Show MR RED HOT POKER london march of the weekly press have drawn ray attention to an interesting citsay b MF lebou caliere in truth it is partly a fragment of autobiography partly it reflects the ical theories of the author and incidentally it raises questions aa to the immortality of the soul and the value of fiuman evidence fin ago or about that daic mr wo lcara tenanted ten anted in bolton street the previous tenant had cut hi own throat and it appears that mr babou labou chere therefore obtained the house on terms anoro moderate than if this acci dent had not oc curel why this have been so can le explained by a survival of the opinion hat the souli of unhappy people like Gorgi bua in moliere Molie rc are dans la maticic rc and haunt alic earthly scene of their distresses it is odd that heathen superstition should affect ahe rent of a house in bolton street wt mr Labouch cro by alic circumstance and by the experiences which followed lie had two maids an d 1 of french birth jhb appear for all learn to have been ecat isaac tory retainers no liina is given of that they or souie of them at least he causes of certain trilling inconveniences for example mr sitting in a room on the ground floor would be an loyod by a prodigious turmoil in the kichen below as if people were throwing about the furniture and pots and pans As none of the servants was known to be in fornear the kitchen at alio lime mr labouchere ero was naturally and lie visited the center of disturbance bailee nicol barvic and s prowess abc jhc thc clachan of mr labouchere cre not only seized the householders weapon the poker but healed it red hot thus aenied lie down stairs when the at once ceased as 41 always does on anch occasions and the furniture was found peacefully and orderly arranged his c was repeated we donot frequently mr labouchere hitting with his study door open heard as of a mans footsteps ascending the staircase to the upper parts noflie house but i he never could aee tha wight who as far as hearing him kept going up stairs thi noises were found not to proceed from the water pipes thou gli water pipes occasionally do produce noises that imitate human footsteps to nor were they echoes from footsteps on the stairs of neighboring houses they were leard by the servants as well as by the tenant of the house in bolton streets and that was all mr comment is to the effect that though lie never found out the cause of the phenomena lie did not leap to a theory of the supernatural nor suppose that a spirit was abc work this degree of metaphysical is creditable to the philosopher phenomena like those described are so far from being supernatural that we can hardly cven call them supernormal they arc very common the racket as if of furniture being tossed very seldom when any one is in the room whence tho coundi ap acar to come I 1 did know a dog once who was shut up in the room his owner a lady in the chamber overhead heard the noise in tho dead of night just as mr labouchere did and the va carme was mingled with tho howla ot alic dog lie seemed to ba extremely alarmed and when tho door was opened next rushed out with his tail between his legs alic articles of furnia turo were all standing staidly in their places as in mr experience unluckily it was impossible to tako the evidence of the dog a fine collie two curious points here arise in the many alleged cases furniture rushes wildly about a room to the horror of the spectators there la enough still the chaira and tables conspicuously desert their wonted places and fragile objects break I 1 shall not ask whether the witnesses to such things are hoaxed that the things more and break is certain even if it bo said that ciomo artful persons cleverly threw them or jerked them with a of fine threads but da far as I 1 know nobody Is ever inthe room where tho sounds appear to indicate violent movements of the furniture aind yet the furniture haa cither not been moved or haa been restored with odd rapidity to ita proper place aa in mr Labouch erea tale kanco it bould appear to follow and this is tho ous point that tho furniture lias not been moved at all and that the aicard for example by mr la chere biad no objective existence f in ghosts do not deny that n sano per ahers however little they may believe son lo 10 all appearances healthy and AO may sec a visual hallucination representing one who 19 not actually present that possibility is not denied but people forget that alio llio ears as well as the byca may be hallucinated and that they may hear sounds which arc not objective the objects in mr babou labou clie kitchen had not as far as I 1 his narrative been moved about for it hardly possible that they could all leavo been in order between the moment ihen tho racket ceased and the when with glowing poker in hand he entered the room in the bame way when sir walter armed with Bc ardies abord entered the room at abbots ford whence re sounded the nois cai of heavy packing cases in collision the racket ceased and the heavy objects were where they had been it was the night on which scotts agent forn rian furnishings died in london in lucli instances it seems eliat either si walter and mn misinterpreted the nature and apparent causa movements of furniture or theno isM or that there were no real at all merely hallucinatory cin atory noises A cat especially if it has swallowed a phantom minnow at cached to a lino as in a story 0 dr macleoda Macl coda can make tt wonder ful set of hoisea bul neither 1 sir valer nor mr ob the most astute it up acts pots and pan could no ibo re attora them to their again the coll iain toy other anecdote woud have titled a sit wh i ca dhea chairs and about the fact that thi dog bovio ml huiard the noises does not prove chahey were objective anle ghosts am objective for doga see when hamao do and even they do in tho odyssey thai ho knew this act in natural history we have as in mr wesley father 0 the celebrated john and in 7 B vincent the great admiral of people who for lung did not hearthia he arthis data 1 of noise other even in the same i room did hear them thus it seems not i illogical to guess that a person in mr Labouch erea company but devoid of lii peculiar physical might not have heard cither the footsteps on the stairs or tho disturbance in the kitchen these are no new ideas I 1 first by ectrus thy a learned jesuit writing about sir myers in lib work recently published mentions a voting lady who fastened from the rails of to the wall jn a house hero mysterious footsteps were common jhc would licar the steps go down the stairs but alie threads would never be dis placed mr Labouch cro mentions thai tha sound of steps would if spoken to so to speak which is a i lar fact but all thia was forty ago and in forty years or much less we know what tricks our memory will play us mr illustrates my theory that lie may hare heard sounds which not by an anecdote lie was sitting alone in alic outer of two drawing rooms when divid danglas iloise was giving assance in the inner room this must have been quite thirty years ago the people who had been at the then came into the room where mr was and said that they had been a piano pass through the wall from their his lie was able to assure them that this circum had not attracted his observation of course it may have happened he entered the outer room but lie thinks that the company saw what did not occur just arfi arf I suggest that lie heard noises that were not produced by vibration in tho material atmosphere still mr anecdote would be very valuable approving as proving that a collective hallucination can be induced that as in mediaeval Media eval glamour several persona can be made to see what they do not see without tho ordinary art of conjuring and without hypnotism but conceivably mr memory en ir mine does for I 1 have always been lold that home denied the possibility of the passage of matter through matter without lesion and denounced mediums who showed tah trick as hum bugs can mr labouchere cre bo thinking of some other medium than |