Spiritualistic Floating Hands. Hands in Haunted Houses. Jerome
Cardan's Tale. "The Cold Hand." The Beach-comber's Tale. "The Black
Dogs and the Thumbless Hand." The Pakeha Maori and "The Leprous
Hand". "The Hand of the Ghost that Bit."
HANDS ALL ROUND
Nothing was more common, in the seances of Home, the "Medium," than
the appearance of "Spirit hands". If these were made of white kid
gloves, stuffed, the idea, at least, was borrowed from ghost stories,
in which ghostly hands, with no visible bodies, are not unusual. We
see them in the Shchapoff case, at Rerrick, and in other haunted
houses. Here are some tales of Hands, old or new.
THE COLD HAND
[Jerome Cardan, the famous physician, tells the following anecdote in
his De Rerum Varietate, lib. x., 93. Jerome only once heard a rapping
himself, at the time of the death of a friend at a distance. He was
in a terrible fright, and dared not leave his room all day.]
A story which my father used often to tell: "I was brought up," he
said, "in the house of Joannes Resta, and therein taught Latin to his
three sons; when I left them I supported myself on my own means. It
chanced that one of these lads, while I was studying medicine, fell
deadly sick, he being now a young man grown, and I was called in to be
with the youth, partly for my knowledge of medicine, partly for old
friendship's sake. The master of the house happened to be absent; the
patient slept in an upper chamber, one of his brothers and I in a
lower room, the third brother, Isidore, was not at home. Each of the
rooms was next to a turret; turrets being common in that city. When
we went to bed on the first night of my visit, I heard a constant
knocking on the wall of the room.
"'What is that?' I said.
"'Don't be afraid, it is only a familiar spirit,' said my companion.
'They call them follets; it is harmless enough, and seldom so
troublesome as it is now: I don't know what can be the matter with
it.'
"The young fellow went to sleep, but I was kept awake for a while,
wondering and observing. After half an hour of stillness I felt a
thumb press on my head, and a sense of cold. I kept watching; the
forefinger, the middle finger, and the rest of the hand were next laid
on, the little finger nearly reaching my forehead. The hand was like
that of a boy of ten, to guess by the size, and so cold that it was
extremely unpleasant. Meantime I was chuckling over my luck in such
an opportunity of witnessing a wonder, and I listened eagerly.
"The hand stole with the ring finger foremost over my face and down my
nose, it was slipping into my mouth, and two finger-tips had entered,
when I threw it off with my right hand, thinking it was uncanny, and
not relishing it inside my body. Silence followed and I lay awake,
distrusting the spectre more or less. In about half an hour it
returned and repeated its former conduct, touching me very lightly,
yet very chilly. When it reached my mouth I again drove it away.
Though my lips were tightly closed, I felt an extreme icy cold in my
teeth. I now got out of bed, thinking this might be a friendly visit
from the ghost of the sick lad upstairs, who must have died.
"As I went to the door, the thing passed before me, rapping on the
walls. When I was got to the door it knocked outside; when I opened
the door, it began to knock on the turret. The moon was shining; I
went on to see what would happen, but it beat on the other sides of
the tower, and, as it always evaded me, I went up to see how my
patient was. He was alive, but very weak.
"As I was speaking to those who stood about his bed, we heard a noise
as if the house was falling. In rushed my bedfellow, the brother of
the sick lad, half dead with terror.
"'When you got up,' he said, 'I felt a cold hand on my back. I
thought it was you who wanted to waken me and take me to see my
brother, so I pretended to be asleep and lay quiet, supposing that you
would go alone when you found me so sound asleep. But when I did not
feel you get up, and the cold hand grew to be more than I could bear,
I hit out to push your hand away, and felt your place empty--but warm.
Then I remembered the follet, and ran upstairs as hard as I could put
my feet to the ground: never was I in such a fright!'
"The sick lad died on the following night."
Here Carden the elder stopped, and Jerome, his son, philosophised on
the subject.
Miss Dendy, on the authority of Mr. Elijah Cope, an itinerant
preacher, gives this anecdote of similar familiarity with a follet in
Staffordshire.
* * * * *
"Fairies! I went into a farmhouse to stay a night, and in the evening
there came a knocking in the room as if some one had struck the table.
I jumped up. My hostess got up and 'Good-night,' says she, 'I'm off'.
'But what was it?' says I. 'Just a poor old fairy,' says she; 'Old
Nancy. She's a poor old thing; been here ever so long; lost her
husband and her children; it's bad to be left like that, all alone. I
leave a bit o' cake on the table for her, and sometimes she fetches
it, and sometimes she don't."
