We seem to need a name for a new branch of the science of Man, the
Comparative Study of Ghost Stories. Neither sciology, from σκιά, nor
idolology, from εἴδωλον, appears a very convenient term, and as the
science is yet in its infancy, perhaps it may go unnamed, for the
time, like a colt before it has won its maiden race. But, though
nameless, the researches which I wish to introduce are by no means
lacking in curious interest. It may be objected that the comparative
study of ghost stories is already well known, and practised by two
very different sets of inquirers, anthropologists and the Society for
Psychical Research; but neither Mr. Tylor and Mr. Herbert Spencer nor
“those about” Mr. Gurney and Mr. Myers work, as it seems to me, exactly
on the topics and in the manner which I wish to indicate. Mr. Herbert
Spencer, as we all know, traces religion to the belief in and worship
of the ghosts of ancestors. Mr. Tylor, again, has learnedly examined
the probable origin of the belief in ghosts, deriving that belief from
the phenomena of dreams, of fainting, of shadows, of visions induced
by hunger or by narcotics, and of death. To state Mr. Tylor’s theory
briefly, and by way of an example, men reasoned themselves into a
theory of ghosts after the manner of Achilles in the _Iliad_ (xxiii.
70-110). The unburied Patroclus appeared to his friend in a dream, and
passed away, “And Achilles sprang up marvelling, and smote his hands
together, and spake a word of woe: ‘Ay me, there remaineth then even
in the house of Hades a spirit and phantom of the dead, albeit the
life be not anywise therein; for all night long hath the spirit of
hapless Patroclus stood over me, wailing and making moan, and charged
me everything that I should do, and wondrous like his living self it
seemed.’”
Here we find Achilles in the moment of inferring from his dream the
actual existence of a spirit surviving the death of the body. No doubt
a belief in ghosts might well have been developed by early thinkers,
as Mr. Tylor holds, out of arguments like these of Achilles. It is
certain, too, that many of the social and religious institutions of
savages (if writers in the English language are to be allowed the use
of that word) have been based on the opinion that the spirits of the
dead are still active among the living. All this branch of the subject
has been exhaustively treated by Mr. Tylor in his _Primitive Culture_.
But I do not observe that Mr. Tylor has paid very much attention to
what we may call the actual ghost stories of savages—that is, the
more or less well-authenticated cases in which savages have seen the
ordinary ghost of modern society. Here, for the purposes of clearness,
I will discriminate certain kinds of ghost stories, all of them current
among races as low as the Australians, and lower than the Fijians, all
of them current, too, in contemporary European civilisation. First,
let us place the well-known savage belief that the spirits of the dead
reappear in the form of the lower animals often of that animal which is
the totem or ancestral friend and guardian of the kinship. This kind
of ghost story one seldom or never hears in drawing-rooms, but it is
the prevalent and fashionable kind among the peasantry for example,
in Shropshire. In the second class, we may reckon the more or less
professional ghosts that appear obedient to the medium’s or conjurer’s
command at _séances_. These spirits, which come “when you do call
them,” behave in much the same manner, and perform the same sorts of
antics or miracles, in Australian _gunyehs_, in Maori _pahs_, and at
the exhibition of Mr. Sludge, or of the esoteric Buddhists. Thirdly,
we arrange the non-professional ghost, which does not come at the
magician’s call, but appears unexpected, and apparently irresponsible.
This sort also haunts houses and forests; other members of the species
manifest themselves at the moment of death, or become visible for the
purpose of warning friends of their own approaching decease. Such
phenomena as a sudden flash of supernatural light, or the presence of a
white bird, or other ghostly creatures prophesying death, may perhaps
be allotted to this class of apparitions.
