Research source

But since ghosts can and do show themselves spontaneously in haunted houses, why the necessity of musical…

Date of account: Published 1911
Source: Byways of Ghost-Land
Reference: Byways of Ghost-Land · selected passage 85
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

But since ghosts can and do show themselves spontaneously in haunted houses, why the necessity of musical instruments, professional medium, and sitting round a table with fingers linked?

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

But since ghosts can and do show themselves spontaneously in haunted houses, why the necessity of musical instruments, professional medium, and sitting round a table with fingers linked? Surely, when one comes to think of it, the _modus operandi_ of the séance, besides being extremely undignified, is somewhat superfluous. Tin trumpets, twopenny tambourines, and concertinas are all very well in their way, but, try how I will, I cannot associate them with ghosts. What phantasm of any standing at all would be attracted by such baubles? Surely only the phantasms of the very silliest of servant girls, of incurable idiots, and of advanced imbeciles. But even they, I think, might be "above it," in which case the musical instruments, tin trumpets, tambourines, and concertinas, disdained by the immaterial, must be manipulated by the material! And this rule with regard to table-turning, the manipulation of musical instruments, etc., equally applies to materialisation.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This 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 only

Lattice 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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