THE TRUTH ABOUT GHOSTS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1035, 11 February 1882, Page 4

THE TRUTH ABOUT GHOSTS.

Mr J. N. Maskelyne, writing to the I London journals says: —Having for, many years been recognised by the 1 public as an ami spiritualist and ex-: poser of the frauds practised by spirit- i media, if may surprise some of the i people to learn that 1 am a believer in ; apparitions. Several similar occur-, rences to those described by many of your correspondents have taken place \ in my own family ami in the families of near friends and relatives. The I most remarkable one happened to my ; wife’s mother some vears ago. Late i one evening, while sitting alone busily : occupied with her needle, a strange: sensation came over her, and upon looking up she distinctly saw her aged mother standing at the end of the room. She rubbed In* weary eyes and looked again, but the spectre had vanished. She concluded it was iin agination, and retired to rest, thinking nothing more of the vision until the next day brought news that her mother at about the same time the apparition had appeared, had fallen down in a fit and expired. I also relate a circumstance which happened to myself, as it may tend to throw light upon these ' common occurrences. V> hen a boy, i and learning to swim, I got out of my j depth, and was very nearly drowned, being insensible when taken out of the i water. My sensations were similar I to those which have often been des-, Bribed by others. Alter the terrible' feeling of suffocation I fell into a pleasant swoon, and a panorama of all the principal incidents of my life now I passed before me. The last thing I i could remember was a vivid picture of j my home. I saw my mother, and I could describe minutely where she sat 1 and what she was doing. Upon re-j turning home I kept the secret of: what had happened from her ; she, however, questioned me closely, ami. saiil she felt strangely uneasy and anxious about me, ami thought some , accident had befallen me. I am quite convinced that, had it been night time, and my mother alone with little to occupy her attention, she would have seen my ghost, and perhaps the ghost of the water winch i closed over my head, as plainly as 1 saw her ghost and the room in which she was sitting. In after years, in : pondering over these and other tacts,; I came to the conclusion that it was : quite possible for one mind to influence I another, no matter how great the distance apart, especially where ‘‘two hearts beat as one,” or, more correctly , speaking, where two brains vibrate in unison. If lam not encroaching too much on your valuable space, I should like to state also tha* I have had some experience with haunted houses. Our family occupied a house which had that reputation. It stood, and I believe still stands, in the outskirts of the town of Cheltenham. A rich old lady of miterly habits resided there for manyyears,and after hi r death strange stories were rife respecting it. Moises were heard within, and a spectre with a green light was often seen flitting about the empty rooms, 'I he first might of our residence in the house we retired to rest shortly before midnight. 1 occupied a room at the top of the house, and two or three of my sisters slept in an adjacent one. Scarcely had our candles been extinguished than we were startled by a curious tapping sound like some one walking upstairs, but came no nearer, although the tapping continued several minutes. I began to feel alarmed, and fancied 1 .saw the shadow of a female flit across the room. I called “ Who’s there?” and my sisters, who were also listening to the ghostly footsteps, uttered a scream of terror, and in a few minutes the whole household was in a state of commotion. The tappings ceased, but fortunately they immediately commenced again, and after a few minutes’ search, I discovered the ghost to be nothing more t han a shower •of rain, and from a leakage in the gutter over my window the water dropped upon the lead covering of a bay window beneath. This proved a most useful lesson to me, and taught me to believe that although there was some “ truth about ghosts,” yet these phenomena are purely mutidaue.