DOPPELGÄNGERS, OR DOUBLES.
IN the instances detailed in the last chapter, the apparition has shown
itself, as nearly as could be discovered, at the moment of dissolution;
but there are many cases in which the wraith is seen at an indefinite
period before or after the catastrophe. Of these I could quote a great
number; but as they generally resolve themselves into simply seeing a
person where they were not, and death ensuing very shortly afterward, a
few will suffice.
There is a very remarkable story of this kind, related by Macnish, which
he calls “a case of hallucination, arising without the individual being
conscious of any physical cause by which it might be occasioned.” If
this case stood alone, strange as it is, I should think so too: but when
similar instances abound, as they do, I can not bring myself to dispose
of it so easily. The story is as follows: Mr. H—— was one day walking
along the street, apparently in perfect health, when he saw, or supposed
he saw, his acquaintance, Mr. C——, walking before him. He called to
him aloud; but he did not seem to hear him, and continued moving on. Mr.
H—— then quickened his pace for the purpose of overtaking him; but the
other increased his, also, as if to keep ahead of his pursuer, and
proceeded at such a rate that Mr. H—— found it impossible to make up
to him. This continued for some time, till, on Mr. C——’s reaching a
gate, he opened it and passed in, slamming it violently in Mr. H——’s
face. Confounded at such treatment from a friend, the latter instantly
opened the gate, and looked down the long lane into which it led, where,
to his astonishment, no one was to be seen. Determined to unravel the
mystery, he then went to Mr. C——’s house, and his surprise was great
to hear that he was confined to his bed, and had been so for several
days. A week or two afterward, these gentlemen met at the house of a
common friend, when Mr. H—— related the circumstance, jocularly
telling Mr. C—— that, as he had seen his wraith, he of course could
not live long. The person addressed laughed heartily, as did the rest of
the party; but, in a few days, Mr. C—— was attacked with putrid sore
throat and died; and within a short period of his death, Mr. H—— was
also in the grave.
This is a very striking case; the hastening on, and the actually opening
and shutting the gate, evincing not only _will_ but _power_ to produce
mechanical effects, at a time the person was bodily elsewhere. It is
true he was ill, and it is highly probable was at the time asleep. The
showing himself to Mr. H——, who was so soon to follow him to the
grave, is another peculiarity which appears frequently to attend these
cases, and which seems like what was in old English, and is still in
Scotch, called a _tryst_—an appointment to meet again between those
spirits, so soon to be free. Supposing Mr. C—— to have been asleep, he
was possibly, in that state, aware of what impended over both.
There is a still more remarkable case given by Mr. Barham in his
reminiscences. I have no other authority for it: but he relates, as a
fact, that a respectable young woman was awaked, one night, by hearing
somebody in her room, and that on looking up she saw a young man to whom
she was engaged. Extremely offended by such an intrusion, she bade him
instantly depart, if he wished her ever to speak to him again. Whereupon
he bade her not be frightened, but said he was come to tell her that he
was to die that day six weeks,—and then disappeared. Having ascertained
that the young man himself could not possibly have been in her room, she
was naturally much alarmed, and, her evident depression leading to some
inquiries, she communicated what had occurred to the family with whom
she lived—I think as dairy-maid; but I quote from memory. They attached
little importance to what seemed so improbable, more especially as the
young man continued in perfectly good health, and entirely ignorant of
this prediction, which his mistress had the prudence to conceal from
him. When the fatal day arrived, these ladies saw the girl looking very
cheerful, as they were going for their morning’s ride, and observed to
each other that the prophecy did not seem likely to be fulfilled; but
when they returned, they saw her running up the avenue toward the house
in great agitation, and learned that her lover was either dead or dying,
from an accident.
The only key I can suggest as the explanation of such a phenomenon as
this, is, that the young man in his sleep was aware of the fate that
awaited him,—and that while the body lay in his bed, in a state
approaching to trance or catalepsy, the freed spirit—free as the
spirits of the actual dead—went forth to tell the tale to the mistress
of his soul.
Franz von Baader says, in a letter to Dr. Kerner, that Eckartshausen,
shortly before his death, assured him that he possessed the power of
making a person’s double or wraith appear, while his body lay elsewhere
in a state of trance or catalepsy. He added that the experiment might be
dangerous, if care were not taken to prevent intercepting the rapport of
the ethereal form with the material one.
A lady, an entire disbeliever in these spiritual phenomena, was one day
walking in her own garden with her husband, who was indisposed, leaning
on her arm, when seeing a man with his back toward them, and a spade in
his hand, digging, she exclaimed, “Look there! who’s that?” “Where?”
said her companion; and at that moment the figure leaning on the spade
turned round and looked at her, sadly shaking its head, and she saw it
was her husband. She avoided an explanation, by pretending she had made
a mistake. Three days afterward the gentleman died,—leaving her
entirely converted to a belief she had previously scoffed at.