These things are as well known to contemporary savages as they were to
the classical people of Lucian’s day, or as they are, doubtless, to
the secretaries of the Society for Psychical Research. Once more, we
ought to notice the “well-authenticated” modern ghost story, which on
examination proves to be really a parallel to the William Tell myth,
and to recur in many ages, always attached to different names, and
provided with fresh properties. To look into these ghost stories cannot
be wholly idle. Apparently there is either some internal groundwork of
fact at the bottom of a belief which savages share with Fellows of the
Royal Society, or liability to certain recurring hallucinations must
be inherited by civilised man from his untutored ancestors, or the
mythopœic faculty, to use no harder term, is common to all stages of
culture. As to habits of hasty inference and false reasoning, these,
of course, were bequeathed to us by our pre-scientific parents, and
these, with our own vain hopes and foolish fears, afford the stuff
for most ghosts and ghost stories. The whole topic, in the meanwhile,
has only been touched at either end, so to speak. The anthropologists
have established their own theory of the origin of a belief in ghosts,
without asking whether the actual appearance of apparitions may not
have helped to start or confirm that belief. The friends of psychical
research have collected modern stories of the actual appearance of
apparitions without paying much attention, as far as I am aware, to
their parallels among the most backward races, or to their mediæval and
classical variants.
It is not necessary to occupy much space with the savage and modern
ghosts of men that reappear in the guise of the lower animals. Among
savages, who believe themselves to be descended from beasts, nothing
can be more natural than the hypothesis that the souls revert to
bestial shapes. The Zulus say their ancestors were serpents, and in
harmless serpents they recognise the dead friend or kinsman returning
to the family kraal. The Indian tribes of North-Western America claim
descent from various creatures, and under the shape of these creatures
their dead reappear. The lack of distinction, in the savage mind,
between man and beast makes ghost stories of this species natural
among savages. But it is curious, in Miss Burne’s volume on _Shropshire
Folk-Lore_, to find that almost all the Shropshire ghosts, even of
known persons recently deceased, display themselves in the form of
beasts, while ghosts in human guise are comparatively rare exceptions.
Thus (p. 111) the wicked squire of Bagley, after his death, _came_ as
a monstrous and savage bull. He was “laid” in church, where he cracked
the walls by the vigor of his resistance. “There are believers in this
story who affirm that, were the stone to be loosened, the bull would
come forth again by many degrees worse than he was at the first.”
“It is not an invariable rule that ghosts should take the form of
animals.... A road near Hodnet is haunted by the ghost of a farmer
who, for no known reason, comes again with a horse’s head,” like the
Phigalian Demeter! The ghost (limited) of seven illegitimate children
_came_ as a cat! A man drowned in the Birmingham and Liverpool Canal
appears (p. 107) as a monkey; and so on. So common, in France, are
human ghosts in bestial form, that M. D’Assier has invented a Darwinian
way of accounting for the phenomena. M. D’Assier, a Positivist, is a
believer in ghosts, but not in the immortality of the soul. He suggests
that the human _revenants_ in the guise of sheep, cows, and shadowy
creatures may be accounted for by a kind of Atavism, or “throwing
back,” on the side of the spirit to the lower animal forms out of which
humanity was developed!
The chief or only interest of these bogies in bestial shape lies in
the proof they afford of the tenacity of tradition. It is impossible
to imagine the amount of evidence capable of proving that what seems
a bull is really the ghost of a wicked squire, as people think in
Shropshire. But the prevalence of a superstition like this demonstrates
that ideas originally conceived by savages, and natural or inevitable
in the savage mental condition, may survive in the rustic peoples of
the most civilised nations.
The second class of ghost stories, tales of what we may call
“professional” spirits that come and go at the sorcerer’s command, need
not detain us long. This branch of the subject has been examined by the
anthropologists. Mr. Tylor has provided many examples of the savage
_séance_, the Shaman or medicine man bound and tied in a darkened room,
and then released by the spirits whose voices are heard chattering
around him. “Suppose a wild North American Indian looking on at a
spirit _séance_ in London. As to the presence of disembodied spirits
manifesting themselves by raps, noises, voices, and other physical
actions, the savage would be perfectly at home in the proceedings, for
such things are part and parcel of his recognised system of nature.”
