Next day his sister told him about the disturbances, after which he heard them as much as his neighbours, and was as unsuccessful in discovering their cause.

{189} Of course this looks as if these noises were unreal, children of the imagination.

Noises being the staple of haunted houses, a few words may be devoted to them.

They are usually the frou-frou or rustling sweep of a gown, footsteps, raps, thumps, groans, a sound as if all the heavy furniture was being knocked about, crashing of crockery and jingling of money.

Of course, as to footsteps, people _may_ be walking about, and most of the other noises are either easily imitated, or easily produced by rats, water pipes, cracks in furniture (which the Aztecs thought ominous of death), and other natural causes.
The explanation is rather more difficult when the steps pace a gallery, passing and repassing among curious inquirers, or in this instance.
THE CREAKING STAIR A lady very well known to myself, and in literary society, lived as a girl with an antiquarian father in an old house dear to an antiquary.
It was haunted, among other things, by footsteps.