The Ghost of Guir House

"That," answered Ah Ben, "is mere assertion, which you can never

prove."

"Do you mean to tell me that the thing was real? There is a secret

about this house which I do not understand!"

His manner was excited. He felt that he had been the dupe of the man

before him, the prey to some clever trick; the thing was too

preposterous, too unreasonable.

"Be calm," said Ah Ben; "there is nothing in this that should disturb

you. The room has disappeared from our sight, and will no more

trouble us. Shall we have another pipe?"

The words had an instantaneous effect, so that Paul resumed his seat

and pipe, as if nothing had happened. For several minutes he sat

silently gazing at vacancy, and listening to the north wind as it

moaned through the old pines. He was trying to account for what he

had seen, but could not. The mystery was deepening into an

overpowering gloom. The house, with its eccentric inmates; the girl

Dorothy, with her freaks and manner of living; the odd circumstance

of the stairway in his closet; these, and other things, flashed upon

his memory in a confused jumble, and seemed as inexplicable as the

vision just witnessed through the chimney.

Suddenly a thought struck him. Could this last have been hypnotism?

He put the question straight to Ah Ben. The man passed his withered

hand over his face thoughtfully as he answered: "Hypnotism, Mr. Henley, is a name that is used in the West for a

condition that has been known in the East for thousands of years as

the underlying principle of all phenomena."

"And what is that condition?" Paul inquired.

"Sympathetic vibration," answered the elder man.

"Vibration of what?" asked Paul.

"Of the mind," said Ah Ben. "The condition of the universal mind

vibrating in our material plane, or within the range of our physical

senses, is represented in the trees and the rocks, in the earth and

the stars. Our physical senses, being attuned to his form of

vibration, are in sympathy with it, and apprehend all its phenomena.

There is but one mind, of which man is a part. Thought is a product

of mind. Thought is real, and, when sufficiently concentrated,

becomes tangible and visible to those who can be brought into

sympathy with its vibrations. There is but one primal substance,

which is mind. Mind creates all things out of itself; therefore, to

change the world we look at, it is only necessary to change our

minds."