It has been said that the phantasm (_taibhs_ or _tamhasg_) was independent of all thought and volition on the part of those whom it represented, as well as on the part of the seer himself. At the same time, it was part of the creed that if the person whose double was seen was spoken to and told to cease his persecutions, the annoyance came to an end. The person spoken to, being utterly unconscious that his phantasm was wandering about and annoying any one, got very angry, but somehow the spectre ceased to appear. Before taking a final leave, however, it gave the person whom it had haunted (as an informant described it) “one thundering lashing.” After that it was no more seen. When a double is first met, if it be taken to be the man himself whose semblance it bears, and be spoken to, it acquires the power of compelling the person who has accosted it to hold nightly assignations with it in future. The man, in fact, from that hour becomes “spectre-haunted.” Hence it was a tenet of the second sight never to be the first to speak, on meeting an acquaintance at night, till satisfied that the figure seen was of this world. The seer did not like, indeed did not dare, to tell to others whose figure it was that haunted him. If he did so, the anger of the spectre was roused, and on the following evening it gave him a dreadful thrashing. When he resisted, he grasped but a shadow, was thrown down repeatedly in the struggle, and bruised severely. This form of the disease was well known in the Western Islands. The haunted person, as in the case of those who had Fairy sweethearts, had to leave home at a certain hour in the evening to meet the spectre, and if he dared for one night to neglect the assignation he received in due course a sound thrashing. Sometimes at these meetings the spectre spoke and gave items of information about the death of the seer and others. Ordinarily, however, it had merely an indistinct murmuring kind of speech (_tormanaich bruidhinn_). People noted for the second sight have been observed to have a peculiar look about the eyes. One of them, for instance, in Harris was described as “always looking up and never looking you straight in the face.” Those who are of a brooding, melancholy disposition are most liable to spectral illusions, and it is only to be expected that the gloom of their character should appear in their looks, and that many of their visions should relate to deaths and funerals.