The genealogical founder of the family of Gothic ghosts is the giant apparition in _The Castle of Otranto_. He heralds his coming by an enormous helmet, a hundred times larger than life size, which crashes into the hall, and a sword which requires a hundred men to bear it in. The ghost himself appears in sections. We first see a Brobdignagian foot and leg, with no body, then a few chapters later an enormous hand to match. In the last scene he assembles his parts, after the fashion of an automobile demonstration, supplies the limbs that are lacking and stands forth as an imposing and portentous shade. After receiving Alfonso's specter--Alfonso will be remembered as the famous statue afflicted with the nose-bleed--he "is wrapt from mortal eyes in a blaze of glory." That seems singular, considering the weighty material of which he and his armor are made. There is another interesting specter in the castle, the monk who is seen kneeling in prayer in the gloomy chapel and who, "turning slowly round discovers to Frederick the fleshless jaws and empty sockets of a skeleton wrapped in a hermit's cowl." Clara Reeve's young peasant in _The Old English Baron_, the unrecognized heir to the estate, who is spending a night in the haunted apartment, sees two apparitions, one a woman and the other a gentleman in armor though not of such appalling size as the revenant in _Otranto_. The two announce themselves as his long-lost parents and vanish after he is estated and suitably wed. Mrs. Radcliffe[9] introduces the shade of a murdered knight, a chatty personage who haunts a baronial hall full of men, and at another time engages in a tournament, slaying his opponent. [9] In _Gaston de Blondeville_. Mrs. Bonhote[10] shows us a migratory ghost of whom the old servant complains in vexation: Only think, Miss, of a ghost that should be at home minding its own business at the Baron's own castle, taking the trouble to follow him here on special business it has to communicate! However, travelling three or four hundred miles is nothing to a ghost that can, as I have heard, go at the rate of a thousand miles a minute on land or sea. In this romance the baron goes to visit the vault and has curdling experiences. [10] In _Bungay Castle_. "A deep groan issues from the coffin and a voice exclaims, 'You hurt me! Forbear or you will crush my bones to powder!'" He knocks the coffin in pieces, whereupon the vocal bones demand decent burial and his departure from the castle. Later the baron sees the ghost of his first wife, who objects to his making a third matrimonial venture, though she has apparently conceded the second. In the same story a young woman's spook pursues one Thomas, almost stamping on his heels, and finally vanishing like a sky-rocket, leaving an odor of brimstone behind. A specter rises from a well in _The History of Jack Smith, or the Castle of Saint Donats_,[11] and shakes its hoary head at a group of men who fire pistols at it.