HAUNTED HOUSES UNDISCOVERABLE.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1039, 21 February 1882, Page 2

HAUNTED HOUSES UNDISCOVERABLE.

As tn haunted hn”se». they are as circuit to find as the celebrated >n>rk. Many years ago, I remember, my father, being considerably pestered with stories of inexplicable ghosts and haunted houses, decided on thoroughly' investigating the first case which admitted of his taking possession cf the house wit!i his own party, under such circumstances as precluded the possibi'itv of anv trickery or foul play. To this end the party were to be well armed, and notice was to be given ex'ensirely in the neighbourhood of the house which might be the subjtctof investigation that the revolvers were for use and not for show, and that it would he advisable for the 1< eal wags not to try any tricks on the garrison. I be partv was to consisi of mv father, ihe. late Mr AV. 11. Wills, Mr Edmund Ya’es (if I rnmtmhrr righ ly), myself, a»*d *w’o dogs of imposing stature and truculent aspect which were kept at Gadshill for the benefit of the tramps who prowl along the Kentish roads. But that haunted house never turned up. Over and over again did the believer in haunted houses, whoso pertinacity led to the formation of thia party of would-be ghost-seers, write to my father with details of inoated granges in Wiltshire, of manor house* in Kent, of wild farms in Cumberland, of buildings, I verilv believe, in half the counties of England, which were said to be full of the most delightful ghosts, and to offer all kinds of mvsierious sights and sounds to the investijator. Over and over again did it turn out either that the houses did not exist (or at all events could not be identified), or that some insuperable obstacle stood in the way of the proposed (‘xaininntion. No kej of any house with a ghost in it was ever procurable on the terms 1 have mentioned, and I very much doubt whether any would ever be forthcoming under similar conditions. — (Jaarles Dickens in lluiisehold 11 or ds.