Before passing on to generalizations about function, let us glance at some of the personal (or psychological) as well as social mechanisms behind these perceptions. Down the centuries, both Catholic and Protestant commentators acknowledged mental instability as one of the reasons that people saw ghosts. In many nineteenth-century narration's therefore, the writers claim to be solid, sober, level-headed chaps who prefer to call a spade a spade. Indeed, since many are men of the cloth, their sincerity and veracity are beyond question (even though their equilibrium is sometimes disturbed: one clergyman was so frightened by ghostly lights 'that he fell out of bed on to the floor'111 ). The ideal percipient was well-characterized by an SPR researcher of the 1880s who endorsed an apparition-account as follows: 'I knew Mr. Morris well. He was a man of first-rate legal and financial ability ... He had about as much imagination as a post, I should think.'112 On the other hand some of our accounts suggest that some percipients were so excitable at the time of their experience that it resulted in long-lasting effects that could even be termed obsessional. After putting up with aimless footsteps in her new house for two years, one lady was thoroughly frightened one night by a 'cry of anguish' that seemed to 'travel toward the window and pass outside of it, dying gradually away'. She left the house for good a few days later. 'For some years after this I constantly, when sitting along at night, heard distinctly low regular breathing close beside, generally slightly behind me.'113 Though this lady was affected perhaps more seriously than others, which presumably reflects her mental state at the time she first heard 'ghosts', there is no need to assume that all percipients were suffering unusual anxiety-attacks. On the contrary, the effects of interpersonal suggestion are far more evident in many narration's.