Bones and I by G.J. Whyte-Melville — Read

A hundred years ago there was scarce a decent country house in England or Scotland that did not pride itself on two advantages-the inexhaustible resources of its cellar and the undoubted respectability of its ghost. Whether the generous contents of the one had not something to do with the regular attendance of the other, I will not take upon me to decide; but in those times hall, castle, manor-house, and even wayside inn were haunted every one. The phantoms used to be as various, too, as the figures in a pantomime. Strains of unaccountable music sometimes floated in the air. Invisible carriages rolled into courtyards at midnight, and door-bells rang loudly, pulled by unearthly visitors, who were heard but never seen. If you woke at twelve o'clock you were sure to find a nobleman in court-dress, or a lady in farthingale and high-heeled shoes, warming a pair of ringed and wasted hands at the embers of your wood-fire; failing these, a favourite sample of the supernatural consisted of some pale woman in white garments, with her black hair all over her shoulders and her throat cut from ear to ear. In one instance I remember a posting-house frequented by the spirit of an ostler with a wooden leg; but perhaps the most blood-chilling tale of all is that which treats of an empty chamber having its floor sprinkled with flour to detect the traces of its mysterious visitant, and the dismay with which certain horror-stricken watchers saw footsteps printing themselves off, one by one, on the level spotless surface-footsteps plain and palpable, but of the Fearful Presence nothing more!

As with houses in those, so is it with men in these days. Most of the people I have known in life were haunted; so haunted, indeed, that for some the infliction has led at last to madness, though in most instances productive only of abstracted demeanour, wandering attention, idiotic cross-purposes, general imbecility of intellect, and, on occasion, reckless hilarity, with quaint, wild, incoherent talk. These haunted head-pieces, too, get more and more dilapidated every day; but how to exorcise them, that is the difficulty! What spells shall have power to banish the evil spirit from its tenement, and lay it in the Red Sea? if indeed that is the locality to which phantoms should properly be consigned. Haunted men are, of all their kind, the most unhappy; and you shall not walk along a London street without meeting them by the dozen.