I must have been here some ten years before I saw sufficient to warrant any belief in the stories current in the neighborhood about this house. It is true that I had on at least a dozen occasions seen vaguely things that puzzled me and perhaps had felt more than I had seen. Then as the years passed bringing age upon me I became often aware of something unseen yet unmistakably present in the empty rooms and corridors. Still it was as I have said many years before I saw any real manifestations of the so-called supernatural. It was not Halloween. If I were telling a story for amusement's sake I should probably place it on that night of nights; but this is a true record of my own experiences and I would not put pen to paper to amuse anyone. No. It was after midnight on the morning of the twenty-first day of January. I was sitting reading as is often my custom in my study. Pepper lay sleeping near my chair.