The New Revelation by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I have mentioned in the text that I had some recent experience of a / case where a "polter-geist" or mischievous spirit had been manifesting. / These entities appear to be of an undeveloped order and nearer to earth / conditions than any others with which we are acquainted. This / comparative materialism upon their part places them low in the scale of / spirit, and undesirable perhaps as communicants, but it gives them a / special value as calling attention to crude obvious phenomena, and so / arresting the human attention and forcing upon our notice that there / are other forms of life within the universe. These borderland forces / have attracted passing attention at several times and places in the / past, such cases as the Wesley persecution at Epworth, the Drummer of / Tedworth, the Bells of Bealing, etc., startling the country for a / time -- each of them being an impingement of unknown forces upon human / life. Then almost simultaneously came the Hydesville case in America / and the Cideville disturbances in France, which were so marked that / they could not be overlooked. From them sprang the whole modern / movement which, reasoning upwards from small things to great, from raw / things to developed ones, from phenomena to messages, is destined to / give religion the firmest basis upon which it has ever stood. / Therefore, humble and foolish as these manifestations may seem, they / have been the seed of large developments, and are worthy of our / respectful, though critical, attention.

Many such manifestations have appeared of recent years in various / quarters of the world, each of which is treated by the press in a more / or less comic vein, with a conviction apparently that the use of the / word "spook" discredits the incident and brings discussion to an end. / It is remarkable that each is treated as an entirely isolated / phenomenon, and thus the ordinary reader gets no idea of the strength / of the cumulative evidence. In this particular case of the Cheriton / Dugout the facts are as follows: