When Colonel Taylor, one of the fundamental members of the London Spiritualist Alliance, a distinguished member of the S.P.R., whose name is associated both in this country and in America with the investigation of haunted houses, offered to take a lease of B—— House, after the lease had been resigned by Mr. H——, the proprietor made no objection whatever. Indeed, the only allusion made to the haunting was the expression of a hope on the part of Captain S——'s agents in Edinburgh, that Colonel Taylor would not make it a subject of complaint, as had been done by Mr. H——, in reply to which they were informed that Colonel Taylor was thoroughly well aware of what had happened during Mr. H——'s tenancy, and would undertake to make no complaint on the subject. Captain S—— having thus thrown the house into the open market, and let it to the well-known expert, with no reference whatever to the subject of haunting, except that it should not be made a ground of complaint, it is obvious that he deprived himself of any right to complain as to observations upon the subject of local hallucination, any more than of observation upon the habits of squirrels or other local features. Nor had he any more right to complain upon this ground, as vendor of the lease, than any other vendor of articles exposed for public sale, such as a hatter, who after selling a hat to Lord Salisbury, might complain that he had been induced to provide headgear for a Conservative. At the same time, both Colonel Taylor and his friends were well aware, from a vexatious experience, that phenomena of the kind found at B—— are very often associated with private matters, which the members of a family concerned might object to see published, just as they might object to the publication of the results of an examination of some object—say, old medicine-bottles—found in the house let by them to a strange tenant.
Acting upon this knowledge, it has been the general rule of the Society for Psychical Research to publish the cases investigated by it under avowedly false names, as private cases are published in medical and other scientific journals. Out of a courteous anxiety that nothing should occur which could in any way annoy any member of the S—— family, no one was admitted to the house for the purpose of observing the phenomena, except on the definite understanding that they were to regard everything as confidential, and it was always intended that any publication on the subject was to be made with all names and geographical indications avowedly fictitious.
As certain points of Gaelic orthography were found to be involved, it was decided to mention the house as standing in a bi-lingual district upon the borders of Wales, and Lord Bute arranged with Sir William Lewis to have these linguistic points represented by Welsh instead of Gaelic.
The affairs of the inquiry, and of any phenomena which might occur, were thus protected, it was believed, by a confidence even more absolute than that usually observed in such affairs of a household as to which honour dictates that a guest should be silent.
The appreciation with which the S—— family responded to this courteous and careful consideration for their possible feelings, was made manifest to the world by the tone which they adopted when, immediately on the appearance of the anonymous article in The Times, they rushed into the newspapers, and published everything concerning themselves, their family property, predecessors, and tenants, with all the proper names at full length. After that outburst it has, of course, been rendered impossible to keep the identity of the place and people any longer secret.
Out of deference to other members of the family who did not take part in this, the matter in the present volume remains in as private a form as the newspaper correspondence now leaves possible.
The names given in full are those mostly very indirectly concerned; other names, including that of the house, are given under the real initials, with the exception of a few of the less prominent, when the real initials would create confusion; and in these latter cases they are taken from letters of the alphabet not already used, and are placed in inverted commas; e.g. the real initial of a Mr. S—— is changed, in order to avoid confusion with the name of the S—— family themselves, the proprietors of B——.
The contents of the book are, except in one respect, arranged upon the simple chronological system. They commence with a short sketch of the history of the S—— family, based in its earlier part upon Douglas's "Baronage of Scotland"; and all information which the writers possess as to the phenomena which have occurred since the death of Major S—— in 1876, except that supplied by the S—— family, is set forth in succession.
The family of S—— date from the earlier part of the middle of the fifteenth century, and were settled upon the river T—— within that century, while they have possessed B—— at least since the earlier half of the century following.