THE BLACK DOG AND THE THUMBLESS HAND
[Some years ago I published in a volume of tales called The Wrong
Paradise, a paper styled "My Friend the Beach-comber". This contained
genuine adventures of a kinsman, my oldest and most intimate friend,
who has passed much of his life in the Pacific, mainly in a foreign
colony, and in the wild New Hebrides. My friend is a man of
education, an artist, and a student of anthropology and ethnology.
Engaged on a work of scientific research, he has not committed any of
his innumerable adventures, warlike or wandering, to print. The
following "yarn" he sent to me lately, in a letter on some points of
native customs. Of course the description of the Beach-comber, in the
book referred to, is purely fictitious. The yarn of "The Thumbless
Hand" is here cast in a dialogue, but the whole of the strange
experience described is given in the words of the narrator. It should
be added that, though my friend was present at some amateur seances,
in a remote isle of the sea, he is not a spiritualist, never was one,
and has no theory to account for what occurred, and no belief in
"spooks" of any description. His faith is plighted to the theories of
Mr. Darwin, and that is his only superstition. The name of the
principal character in the yarn is, of course, fictitious. The real
name is an old but not a noble one in England.]
"Have the natives the custom of walking through fire?" said my friend
the Beach-comber, in answer to a question of mine. "Not that I know
of. In fact the soles of their feet are so thick-skinned that they
would think nothing of it."
"Then have they any spiritualistic games, like the Burmans and
Maories? I have a lot of yarns about them."
"They are too jolly well frightened of bush spirits to invite them to
tea," said the Beach-comber. "I knew a fellow who got a bit of land
merely by whistling up and down in it at nightfall. {292} They think
spirits whistle. No, I don't fancy they go in for seances. But we
once had some, we white men, in one of the islands. Not the Oui-ouis"
(native name for the French), "real white men. And that led to
Bolter's row with me."
"What about?"
"Oh, about his young woman. I told her the story; it was thoughtless,
and yet I don't know that I was wrong. After all, Bolter could not
have been a comfortable fellow to marry."
In this opinion readers of the Beach-comber's narrative will probably
agree, I fancy.
"Bad moral character?"
"Not that I know of. Queer fish; kept queer company. Even if she was
ever so fond of dogs, I don't think a girl would have cared for
Bolter's kennel. Not in her bedroom anyway."
"But she could surely have got him to keep them outside, however doggy
he was?"
"He was not doggy a bit. I don't know that Bolter ever saw the black
dogs himself. He certainly never told me so. It is that beastly
Thumbless Hand, no woman could have stood it, not to mention the
chance of catching cold when it pulled the blankets off."
"What on earth are you talking about? I can understand a man attended
by black dogs that nobody sees but himself. The Catholics tell it of
John Knox, and of another Reformer, a fellow called Smeaton.
Moreover, it is common in delirium tremens. But you say Bolter didn't
see the dogs?"
"No, not so far as he told me, but I did, and other fellows, when with
Bolter. Bolter was asleep; he didn't see anything. Also the Hand,
which was a good deal worse. I don't know if he ever saw it. But he
was jolly nervous, and he had heard of it."
The habits of the Beach-comber are absolutely temperate, otherwise my
astonishment would have been less, and I should have regarded all
these phenomena as subjective.
"Tell me about it all, old cock," I said.
"I'm sure I told you last time I was at home."
"Never; my memory for yarns is only too good. I hate a chestnut."
"Well, here goes! Mind you I don't profess to explain the thing; only
I don't think I did wrong in telling the young woman, for, however you
account for it, it was not nice."
"A good many years ago there came to the island, as a clerk, un nomme
Bolter, English or Jew."
"His name is not Jewish."
"No, and I really don't know about his breed. The most curious thing
about his appearance was his eyes: they were large, black, and had a
peculiar dull dead lustre."
"Did they shine in the dark? I knew a fellow at Oxford whose eyes
did. Chairs ran after him."
"I never noticed; I don't remember. 'Psychically,' as you
superstitious muffs call it, Bolter was still more queer. At that
time we were all gone on spirit-rapping. Bolter turned out a great
acquisition, 'medium,' or what not. Mind you, I'm not saying Bolter
was straight. In the dark he'd tell you what you had in your hand,
exact time of your watch, and so on. I didn't take stock in this, and
one night brought some photographs with me, and asked for a
description of them. This he gave correctly, winding up by saying,
'The one nearest your body is that of ---'"
Here my friend named a person well known to both of us, whose name I
prefer not to introduce here. This person, I may add, had never been
in or near the island, and was totally unknown to Bolter.
"Of course," my friend went on, "the photographs were all the time
inside my pocket. Now, really, Bolter had some mystic power of seeing
in the dark."
