The Book of Dreams and Ghosts

"Anybody see anything?" "No, only footsteps are heard creeping up, before the twitches come off." "And what do the people do?" "Nothing! We set a camera once to photograph the spook. He did not sit." "It's rum!" said the Beach-comber. "But mind you, as to spooks, I don't believe a word of it." {299} THE GHOST THAT BIT The idiot Scotch laird in the story would not let the dentist put his fingers into his mouth, "for I'm feared ye'll bite me". The following anecdote proves that a ghost may entertain a better founded alarm on this score. A correspondent of Notes and Queries (3rd Sept., 1864) is responsible for the narrative, given "almost verbatim from the lips of the lady herself," a person of tried veracity. "Emma S---, one of seven children, was sleeping alone, with her face towards the west, at a large house near C---, in the Staffordshire moorlands. As she had given orders to her maid to call her at an early hour, she was not surprised at being awakened between three and four on a fine August morning in 1840 by a sharp tapping at her door, when in spite of a "thank you, I hear," to the first and second raps, with the third came a rush of wind, which caused the curtains to be drawn up in the centre of the bed. She became annoyed, and sitting up called out, "Marie, what are you about?"