phenomena, and as frequent in our day as at any previous period, is
formed by those which are the result of climatic and topographic
peculiarities. We have already stated that the peculiar impression made
upon predisposed minds by vast deserts and boundless wastes is
frequently ascribed, by the superstitious dwellers near such localities,
to the influence of evil spirits. Such a vision is the Ragl of Northern
Africa, which occurs either after fatiguing journeys through the dry,
hot desert, in consequence of great nervous excitement, or as one of the
symptoms of typhoid fever in native patients. Seeing and hearing are
alike affected, the other senses only in rare cases. Ordinarily the eye
sees everything immensely magnified or oddly changed; pebbles become
huge blocks of stone, faint tracks in the hot sand change into broad
causeways or ample meadows, and distant shadows appear as animals,
wells, or mountain-dells. If the moon rises the vision increases in size
and distinctness; the scene becomes animated, men pass by, camels follow
each other in long lines, and troops are marching past in battalions.
Then the ear also begins to succumb to the charm; the rustling of dry
leaves becomes the sweet song of numerous birds; the wind changes into
cries of despair, and the noise of falling sand into distant thunder.
The brain remains apparently unaffected, for travelers suffering of the
Ragl are able to make notes and record the symptoms, although the
note-book looks to them like a huge album with costly engravings. There
can be little doubt that the great afflux of blood to the eyes and the
ears is the first cause of these phenomena, but the peculiar nature of
the visions remains still a mystery. One striking peculiarity is their
unvarying identity in men of the same race and culture; Europeans have
their own hallucinations which are not shared by Africans; the former
see churches, houses, and carriages, the latter mosques, tents, and
camels, thus proving here also the fact that these delusions of the
senses are produced in the mind and not in the outer world. Travelers
who suffer from hunger or from the dread effects of the simoon are
naturally more subject to the Ragl than others; the visions generally
appear towards midnight and continue till six or seven o'clock in the
morning, while during the day they are only seen in cases of aggravated
suffering. Another peculiarity is the fact that these visions connect
themselves only with small objects and moderate sounds; the gentle
friction of a vibrating tassel on his camel's neck appeared to the great
explorer Richardson like the clacking of a mill-wheel, but the words
shouted by his companion sounded quite natural. Thus he saw in every
little lichen a green garden spot, but the stars he discerned distinctly
enough to direct his way by them even when suffering most intensely from
the Ragl.
The Fata Morgana of the so-called Great Desert in Oregon, in which the
waters of the Paducah, Kansas, and Arkansas lose themselves to a great
extent, is a kindred affection. Here also phantoms of every kind are
seen, gigantic horsemen, colossal buildings, and flitting fires; but the
absence of heat makes the visions less frequent and less distinct. The
Indians, however, like the Moors of Africa, dread these apparitions and
ascribe them to evil spirits. These phenomena have besides a special
interest, by proving how constantly in all these questions of modern
magic facts are combined with mere delusions. The flitting fires, to
which we alluded, for instance, are not mere visions, but real and
tangible substances, the effect of gaseous effusions which are quite
frequent on these steppes. So it is also with the local visions peculiar
to mountain regions, like the Little Gray Man of the Grisons in
Switzerland and the gnomes of miners in almost all lands. The dwellers
in Alpine regions acquire--or even inherit, it may be--a peculiar power
of divination with regard to the weather; they feel instinctively, and
without ever giving themselves the trouble of trying to ascertain the
reason, the approach of fogs and mists, so dangerous to the welfare of
their herds and their own safety. This presentiment is clothed by local
traditions and their own vivid imaginations in the familiar shape of
supernatural beings, and what was at first perhaps merely a form of
speech, has gradually become a deep-rooted belief handed down from
father to son. They end by really seeing--with their mind's eye--the
rising mists and drifting fogs in the shape which they have so often
heard mentioned, or give to rising gases, far down in the bowels of the
earth, the form of familiar gnomes. These visions are hence not
altogether produced by the imagination, but have, so to say, a grain of
truth around which the weird form is woven.
