“Cured?” repeated the relative. “Cured of what?”
“Why, her ear trouble—the disease that has made it necessary for her to keep her head bandaged.”
“But,” said the other, obviously puzzled, “I do not understand you. I did not know she had any ear trouble, and I have never seen her with a bandage.”
It was the teacher’s turn to be astonished. She could not believe that the girl had been deceiving her; but, to get at the truth, she decided to take her immediately to the hospital where the operation was supposed to have been performed. There the child made her way about as if perfectly familiar with the place, and greeted in a friendly manner the surgeon in charge. He, however, did not seem to recognise her, and when told the circumstances by the teacher, said:
“I can assure you I have never operated upon this girl.”
He then made a thorough examination of her ear, and found it to be quite sound. After which, careful investigation developed the fact that her sole knowledge of the hospital was derived from detailed information given her by a friend, a lady who, curiously enough, had been operated upon a little while previously for precisely the trouble that the girl had attributed to herself.
In other words, no doubt remained that she had for weeks been acting a lie, from what motive neither her teacher nor her parents could fathom.
Again, a clergyman writing to the Society for Psychical Research from a little English village named Ham, urgently requested the despatch of a skilled investigator to look into certain strange occurrences in the house of a Mr. Turner. This house, the clergyman asserted, was haunted by a “veritable ghost,” which amused itself by playing all sorts of mischievous and annoying pranks.
Remaining invisible, it hurled boots, shoes, and other small objects through the air, upset chairs and tables, and on at least one occasion it had pitched the family cat into the fire. All this was done, according to both the clergyman and several other intelligent eye-witnesses, under circumstances that rendered it impossible that the “manifestations” could be the work of any human agency.