Mr Scarletti's Ghost Read Online Free PDF

to believe, but there was writing on the paper – clear writing! It can only have been a message from the spirits. It said that all those present would enjoy good fortune.’
    Mina had never seen a ghost or experienced anything that suggested the existence of a force outside of the body apart from what was already known to and approved of by science, such as the warmth and light of the sun. The world of paper ghosts she had created from her imagination was, she thought, a great deal more interesting than the commonplace manifestations described by her mother. She was not sure that she even believed in the apparitions of deceased loved ones that fanciful people sometimes reported seeing. Her stories, far from inducing her to credit the possibility of ghosts, did rather the opposite, since they created a vivid impression in her mind that was very different from what she saw around her. Perhaps, she thought, all ghosts, both those in stories and those said to be real, were only the product of the human mind. In her own case she knew they were false and wrote about them to entertain her readers, but for those who did not write, they became not words, but visions.
    Still, Mina was obliged to admit that the evening’s séance had been considered a success by all present, and her mother said that she would certainly go again, since Professor Gaskin had said that they had only seen a tiny part of what Miss Eustace could do. There were things he had seen with his own eyes that they would not believe until they had seen for themselves. The professor was intending to write a book about Miss Eustace, which, he was quite sure, would cause a sensation not only amongst the public but all the leading men of science.
    ‘She is undoubtedly genuine,’ said Louisa. ‘She refuses to take any payment at all for her work, although some of those present did press her with small gifts, but she asked for nothing! When I go again I will see if Miss Whinstone can be persuaded to come, as I am sure she will benefit. I did ask Mrs Parchment, but really she is impossible. I do believe she may be an atheist, or even one of those horrid materialists who Professor Gaskin says are even worse. How you could have admitted such a person to the house, I do not know.’
    ‘I did not seek to enquire after her religious observation when I accepted her as a tenant,’ said Mina. ‘She seems perfectly respectable, paid a month in advance without quibble and has given us no trouble and regular rent ever since.’
    ‘Her husband was little more than a peddler,’ said Louisa, shaking a copy of the Gazette at Mina. ‘Do you see this advertisement? Parchment’s Pink Complexion Pills, that was he.’ She allowed her fingertips to glide over her cheek, as if to demonstrate that she needed no such thing. ‘The man must have been a scoundrel, since I believe they once had a fine house in London with a carriage and servants, but I suppose that is all gone now, and the poor woman has to live in one room and pay rent and entertain herself with long walks and fresh air. What a thing to come to!’
    Mina was curious as to the nature of the gifts Miss Eustace had been persuaded to accept, but when she asked, her mother replied dismissively that she didn’t know, in a manner that entirely confirmed Mina’s suspicion that they took the form of money and that her mother had been one of those to part with a ‘gift’. Miss Eustace without doubt made a tidy enough income from her activities but then, Mina thought, the lady had provided a few hours of entertainment as one might do at a musical recital and it seemed harmless enough.
    As Mina climbed the stairs to her room, trying to ignore the pain that stitched down her back, its needle-sharp point embedded deep in her hip, she began to have second thoughts. Was this new enthusiasm of her mother’s really so unobjectionable? Ought she to be concerned about something that might in time become detrimental, either to health or