This most amazing of all ghost stories was related by a woman at the end of the last century to several eminent men who took it seriously. Lord Bute, Andrew Lang, the literary historian, and his friend Dr. Ferrier collected the details of how a "Mrs. Claughton" (a pseudonym) was visited by a party of ghosts and given instructions and an appointment to meet them again. Only the real names of places and certain people were changed to avoid embarrassment to living people, but the names were given to the investigators.

Dr. Ferrier was dining with Andrew Lang and some friends in "Rapingham" (a pseudonym) in October, 1893, and during conversation, Dr. Ferrier asked if they had heard about the haunted house in Blake Street which belonged to some friends of his named Appleby. These had let the house and the new tenants, a Mr. Buckley and his mother and sister, had been puzzled by ghostly happenings there. Dr. Ferrier said that he himself had been in the house years before, and while the family were in the dining-room they heard queer noises in the room overhead, which was empty.

Besides noises there were other puzzling things. Buckley's sister was alone in an attic, kneeling by a trunk, when water was swished over her face. 'When Mr. Buckley was carrying an inkwell upstairs one evening he suddenly felt liquid' in his hand and feared that he had spilled the ink. Reaching his room he went to the window and found that his hand held not ink but water.

These incidents might belong to any old ghost story, but they were to prove only the preliminary operations of the ghosts in the Blake Street house in Rapingham, who apparently were trying to engage the attention of a living person. And their opportunity came with the arrival of Mrs. Claughton, a widow, and two of her children, to stay with the Buckleys.

She had not been there more than a few days before she went to consult Dr. Ferrier and told him that the previous night, while asleep with one of her children in the same bed, she had been awakened by footsteps on the stairs. At last she lit her candle and went to look. By the clock on the landing the time was twenty past one. Nobody was on the stairs. She went back to bed and started to read but fell asleep.

When she woke the candle was burnt low and the sound of a sigh made her look up. A woman wrapped in a white shawl was leaning over her. Mrs. Claughton heard the words "Follow me" and took hold of the candlestick. She may have dreamed what happened next except for one thing. She followed the apparition past the landing and into the drawing-room, which was on the same floor but had been locked by the maid. As her candle was nearly out she replaced it by a pink one from an ornamental cupboard in the drawing-room. Meanwhile she saw the ghost go towards the window, turn round, and say "Tomorrow." Then it vanished.

When she got back to bed her child sleepily asked, "Who is the lady in white?" She eventually fell asleep again. In the morning she saw the pink candle in her candlestick.

Mr. Buckley arranged for Mrs. Claughton to have an electric alarm communicating with his sister's room, in case she was frightened in the night.

This is still like an ordinary ghost story. But Dr. Ferrier went on to tell his friends that Mrs. Claughton had suddenly left Rapingham to obey the instructions of three ghosts who, again at night when she was in bed, had appeared to her. They had ordered her to go to "Meresby." Whereas Rapingham was in the Midlands, Meresby was an obscure village several hours by train on the south side of London.

Buckley's sister the previous night, about one o'clock, had been roused by the electric alarm. She and her brother had found Mrs. Claughton lying on the floor of her bedroom in a faint.

Nobody expected to hear any further incidents in this story, and a report of the occurrences, so far as they knew them, was sent to the Psychical Research Society.

The night that she had rung the alarm bell, Mrs. Claughton did not get into bed but lay on it in her dressing-gown, intending to read. But she fell asleep, then woke (as she believed) to see the white-shawled woman bending over her. Then another figure appeared beside her, a tall, dark man in good health, who was sixty. He told her his name was George Howard, and that he had been buried in Meresby Churchyard. (Neither Mrs. Claughton nor the Buckleys had ever heard of Meresby.) This ghost gave her dates of his marriage and death and impelled her to put them down in her notebook. She must, he said, go to Meresby to check these dates, and if she found them correct, she must wait alone in the church there at 1:15 at night beside the grave of Richard Harte. Mrs. Claughton had never heard of Harte or Howard. But the ghostly Howard told her she would find Harte's grave at the south-west corner of the south aisle.

The ghost then described to her the parish clerk, one Joseph Wright, who would, he said, help her. When Howard finished talking, Mrs. Claughton saw a third phantom, who seemed to be in great grief. She told the investigators that she was not free to repeat his name.The three ghosts made her understand that if she obeyed them, they would meet her again in Meresby Church at the time indicated. Then as they vanished she got up to look at the time by the landing clock. Feeling that she was going to faint, she rang the alarm. (Her condition suggests that she had been asleep.)

Mrs. Claughton left for London on the Thursday, slept in London on the Friday night and this time knew that she merely dreamed of the ghosts, who gave her other particulars and told her that her half ticket to Meresby would not be collected.

They also added to their previous instructions that she would seek out a Mr. Francis, who knew about the private affairs which the ghosts wanted straightened out. All of which was realized in fact.

When she reached Meresby on the Saturday the clerk, Wright, got her the registers and she checked up the dates in her notebook. Wright testified afterwards that she correctly described George Howard, whom he had known. Inside the church she found the grave of Richard Harte, who had died in 1745, and was apparently only useful as a meeting-place.

The curate was surprised at her request to be allowed to go into the church alone that night, but eventually he left the matter in the hands of the parish clerk, who unlocked the church for her and locked her in from 1:20 until 1:45 a.m. on Saturday, October 14, 1893.

Whether or not Mrs. Claughton really met the ghosts again in the church, as she maintained, it is a fact that she was supplied with accurate details of the private affairs of people who were strangers to her. On the following Monday she visited the daughter of George Howard and passed on to her the ghostly messages. Howard's daughter recognized the importance and reasonableness of their requests, though the details were too private to publish. She sent the uncollected half-ticket to Meresby to Dr. Ferrier, who gave it to Andrew Lang. Lang got the railway company to check the date of issue.

None of the ghosts was ever heard of again.

One might well ask what kind of telepathy was this! Spiritualists would not hesitate to regard it as direct communication from persons who had died to a living person whose mind was in the twilight state of dream resembling a trance. Each reader may select a theory where no theory can be substantiated, but one course I do not believe can reasonably be followed, and that is to dismiss such investigated stories as mere superstitious twaddle.