LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
A GHOST STORY.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sta,—Considerable astonishment, not wholly unmixed with indig- nation, is felt here at the extraordinary ghost-story furnished by Sir Edmund Hornby to Messrs. Myers and Gurney, and by them confidingly published in the Nineteenth Century for July. The entire compilation is a tissue of the most transparent misstate- ments, as the following remarks will prove :— Sir Edmund's story is briefly this. On a certain night in January, 1875, while in bed—Lady Hornby being asleep at the time—he was visited by the ghost of a certain editor, who insisted on Sir Edmund dictating to him the précis of a judgment which was to be delivered during the ensuing day. It was afterwards discovered that this editor, one Mr. Hugh Lang, had died suddenly at the very time of his appear- ance to Sir Edmund, the cause of his death being deter- mined, at the inquest, to have resulted from heart-disease; but Sir Edmund, for reasons best known to himself, only mentioned his strange experience to the Puisne Judge, to whom it was confirmed the same day at tiffin by Lady Hornby. Now, will it be credited, at the time in question there was no Lady Hornby in existence. Sir Edmund was a widower, and did not marry again till April 29th following. No inquest was held ; Mr. Lang did not die in the middle of the night, but at eight or nine in the morning ; there was no case before the Court on which any judgment was to be delivered ; and the Puisne Judge, the late well-known Egyptologist and essayist and reviewer, Mr. Charles Wycliff Goodwin, was not in Shanghai, but in Japan. Nobody believes that Sir Edmund Hornby has wilfully imposed upon Messrs. Gurney and Myers ; but he is certainly a victim of the very strangest and most inexplicable self-delusion that ever took possession of a man's mind. The enclosed article deals with the affair at somewhat greater length.—I am, Sir, &c., FREDERIC H. BALFOUR,
Editor of the North. ChinaHerald. Shanghai, August 15th,, 1884.
[As we quoted the story from the Nineteenth Century, we pub- lish Mr. Balfour's rather rough denial of it. Sir E. Hornby's veracity is above suspicion, and the conflict of evidence as yet absolutely inexplicable.—ED. Spectator.]
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