The House Surgeon by Rudyard Kipling is about the narrator who makes friends with Mr. M'Leod, a wealthy businessman who determines the narrator's house to be haunted. Excerpt: "ON AN evening after Easter Day, I sat at a table in a homeward bound steamer's smoking room, where half a dozen of us told ghost stories. As our party broke up a man, playing Patience in the next alcove, said to me: "I didn't quite catch the end of that last story about the Curse on the family's firstborn." "It turned out to be drains," I explained. "As soon as new ones were put into the house the Curse was lifted, I believe. I never knew the people myself."