Here, again, the foreknowledge and evident design, as well as the power
of manifesting it, are extremely curious—more especially as the
antitype of the figure was neither in a trance nor asleep, but perfectly
conscious, walking and talking. If any particular purpose were to be
gained by the information indicated, the solution might be less
difficult. One object, it is true, may have been, and indeed was
attained, namely, the change in the opinions of the wife; and it is
impossible to say what influence such a conversion may have had on her
after-life.
It must be admitted that these cases are very perplexing. We might,
indeed, get rid of them by denying them; but the instances are too
numerous, and the phenomenon has been too well known in all ages, to be
set aside so easily. In the above examples, the apparition, or wraith,
has been in some way connected with the death of the person whose
visionary likeness is seen; and, in most of these instances, the earnest
longing to behold those beloved seems to have been the means of
effecting the object. The mystery of death is to us so awful and
impenetrable, and we know so little of the mode in which the spiritual
and the corporeal are united and kept together during the continuance of
life, or what condition may ensue when this connection is about to be
dissolved, that while we look with wonder upon such phenomena as those
above alluded to, we yet find very few persons who are disposed to
reject them as utterly apocryphal. They feel that in that department,
already so mysterious, there may exist a greater mystery still; and the
very terror with which the thoughts of present death inspires most
minds, deters people from treating this class of facts with that
scornful skepticism with which many approximate ones are denied and
laughed at. Nevertheless, if we suppose the person to have been dead,
though it be but an inappreciable instant of time before he appears, the
appearance comes under the denomination of what is commonly called a
ghost; for whether the spirit has been parted from the body one second
or fifty years, ought to make no difference in our appreciation of the
fact, nor is the difficulty less in one case than the other.
I mention this because I have met with, and do meet with, people
constantly, who admit this class of facts, while they declare they can
not believe in ghosts; the instances, they say, of people being seen at
a distance at the period of their death, are too numerous to permit of
the fact being denied. In granting it, however, they seem to me to grant
everything. If, as I have said above, the person be dead, the form seen
is a ghost or spectre, whether he has been dead a second or a century;
if he be alive, the difficulty is certainly not diminished; on the
contrary, it appears to me to be considerably augmented; and it is to
this perplexing class of facts that I shall next proceed, namely, those
in which the person is not only alive, as in some of the cases above
related, but where the phenomenon seems to occur without any reference
to the death of the subject, present or prospective.
In either case, we are forced to conclude that the thing seen is the
same; the questions are, what is it that we see, and how does it render
itself visible? and, still more difficult to answer, appears the
question, of how it can communicate intelligence, or exert a mechanical
force. As, however, this investigation will be more in its place when I
have reached that department of my subject commonly called ghosts, I
will defer it for the present, and merely confine myself to that of
doubles, or doppelgängers, as the Germans denominate the appearance of a
person out of his body.
In treating of the case of Auguste Müller, a remarkable somnambule, who
possessed the power of appearing elsewhere, while his body lay cold and
stiff in his bed, Professor Keiser, who attended him, says, that the
phenomenon, as regards the seer, must be looked upon as purely
subjective—that is, that there was no outstanding form of Auguste
Müller visible to the sensuous organs, but that the magnetic influence
of the somnambule, by the force of his will, acted on the imagination of
the seer, and called up the image which he believed he saw. But then,
allowing this to be possible, as Dr. Werner says, how are we to account
for those numerous cases in which there is no somnambule concerned in
the matter, and no especial rapport, that we are aware of, established
between the parties? And yet these latter cases are much the most
frequent; for, although I have met with numerous instances recorded by
the German physiologists, of what is called far-working on the part of
the somnambules, this power of appearing out of the body seems to be a
very rare one. Many persons will be surprised at these allusions to a
kind of magnetic phenomena, of which, in this country, so little is
known or believed; but the physiologists and psychologists of Germany
have been studying this subject for the last fifty years, and the
volumes filled with their theoretical views and records of cases, are
numerous beyond anything the English public has an idea of.
The only other theory I have met with, which pretends to explain the
mode of this double appearance, is that of the spirit leaving the body,
as we have supposed it to do in cases of dreams and catalepsy; in which
instances the nerve-spirit, which seems to be the archæus or astral
spirit of the ancient philosophers, has the power of projecting a
visible body out of the imponderable matter of the atmosphere. According
to this theory, this nerve-spirit, which seems to be an embodiment
of—or rather, a body constructed out of the nervous fluid, or ether—in
short, the spiritual body of St. Paul, is the bond of union between the
body and the soul, or spirit; and has the plastic force of raising up an
aerial form. Being the highest organic power, it can not by any other,
physical or chemical, be destroyed; and when the body is cast off, it
follows the soul; and as, during life, it is the means by which the soul
acts upon the body, and is thus enabled to communicate with the external
world, so when the spirit is disembodied, it is through this
nerve-spirit that it can make itself visible, and even exercise
mechanical powers.
It is certain, that not only somnambules, but sick persons, are
occasionally sensible of a feeling that seems to lend some countenance
to this latter theory.
