Veracious Waking Hallucinations not recognised by Science; or
explained by Coincidence, Imposture, False Memory. A Veracious
Hallucination popularly called a Wraith or Ghost. Example of
Unveracious Hallucination. The Family Coach. Ghosts' Clothes and
other Properties and Practices; how explained. Case of Veracious
Hallucination. Riding Home from Mess. Another Case. The Bright
Scar. The Vision and the Portrait. Such Stories not usually
believed. Cases of Touch: The Restraining Hand. Of Hearing: The
Benedictine's Voices; The Voice in the Bath-room. Other "Warnings".
The Maoris. The Man at the Lift. Appearances Coincident with Death.
Others not Coincident with Anything.
In "crystal-gazing" anybody can make experiments for himself and among
such friends as he thinks he can trust. They are hallucinations
consciously sought for, and as far as possible, provoked or induced by
taking certain simple measures. Unsought, spontaneous waking
hallucinations, according to the result of Mr. Galton's researches,
though not nearly so common as dreams, are as much facts of _sane_
mental experience. Now every ghost or wraith is a hallucination. You
see your wife in the dining-room when she really is in the drawing-
room; you see your late great-great-grandfather anywhere. Neither
person is really present. The first appearance in popular language is
a "wraith"; the second is a "ghost" in ordinary speech. Both are
hallucinations.
So far Mr. Galton would go, but mark what follows! Everybody allows
the existence of dreams, but comparatively few believe in dream
stories of _veracious_ dreams. So every scientific man believes in
hallucinations, {68} but few believe in _veracious_ hallucinations. A
veracious hallucination is, for our purpose, one which communicates
(as veracious dreams do) information not otherwise known, or, at
least, not known to the knower to be known. The communication of the
knowledge may be done by audible words, with or without an actual
apparition, or with an apparition, by words or gestures. Again, if a
hallucination of Jones's presence tallies with a great crisis in
Jones's life, or with his death, the hallucination is so far veracious
in that, at least, it does not seem meaningless. Or if Jones's
appearance has some unwonted feature not known to the seer, but
afterwards proved to be correct in fact, that is veracious. Next, if
several persons successively in the same place, or simultaneously,
have a similar hallucination not to be accounted for physically, that
is, if not a veracious, a curious hallucination. Once more, if a
hallucinatory figure is afterwards recognised in a living person
previously unknown, or a portrait previously unseen, that (if the
recognition be genuine) is a veracious hallucination. The vulgar call
it a wraith of the living, or a ghost of the dead.
Here follow two cases. The first, The Family Coach, {69a} gave no
verified intelligence, and would be styled a "subjective
hallucination". The second contributed knowledge of facts not
previously known to the witness, and so the vulgar would call it a
ghost. Both appearances were very rich and full of complicated
detail. Indeed, any ghost that wears clothes is a puzzle. Nobody but
savages thinks that clothes have ghosts, but Tom Sawyer conjectures
that ghosts' clothes "are made of ghost stuff".
As a rule, not very much is seen of a ghost; he is "something of a
shadowy being". Yet we very seldom hear of a ghost stark naked; that
of Sergeant Davies, murdered in 1749, is one of three or four examples
in civilised life. {69b} Hence arises the old question, "How are we
to account for the clothes of ghosts?" One obvious reply is that there
is no ghost at all, only a hallucination. We do not see people naked,
as a rule, in our dreams; and hallucinations, being waking dreams,
conform to the same rule. If a ghost opens a door or lifts a curtain
in our sight, that, too, is only part of the illusion. The door did
not open; the curtain was not lifted. Nay, if the wrist or hand of
the seer is burned or withered, as in a crowd of stories, the ghost's
hand did not produce the effect. It was produced in the same way as
when a hypnotised patient is told that "his hand is burned," his fancy
then begets real blisters, or so we are informed, truly or not. The
stigmata of St. Francis and others are explained in the same way. {70}
How ghosts pull bedclothes off and make objects fly about is another
question: in any case the ghosts are not _seen_ in the act.
Thus the clothes of ghosts, their properties, and their actions
affecting physical objects, are not more difficult to explain than a
naked ghost would be, they are all the "stuff that dreams are made
of". But occasionally things are carried to a great pitch, as when a
ghost drives off in a ghostly dogcart, with a ghostly horse, whip and
harness. Of this complicated kind we give two examples; the first
reckons as a "subjective," the second as a veracious hallucination.
THE OLD FAMILY COACH
A distinguished and accomplished country gentleman and politician, of
scientific tastes, was riding in the New Forest, some twelve miles
from the place where he was residing. In a grassy glade he discovered
that he did not very clearly know his way to a country town which he
intended to visit. At this moment, on the other side of some bushes a
carriage drove along, and then came into clear view where there was a
gap in the bushes. Mr. Hyndford saw it perfectly distinctly; it was a
slightly antiquated family carriage, the sides were in that imitation
of wicker work on green panel which was once so common. The coachman
was a respectable family servant, he drove two horses: two old ladies
were in the carriage, one of them wore a hat, the other a bonnet.
