"They are the most unlikely family to do such a thing; and besides, if further proof were wanted, the young men of the family were away from B—— when we stayed there ten days, and there was only one night when we did not hear the noises."
Miss Freer of course entirely accepts Mrs. "G.'s" statement, and that of Mr. H—— as published in The Times. She had been led to her earlier conclusions as to the marks of a boot-heel on the upper panels of the doors by the statements of interested persons.
A suggestive point in this connection is the fact, to which Miss "G." has herself testified, that while Mr. and Mrs. "G." were disturbed to the utmost degree, their daughter, who slept in a room communicating with that of her mother, heard nothing whatever; from which it would appear that the noises heard by them were subjective, and that the alleged evidence of the boot-heel, even were it credible, would be, in fact, irrelevant.
The mention of the hallucinatory nature of such phenomena suggests attention to the intellectual acumen displayed by The Times correspondent in saying that "Lord Bute ought to have employed a couple of intelligent detectives" for the purpose of catching subjective hallucinations. On the same principle, he ought to offer to his learned friend, Sir James Crichton-Browne, well known as an alienist, some advice as to the best mode of securing morbid hallucinations in strait-waistcoats. Is he prepared to propose to take photographs of a dream, to put thoughts under lock and key, or to advocate the supply of hot and cold water on every floor of a castle in the air?
One of the guests at B—— during Colonel Taylor's tenancy wrote after his return to London to Miss Freer as follows:—
"March 24th.—I went to call the other day on the 'G.'s' who chanced to be still in town.... I begin chronologically, and give you what I was told in all seriousness.... The H——s knew nothing about any stories of haunting when they took the place, and Miss H—— and one of the sons went up, most innocently, to prepare for the arrival of the others. As soon as they entered it the son said to his sister that he couldn't explain why, but he had a conviction that the house was haunted. That night, however, nothing happened. But the second night the bangings began. An old Spanish nurse was in the haunted room, and was greatly disturbed by the noise upon her door, which seemed as if it were going to be burst open. She didn't seem to be alarmed in the least however, and later took steps to secure its remaining shut by stuffing a towel under the chink (why this should secure it I rather fail to see, still that was her view). Apparently the ghost resented this, and one night did actually burst the door open, with such violence that the towel was precipitated into the middle of the room. The longer they stayed in the house, the worse things got. The noises were all over the house more or less, and were by no means confined to bangings. Miss H—— slept in room No. 8, where the ghost limped round her bed. She was so alarmed that she fetched her brother in, and he slept on the sofa. The limping began again, and she asked him if he heard anything, and he at once agreed that somebody was walking round the bed. In his own room—I forget which—he twice saw the ghost, once in the shape of an indeterminate mist, once in the shape of a man, who came in by the door and vanished in the wall. Mrs. 'G.'[B] now appears on the scene, and slept in No. 1 (I think). She heard only the bangings, which she declares were indescribably loud. They were mostly at the door of the haunted room. Traps were laid to catch unwary jesters; the door, or the surrounding floor, I forget which, was covered with flour, and wires were stretched across the door; and if I had the proper mind of a ghost-story narrator, I should say that the bangings were as bad as ever, and the flour and the wires were found undisturbed.
"But as a matter of fact she didn't say that, though doubtless she intended to, but jumped on to something else. Mr. "G.," who was there some weeks after his wife, was put down in the wing—I don't know which room—and had visitations. He heard steps approach down the passage, followed by a heavy body flinging itself against his door. He also heard screams, which seemed to him to recede as though the screamer was passing through the walls. (I couldn't quite understand this effect, but that was how he described it.) Their chaplain, who was put into the haunted room, was also greatly worried, and both he and the Spanish nurse and Colonel A—— all had the sensation that their bedclothes were being pulled off, and they had to hold on to them to prevent their departure. The most interesting part of the story is that Mrs. S—— later admitted to Mrs. "G." that it was quite true the house was supposed to be haunted, that she had lived there for twenty years, and at various times there had been outbreaks of this kind of thing of greater or less duration, but that the outbreaks had not been often enough for them to think it worth while mentioning the fact to incoming tenants. It appears also that the story of the bangings on the table in the daylight on the occasion of the last interview between the late Mr. S—— and the land-steward, came from one of the young S——s. It was also said that one of the young S——s used to sleep in the dressing-room between No. 1 and the haunted room, and used to complain that somebody kept pulling his bedclothes off.
"I may add that it is quite clear that the people about the place—some of whom, on my leaving, I vainly tried to draw—have been threatened not to talk about the ghost. There was no mystery about it whatever last year, the station officials being exceedingly loquacious and full of information...."
The above are the circumstances which The Times correspondent thus describes:—
"Lord Bute's confidence has been grossly abused by some one. It was represented to him by some one that he was taking the 'most haunted house in Scotland,' a house with an old and established reputation for mysterious if not supernatural disturbances. What he has got is a house with no reputation whatever of that kind, with no history, with nothing germane to his purpose beyond a cloud of baseless rumours produced during the last twelve-month. Who is responsible for the imposture it is not my business to know or to inquire, but that it is an imposture of the most shallow and impudent kind there can be no manner of doubt. I interviewed in P—— a man who has the district at his finger-tips, and was ready to enumerate in order all the shooting properties in the valley. He had never heard until the moment I spoke to him of B—— possessing any reputation, ancient or modern, for being haunted, although he is familiar with the estate, and has slept in the house. It has no local reputation of the kind even now beyond the parish it stands in. The whole thing has been fudged up in London upon the basis of some distorted account of the practical jokes of the H——s."