Ghosts I have Met and Some Others

The main thing to bring my present trouble upon me, I am forced to
believe, is the fact that my house has been in the past, and may
possibly still be, haunted. Why my house should be haunted at all I
do not know, for it has never been the scene of any tragedy that I
am aware of. I built it myself, and it is paid for. So far as I am
aware, nothing awful of a material nature has ever happened within
its walls, and yet it appears to be, for the present at any rate, a
sort of club-house for inconsiderate if not strictly horrid things,
which is a most unfair dispensation of the fates, for I have not
deserved it. If I were in any sense a Bluebeard, and spent my days
cutting ladies' throats as a pastime; if I had a pleasing habit of
inviting friends up from town over Sunday, and dropping them into
oubliettes connecting my library with dark, dank, and snaky
subterranean dungeons; if guests who dine at my house came with a
feeling that the chances were, they would never return to their
families alive--it might be different. I shouldn't and couldn't
blame a house for being haunted if it were the dwelling-place of a
bloodthirsty ruffian such as I have indicated, but that is just what