"Hyperaesthesia!" said I.
"Hypercriticism!" said the Beach-comber.
"What happened next _might_ be hyperaesthesia--I suppose you mean
abnormal intensity of the senses--but how could hyperaesthesia see
through a tweed coat and lining?"
"Well, what happened next?"
"Bolter's firm used to get sheep by every mail from ---, and send them
regularly to their station, six miles off. One time they landed late
in the afternoon, and yet were foolishly sent off, Bolter in charge.
I said at the time he would lose half the lot, as it would be dark
long before he could reach the station. He didn't lose them!
"Next day I met one of the niggers who was sent to lend him a hand,
and asked results.
"'Master,' said the nigger, 'Bolter is a devil! He sees at night.
When the sheep ran away to right or left in the dark, he told us where
to follow.'"
"He _heard_ them, I suppose," said I.
"Maybe, but you must be sharp to have sharper senses than these
niggers. Anyhow, that was not Bolter's account of it. When I saw him
and spoke to him he said simply, 'Yes, that when excited or interested
to seek or find anything in obscurity the object became covered with a
dim glow of light, which rendered it visible'. 'But things in a
pocket.' 'That also,' said he. 'Curious isn't it? Probably the
Rontgen rays are implicated therein, eh?'"
"Did you ever read Dr. Gregory's Letters on Animal Magnetism?"
"The cove that invented Gregory's Mixture?"
"Yes."
"Beast he must have been. No, I never read him."
"He says that Major Buckley's hypnotised subjects saw hidden objects
in a blue light--mottoes inside a nut, for example."
"Rontgen rays, for a fiver! But Bolter said nothing about seeing
_blue_ light. Well, after three or four seances Bolter used to be
very nervous and unwilling to sleep alone, so I once went with him to
his one-roomed hut. We turned into the same bed. I was awakened
later by a noise and movement in the room. Found the door open; the
full moon streaming in, making light like day, and the place full of
great big black dogs--well, anyhow there were four or five! They were
romping about, seemingly playing. One jumped on the bed, another
rubbed his muzzle on mine! (the bed was low, and I slept outside).
Now I never had anything but love for dogs of any kind, and as--n'est-
ce pas?--love casts out fear, I simply got up, turned them all out,
shut the door, and turned in again myself. Of course my idea was that
they were flesh and blood, and I allude to physical fear.
"I slept, but was anew awakened by a ghastly feeling that the blanket
was being dragged and creeping off the bed. I pulled it up again, but
anew began the slow movement of descent.
"Rather surprised, I pulled it up afresh and held it, and must have
dozed off, as I suppose. Awoke, to feel it being pulled again; it was
slipping, slipping, and then with a sudden, violent jerk it was thrown
on the floor. Il faut dire that during all this I had glanced several
times at Bolter, who seemed profoundly asleep. But now alarmed I
tried to wake him. In vain, he slept like the dead; his face, always
a pasty white, now like marble in the moonlight. After some
hesitation I put the blanket back on the bed and held it fast. The
pulling at once began and increased in strength, and I, by this time
thoroughly alarmed, put all my strength against it, and hung on like
grim death.
"To get a better hold I had taken a turn over my head (or perhaps
simply to hide), when suddenly I felt a pressure outside on my body,
and a movement like fingers--they gradually approached my head. Mad
with fear I chucked off the blanket, grasped a Hand, gazed on it for
one moment in silent horror, and threw it away! No wonder, it was
attached to no arm or body, it was hairy and dark coloured, the
fingers were short, blunt, with long, claw-like nails, and it was
minus a thumb! Too frightened to get up I had to stop in bed, and, I
suppose, fell to sleep again, after fresh vain attempts to awaken
Bolter. Next morning I told him about it. He said several men who
had thus passed the night with him had seen this hand. 'But,' added
he, 'it's lucky you didn't have the big black dogs also.' Tableau!
"I was to have slept again with him next night to look further into
the matter, but a friend of his came from --- that day, so I could not
renew the experiment, as I had fully determined to do. By-the-bye, I
was troubled for months after by the same feeling that the clothes
were being pulled off the bed.
"And that's the yarn of the Black Dogs and the Thumbless Hand."
"I think," said I, "that you did no harm in telling Bolter's young
woman."
"I never thought of it when I told her, or of her interest in the
kennel; but, by George, she soon broke off her engagement."
"Did you know Manning, the Pakeha Maori, the fellow who wrote Old New
Zealand?"
"No, what about him?"
"He did not put it in his book, but he told the same yarn, without the
dogs, as having happened to himself. He saw the whole arm, and _the
hand was leprous_."