They passed, and then Mr. Hyndford, going through the gap in the
bushes, rode after them to ask his way. There was no carriage in
sight, the avenue ended in a cul-de-sac of tangled brake, and there
were no traces of wheels on the grass. Mr. Hyndford rode back to his
original point of view, and looked for any object which could suggest
the illusion of one old-fashioned carriage, one coachman, two horses
and two elderly ladies, one in a hat and one in a bonnet. He looked
in vain--and that is all!
Nobody in his senses would call this appearance a ghostly one. The
name, however, would be applied to the following tale of
RIDING HOME FROM MESS
In 1854, General Barter, C.B., was a subaltern in the 75th Regiment,
and was doing duty at the hill station of Murree in the Punjaub. He
lived in a house built recently by a Lieutenant B., who died, as
researches at the War Office prove, at Peshawur on 2nd January, 1854.
The house was on a spur of the hill, three or four hundred yards under
the only road, with which it communicated by a "bridle path," never
used by horsemen. That path ended in a precipice; a footpath led into
the bridle path from Mr. Barter's house.
One evening Mr. Barter had a visit from a Mr. and Mrs. Deane, who
stayed till near eleven o'clock. There was a full moon, and Mr.
Barter walked to the bridle path with his friends, who climbed it to
join the road. He loitered with two dogs, smoking a cigar, and just
as he turned to go home, he heard a horse's hoofs coming down the
bridle path. At a bend of the path a tall hat came into view, then
round the corner, the wearer of the hat, who rode a pony and was
attended by two native grooms. "At this time the two dogs came, and
crouching at my side, gave low frightened whimpers. The moon was at
the full, a tropical moon, so bright that you could see to read a
newspaper by its light, and I saw the party above me advance as
plainly as if it were noon-day; they were above me some eight or ten
feet on the bridle road. . . . On the party came, . . . and now I had
better describe them. The rider was in full dinner dress, with white
waistcoat and a tall chimney-pot hat, and he sat on a powerful hill
pony (dark-brown, with black mane and tail) in a listless sort of way,
the reins hanging loosely from both hands." Grooms led the pony and
supported the rider. Mr. Barter, knowing that there was no place they
could go to but his own house, cried "Quon hai?" (who is it?), adding
in English, "Hullo, what the devil do you want here?" The group
halted, the rider gathered up the reins with both hands, and turning,
showed Mr. Barter the known features of the late Lieutenant B.
He was very pale, the face was a dead man's face, he was stouter than
when Mr. Barter knew him and he wore _a dark Newgate fringe_.
Mr. Barter dashed up the bank, the earth thrown up in making the
bridle path crumbled under him, he fell, scrambled on, reached the
bridle path where the group had stopped, and found nobody. Mr. Barter
ran up the path for a hundred yards, as nobody could go _down_ it
except over a precipice, and neither heard nor saw anything. His dogs
did not accompany him.
Next day Mr. Barter gently led his friend Deane to talk of Lieutenant
B., who said that the lieutenant "grew very bloated before his death,
and while on the sick list he allowed the fringe to grow in spite of
all we could say to him, and I believe he was buried with it". Mr.
Barter then asked where he got the pony, describing it minutely.
"He bought him at Peshawur, and killed him one day, riding in his
reckless fashion down the hill to Trete."
Mr. Barter and his wife often heard the horse's hoofs later, though he
doubts if any one but B. had ever ridden the bridle path. His Hindoo
bearer he found one day armed with a lattie, being determined to
waylay the sound, which "passed him like a typhoon". {74} Here the
appearance gave correct information unknown previously to General
Barter, namely, that Lieutenant B. grew stout and wore a beard before
his death, also that he had owned a brown pony, with black mane and
tail. Even granting that the ghosts of the pony and lieutenant were
present (both being dead), we are not informed that the grooms were
dead also. The hallucination, on the theory of "mental telegraphy,"
was telegraphed to General Barter's mind from some one who had seen
Lieutenant B. ride home from mess not very sober, or from the mind of
the defunct lieutenant, or, perhaps, from that of the deceased pony.
The message also reached and alarmed General Barter's dogs.
Something of the same kind may or may not explain Mr. Hyndford's view
of the family coach, which gave no traceable information.
The following story, in which an appearance of the dead conveyed
information not known to the seer, and so deserving to be called
veracious, is a little ghastly.
THE BRIGHT SCAR
In 1867, Miss G., aged eighteen, died suddenly of cholera in St.