I doubt if any modern medium could quite rival the following feat
of an Australian Birraark or sorcerer, as vouched for by one of the
Tatungolung tribe. “The fires were allowed to go down,” the Birraark
began his invocation. At intervals he uttered the cry, _Coo’ee!_ “At
length a distant reply was heard, and shortly afterwards the sound as
of persons jumping on the ground in succession. This was supposed to
be the spirit Baukan followed by the ghosts. A voice was then heard in
the gloom asking in a strange intonation, “What is wanted?” Questions
were put by the Birraark, and replies given. At the termination of the
_séance_, the spirit voices said, “We are going.” Finally the Birraark
was found in the _top of an almost inaccessible tree, apparently
asleep_. It was alleged that the ghosts had transported him there at
their departure.[39] If as good a _séance_ could be given in Hyde Park,
and if Mr. Sludge could be found at the close in the top of one of the
Scotch pines in Kensington Gardens, we might admit that the civilised
is on a level with savage spiritualism. Yet even this _séance_ was
very much less impressive than what the author of _Old New Zealand_
witnessed in a Maori pah, when the spirit of a dead native friend of
his own was present and “manifested” rarely.
[39] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 254.
The curious coincidences between savage and civilised “spiritualism”
have still to be explained. Mr. Tylor says that “the ethnographic view”
finds “modern spiritualism to be in great measure a direct revival
from the regions of savage philosophy and peasant folk-lore.” But in a
really comparative study of the topic, this theory would need to be
proved by historical facts. Let us grant that Eskimo and Australian
spiritualism are a savage imposture. Let us grant that peasants, little
advanced from the savage intellectual condition, retained a good deal
of savage spiritualism. To complete the proof it would be necessary
to adduce many examples of peasant _séances_, to show that these were
nearly identical with savage _séances_, and then to demonstrate that
the introducers of the civilised modern _séance_ had been in touch with
the savage or peasant performances. For the better explanation of the
facts, the Psychical Society might send missionaries to investigate
and test the exhibitions of Australian Birraarks, and Maori Tohungas,
and Eskimo Angekoks. Mr. Im Thurm, in Guiana, has made experiments
in Peayism, or local magic, but felt no more than a drowsy mesmeric
sensation, and a headache, after the treatment. While those things are
neglected, psychical research is remiss in attention to her elevating
task.
In the third class of ghosts we propose to place those which are
independent of the invocations of the sorcerer, which come and go, or
stay, at their own will. As to “haunted houses,” savages, who have
no houses, are naturally not much troubled by them. It is easy to
leave one _gungeh_ or bark shelter for another; and this is generally
done after a death among the Australians. Races with more permanent
habitations have other ways of exorcising the haunters—by feeding the
ghosts, for example, at their graves, so that they are comfortable
there, and do not wish to emerge. Two curious instances of haunted
forests may be given here. To one I have already referred in a little
volume, _Custom and Myth_, recently published. Mrs. Edwards, in
_Macmillan’s Magazine_, printed a paper called “The Mystery of the
Pezazi.” To be brief, the mystery lay in the constant disturbing sounds
of nocturnal tree-felling near a bungalow in Ceylon, where examination
proved that no trees had been felled. Mrs. Edwards, her husband, and
their servants were on several occasions disturbed by these sounds,
which were unmistakable and distinct. The Cingalese attribute the
noises to a Pezazi or spirit. I find a description of precisely the
same disturbances in Sahagun’s account of the superstitions of the
Aztecs. Brother Sahagun was one of the earliest Spanish missionaries in
Mexico, and his account of Aztec notions is most intelligently written.
In Mexico, too, “the Midnight Axe” is supposed to be a phenomenon
produced by woodland spectres. A critic in the _Athenæum_ suggested
that the fact of the noise, attested by English witnesses in Ceylon who
knew not Sahagun, was matter for the Psychical Society. Perhaps some
physical examination would be more likely to discover the actual origin
of the sounds of tree-felling. I was not aware, however, till Mr.
