Welsh rarebits and supernatural encounters

You probably wonder where I am getting at with today's countdown to Halloween post. So I am reading this book of horror stories by F. Marion Crawford and yesterday I reread in it The Upper Berth. And I was surprised to find not one but two mentions of Welsh rarebit, which is one of my favourite British comfort food. (By the way, you can read about it on this blog here and here.) After his first encounter with what appears to be a ghost, the skeptical narrator rationalizes it this way: "Still I doubted my senses, and pulled myself together. It was absurd, I thought. The Welsh rarebit I had eaten had disagreed with me. I had been in a nightmare." And then, before further investigating the matter, he says this: "I abstained from Welsh rarebits and grog that evening, and did not even join in the customary game of whist. I wanted to be quite sure of my nerves, and my vanity made me anxious to make a good figure in the captain's eyes." So there you have it, Welsh rarebit may have hallucinogenic properties. All the same, it made me hungry for it and when we went for lunch today with my parents-in-law, I ordered one.