"Ugh!" said the Beach-comber.
"Next morning he was obliged to view the body of an old Maori, who had
been murdered in his garden the night before. That old man's hand was
the hand he saw. I know a room in an old house in England where
plucking off the bed-clothes goes on, every now and then, and has gone
on as long as the present occupants have been there. But I only heard
lately, and _they_ only heard from me, that the same thing used to
occur, in the same room and no other, in the last generation, when
another family lived there."
"Anybody see anything?"
"No, only footsteps are heard creeping up, before the twitches come
off."
"And what do the people do?"
"Nothing! We set a camera once to photograph the spook. He did not
sit."
"It's rum!" said the Beach-comber. "But mind you, as to spooks, I
don't believe a word of it." {299}
THE GHOST THAT BIT
The idiot Scotch laird in the story would not let the dentist put his
fingers into his mouth, "for I'm feared ye'll bite me". The following
anecdote proves that a ghost may entertain a better founded alarm on
this score. A correspondent of Notes and Queries (3rd Sept., 1864) is
responsible for the narrative, given "almost verbatim from the lips of
the lady herself," a person of tried veracity.
"Emma S---, one of seven children, was sleeping alone, with her face
towards the west, at a large house near C---, in the Staffordshire
moorlands. As she had given orders to her maid to call her at an
early hour, she was not surprised at being awakened between three and
four on a fine August morning in 1840 by a sharp tapping at her door,
when in spite of a "thank you, I hear," to the first and second raps,
with the third came a rush of wind, which caused the curtains to be
drawn up in the centre of the bed. She became annoyed, and sitting up
called out, "Marie, what are you about?"
Instead, however, of her servant, she was astonished to see the face
of an aunt by marriage peering above and between the curtains, and at
the same moment--whether unconsciously she threw forward her arms, or
whether they were drawn forward, as it were, in a vortex of air, she
cannot be sure--one of her thumbs was sensibly pressed between the
teeth of the apparition, though no mark afterwards remained on it.
All this notwithstanding, she remained collected and unalarmed; but
instantly arose, dressed, and went downstairs, where she found not a
creature stirring. Her father, on coming down shortly afterwards,
naturally asked what had made her rise so early; rallied her on the
cause, and soon afterwards went on to his sister-in-law's house, where
he found that she had just unexpectedly died. Coming back again, and
not noticing his daughter's presence in the room, in consequence of
her being behind a screen near the fire, he suddenly announced the
event to his wife, as being of so remarkable a character that he could
in no way account for it. As may be anticipated, Emma, overhearing
this unlooked-for denouement of her dream, at once fell to the ground
in a fainting condition.
_On one of the thumbs of the corpse was found a mark as if it had been
bitten in the death agony_. {300}
We have now followed the "ghostly" from its germs in dreams, and
momentary hallucinations of eye or ear, up to the most prodigious
narratives which popular invention has built on bases probably very
slight. Where facts and experience, whether real or hallucinatory
experience, end, where the mythopoeic fancy comes in, readers may
decide for themselves.
Footnotes:
{0a} Principles of Psychology, vol. ii., p. 115. By Professor
William James, Harvard College, Macmillan's, London, 1890. The
physical processes believed to be involved, are described on pp. 123,
124 of the same work.
{0b} Op. cit., ii., 130.
{4} Story received from Miss ---; confirmed on inquiry by Drumquaigh.
{5a} Phantasms of the Living, ii., 382.
{5b} To "send" a dream the old Egyptians wrote it out and made a cat
swallow it!
{8} See "Queen Mary's Jewels" in chapter ii.
{10} Narrated by Mrs. Herbert.
{11a} Story confirmed by Mr. A.
{11b} This child had a more curious experience. Her nurse was very
ill, and of course did not sleep in the nursery. One morning the
little girl said, "Macpherson is better, I saw her come in last night
with a candle in her hand. She just stooped over me and then went to
Tom" (a younger brother) "and kissed him in his sleep." Macpherson
had died in the night, and her attendants, of course, protested
ignorance of her having left her deathbed.
{11c} Story received from Lady X. See another good case in
Proceedings of the Psychical Society, vol. xi., 1895, p. 397. In this
case, however, the finder was not nearer than forty rods to the person
who lost a watch in long grass. He assisted in the search, however,
and may have seen the watch unconsciously, in a moment of absence of
mind. Many other cases in Proceedings of S.P.R.
{13} Story received in a letter from the dreamer.
{16} Augustine. In Library of the Fathers, XVII. Short Treatises,
pp. 530-531.
{18} St. Augustine, De Cura pro Mortuis.