A numerous class of visions, presenting some of the most interesting
phenomena of this branch of magic, must be looked upon as the result of
the innate desire to fathom the mystery of future life. The human heart,
conscious of immortality by nature and assured of it by revelation,
desires ardently to lift the veil which conceals the secrets of the life
to come. Among other means to accomplish this, the promise has often
been exacted of dear friends, that they would, after death, return and
make known their condition in the other world. Such compacts have been
made from time immemorial--but so far their only result has been that
the survivors have believed occasionally that they have received visits
from deceased friends--in other words, that their state of great
excitement and eager expectation has caused them to have visions. It
remains true, after all, that from that bourne no traveler ever returns.
Nevertheless, these visions have a deep interest for the psychologist,
as they are the result of unconscious action, and thus display what
thoughts dwell in our innermost heart concerning the future.
V.
GHOSTS.
"Sunt aliquid manes; letum non omnia finit."
There are few subjects, outside of the vexed questions of Theology, on
which eminent men of all nations and ages have held more varied views
than so-called ghosts. The very term has been understood differently by
almost every great writer who has approached the boundary line of this
department of magic. The word which is now commonly used in order to
designate any immaterial being, not made of the earth, earthy, or
perhaps, in a higher sense, the "body spiritual" of St. Paul, was in the
early days of Christianity applied to the visible spirits of deceased
persons only. In the Middle Ages again, when everything weird and
unnatural was unhesitatingly ascribed to diabolic agency, these
phenomena, also, were regarded as nothing else but the Devil's work.
Theologians have added in recent days a new subject of controversy to
this vexed matter. The divines of the seventeenth and eighteenth century
denied, of course, the possibility of a reappearance of the spirits of
the departed, as they were in consistency bound to deny the existence of
a purgatory, and yet, from purgatory alone were these spirits,
according to popular belief, allowed to revisit the earth--heaven and
hell being comparatively closed places. As the people insisted upon
seeing ghosts, however, there remained nothing but to declare them to be
delusions produced for malign purposes by the Evil One himself; and so
decided, not many generations ago, the Consistory of Basle in an appeal
made by a German mystic author, Jung Stilling. And yet it is evident
that a number of eminent thinkers, and not a few of the most skeptic
philosophers even, have believed in the occurrence of such visits by
inmates of Sheol. Hugo Grotius and Puffendorf, whose far-famed worldly
wisdom entitles their views to great respect, Machiavelli and Boccaccio,
Thomasius and even Kant, all have repeatedly admitted the existence of
what we familiarly call ghosts. The great philosopher of Koenigsberg
enters fully into the subject. "Immaterial beings," he says, "including
the souls of men and animals, may exist, though they must be considered
as not filling space but only acting within the limits of space." He
admits the probability that ere long the process will be discovered, by
which the human soul, even in this life, is closely connected with the
immaterial inmates of the world of spirits, a connection which he states
to be operative in both directions, men affecting spirits and spirits
acting upon men, though the latter are unconscious of such impressions
"as long as all is well." In the same manner in which the physical world
is under the control of a law of gravity, he believes the spiritual
world to be ruled by a moral law, which causes a distinction between
good and evil spirits. The same belief is entertained and fully
discussed by French authors of eminence, such as Des Mousseaux, De
Mirville, and others. The Catholic church has never absolutely denied
the doctrine of ghosts, perhaps considering itself bound by the biblical
statement that "the graves were opened and many bodies of the saints
which slept, arose and came out of the graves and went into the holy
city and appeared unto many." (St. Matt. xxvii. 52.) Tertullian, St.
Augustine, and Thomas de Aquinas, all state distinctly, as a dogma, that
the souls of the departed can leave their home, though not at will, but
only by special permission of the Almighty. St. Augustine mentions
saints by whom he was visited, and Thomas de Aquinas speaks even of the
return of accursed inmates of hell, for the purpose of terrifying and
converting criminals in this world. The "Encyclopedia of Catholic
Theology" (iv. p. 489) states that "although the theory of ghosts has
never become a dogma of the Holy Church, it has ever maintained itself,
and existed in the days of Christ, who did not condemn it, when it was
mentioned in his presence." (St. Matt. xiv. 26; St. Luke xxiv. 37.)