The girl at Canton, for example, mentioned in a former chapter, as well
as many somnambulic patients, declare, while their bodies are lying
stiff and cold, that they see it, as if out of it; and, in some
instances, they describe particulars of its appearance, which they could
not see in the ordinary way. There are also numerous cases of sick
persons seeing themselves double, where no tendency to delirium or
spectral illusion has been observed. These are, in this country, always
placed under the latter category; but I find various instances recorded
by the German physiologists, where this appearance has been seen by
others, and even by children, at the same that it was _felt_ by the
invalid. In one of these cases, I find the sick person saying, “I can
not think how I am lying. It seems to me that I am divided and lying in
two places at once.” It is remarkable, that a friend of my own, during
an illness in the autumn of 1845, expressed precisely the same feeling;
we, however, saw nothing of this second _ego_; but it must be
remembered, that the seeing of these things, as I have said in a former
chapter, probably depends on a peculiar faculty or condition of the
seer. The servant of Elisha was not blind, but yet he could not see what
his master saw, till his eyes were opened—that is, till he was rendered
capable of perceiving spiritual objects.
When Peter was released from prison by the angel—and it is not amiss
here to remark, that even he “wist not that it was true which was done
by the angel, but thought he saw a vision,” that is, he did not believe
his senses, but supposed himself the victim of a spectral illusion—but
when he was released, and went and knocked at the door of the gate,
where many of his friends were assembled, they, not conceiving it
possible he could have escaped, said, when the girl who had opened the
door insisted that he was there, “It is his angel.” What did they mean
by this? The expression is not _an_ angel, but _his_ angel. Now, it is
not a little remarkable, that in the East, to this day, a double, or
doppelgänger, is called a man’s angel, or messenger. As we can not
suppose that this term was used otherwise than seriously by the
disciples that were gathered together in Mark’s house, for they were in
trouble about Peter, and, when he arrived, were engaged in prayer, we
are entitled to believe they alluded to some recognised phenomenon. They
knew, either that the likeness of a man—his spiritual self—sometimes
appeared where bodily he was not; and that this _imago_ or _idolon_ was
capable of exerting a mechanical force, or else that other spirits
sometimes assumed a mortal form, or they would not have supposed it to
be Peter’s angel that had _knocked_ at the gate.
Dr. Ennemoser, who always leans to the physical rather than the
psychical explanation of a phenomenon, says, that the faculty of
self-seeing, which is analogous to seeing another person’s double, is to
be considered an illusion; but that this imago of another seen at a
distance, at the moment of death, must be supposed to have an objective
reality. But if we are capable of thus perceiving the imago of another
person, I can not comprehend why we may not see our own; unless, indeed,
the former was never perceived but when the body of the person seen was
in a state of insensibility; but this does not always seem to be a
necessary condition, as will appear by some examples I am about to
detail. The faculty of perceiving the object, Dr. Ennemoser considers
analogous to that of second sight, and thinks it may be evolved by
local, as well as idiosyncratical conditions. The difficulty arising
from the fact that some persons are in the habit of seeing the wraiths
of their friends and relations, must be explained by his hypothesis. The
spirit, as soon as liberated from the body, is adapted for communion
with _all_ spirits, embodied or otherwise; but all embodied spirits are
not prepared for communion with it.
A Mr. R——, a gentleman who has attracted public attention by some
scientific discoveries, had had a fit of illness at Rotterdam. He was in
a state of convalescence, but was still so far taking care of himself as
to spend part of the day in bed, when, as he was lying there one
morning, the door opened, and there entered in tears, a lady with whom
he was intimately acquainted, but whom he believed to be in England. She
walked hastily to the side of his bed, wrung her hands, evincing by her
gestures extreme anguish of mind, and before he could sufficiently
recover his surprise to inquire the cause of her distress and sudden
appearance, she was gone. She did not disappear, but walked out of the
room again, and Mr. R—— immediately summoned the servants of the
hotel, for the purpose of making inquiries about the English lady—when
she came, what had happened to her, and where she had gone to, on
quitting his room? The people declared there was no such person there;
he insisted there was, but they at length convinced him that they, at
least, knew nothing about her. When his physician visited him, he
naturally expressed the great perplexity into which he had been thrown
by this circumstance; and, as the doctor could find no symptoms about
his patient that could warrant a suspicion of spectral illusion, they
made a note of the date and hour of the occurrence, and Mr. R—— took
the earliest opportunity of ascertaining if anything had happened to the
lady in question. Nothing had happened to herself, but at that precise
period her son had expired, and she was actually in the state of
distress in which Mr. R—— beheld her. It would be extremely
interesting to know whether her thoughts had been intensely directed to
Mr. R—— at the moment; but that is a point which I have not been able
to ascertain. At all events the impelling cause of the form projected,
be the mode of it what it may, appears to have been violent emotion. The
following circumstance, which is forwarded to me by the gentleman to
whom it occurred, appears to have the same origin:—
“On the evening of the 12th of March, 1792,” says Mr. H——, an artist,
and a man of science, “I had been reading in the ‘Philosophical
Transactions,’ and retired to my room somewhat fatigued, but not
inclined to sleep. It was a bright moonlight night and I had
extinguished my candle and was sitting on the side of the bed,
deliberately taking off my clothes, when I was amazed to behold the
visible appearance of my half-uncle, Mr. R. Robertson, standing before
me; and, at the same instant, I heard the words, ‘_Twice will be
sufficient!_’ The face was so distinct that I actually saw the
pock-pits. His dress seemed to be made of a strong twilled sort of
sackcloth, and of the same dingy color. It was more like a woman’s dress
than a man’s—resembling a petticoat, the neck-band close to the chin,
and the garment covering the whole person, so that I saw neither hands
nor feet. While the figure stood there, I twisted my fingers till they
cracked, that I might be sure I was awake.
