He would sometimes throw a boot at it, and always with the same result--the boot would go right through it."…
- Date of account
- Published 1911
- Source
- Byways of Ghost-Land
- Reference
- Byways of Ghost-Land · selected passage 42
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
He would sometimes throw a boot at it, and always with the same result--the boot would go right through it." She then told me that a former tenant of the house, who had borne an evil reputation in the village--the peasants unanimously declaring she was a witch--had died, so it was said, in my room
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 onlyHe would sometimes throw a boot at it, and always with the same result--the boot would go right through it." She then told me that a former tenant of the house, who had borne an evil reputation in the village--the peasants unanimously declaring she was a witch--had died, so it was said, in my room. "But, of course," she added, "it wasn't her ghost that Mike saw." Here I disagreed with her. However, if she could not come to any conclusion, neither could I; for though, of course, the dog may have been the earth-bound spirit of some particularly carnal-minded occupant of the cottage--or, in other words, a phantasm representing one of that carnal-minded person's several personalities,--it may have been the phantasm of a vagrarian, of a barrowvian, or, of some other kind of elemental, attracted to the spot by its extreme loneliness, and the presence there, unsuspected by man, of some ancient remains, either human or animal.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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