Warning! Oscar Wilde is now pretending to write a scientific report, so his language becomes more complicated.

The whole family were now quite interested; Mr Otis began to suspect that he had been too dogmatic in his denial of the existence of ghosts, Mrs Otis expressed her intention of joining the Psychical Society.

Washington prepared a long letter to a detective agency on the subject of the Permanence of Sanguineous Stains when connected with Crime.

That night all doubts about the objective existence of phantasmata were removed for ever. The day had been warm and sunny; and, in the cool of the evening, the whole family went out of the house. They did not return home till nine o'clock, when they had a light supper.

The conversation in no way turned upon ghosts, so there were not even those primary conditions of receptive expectation which so often precede ghostly appearances.

The subjects discussed, as I have since learned from Mr Otis, were merely such as form the ordinary conversation of cultured Americans of the better class

They discussed the immense superiority of Miss Fanny Davenport over Sara Bernhardt as an actress; the difficulty of obtaining green corn, buckwheat cakes, and hominy, even in the best English houses, and the importance of Boston in the world's spiritual development.

The advantages of the baggage check system in railway travelling; and the sweetness of the New York accent as compared to the London drawl also entered the conversation.