“On the following morning, I inquired if anybody had heard lately of Mr.
R., and was well laughed at when I confessed the origin of my inquiry. I
confess I thought he was dead; but when my grandfather heard the story,
he said that the dress I described, resembled the strait-jacket Mr. R.
had been put in formerly, under an attack of insanity. Subsequently, we
learned that on the night, and at the very hour I had seen him, he had
attempted suicide, and been actually put into a strait-jacket.
“He afterward recovered, and went to Egypt with Sir Ralph Abercrombie.
Some people laugh at this story, and maintain that it was a delusion of
the imagination; but surely this is blinking the question! Why should my
imagination create such an image, while my mind was entirely engrossed
with a mathematical problem?”
The words “_Twice will be sufficient._” probably embodied the thought,
uttered or not, of the maniac, under the influence of his emotion—two
blows or two stabs would be sufficient for his purpose.
Dr. Kerner relates a case of a Dr. John B——, who was studying medicine
in Paris, seeing his mother one night, shortly after he had got into
bed, and before he had put out his light. She was dressed after a
fashion in which he had never seen her; but she vanished,—and thus,
aware of the nature of the appearance, he became much alarmed, and wrote
home to inquire after her health. The answer he received was that she
was extremely unwell, having been under the most intense anxiety on his
account, from hearing that several medical students in Paris had been
arrested as resurrectionists; and, knowing his passion for anatomical
investigations, she had apprehended he might be among the number. The
letter concluded with an earnest request that he would pay her a visit.
He did so; and his surprise was so great on meeting her, to perceive
that she was dressed exactly as he had seen her in his room at Paris,
that he could not at first embrace her, and was obliged to explain the
cause of his astonishment and repugnance.
An analogous case to these is that of Dr. Donne,—which is already
mentioned in so many publications, that I should not allude to it here
but for the purpose of showing that these examples belong to a _class_
of facts, and that it is not to be supposed that similarity argues
identity, or that one and the same story is reproduced with new names
and localities. I mention this because, when circumstances of this kind
are related, I sometimes hear people say, “Oh, I have heard that story
before, but it was said to have happened to Mr. So-and-so, or at such a
place;” the truth being, that these things happen in all places and to a
great variety of people.
Dr. Donne was with the embassy in Paris, where he had been but a short
time, when his friend Mr. Roberts, entering the _salon_, found him in a
state of considerable agitation. As soon as he was sufficiently
recovered to speak, he said that his wife had passed twice through the
room with a dead child in her arms. An express was immediately
despatched to England to inquire for the lady, and the intelligence
returned was that, after much suffering, she had been delivered of a
dead infant. The delivery had taken place at the time that her husband
had seen her in Paris. Nobody has ever disputed Dr. Donne’s assertion
that he saw his wife: but, as usual, the case is crammed into the theory
of spectral illusions. They say Dr. Donne was naturally very anxious
about his wife’s approaching confinement, of which he must have been
aware, and that his excited imagination did all the rest. In the first
place, I do not find it recorded that he was suffering any particular
anxiety on the subject; and, even if he were, the coincidences in time
and in the circumstance of the dead child remain unexplained. Neither
are we led to believe that the doctor was unwell, or living the kind of
life that is apt to breed thick-coming fancies. He was attached to the
embassy in the gay city of Paris; he had just been taking luncheon with
others of the _suite_, and had been left alone but a short time, when he
was found in the state of amazement above described. If such
extraordinary cases of spectral illusion as this, and many others I am
recording, can suddenly arise in constitutions apparently healthy, it is
certainly high time that the medical world reconsider the subject, and
give us some more comprehensible theory of it; if they are not cases of
spectral illusion, but are to be explained under that vague and abused
term _imagination_, let us be told something more about imagination—a
service which those who consider the word sufficient to account for
these strange phenomena, must of course be qualified to perform. If,
however, both these hypotheses—for they are but simple hypotheses,
unsupported by any proof whatever, only, being delivered with an air of
authority in a rationalistic age, they have been allowed to pass
unquestioned—if, however, they are not found sufficient to satisfy a
vast number of minds, which I know to be the case, I think the inquiry I
am instituting can not be wholly useless or unacceptable, let it lead us
where it may. The _truth_ is all I seek; and I think there is a very
important truth to be deduced from the further investigation of this
subject in its various relations—in short, a truth of paramount
importance to all others; one which contains evidence of a fact in which
we are more deeply concerned than in any other, and which, if well
established, brings demonstration to confirm intuition and tradition. I
am very well aware of all the difficulties in the way—difficulties
internal and external,—many inherent to the subject itself, and others
extraneous but inseparable from it; and I am very far from supposing
that my book is to settle the question even with a single mind. All I
hope or expect is to show that the question is not disposed of yet,
either by the rationalists or the physiologists, and that it is still an
open one; and all I desire is to arouse inquiry and curiosity, and that
thus some mind, better qualified than mine to follow out the
investigation, may be incited to undertake it.