Calmet, the well-known Benedictine Abbot of Senon, in Lorraine, who was
one of the most renowned theological writers of the eighteenth century,
says (i. 17): "Apparitions of ghosts would be more readily understood if
spirits had a body; but the Holy Church has decided that angels, devils
and the spirits of the departed are pure immaterial spirits. Since this
question transcends our mental faculties, we must submit to the judgment
of the Church, which cannot err." Another great theologian, the German
Bengel, on the contrary, assumed that "probably the apparitions of the
departed have a prescribed limit and then cease; they continue probably
as long as all the ties between body and soul are not fully dissolved."
This question of the nature of our existence during the time immediately
following death, is, it is well known, one of the most vexed of our day,
for while most divines of the Protestant Church assume an immediate
decision of our eternal fate, others admit the probability of an
intermediate state, and the Catholic Church has its well-known
probationary state in purgatory. It may as well be stated here at once
that the whole theory of ghosts is admissible only if we assume that
there follows after death a period during which the soul undergoes, not
an immediate rupture, but a slow, gradual separation from its body,
accompanied by a similar gradual adaptation to its new mode of
existence. Whether the spirit, during this time, is still sufficiently
akin to earthy substances to be able to clothe itself into some material
perceptible to the senses of living men, is of comparatively little
importance. The idea of such an "ethereal body" is very old, and has
never ceased to be entertained. Thus, in 1306, already Guido de la
Tones, who died in Verona, appeared during eight days to his wife, his
neighbors, and a number of devout priests, and declared in answer to
their questions that the spirits of the departed possessed the power to
clothe themselves with air, and thus to become perceptible to living
beings. Bayle also, in his article on Spinoza (note 2), advocates the
possibility, at least, of physical effects being produced by agents
whose presence we are not able to perceive by the use of our ordinary
senses. Even so eminently practical a mind as Lessing's was bewildered
by the difficulties surrounding this question, and he declared that
"here his wits were at an end."
Another great German writer, Goerres, in his "Christian Mystic" (iii. p.
307), not only admits the existence of ghosts, but explains them as "the
higher prototypal form of man freed from the earthy form, the spectrum
relieved of its envelope, which can be present wherever it chooses
within the prescribed limits of its domain." This view is, however, not
supported by the experience of those who believe they have seen ghosts;
for the latter appear only occasionally in a higher, purified form,
resembling ethereal beings, as a mere whitish vapor or a shape formed of
faint light; by far more generally they are seen in the form and even
the costume of their earthy existence. The only evidence of really
supernatural or magic powers accompanying such phenomena consists in the
ineffable dread which is apt to oppress the heart and to cause intense
bodily suffering; in the cold chill which invariably precedes the
apparition, and in the profound and exquisitely painful emotion which is
never again forgotten throughout life.
As yet, the subject has been so little studied by candid inquiries, that
there are but a few facts which can be mentioned as fully established.
The form and shape under which ghosts appear, are the result of the
imagination of the ghost seer only, whether he beholds angels or devils,
men or animals. If his receptive power is highly developed, he will see
them in their completeness, and discern even the minutest details; weak
persons, on the other hand, perceive nothing more than a faint, luminous
or whitish appearance, mere fragmentary and embryonic visions. These
powers of perception may, however, be improved by practice, and those
who see ghosts frequently, are sure to discover one feature after
another, until the whole form stands clearly and distinctly before their
mind's eye. The ear is generally more susceptible than the eye to the
approach of ghosts, and often warns the mind long before the apparition
becomes visible. The noises heard are apt to be vague and ill defined,
consisting mainly of a low whispering or restless rustling, a strange
moving to and fro, or the blowing of cold air in various directions.
