Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. HAUNTED HOUSES.

Everybody has heard of haunted houses; and there is no country, and scarcely any place, in which something of the sort is not known or talked off; and I suppose there in no one who, in the course of their travels, has not seen very respectable, good-looking houses shut up and uninhabited, because they had this evil reputation assigned to them. I have seen several such, for my own part; and it is remarkable that this mala fama does not always, by any means, attach itself to buildings one would imagine most obnoxious to such a suspicion.For example, I never heard of a ghost being seen or heard in Haddon Hall, the most ghostly of houses; nor in many other antique, mysterious looking buildings, where one might expect them, whilst sometimes a house of a very prosaic aspect remains uninhabited, and is ultimately allowed to fall to ruin for no other reason, we are told, than that nobody can live in it. I remember, in my childhood, such a house in Kent?I think it was on the road betwixt MaidstoneandTunbridge?whichhadthis reputation. There was nothing dismal about it; it was neither large nor old; and it stood on the borders of a well frequented road; yet, I was assured it had stood empty for years; and as long as I lived in that part of the country it never had an inhabitant, and I believe was finally pulled down; and all for no other reason than that it was haunted, and nobody could live in it. I have frequently heard of people, whilst travelling on the continent, getting into houses at a rent so low as to surprise them, and I have moreover frequently heard of very strange things occurring whilst they were there. I remember, for instance, a family of the name of S. S., who obtained a very handsome house at a most agreeably cheap rate, somewhere on the ...