{20} The professor is not sure whether he spoke English or German.
{24} From Some Account of the Conversion of the late William Hone,
supplied by some friend of W. H. to compiler. Name not given.
{28} What is now called "mental telegraphy" or "telepathy" is quite
an old idea. Bacon calls it "sympathy" between two distant minds,
sympathy so strong that one communicates with the other without using
the recognised channels of the senses. Izaak Walton explains in the
same way Dr. Donne's vision, in Paris, of his wife and dead child.
"If two lutes are strung to an exact harmony, and one is struck, the
other sounds," argues Walton. Two minds may be as harmoniously
attuned and communicate each with each. Of course, in the case of the
lutes there are actual vibrations, physical facts. But we know
nothing of vibrations in the brain which can traverse space to another
brain.
Many experiments have been made in consciously transferring thoughts
or emotions from one mind to another. These are very liable to be
vitiated by bad observation, collusion and other causes. Meanwhile,
intercommunication between mind and mind without the aid of the
recognised senses--a supposed process of "telepathy"--is a current
explanation of the dreams in which knowledge is obtained that exists
in the mind of another person, and of the delusion by virtue of which
one person sees another who is perhaps dying, or in some other crisis,
at a distance. The idea is popular. A poor Highland woman wrote to
her son in Glasgow: "Don't be thinking too much of us, or I shall be
seeing you some evening in the byre". This is a simple expression of
the hypothesis of "telepathy" or "mental telegraphy".
{31} Perhaps among such papers as the Casket Letters, exhibited to
the Commission at Westminster, and "tabled" before the Scotch Privy
Council.
{35a} To Joseph himself she bequeathed the ruby tortoise given to her
by his brother. Probably the diamonds were not Rizzio's gift.
{35b} Boismont was a distinguished physician and "Mad Doctor," or
"Alienist". He was also a Christian, and opposed a tendency, not
uncommon in his time, as in ours, to regard all "hallucinations" as a
proof of mental disease in the "hallucinated".
{39a} S.P.R., v., 324.
{39b} Ibid., 324.
{42} Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. v., pp.
324, 325.
{43} Proceedings, S.P.R., vol. xi., p. 495.
{45a} Signed by Mr. Cooper and the Duchess of Hamilton.
{45b} See Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, p. 91.
{48} Proceedings, S.P.R., vol. xi., p. 522.
{50} The case was reported in the Herald (Dubuque) for 12th February,
1891. It was confirmed by Mr. Hoffman, by Mr. George Brown and by
Miss Conley, examined by the Rev. Mr. Crum, of Dubuque.--Proceedings,
S.P.R., viii., 200-205. Pat Conley, too, corroborated, and had no
theory of explanation. That the girl knew beforehand of the dollars
is conceivable, but she did not know of the change of clothes.
{56a} Told by the nobleman in question to the author.
{56b} The author knows some eight cases among his friends of a
solitary meaningless hallucination like this.
{58} As to the fact of such visions, I have so often seen crystal
gazing, and heard the pictures described by persons whose word I could
not doubt, men and women of unblemished character, free from
superstition, that I am obliged to believe in the fact as a real
though hallucinatory experience. Mr. Clodd attributes it to disorder
of the liver. If no more were needed I could "scry" famously!
{60a} Facts attested and signed by Mr. Baillie and Miss Preston.
{60b} Story told to me by both my friends and the secretary.
{62} Memoires, v., 120. Paris, 1829.
{66} Readers curious in crystal-gazing will find an interesting
sketch of the history of the practice, with many modern instances, in
Proceedings, S.P.R., vol. v., p. 486, by "Miss X.". There are also
experiments by Lord Stanhope and Dr. Gregory in Gregory's Letters on
Animal Magnetism, p. 370 (1851). It is said that, as sights may be
seen in a glass ball, so articulate voices, by a similar illusion, can
be heard in a sea shell, when
"It remembers its august abodes,
And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there".
{68} A set of scientific men, as Lelut and Lombroso, seem to think
that a hallucination stamps a man as _mad_. Napoleon, Socrates,
Pascal, Jeanne d'Arc, Luther were all lunatics. They had lucid
intervals of considerable duration, and the belief in their lunacy is
peculiar to a small school of writers.
{69a} A crowd of phantom coaches will be found in Messrs. Myers and
Gurney's Phantasms of the Living.
{69b} See The Slaying of Sergeant Davies of Guise's.
{70} Principles of Psychology, by Prof. James of Harvard, vol. ii.,
p. 612. Charcot is one of sixteen witnesses cited for the fact.
{74} Story written by General Barter, 28th April, 1888. (S.P.R.)