Louis. In 1876 a brother, F. G., who was much attached to her, had
done a good day's business in St. Joseph. He was sending in his
orders to his employers (he is a commercial traveller) and was smoking
a cigar, when he became conscious that some one was sitting on his
left, with one arm on the table. It was his dead sister. He sprang
up to embrace her (for even on meeting a stranger whom we take for a
dead friend, we never realise the impossibility in the half moment of
surprise) but she was gone. Mr. G. stood there, the ink wet on his
pen, the cigar lighted in his hand, the name of his sister on his
lips. He had noted her expression, features, dress, the kindness of
her eyes, the glow of the complexion, and what he had never seen
before, _a bright red scratch on the right side of her face_.
Mr. G. took the next train home to St. Louis, and told the story to
his parents. His father was inclined to ridicule him, but his mother
nearly fainted. When she could control herself, she said that,
unknown to any one, she had accidentally scratched the face of the
dead, apparently with the pin of her brooch, while arranging something
about the corpse. She had obliterated the scratch with powder, and
had kept the fact to herself. "She told me she _knew_ at least that I
had seen my sister." A few weeks later Mrs. G. died. {75}
Here the information existed in one living mind, the mother's, and if
there is any "mental telegraphy," may thence have been conveyed to Mr.
F. G.
Another kind of cases which may be called veracious, occurs when the
ghost seer, after seeing the ghost, recognises it in a portrait not
previously beheld. Of course, allowance must be made for fancy, and
for conscious or unconscious hoaxing. You see a spook in Castle
Dangerous. You then recognise the portrait in the hall, or elsewhere.
The temptation to recognise the spook rather more clearly than you
really do, is considerable, just as one is tempted to recognise the
features of the Stuarts in the royal family, of the parents in a baby,
or in any similar case.
Nothing is more common in literary ghost stories than for somebody to
see a spectre and afterwards recognise him or her in a portrait not
before seen. There is an early example in Sir Walter Scott's
Tapestried Chamber, which was told to him by Miss Anna Seward.
Another such tale is by Theophile Gautier. In an essay on Illusions
by Mr. James Sully, a case is given. A lady (who corroborated the
story to the present author) was vexed all night by a spectre in
armour. Next morning she saw, what she had not previously observed, a
portrait of the spectre in the room. Mr. Sully explains that she had
seen the portrait _unconsciously_, and dreamed of it. He adds the
curious circumstance that other people have had the same experience in
the same room, which his explanation does not cover. The following
story is published by the Society for Psychical Research, attested by
the seer and her husband, whose real names are known, but not
published. {76}
THE VISION AND THE PORTRAIT
Mrs. M. writes (December 15, 1891) that before her vision she had
heard nothing about hauntings in the house occupied by herself and her
husband, and nothing about the family sorrows of her predecessors
there.
"One night, on retiring to my bedroom about 11 o'clock, I thought I
heard a peculiar moaning sound, and some one sobbing as if in great
distress of mind. I listened very attentively, and still it
continued; so I raised the gas in my bedroom, and then went to the
window on the landing, drew the blind aside, and there on the grass
was a very beautiful young girl in a kneeling posture, before a
soldier in a general's uniform, sobbing and clasping her hands
together, entreating for pardon, but alas! he only waved her away from
him. So much did I feel for the girl that I ran down the staircase to
the door opening upon the lawn, and begged her to come in and tell me
her sorrow. The figures then disappeared gradually, as in a
dissolving view. Not in the least nervous did I feel then; went again
to my bedroom, took a sheet of writing-paper, and wrote down what I
had seen." {77}
Mrs. M., whose husband was absent, began to feel nervous, and went to
another lady's room.
She later heard of an old disgrace to the youngest daughter of the
proud family, her predecessors in the house. The poor girl tried in
vain to win forgiveness, especially from a near relative, a soldier,
Sir X. Y.
"So vivid was my remembrance of the features of the soldier, that some
months after the occurrence [of the vision] when I called with my
husband at a house where there was a portrait of him, I stepped before
it and said, 'Why, look! there is the General!' And sure enough it
_was_."
Mrs. M. had not heard that the portrait was in the room where she saw
it. Mr. M. writes that he took her to the house where he knew it to
be without telling her of its existence. Mrs. M. turned pale when she
saw it. Mr. M. knew the sad old story, but had kept it to himself.
The family in which the disgrace occurred, in 1847 or 1848, were his
relations. {78}
This vision was a veracious hallucination; it gave intelligence not
otherwise known to Mrs. M., and capable of confirmation, therefore the
appearances would be called "ghosts". The majority of people do not
believe in the truth of any such stories of veracious hallucinations,
just as they do not believe in veracious dreams. Mr. Galton, out of
all his packets of reports of hallucinations, does not even allude to
a veracious example, whether he has records of such a thing or not.