Dr. Kerner mentions the case of a lady named Dillenius, who was awakened
one night by her son, a child six years of age; her sister-in-law, who
slept in the same room, also awoke at the same time, and all three saw
Madame Dillenius enter the room, attired in a black dress, which she had
lately bought. The sister said, “I see you double! you are in bed, and
yet you are walking about the room.” They were both extremely alarmed,
while the figure stood between the doors in a melancholy attitude with
the head leaning on the hand. The child—who also saw it, but seems not
to have been terrified—jumped out of bed, and running to the figure,
put his hand through it as he attempted to push it, exclaiming, “Go
away, you black woman.” The form, however, remained as before; and the
child, becoming alarmed, sprung into bed again. Madame Dillenius
expected that the appearance foreboded her own death; but that did not
ensue. A serious accident immediately afterward occurred to her husband,
and she fancied there might be some connection between the two events.
This is one of those cases which, from their extremely perplexing
nature, have induced some psychologists to seek an explanation in the
hypothesis that other spirits may for some purpose, or under certain
conditions, assume the form of a person with a view to giving an
intimation or impression, which the gulf separating the material from
the spiritual world renders it difficult to convey. As regards such
instances as that of Madame Dillenius, however, we are at a loss to
discover any motive—unless, indeed, it be sympathy—for such an
exertion of power, supposing it to be possessed. But in the famous case
of Catherine of Russia, who is said, while lying in bed, to have been
seen by the ladies to enter the throne-room, and, being informed of the
circumstance, went herself and saw the figure seated on the throne, and
bade her guards fire on it, we may conceive it possible that her
guardian-spirit, if such she had, might adopt this mode of warning her
to prepare for a change, which, after such a life as hers, we are
entitled to conclude she was not very fit to encounter.
There are numerous examples of similar phenomena to be met with.
Professor Stilling relates that he heard from the son of a Madame M——,
that his mother, having sent her maid up stairs on an errand, the woman
came running down in a great fright, saying that her mistress was
sitting above, in her arm-chair, looking precisely as she had left her
below. The lady went up stairs, and saw herself as described by the
woman, very shortly after which she died.
Dr. Werner relates that a jeweller at Ludwigsburg, named Ratzel, when in
perfect health, one evening, on turning the corner of a street, met his
own form, face to face. The figure seemed as real and lifelike as
himself; and he was so close as to look into its very eyes. He was
seized with terror, and it vanished. He related the circumstance to
several people, and endeavored to laugh, but, nevertheless, it was
evident he was painfully impressed with it. Shortly afterward, as he was
passing through a forest, he fell in with some wood-cutters, who asked
him to lend a hand to the ropes with which they were pulling down an
oak-tree. He did so, and was killed by its fall.
Becker, professor of mathematics at Rostock, having fallen into argument
with some friends regarding a disputed point of theology, on going to
his library to fetch a book which he wished to refer to, saw himself
sitting at the table in the seat he usually occupied. He approached the
figure, which appeared to be reading, and, looking over its shoulder, he
observed that the book open before it was a bible, and that, with one of
the fingers of the right hand, it pointed to the passage—“Make ready
thy house, for thou must die!” He returned to the company, and related
what he had seen, and, in spite of all their arguments to the contrary,
remained fully persuaded that his death was at hand. He took leave of
his friends, and expired on the following day, at six o’clock in the
evening. He had already attained a considerable age.
Those who would not believe in the appearance, said he had died of the
fright; but, whether he did so or not, the circumstance is sufficiently
remarkable: and, if this were a real, outstanding apparition, it would
go strongly to support the hypothesis alluded to above, while, if it
were a spectral illusion, it is certainly an infinitely strange one.
As I am aware how difficult it is, except where the appearance is seen
by more persons than one, to distinguish cases of actual self-seeing
from those of spectral illusion, I do not linger longer in this
department; but, returning to the analogous subject of _doppelgängers_,
I will relate a few curious instances of this kind of phenomena:—
Stilling relates that a government-officer, of the name of Triplin, in
Weimar, on going to his office to fetch a paper of importance, saw his
own likeness sitting there, with the deed before him. Alarmed, he
returned home, and desired his maid to go there and fetch the paper she
would find on the table. The maid saw the same form, and imagined that
her master had gone by another road, and got there before her. His mind
seems to have preceded his body.