Corroborated by Mrs. Barter and Mr. Stewart, to whom General Barter
told his adventure at the time.
{75} Statement by Mr. F. G., confirmed by his father and brother, who
were present when he told his tale first, in St. Louis. S.P.R.
Proceedings, vol. vi., p. 17.
{76} S.P.R., viii., p. 178.
{77} Mrs. M. sent the memorandum to the S.P.R. "March 13, 1886.
Have just seen visions on lawn--a soldier in general's uniform, a
young lady kneeling to him, 11.40 p.m."
{78} S.P.R., viii., p. 178. The real names are intentionally
reserved.
{80a} Corroborated by Mr. Elliot. Mrs. Elliot nearly fainted.
S.P.R., viii., 344-345.
{80b} Oddly enough, maniacs have many more hallucinations of hearing
than of sight. In sane people the reverse is the case.
{82} Anecdote by the lady. Boston Budget, 31st August, 1890.
S.P.R., viii., 345.
{85a} Tom Sawyer, Detective.
{85b} Phantasms of the Living, by Gurney and Myers.
{85c} The story is given by Mr. Mountford, one of the seers.
{86} Journal of Medical Science, April, 1880, p. 151.
{88} Catholic theology recognises, under the name of "Bilocation,"
the appearance of a person in one place when he is really in another.
{91a} Phantasms, ii., pp. 671-677.
{91b} Phantasms of the Living.
{91c} Mr. E. B. Tylor gives a Maori case in Primitive Culture.
Another is in Phantasms, ii., 557. See also Polack's New Zealand for
the prevalence of the belief.
{92} Gurney, Phantasms, ii., 6.
{93} The late Surgeon-Major Armand Leslie, who was killed at the
battle of El Teb, communicated the following story to the Daily
Telegraph in the autumn of 1881, attesting it with his signature.
{95a} This is a remarkably difficult story to believe. "The morning
bright and calm" is lit by the rays of the moon. The woman (a Mrs.
Gamp) must have rushed past Dr. Leslie. A man who died in Greece or
Russia "that morning" would hardly be arrayed in evening dress for
burial before 4 a.m. The custom of using goloshes as "hell-shoes"
(fastened on the Icelandic dead in the Sagas) needs confirmation. Men
are seldom buried in eye-glasses--never in tall white hats.--Phantasms
of the Living, ii., 252.
{95b} From a memorandum, made by General Birch Reynardson, of an oral
communication made to him by Sir John Sherbrooke, one of the two
seers.
{101} This is an old, but good story. The Rev. Thomas Tilson,
minister (non-conforming) of Aylesford, in Kent, sent it on 6th July,
1691, to Baxter for his Certainty of the World of Spirits. The woman
Mary Goffe died on 4th June, 1691. Mr. Tilson's informants were her
father, speaking on the day after her burial; the nurse, with two
corroborative neighbours, on 2nd July; the mother of Mary Goffe; the
minister who attended her, and one woman who sat up with her--all
"sober intelligent persons". Not many stories have such good evidence
in their favour.
{103} Phantasms, ii., 528.
{111} "That which was published in May, 1683, concerning the Daemon,
or Daemons of Spraiton was the extract of a letter from T. C.,
Esquire, a near neighbour to the place; and though it needed little
confirmation further than the credit that the learning and quality of
that gentleman had stampt upon it, yet was much of it likewise known
to and related by the Reverend Minister of Barnstaple, of the vicinity
to Spraiton. Having likewise since had fresh testimonials of the
veracity of that relation, and it being at first designed to fill this
place, I have thought it not amiss (for the strangeness of it) to
print it here a second time, exactly as I had transcribed it then."--
BOVET.
{118} Shchapoff case of "The Dancing Devil" and "The Great Amherst
Mystery".
{121} Additional MSS., British Museum, 27,402, f. 132.
{122} Really 1628, unless, indeed, the long-continued appearances
began in the year before Buckingham's death; old style.
{127} It may fairly be argued, granting the ghost, his advice and his
knowledge of a secret known to the countess, that he was a
hallucination unconsciously wired on to old Towse by the mind of the
anxious countess herself!
{129a} Hamilton's Memoirs.
{129b} Mrs. Thrale's Diary, 28th November, 1779.
{129c} Diary of Lady Mary Coke, 30th November, 1779.
{130a} See Phantasms, ii., 586.
{130b} The difficulty of knowing whether one is awake or asleep, just
about the moment of entering or leaving sleep is notorious. The
author, on awaking in a perfectly dark room, has occasionally seen it
in a dim light, and has even been aware, or seemed to be aware, of the
pattern of the wall paper. In a few moments this effect of light
disappears, and all is darkness. This is the confused mental state
technically styled "Borderland," a haunt of ghosts, who are really
flitting dreams.