Leslie Stephen pointed it out, that the Galapagos Islands, “suthard of
the line,” were haunted by the Midnight Axe. De Quincey, who certainly
had not heard the Ceylon story, and who probably would have mentioned
Sahagun’s had he known it, describes the effect produced by the
Midnight Axe on the nerves of his brother, Pink:—
So it was, and attested by generations of sea-vagabonds, that every
night, duly as the sun went down and the twilight began to prevail, a
sound arose—audible to other islands and to every ship lying quietly
at anchor in that neighborhood—of a woodcutter’s axe.... The close of
the story was that after, I suppose, ten or twelve minutes of hacking
and hewing, a horrid crash was heard, announcing that the tree, if
tree it were, that never yet was made visible to daylight search, had
yielded to the old woodman’s persecution.... The woodcutter’s axe
began to intermit about the earliest approach of dawn, and, as light
strengthened, it ceased entirely, after poor Pink’s ghostly panic grew
insupportable.[40]
[40] _Autobiographic Sketches_, p. 337.
I offer no explanation of the Midnight Axe, which appears (to
superstitious minds) to be produced by the _Poltergeist_ of the forests.
A much more romantic instance, savage and civilised, of a haunted
woodland may perhaps be regarded as a superstition transmitted by
French settlers to the natives of New Caledonia. The authority for the
following anecdote is my friend and kinsman, Mr. J. J. Atkinson, of
Viewfield, Noumea, New Caledonia.
Mr. Atkinson has lived for twenty years remote from books, and in
the company of savage men. He informs me that a friendly Kaneka came
to visit him one day, and seemed unusually loth to go. After one
affectionate farewell he came back and took another, and then a third,
till Mr. Atkinson asked him why he was so demonstrative. The native
then replied that this would be their last meeting; that in a day or
two he would be dead. As he seemed in perfect health, the Englishman
rallied him on his fears. But he very gravely explained that he had
met in the woods one whom he took for the girl of his heart. It was
not till too late that he recognised the woman for a forest-haunting
spirit. To have to do with these is death in three days, and their
caresses are mortal. As he said, so it happened, for the unlucky fellow
shortly afterwards died. I do not think my informant had ever heard
of Le Sieur Nann and the Korrigan, the well-known Breton folk-song
of the knight who met the forest fairy, and died in three days. A
version of the ballad is printed by De la Villemarque, Barzaz-Breiz (i.
41). Variants exist in Swedish, French, and even in a Lowland Scotch
version, sung by children in a kind of dancing game. In this case, what
we want to know is whether the Kaneka belief is native, or borrowed
from the French. That there really exist fair and deadly women of the
woods perhaps the most imaginative student will decline to believe.
Among savages men often sicken, and even die, because they consider
themselves bewitched, and the luckless Kaneka must have been the victim
of a dream or hallucination reacting on the nervous system. But that
does not account for the existence of the superstition.
The ghosts which at present excite most interest are ghosts beheld at
the moment of their owner’s decease by persons at a distance from the
scene of death. Thus Baronius relates how “that eximious Platonist,
Marsilius Ficinus,” appeared at the hour of his death on a white horse
to Michael Mercatus, and rode away, crying “O Michael, Michael, vera,
vera sunt illa,” that is, the doctrine of a future life is true. Lord
Brougham was similarly favored. Among savages I have not encountered
more than one example, and that rather sketchy, of a warning conveyed
to a man by a ghost as to the death of a friend. The tale is in
FitzRoy’s _Voyage of the ‘Adventurer’ and the ‘Beagle’_ (ii. 118).
Jemmy Button was a young Fuegian whom his uncle had sold to the
‘Beagle’ for a few buttons.
While at sea, on board the “Beagle,” about the middle of the year
1842, he said one morning to Mr. Byno, that in the night some man
came to the side of his hammock, and whispered in his ear that
his father was dead. Mr. Byno tried to laugh him out of the idea,
but ineffectually. He fully believed that such was the case, and
maintained his opinion up to the time of finding his relations in
Beagle Channel, when, I regret to say, he found that his father had
died some months previously.