The landrichter, or sheriff, F——, in Frankfort, sent his secretary on
an errand. Presently afterward, the secretary re-entered the room, and
laid hold of a book. His master asked him what had brought him back,
whereupon the figure vanished, and the book fell to the ground. It was a
volume of Linnæus. In the evening, when the secretary returned, and was
interrogated with regard to his expedition, he said that he had fallen
into an eager dispute with an acquaintance, as he went along, about some
botanical question, and had ardently wished he had had his Linnæus with
him to refer to.
Dr. Werner relates that Professor Happach had an elderly maid-servant,
who was in the habit of coming every morning to call him, and on
entering the room, which he generally heard her do, she usually looked
at a clock which stood under the mirror. One morning, she entered so
softly, that, though he saw her, he did not hear her foot. She went, as
was her custom, to the clock, and came to his bedside, but suddenly
turned round and left the room. He called after her, but she not
answering, he jumped out of bed and pursued her. He could not see her,
however, till he reached her room, where he found her fast asleep in
bed. Subsequently, the same thing occurred frequently with this woman.
An exactly parallel case was related to me, as occurring to himself, by
a publisher in Edinburgh. His housekeeper was in the habit of calling
him every morning. On one occasion, being perfectly awake, he saw her
enter, walk to the window, and go out again without speaking. Being in
the habit of fastening his door, he supposed he had omitted to do so;
but presently afterward he heard her knocking to come in, and he found
the door was still locked. She assured him she had not been there
before. He was in perfectly good health at the time this happened.
Only a few nights since, a lady, with whom I am intimately acquainted,
was in bed, and had not been to sleep, when she saw one of her
daughters, who slept in an upper room, and who had retired to rest some
time before, standing at the foot of her bed. “H——,” she said, “what
is the matter? what are you come for?” The daughter did not answer, but
moved away. The mother jumped out of bed, but not seeing her, got in
again: but the figure was still there. Perfectly satisfied it was really
her daughter, she spoke to her, asking if anything had happened; but
again the figure moved silently away, and again the mother jumped out of
bed, and actually went part of the way up stairs: and this occurred a
third time! The daughter was during the whole of this time asleep in her
bed, and the lady herself is quite in her usual state of health—not
robust, but not by any means sickly, nor in the slightest degree
hysterical or nervous; yet she is perfectly convinced that she saw the
figure of her daughter on that occasion, though quite unable to account
for the circumstance. Probably the daughter was dreaming of the mother.
Edward Stern, author of some German works, had a friend who was
frequently seen _out of the body_, as the Germans term it; and the
father of that person was so much the subject of this phenomenon, that
he was frequently observed to enter his house while he was yet working
in the fields! His wife used to say to him, “Why, papa, you came home
before;” and he would answer, “I dare say, I was so anxious to get away
earlier, but it was impossible!”
The cook in a convent of nuns, at Ebersdorf, was frequently seen picking
herbs in the garden, when she was in the kitchen and much in need of
them.
A Danish physician, whose name Dr. Werner does not mention, is said to
have been frequently seen entering a patient’s room, and on being spoken
to, the figure would disappear, with a sigh. This used to occur when he
had made an appointment which he was prevented keeping, and was rendered
uneasy by the failure. The hearing of it, however, occasioned him such
an unpleasant sensation, that he requested his patients never to tell
him when it happened.
A president of the supreme court, in Ulm, named Pfizer, attests the
truth of the following case: A gentleman, holding an official situation,
had a son at Göttingen, who wrote home to his father, requesting him to
send him, without delay, a certain book, which he required to aid him in
preparing a dissertation he was engaged in. The father answered that he
had sought but could not find the work in question. Shortly afterward,
the latter had been taking a book from his shelves, when, on turning
round, he beheld, to his amazement, his son just in the act of
stretching up his hand toward one on a high shelf in another part of the
room. “Hallo!” he exclaimed, supposing it to be the young man himself,
but the figure disappeared; and, on examining the shelf, the father
found there the book that was required, which he immediately forwarded
to Göttingen; but before it could arrive there, he received a letter
from his son, describing the exact spot where it was to be found.
A case of what is called spectral illusion is mentioned by Dr. Paterson,
which appears to me to belong to the class of phenomena I am treating
of. One Sunday evening, Miss N—— was left at home, the sole inmate of
the house, not being permitted to accompany her family to church on
account of her delicate state of health. Her father was an infirm old
man, who seldom went from home, and she was not aware whether, on this
occasion, he had gone out with the rest or not. By-and-by, there came on
a severe storm of thunder, lightning, and rain, and Miss N—— is
described as becoming very uneasy about her father. Under the influence
of this feeling, Dr. Paterson says she went into the back room, where he
usually sat, and there saw him in his arm-chair. Not doubting but it was
himself, she advanced and laid her hand upon his shoulder, but her hand
encountered vacancy; and, alarmed, she retired. As she quitted the room,
however, she looked back, and there still sat the figure. Not being a
believer in what is called the “supernatural,” Miss N—— resolved to
overcome her apprehensions, and return into the room, which she did, and
saw the figure as before. For the space of fully half an hour she went
in and out of the room in this manner, before it disappeared. She did
not see it vanish, but the fifth time she returned, it was gone.