Many sounds, however, are so peculiar, that they are never heard except
in connection with ghosts, and hence, baffle all description. It need
not be added, that the great majority of such sounds also exist only in
the mind of the hearer, but as the latter is, in his state of
excitement, fully persuaded that he hears them, they are to him as real
as if they existed outside of his being. Nor are they always confined to
the ghost seer. On the contrary, the hearing of such sounds is as
contagious as the seeing of such sights; and not only men are thus
affected, and see and hear what others experience, but even the higher
animals, horses and dogs, share in this susceptibility. When ghosts
appear to speak, the voice is almost always engastrimantic, that is, the
ghost seer produces the words himself, in a state of ecstatic
unconsciousness, and probably by a kind of instinctive ventriloquism. To
these phenomena of sight and hearing must be added, thirdly, the
occasional violent moving about of heavy substances. Furniture seems to
change its place, ponderous objects disappear entirely, or the whole
surrounding scene assumes a new order and arrangement. These phenomena,
as far as they really exist, must be ascribed to higher, as yet
unexplained powers, and suggest the view entertained by many writers on
the subject, that disembodied spirits, as they are freed from the
mechanical laws of nature, possess also the power to suspend them in
everything with which they come in contact. The last feature in
ghost-seeing, which is essential, is the cold shudder, the ineffable
dread, which falls upon poor mortal man, at the moment when he is
brought into contact with an unknown world. Already Job said: "Fear came
upon me and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit
passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up" (iv. 14, 15). This
sense of vague, and yet almost intolerable dread, resembles the agony of
the dying man; it is perfectly natural, since the seeing of ghosts, that
is, of disembodied spirits, can only become possible by the more or
less complete suspension of the ordinary life in the flesh. For a
moment, all bodily functions are suspended, the activity of the brain
ceases, and consciousness itself is lost as in a fit of fainting. This
rarely happens without a brief instinctive struggle, and the final
victory of an unseen and unknown power, which deprives the mind of its
habitual mastery over the body, is necessarily accompanied by intense
pain and overwhelming anguish.
Well-authenticated cases of the appearance of spirits of departed
persons are mentioned in the earliest writings. Valerius Maximus relates
in graphic words the experience of the poet Simonides, who was about to
enter a vessel for the purpose of undertaking a long journey with some
of his friends, when he discovered a dead body lying unburied on the
sea-shore. Shocked by the impiety of the unknown man's friends, he
delayed his departure to give to the corpse a decent funeral. During the
following night, the spirit of this man appeared to him and advised him
not to sail on the next day. He obeys the warning; his friends leave
without him, and perish miserably in a great tempest. Deeply moved by
his sad loss, but equally grateful for his own miraculous escape, he
erected to the memory of his unknown friend a noble monument in verses,
unmatched in beauty and pathos. Phlegon, also, the freedman of the
Emperor Hadrian, has left us in his work, _De Mirabilibus_, one of the
most touching instances of such ghost-seeing; it is the well-known story
of Machates and Philimion, which Goethe reproduced in his "Bride of
Corinth." Nor must we forget the numerous examples of visions in dreams,
by which the Almighty chose to reveal His will to his beloved among the
chosen people--a series of apparitions, which the Church has taken care
to continue during the earlier ages, in almost unbroken succession from
saint to saint. Pagans were converted by such revelations, martyrs were
comforted, the wounded healed, and even an Emperor, Constantine, cured
of leprosy, by the appearance of the two apostles, Peter and Paul.
The truth, which lies at the bottom of all such appearances, is
probably, that ghostly disturbances are uniformly the acts of men, but
of men who have ceased for a time to be free agents, and who have, for
reasons to be explained presently, acquired exceptional powers. Thus, a
famous jurist, Counselor Hellfeld, in Jena, was one evening on the point
of signing the death warrant of a cavalry soldier. The subject had
deeply agitated his mind for days, and before seizing his pen, he
invoked, as was his custom in such cases, the "aid of the Almighty
through His holy spirit." At that moment--it was an hour before
midnight--he hears heavy blows fall upon his window, which sound as if
the panes were struck with a riding-whip. His clerk also hears the blows
distinctly, and begins to tremble violently. This apparent accident
induces the judge to delay his action; he devotes the next day to a
careful re-perusal of the evidence, and is now led to the conviction
that the crime deserves only a minor punishment. Ere the year has
closed, another criminal is caught, and volunteers the confession that
he was the perpetrator of the crime for which the soldier was punished.