Another kind of ghost, again, that of a dead relative who comes to warn
a man of his own approaching decease, appears to be quite common among
savages. In his interesting account of the Kurnai, an Australian tribe,
Mr. Howitt writes:—
Mr. C. J. Du Vé, a gentleman of much experience with the Aborigines,
tells me that, in the year 1860, a Maneroo black fellow died while
with him. The day before he died, having been ill for some time, he
said that, in the night, his father, his father’s friend, and a female
spirit he could not recognize, had come to him, and said that he would
die next day, and that they would wait for him.
To this statement the Rev. Lorimer Fison appends a note which ought
to interest psychical inquirers. “I could give many similar instances
which have come within my own knowledge among the Fijians, and, strange
to say, the dying man, in all these cases, kept his appointment with
the ghosts to the very day.” A civilised example recorded by Henry
More is printed in the _Remains_ of the late Dr. Symonds. In that
narrative a young lady was wakened by a bright light in her bedroom.
Her dead mother appeared to her, exactly as the father of the Maneroo
black fellow did, and warned her that she was to die on the following
midnight. The girl made all her preparations, and, with Fijian
punctuality, “kept her appointment with the ghosts to the very day.”
The peculiarity of More’s tale seems to be the brilliance of the light
which attended the presence of the supernatural. This strange fire
is widely diffused in folk-lore. If we look at the Eskimo we find
them convinced that the Inue, or powerful spirits, “generally have
the appearance of a fire or bright light, and to see them is very
dangerous ... _partly as foreshadowing the death of a relation_.”[41]
In the story repeated by More, not a kinsman of the visionary, but
the visionary herself was in danger. In the _Odyssey_, when Athene
was mystically present as Odysseus and Telemachus were moving the
weapons out of the hall (xix. 21-50), Telemachus exclaims, “Father,
surely a great marvel is this I behold! Meseemeth that the walls of
the hall, and the fair spaces between the pillars, and the beams of
pine, and the columns that run aloft are bright as it were with flaming
fire. Verily some god is within of them that hold the wide heaven.”
Odysseus answers, “Lo, this is the wont of the gods that possess
Olympus.” Again, in Theocritus, when Hera sends the snakes to attack
the infant Heracles, a mysterious flame shines forth, φάος δ’ ἀνἀ οἶκον
ἐτύχθη.[42] The same phenomenon occurs in the saga of Burnt Njal when
Gunnar sings within his tomb. Philosophers may dispute whether any
objective fact lies at the bottom of this belief, or whether a savage
superstition has survived into Greek epic and idyll, and into modern
ghost stories. Into Scotch legend, too, this faith in a mysterious and
ominous fire found its way—
Seemed all on fire that chapel proud,
Where Roslin’s chiefs uncoffined lie,
Each baron, for a sable shroud,
Sheathed in his iron panoply.
Scott derives the idea from the tomb fires of the Sagas, but we have
shown the wide diffusion of the belief.
[41] Rink, _Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo_, p. 43.
[42] “And all the house showed clear as in the light of dawn.”—Theoc.
xix. 30-40, ed. Ahrens.
By way of ending this brief sketch of the comparative study of ghost
stories, an example may be given of the recurrent tale which is told of
different people in different ages and countries. Just as the anecdote
of William Tell and the Apple occurs in various times, and among widely
severed races, so, in a minor degree, does the famous Beresford ghost
story present itself in mythical fashion. The Beresford tale is told at
great length by Dr. F. G. Lee, in his _Glimpses of the Supernatural_.
As usual, Dr. Lee does not give the names of his informants, nor trace
the channels through which the legend reached them. But he calls his
version of the myth “an authentic record” (p. 51). To be brief, Lord
Tyrone and Miss Blank were orphans, educated in the same house “in the
principles of Deism.” When they were about fourteen years of age their
preceptor died, and their new guardians tried to “persuade them to
embrace revealed religion.” The boy and girl, however, stuck to Deism.
