Research source

It is difficult to write with perfect seriousness about haunted houses

Date of account: Published 1894
Source: Cock Lane and Common-Sense
Reference: Cock Lane and Common-Sense · selected passage 125
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

It is difficult to write with perfect seriousness about haunted houses. The writer will frankly confess that, when living in haunted houses (as he has done at various times when suffering from illness and overwork), he takes a very solemn view of the matter about bed-time. If 'expectant attention' on a mind strained by the schools, and a body enfeebled by bronchitis, could have made a man, who was the only occupant of the haunted wing of an old Scotch castle, see a ghost, the writer would have seen whatever there was to see. To be sure he could not rationally have regarded a spectre beheld in these conditions, as a well-authenticated ghost. {151} As far as his experience of first-hand tales is concerned, the persons known to him who say they have seen ghosts in haunted houses, were neither unhealthy, nor, except in one solitary case, imaginative, nor were they _expecting_ a ghost. The apparition was 'a little pleasant surprise'. The usual seer is not an invalid, nor a literary person who can always be dismissed as 'imaginative,' though he is generally nothing of the kind. But it cannot be denied that ladies either see more ghosts than men or are less reluctant to impart information.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This comes from historical psychical research. Methods, witness handling and standards of evidence differ from present-day research and should be assessed from the cited passage and edition.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

The passage can support a history of claims and recurring descriptions. It does not establish a paranormal mechanism, and competing psychological, social and physical explanations remain relevant.

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