"A moment or two later I heard a click near the fireplace, and looking towards the spot whence this sound came, I saw the handle of the bell being pulled back. In another second the bell rang.
"When the maid answered it I was ready for her.
"'Oh! don't you know what that is?' I inquired with mild sarcasm. 'Only mice crossing the wires. Nothing to be frightened of in that, is there?'
"I stuck to this all through the weeks that followed. The maids ceased to answer the bells, and went early to bed in a bunch. They no longer required rooms to themselves.
"In a few months the trouble stopped as suddenly as it had begun. 'It' had evidently found other quarters more to 'its' liking. The mice were equally obliging. They ceased running across the wires."
What theory will explain this species of haunting which is quite common? May it not be that this disembodied entity attached itself to my brother whilst he was out, and like a lost dog followed him home? There must be countless entities wandering about all over this globe, seeking an abiding-place for their restless souls. People who find themselves as bereft of friends on the other side of death, as they were in earth life. Those who have friends here have doubtless friends there.
In old days we used to think of a post-mortem abode as somewhere in the skies. Some even mentioned a receiving station in the bowels of the earth. Now I find that the majority of educated people have come to regard so-called death as merely a change of consciousness, and the immediate post-mortem sphere of our activities to be a region interpenetrating this earth.
A county neighbor of ours in Aberdeenshire told me of a very tantalizing experience he had a very few years ago of temporary haunting. This was a case of seeing, not hearing.
The time was late autumn, and his family had gone south for the winter, leaving him alone for a week or two to finish up the shooting.