But they made a compact that he or she who died first should appear to
the survivor “to declare what religion was most approved by the Supreme
Being.” Miss Blank married Sir Martin Beresford. One day she appeared
at breakfast with a pale face, and a black band round her wrist. Long
afterwards, on her death-bed, she explained that this band covered
shrunken sinews. The ghost of Lord Tyrone, at the hour of his death,
had appeared to her, had prophesied (correctly) her future, and had
touched her wrist by way of a sign.
He struck my wrist; his hand was as cold as marble; in a moment the
sinews shrank up, every nerve withered.... I bound a piece of black
ribbon round my wrist. The black ribbon was formerly in the possession
of Lady Betty Cobb, who, during her long life, was ever ready to
attest the truth of this narration, as are, to the present hour, the
whole of the Tyrone and Beresford families.
Nothing would induce me to dispute the accuracy of a report vouched for
by Lady Betty Cobb and all the Tyrones and Beresfords. But I must be
permitted to point out that Lord Tyrone merely did what many ghosts had
done before in that matter of touching Lady Beresford’s wrist. Thus,
according to Henry More “one” (bogie) “took a relation of Melanchthon’s
by the hand, and so scorched her that she bore the mark of it to her
dying day.” Before Melanchthon the anecdote was “improved” by Eudes de
Shirton in a sermon (_Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions_, 1877).
According to Eudes, a certain clerk, Serlon, made with a friend the
covenant which Miss Blank made with Lord Tyrone. The survivor was to
bring news of the next world. Well, the friend died, and punctually
appeared to Serlon, “in a parchment cloak, covered with the finest
writing in the world.” Being asked how he fared, he said that this
cloak, a punishment for his love of Logic, weighed heavier than lead,
and scorched like the shirt of Nessus. Then he held out his hand, and
let fall a drop which burned Serlon to the bone—
And ever more that Master wore
A covering on his wrist.
Before Eudes de Shirton (1081-1153) William of Malmesbury knew this
anecdote, which he dates about 1060-1063, and localises in Nantes.
His characters are “two clerks,” an Epicurean and a Platonist, who
made the usual contract that the first to die should appear to the
survivor, and state whether Plato’s ideas or Epicurus his atoms were
the correct reply to the conundrum of the universe. The visit was to
be paid within thirty days of the death. One of the philosophical pair
was killed, a month passed, no news of him came. Then, when the other
expected nothing less, and was busy with some ordinary matter, the
dead man suddenly stood before him. The spectre explained that he had
been unable to keep his appointment earlier; and, stretching out his
hand, let fall three burning drops of blood, which branded, not the
wrist, but the brow of the psychical inquirer. The anecdote recurs
later, and is attached by certain commentators on Dante to one Siger
de Brabant. Now this legend may be true about Lady Beresford, or about
William of Malmesbury’s two clerks, or about Siger de Brabant, or about
Serlon; but the same facts of a compact, the punctual appearance of
the survivor, and the physical sign which he gave, can scarcely have
occurred more than once. I am inclined, therefore, to believe that the
narrative vouched for by two noble families is accurate, and that the
tales of William of Malmesbury, Henry More, Eudes de Shirton, and Siger
de Brabant are myths—
Or such refraction of events
As often rises ere they rise.
Though this sketch of a new comparative science does not perhaps prove
or disprove any psychical or mythological theory, it demonstrates
that there is a good deal of human nature in man. From the Eskimo,
Fuegians, Fijians, and Kurnai, to Homer, Henry More, Theocritus, and
Lady Betty Cobb, we mortals are “all in a tale,” and share coincident
beliefs or delusions. What the value of the coincidence of testimony
may be, how far it attests facts, how far it merely indicates the
survival of savage conceptions, Mr. Tylor and Mr. Edmund Gurney may be
left to decide. Readers of the _Philopseudes_ of Lucian will remember
how the Samosatene settled the inquiries of the psychical researches
of his age, and in that dialogue there are abundant materials for the
comparative student of ghost stories.—_Nineteenth Century._