{131} Life of Lockhart.
{132} The author has given authorities in Blackwood's Magazine March,
1895. A Mr. Coulton (not Croker as erroneously stated) published in
the Quarterly Review, No. 179, an article to prove that Lyttelton
committed suicide, and was Junius. See also the author's Life of
Lockhart.
{140} A prominent name among the witnesses at the trial.
{141} The report of the trial in the Scots Magazine of June, 1754
(magazines appeared at the end of the month), adds nothing of
interest. The trial lasted from 7 a.m. of June 11 till 6 a.m. of June
14. The jury deliberated for two hours before arriving at a verdict.
{142} Sydney, no date.
{144} Phantasms, ii., 586, quoting (apparently) the Buckingham
Gazette of the period.
{145a} Oddly enough a Mr. William Soutar, of Blairgowrie, tells a
ghost story of his own to the S.P.R.!
{145b} I put them for convenience at the foot.--W. L. L.
{146a} The dogs in all these towns (farms) of Mause are very well
accustomed with hunting the fox.
{146b} Blair (Blairgowrie) is the kirk-town of that parish, where
there is also a weekly market: it lies about a mile below Middle
Mause on the same side of the river.
{146c} Knockhead is within less than half a mile of Middle Mause, and
the Hilltown lies betwixt the two. We see both of them from our
window of Craighall House.
{148a} This George Soutar died about two or three years ago, and was
very well known to William.
{148b} The Isle is a spot of ground in the wood of Rychalzie, about a
mile above Middle Mause, on the same side of the river.
{149a} Glasclune is a gentleman of the name of Blair, whose house
lies about three-quarters of a mile south-west from Middle Mause.
{149b} He said the voice answered him as if it had been some distance
without the door.
{150} Besides the length of time since the murder was committed,
there is another reason why all the bones were not found, viz., that
there is a little burn or brook which had run for the space of twenty
years, at least, across upon the place when the bones were found, and
would have carried them all away had it not been that the bush, at the
side of which they were buried, had turned the force of the stream a
little from off that place where they lay, for they were not more than
a foot, or at most a foot and a half, under ground, and it is only
within these three years that a water-spate has altered the course of
the burn.
{151} The course of the river (the Ericht) is from north to south.
Middle Mause lies on the west side of it, and Craighall on the east.
{155a} With reference to the last statement in Mr. Newton's notes see
the Journal of Sir Walter Scott (edit., 1891, p. 210) under date 13th
June, 1826.
{155b} L'Homme Posthume.
{155c} Denny's Folklore of China.
{156} Story received in a letter from Lieutenant --- of H.M.S gunboat ---.
{157} He fought at Culloden, of course for King George, and was
appealed to for protection by old Glengarry.
{158a} Fox's hole.
{158b} How did Inverawe get leave to wear the Highland dress?
{160} In every version of the story that I have heard or read
Ticonderoga is called St. Louis, and Inverawe was ignorant of its
other name. Yet in all the histories of the war that I have seen, the
only name given to the place is Ticonderoga. There is no mention of
its having a French name. Even if Inverawe knew the fort they were to
storm was called Ticonderoga, he cannot have known it when the ghost
appeared to him in Scotland. At that time there was not even a fort
at Ticonderoga, as the French only erected it in 1756. Inverawe had
told his story to friends in Scotland before the war broke out in
America, so even if in 1758 he did know the real name of the fort that
the expedition was directed against, I don't see that it lessens the
interest of the story.--E. A. C.
The French really called the place Fort Carillon, which disguised the
native name Ticonderoga. See Memoirs of the Chevalier Johnstone.--A.
L.
{162} Abercromby's force consisted of the 27th, 42nd, 44th, 46th,
55th, and battalions of the 60th Royal Americans, with about 9000
Provincials and a train of artillery. The assault, however, took
place before the guns could come up, matters having been hastened by
the information that M. de Levy was approaching with 3000 French
troops to relieve Ticonderoga garrison.
{177a} I know one inveterate ghost produced in an ancient Scottish
house by these appliances.--A. L.
{177b} Such events are common enough in old tales of haunted houses.
{177c} This lady was well known to my friends and to Dr. Ferrier. I
also have had the honour to make her acquaintance.
{179} Apparently on Thursday morning really.
{182} She gave, not for publication, the other real names, here
altered to pseudonyms.
{186} Phantasms, ii., 202.
{188a} Maspero, Etudes Egyptiennes, i., fascic. 2.
{188b} Examples cited in Classical Review, December, 1896, pp. 411,
413.