Dr. Paterson vouches for the truth of this story, and no doubt of its
being a mere illusion occurs to him, though the lady had never before or
since, as she assured him, been troubled with the malady. It seems to me
much more likely that, when the storm came on, the thoughts of the old
man would be intensely drawn homeward: he would naturally wish himself
in his comfortable arm-chair, and, knowing his young daughter to be
alone, he would inevitably feel some anxiety about her too. There was a
mutual projection of their spirits toward each other; and the one that
was most easily freed from its bonds, was seen where in the spirit it
actually was; for, as I have said above, a spirit out of the flesh, to
whom space is annihilated, must be where its thoughts and affections
are, for its thoughts and affections are _itself_.
I observe that Sir David Brewster and others, who have written on this
subject, and who represent all these phenomena as images projected on
the retina from the brain, dwell much on the fact that they are seen
alike, whether the eye be closed or open. There are, however, two
answers to be made to this argument: first, that even if it were so, the
proof would not be decisive, since it is generally with closed eyes that
somnambulic persons see, whether natural somnambules or magnetic
patients; and, secondly, I find in some instances, which appear to me to
be genuine cases of an objective appearance, that where the experiment
has been tried, the figure is not seen when the eyes are closed.
The author of a work entitled “An Inquiry into the Nature of Ghosts,”
who adopts the illusion theory, relates the following story, as one he
can vouch for, though not permitted to give the names of the parties:—
“Miss ——, at the age of seven years, being in a field not far from her
father’s house, in the parish of Kirklinton, in Cumberland, saw what she
thought was her father in the field, at a time that he was in bed, from
which he had not been removed for a considerable period. There were in
the field also, at the same moment, George Little, and John, his
fellow-servant. One of these cried out, ‘Go to your father, miss!’ She
turned round, and the figure had disappeared. On returning home, she
said, ‘Where is my father?’ The mother answered, ‘In bed, to be sure,
child!’—out of which he had not been.”
I quote this case, because the figure was seen by two persons. I could
mention several similar instances, but when only seen by one, they are,
of course, open to another explanation.
Goethe (whose family, by-the-way, were ghost-seers) relates that as he
was once in an uneasy state of mind, riding along the footpath toward
Drusenheim, he saw, “not with the eyes of his body, but with those of
his spirit,” himself on horseback coming toward him, in a dress that he
then did not possess. It was gray, and trimmed with gold. The figure
disappeared; but eight years afterward he found himself, quite
accidentally, on that spot, on horseback, and in precisely that attire.
This seems to have been a case of second-sight.
The story of Byron’s being seen in London when he was lying in a fever
at Patras, is well known; but may possibly have arisen from some
extraordinary personal resemblance, though so firm was the conviction of
its being his actual self, that a bet of a hundred guineas was offered
on it.
Some time ago, the “Dublin University Magazine” related a case—I know
not on what authority—as having occurred at Rome, to the effect that a
gentleman had, one night on going home to his lodging, thrown his
servant into great amazement, the man exclaiming, “Good Lord, sir, you
came home before!” He declared that he had let his master into the
house, attended him up stairs, and, I think, undressed him, and seen him
get into bed. When they went to the room, they found no clothes; but the
bed appeared to have been lain in, and there was a strange mark upon the
ceiling, as if from the passage of an electrical fluid. The only thing
the young man could remember, whereby to account for this extraordinary
circumstance, was, that while abroad, and in company, he had been
overcome with ennui, fallen into a deep reverie, and had for a time
forgotten that he was not at home.
When I read this story, though I have learned from experience to be very
cautious how I pronounce that impossible which I know nothing about, I
confess it somewhat exceeded my receptive capacity, but I have since
heard of a similar instance, so well authenticated, that my incredulity
is shaken.
Dr. Kerner relates that a canon of a catholic cathedral, of somewhat
dissipated habits, on coming home one evening, saw a light in his
bed-room. When the maid opened the door, she started back with surprise,
while he inquired why she had left a candle burning up stairs; upon
which she declared that he had come home just before, and gone to his
room, and she had been wondering at his unusual silence. On ascending to
his chamber, he saw himself sitting in the arm-chair. The figure rose,
passed him, and went out at the room-door. He was extremely alarmed,
expecting his death was at hand. He, however, lived many years
afterward, but the influence on his moral character was very beneficial.
Not long since, a professor, I think of theology, at a college at
Berlin, addressed his class, saying, that, instead of his usual lecture,
he should relate to them a circumstance which, the preceding evening,
had occurred to himself, believing the effects would be no less
salutary.