Such reports, however, are ghost stories, "which we now proceed," or
continue, "to narrate". The reader will do well to remember that
while everything ghostly, and not to be explained by known physical
facts, is in the view of science a hallucination, every hallucination
is not a ghost for the purposes of story-telling. The hallucination
must, for story-telling purposes, be _veracious_.
Following our usual method, we naturally begin with the anecdotes
least trying to the judicial faculties, and most capable of an
ordinary explanation. Perhaps of all the senses, the sense of touch,
though in some ways the surest, is in others the most easily deceived.
Some people who cannot call up a clear mental image of things seen,
say a saltcellar, can readily call up a mental revival of the feeling
of touching salt. Again, a slight accidental throb, or leap of a
sinew or vein, may feel so like a touch that we turn round to see who
touched us. These familiar facts go far to make the following tale
more or less conceivable.
THE RESTRAINING HAND
"About twenty years ago," writes Mrs. Elliot, "I received some letters
by post, one of which contained 15 pounds in bank notes. After
reading the letters I went into the kitchen with them in my hands. I
was alone at the time. . . . Having done with the letters, I made an
effort to throw them into the fire, when I distinctly felt my hand
arrested in the act. It was as though another hand were gently laid
upon my own, pressing it back. Much surprised, I looked at my hand
and then saw it contained, not the letters I had intended to destroy,
but the bank notes, and that the letters were in the other hand. I
was so surprised that I called out, 'Who's here?'" {80a}
Nobody will call this "the touch of a vanished hand". Part of Mrs.
Elliot's mind knew what she was about, and started an unreal but
veracious feeling to warn her. We shall come to plenty of Hands not
so readily disposed of.
Next to touch, the sense most apt to be deceived is hearing. Every
one who has listened anxiously for an approaching carriage, has often
heard it come before it came. In the summer of 1896 the writer, with
a lady and another companion, were standing on the veranda at the back
of a house in Dumfriesshire, waiting for a cab to take one of them to
the station. They heard a cab arrive and draw up, went round to the
front of the house, saw the servant open the door and bring out the
luggage, but wheeled vehicle there was none in sound or sight. Yet
all four persons had heard it, probably by dint of expectation.
To hear articulate voices where there are none is extremely common in
madness, {80b} but not very rare, as Mr. Galton shows, among the sane.
When the voices are veracious, give unknown information, they are in
the same case as truthful dreams. I offer a few from the experience,
reported to me by himself, of a man of learning whom I shall call a
Benedictine monk, though that is not his real position in life.
THE BENEDICTINE'S VOICES
My friend, as a lad, was in a strait between the choice of two
professions. He prayed for enlightenment, and soon afterwards heard
an _internal_ voice, advising a certain course. "Did you act on it?"
I asked.
"No; I didn't. I considered that in my circumstances it did not
demand attention."
Later, when a man grown, he was in his study merely idling over some
books on the table, when he heard a loud voice from a corner of the
room assert that a public event of great importance would occur at a
given date. It did occur. About the same time, being abroad, he was
in great anxiety as to a matter involving only himself. Of this he
never spoke to any one. On his return to England his mother said,
"You were very wretched about so and so".
"How on earth did you know?"
"I heard ---'s voice telling me."
Now --- had died years before, in childhood.
In these cases the Benedictine's own conjecture and his mother's
affection probably divined facts, which did not present themselves as
thoughts in the ordinary way, but took the form of unreal voices.
There are many examples, as of the girl in her bath who heard a voice
say "Open the door" four times, did so, then fainted, and only escaped
drowning by ringing the bell just before she swooned.
Of course she might not have swooned if she had not been alarmed by
hearing the voices. These tales are dull enough, and many voices,
like Dr. Johnson's mother's, when he heard her call his name, she
being hundreds of miles away, lead to nothing and are not veracious.
When they are veracious, as in the case of dreams, it may be by sheer
accident.
In a similar class are "warnings" conveyed by the eye, not by the ear.
The Maoris of New Zealand believe that if one sees a body lying across
a path or oneself on the opposite side of a river, it is wiser to try
another path and a different ford.
THE MAN AT THE LIFT
In the same way, in August, 1890, a lady in a Boston hotel in the dusk
rang for the lift, walked along the corridor and looked out of a
window, started to run to the door of the lift, saw a man in front of
it, stopped, and when the lighted lift came up, found that the door
was wide open and that, had she run on as she intended, she would have
fallen down the well. Here part of her mind may have known that the
door was open, and started a ghost (for there was no real man there)
to stop her. Pity that these things do not occur more frequently.
They do--in New Zealand. {82}
These are a few examples of useful veracious waking dreams. The sort
of which we hear most are "wraiths". A, when awake, meets B, who is
dead or dying or quite well at a distance. The number of these
stories is legion. To these we advance, under their Highland title,
_spirits of the living_.