Research source

I will now proceed in Mr. Davies' words, heading each incident with the title given it in the collec

Date of account: Published 1911
Source: Stranger Than Fiction: Being Tales from the Byways of Ghosts and Folk-lore
Reference: Stranger Than Fiction: Being Tales from the Byways of Ghosts and Folk-lore · selected passage 163
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

One would like to know the raison d'être of that little feline spectre, and there is doubtless some story connected with it that would account for its presence could we but look back far enough into the histories of former tenants of the house

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

One would like to know the _raison d'être_ of that little feline spectre, and there is doubtless some story connected with it that would account for its presence could we but look back far enough into the histories of former tenants of the house. But in a city or town, strange happenings connected with any particular family are more quickly forgotten than in the country, where such traditions are apt to linger far longer in the memories of the local inhabitants. In a town, one is told "such and such a house is haunted"; but if you ask why and how haunted, you will generally meet with "I don't know" in reply. Whereas in the country, if a house acquires a "haunted" reputation, there is mostly chapter and verse for its particular kind of ghost, and often a story told to account for the haunting.

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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