He then told them that, as he was going home the last evening, he had
seen his own imago, or double, on the other side of the street. He
looked away, and tried to avoid it, but, finding it still accompanied
him, he took a short cut home, in hopes of getting rid of it, wherein he
succeeded, till he came opposite his own house, when he saw it at the
door.
It rang, the maid opened, it entered, she handed it a candle, and, as
the professor stood in amazement, on the other side of the street, he
saw the light passing the windows, as it wound its way up to his own
chamber. He then crossed over and rang; the servant was naturally
dreadfully alarmed on seeing him, but, without waiting to explain, he
ascended the stairs. Just as he reached his own chamber, he heard a loud
crash, and, on opening the door, they found no one there, but the
ceiling had fallen in, and his life was thus saved. The servant
corroborated this statement to the students; and a minister, now
attached to one of the Scotch churches, was present when the professor
told his tale. Without admitting the doctrine of protecting spirits, it
is difficult to account for these latter circumstances.
A very interesting case of an apparent friendly intervention occurred to
the celebrated Dr. A—— T——, of Edinburgh. He was sitting up late one
night, reading in his study, when he heard a foot in the passage, and
knowing the family were, or ought to be, all in bed, he rose and looked
out to ascertain who it was, but, seeing nobody, he sat down again.
Presently, the sound recurred, and he was sure there was somebody,
though he could not see him. The foot, however, evidently ascended the
stairs, and he followed it, till it led him to the nursery-door, which
he opened, and found the furniture was on fire; and thus, but for this
kind office of his good angel, his children would have been burned in
their beds.
The most extraordinary history of this sort, however, with which I am
acquainted, is the following, the facts of which are perfectly
authentic:—
Some seventy or eighty years since, the apprentice, or assistant, of a
respectable surgeon in Glasgow, was known to have had an illicit
connection with a servant-girl, who somewhat suddenly disappeared. No
suspicion, however, seems to have been entertained of foul play. It
appears rather to have been supposed that she had retired for the
purpose of being confined, and, consequently, no inquiries were made
about her.
Glasgow was, at that period, a very different place to what it is at
present, in more respects than one; and, among its peculiarities, was
the extraordinary strictness with which the observance of the sabbath
was enforced, insomuch, that nobody was permitted to show themselves in
the streets or public walks during the hours dedicated to the church
services, and there were actually inspectors appointed to see that this
regulation was observed, and to take down the names of defaulters.
At one extremity of the city, there is some open ground, of rather
considerable extent, on the north side of the river, called “The Green,”
where people sometimes resort for air and exercise; and where lovers not
unfrequently retire to enjoy as much solitude as the proximity to so
large a town can afford.
One Sunday morning, the inspectors of public piety above alluded to
having traversed the city, and extended their perquisitions as far as
the lower extremity of the Green, where it was bounded by a wall,
observed a young man lying on the grass, whom they immediately
recognised to be the surgeon’s assistant. They, of course, inquired why
he was not at church, and proceeded to register his name in their books,
but, instead of attempting to make any excuse for his offence, he only
rose from the ground, saying, “I am a miserable man; look in the water!”
He then immediately crossed a stile, which divided the wall, and led to
a path extending along the side of the river toward the Rutherglen road.
They saw him cross the stile, but, not comprehending the significance of
his words, instead of observing him further, they naturally directed
their attention to the water, where they presently perceived the body of
a woman. Having with some difficulty dragged it ashore, they immediately
proceeded to carry it into the town, assisted by several other persons,
who by this time had joined them. It was now about one o’clock, and, as
they passed through the streets, they were obstructed by the
congregation that was issuing from one of the principal places of
worship; and, as they stood up for a moment, to let them pass, they saw
the surgeon’s assistant issue from the church door. As it was quite
possible for him to have gone round some other way, and got there before
them, they were not much surprised. He did not approach them, but
mingled with the crowd, while they proceeded on their way.
On examination, the woman proved to be the missing servant-girl. She was
pregnant, and had evidently been murdered with a surgeon’s instrument,
which was found entangled among her clothes. Upon this, in consequence
of his known connection with her, and his implied self-accusation to the
inspectors, the young man was apprehended on suspicion of being the
guilty party, and tried upon the circuit. He was the last person seen in
her company, immediately previous to her disappearance; and there was,
altogether, such strong presumptive evidence against him, as
corroborated by what occurred on the green would have justified a
verdict of guilty. But, strange to say, this last most important item in
the evidence failed, and he established an incontrovertible _alibi_; it
being proved, beyond all possibility of doubt, that he had been in
church from the beginning of the service to the end of it. He was,
therefore, acquitted; while the public were left in the greatest
perplexity, to account as they could for this extraordinary discrepancy.
The young man was well known to the inspectors, and it was in broad
daylight that they had met him and placed his name in their books.
Neither, it must be remembered, were they seeking for him, nor thinking
of him, nor of the woman, about whom there existed neither curiosity nor
suspicion. Least of all, would they have sought her where she was, but
for the hint given to them.
The interest excited, at the time, was very great; but no natural
explanation of the mystery has ever been suggested.