GHOST SEERS
According to the popular creed, some persons have the peculiar faculty
of seeing ghosts, a privilege which, it would seem, is denied to
others. It has been urged, however, that under certain conditions
of health there are those who are endowed with special powers of
perception, whereby they are enabled to see objects not visible at
other times. Thus, as Sir William Hamilton has observed, 'however
astonishing, it is now proved, beyond all rational doubt, that in
certain abnormal states of the nervous organism, perceptions are
possible through other than the ordinary channels of the senses.' But,
without entering into this metaphysical question, folk-lore holds that
persons born at a particular time of the day have the power of seeing
ghosts. Thus it is said in Lancashire, that children born during
twilight are supposed to have this peculiarity, and to know who of
their acquaintance will next die. Some say that this property belongs
also to those who happen to be born exactly at twelve o'clock at night,
or, as the peasantry say in Somersetshire, 'a child born in chime-hours
will have the power to see spirits.' The same belief prevails in
Yorkshire, where it is commonly supposed that children born during
the hour after midnight have the privilege through life of seeing the
spirits of the departed. Mr. Henderson says[204] that 'a Yorkshire lady
informed him she was very near being thus distinguished, but the clock
had not struck twelve when she was born. When a child she mentioned
this circumstance to an old servant, adding that mamma was sure her
birthday was the 23rd, not the 24th, for she had inquired at the time.
"Ay, ay," said the old woman, turning to the child's nurse, "mistress
would be very anxious about _that_, for bairns born after midnight see
more things than other folk."'
This superstition prevails on the Continent, and, in Denmark, Sunday
children have prerogatives far from enviable. Thorpe[205] tells how
'in Fyer there was a woman who was born on a Sunday, and, like other
Sunday children, had the faculty of seeing much that was hidden from
others. But, because of this property, she could not pass by the
church at night without seeing a hearse or a spectre. The gift became
a perfect burden to her; she therefore sought the advice of a man
skilled in such matters, who directed her, whenever she saw a spectre,
to say, "Go to Heaven!" but when she met a hearse, "Hang on!" Happening
some time after to meet a hearse, she, through lapse of memory, cried
out, "Go to Heaven!" and straightway the hearse rose in the air and
vanished. Afterwards meeting a spectre, she said to it, "Hang on!" when
the spectre clung round her neck, hung on her back, and drove her down
into the earth before it. For three days her shrieks were heard before
the spectre would put an end to her wretched life.'
It is a popular article of faith in Scotland that those who are born on
Christmas Day or Good Friday have the power of seeing spirits, and even
of commanding them, a superstition to which Sir Walter Scott alludes
in his 'Marmion' (stanza xxii.). The Spaniards imputed the haggard and
downcast looks of their Philip II. to the disagreeable visions to which
this privilege subjected him.
Among uncultured tribes it is supposed that spirits are visible to
some persons and not to others. The 'natives of the Antilles believed
that the dead appeared on the roads when one went alone, but not
when many went together; and among the Finns the ghosts of the dead
were to be seen by the Shamans, but not by men generally unless in
dreams.'[206] It is, too, as already noticed,[207] a popular theory
with savage races that the soul appears in dreams to visit the sleeper,
and hence it has been customary for rude tribes to drink various
intoxicating substances, under the impression that when thrown into
a state of ecstasy they would have pleasing visions. On this account
certain tribes on the Amazon use certain narcotic plants, producing an
intoxication lasting twenty-four hours. During this period they are
said to be subject to extraordinary visions, in the course of which
they acquire information on any subject they may specially require.
For a similar reason the inhabitants of North Brazil, when anxious
to discover some guilty person, were in the habit of administering
narcotic drinks to seers, in whose dreams the criminal made his
appearance. The Californian Indians would give children certain
intoxicants, in order to gain from the ensuing vision information about
their enemies. And the Darien Indians used the seeds of the _Datura
sanguinea_ to produce in children prophetic delirium, during which they
revealed the whereabouts of hidden treasure.
In our own country various charms have been practised from time
immemorial for invoking spirits, and, as we shall show in a succeeding
chapter, it is still a widespread belief that, by having recourse to
certain spells at special seasons in the year, one, if so desirous, may
be favoured with a view of the spirits of departed friends.
FOOTNOTES:
[204] _Folk-lore of Northern Counties_, p. 11.
[205] _Northern Mythology_, ii. p. 203.
[206] Tylor's _Primitive Culture_, i. p. 446.
[207] Chap. II.