{188c} Proceedings, S.P.R., vol. xii., p. 45-116.
{189} See "Lord St. Vincent's Story".
{190} Anecdote received from the lady.
{191} Story at second-hand.
{192} See The Standard for summer, 1896.
{196} I have once seen this happen, and it is a curious thing to see,
when on the other side of the door there is nobody.
{198a} S.P.R., iii., 115, and from oral narrative of Mr. and Mrs.
Rokeby. In 1885, when the account was published, Mr. Rokeby had not
yet seen the lady in grey. Nothing of interest is known about the
previous tenants of the house.
{198b} Proceedings, S.P.R., vol. viii., p. 311.
{199} Letter of 31st January, 1884.
{200} Six separate signed accounts by other witnesses are given.
They add nothing more remarkable than what Miss Morton relates. No
account was published till the haunting ceased, for fear of lowering
the letting value of Bognor House.
{201} Mr. A. H. Millar's Book of Glamis, Scottish History Society.
{202} This account is abridged from Mr. Walter Leaf's translation of
Aksakoff's Predvestniki Spiritizma, St. Petersburg, 1895. Mr.
Aksakoff publishes contemporary letters, certificates from witnesses,
and Mr. Akutin's hostile report. It is based on the possibility of
imitating the raps, the difficulty of locating them, and the fact that
the flying objects were never seen to start. If Mrs. Shchapoff threw
them, they might, perhaps, have occasionally been seen to start.
S.P.R., vol. xii., p. 298. Precisely similar events occurred in
Russian military quarters in 1853. As a quantity of Government
property was burned, official inquiries were held. The reports are
published by Mr. Aksakoff. The repeated verdict was that no suspicion
attached to any subject of the Czar.
{205} The same freedom was taken, as has been said, with a lady of
the most irreproachable character, a friend of the author, in a
haunted house, of the usual sort, in Hammersmith, about 1876.
{206} Proceedings, S.P.R., vol. xii., p. 49.
{212} John Wesley, however, places Hetty as next in seniority to Mary
or Molly. We do not certainly know whether Hetty was a child, or a
grown-up girl, but, as she always sat up till her father went to bed,
the latter is the more probable opinion. As Hetty has been accused of
causing the disturbances, her age is a matter of interest. Girls of
twelve or thirteen are usually implicated in these affairs. Hetty was
probably several years older.
{220} 30th January, 1717.
{221} Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus, 1726. Preface to part ii.,
Mompesson's letters.
{222} Gentleman's Magazine, November, December, 1872.
{223} This happened, to a less degree, in the Wesley case, and is not
uncommon in modern instances. The inference seems to be that the
noises, like the sights occasionally seen, are hallucinatory, not
real. Gentleman's Magazine, Dec., 1872, p. 666.
{229} S.P.R. Proceedings, vol. xii., p. 7.
{232} Demon Possession in China, p. 399. By the Rev. John L. Nevius,
D.D. Forty years a missionary in China. Revel, New York, 1894.
{233a} Translated from report of Hsu Chung-ki, Nevius, p. 61.
{233b} Nevius, pp. 403-406.
{234} Op. cit., p. 415. There are other cases in Mr. Denny's
Folklore of China.
{239a} The Great Amherst Mystery, by Walter Hubbell. Brentano, New
York, 1882. I obtained some additional evidence at first hand
published in Longman's Magazine.
{239b} The sources for this tale are two Gaelic accounts, one of
which is printed in the Gael, vol. vi., p. 142, and the other in the
Glenbard Collection of Gaelic Poetry, by the Rev. A. Maclean Sinclair,
p. 297 ff. The former was communicated by Mr. D. C. Macpherson from
local tradition; the latter was obtained from a tailor, a native of
Lochaber, who emigrated to Canada when about thirty years of age.
When the story was taken down from his lips in 1885, he was over
eighty years old, and died only a few months later.
{246} John Arnason, in his Icelandic Folklore and Fairy Tales (vol.
i., p. 309), gives the account of this as written by the Sheriff Hans
Wium in a letter to Bishop Haldorr Brynjolfsson in the autumn of 1750.
{249} Huld, part 3, p. 25, Keykjavik, 1893.
{259} As at Amherst!
{272} Written out from tradition on 24th May, 1852. The name of the
afflicted family is here represented by a pseudonym.
{273} From Eyrbyggja Saga, chaps, l.-lv. Froda is the name of a farm
on the north side of Snaefell Ness, the great headland which divides
the west coast of Iceland.
{292} Fact.
{299} Cornhill Magazine, 1896.
{300} This story should come under the head of "Common Deathbed
Wraiths," but, it is such an uncommon one!