In that solemn moment, it was, of course, only the judge's own mind,
deeply moved and worn out by painful work, which warned him in a
symbolic manner not to be precipitate, and the very fact that the blows
sounded as if they had been produced by a whip proved his unconscious
association of the noise with the cavalry soldier. And yet he and his
clerk believed and solemnly affirmed, that they had heard the mysterious
blows! This dualism, which, as it were, divides man into two beings, one
of whom follows and watches the other, while both are unconscious of
their identity, is the magic element in these phenomena. This
unconsciousness, proving--as in dreams--the inactivity of our reason,
produces the natural effect, that we fancy all ghostly appearances are
foolish, wanton and wicked. The fact is, moreover that they almost
always proceed from a more or less diseased or disturbed mind, and
acquire importance only in so far as it is our duty here also to
eliminate truth from error. Thus only can we hope to counteract their
mischievous tendency, and to prevent still stronger delusions from
obtaining a mastery over weak minds. This is the purpose of a club
formed in London in 1869, the members of which find amusement and useful
employment in investigating all cases of haunted houses and other
ghostly appearances.
That the belief in ghostly disturbances is not a modern error, we see
from St. Augustine, who already mentions the farm of a certain Hasparius
as disquieted by loud noises till the prayer of a pious priest restored
peace. The Catholic Church has a St. Caesarius, who purified in like
manner the house of the physician Elpidius in Ravenna, which was filled
with evil spirits and only admitted the owner after he had passed
through a shower of stones. Another saint, Hubertus, was himself annoyed
by ghosts in his residence at Camens, and never succeeded in obtaining
peace till he died, in 958. Wicked or interested men take, of course,
but too readily advantage of the credulity of men and employ similar
disturbances for personal purposes; such was the case with the ghosts
that haunted the Council house in Constance and the palace at Woodstock
in Cromwell's time. The case of a scrupulously conscientious Protestant
minister in Germany, which created in 1719 a great excitement throughout
the empire, is well calculated to show the real nature of a number of
such ghostly disturbances. He had been called to the death-bed of a
notorious sinner, a woman, who desired at the last moment to receive the
comforts of religion. Unfortunately he reached her house too late; she
was already unconscious, and died in his presence, as he thought,
unreconciled with her God and with himself, whom she had often insulted
and cursed in life. Deeply disturbed he returned home, and after having
dwelt upon the painful subject with intense anxiety for several days he
began to hear footsteps in his house. Gradually they became more
frequent; then he distinguished them clearly as a woman's step, and at
last they were accompanied by the dragging of a gown. Watches were set,
sand was strewn, dogs were kept in the house--but all in vain; no trace
of man was found, and still the sounds continued. The unhappy man prayed
day and night, and the noise disappeared for a fortnight. When he ceased
praying they returned, louder than ever. He sternly bids the ghost
desist, and behold! the ghost obeys. When he asks if it is a good angel
or a demon, no answer is given; but the question: Art thou the Devil?
finds an immediate reply in rapid steps up and down the house--for the
poor man's mind was filled with the idea that such things can be done
only by the Evil One. At last he summons all his remaining energy and in
a tone of command he orders the ghost to depart and never to reappear.
From that moment all disturbances cease--and very naturally, for the
haunted, disturbed man, had fully recovered the command over himself;
the dualism that produced all the spectral phenomena had ceased, and the
restored mind accomplished its own cure. As these phenomena are thus
produced from within, it appears perfectly natural also that they should
be reported as occurring most frequently in the month of November.
Religious minds and superstitious dispositions have brought this fact
into a quaint connection with the approach of Advent-time, but the cause
is probably purely physical; the dark and dismal month with its dense
fogs emblematic of coming winter predisposes the mind to gloomy thoughts
and renders it less capable of resisting atmospheric influences.
A very general belief ascribes such disturbances, under the name of
"haunted houses," to the souls of deceased persons who can find no rest
beyond the grave. The series of ghost stories based upon this
supposition begins with the account of Suetonius and continues unbroken
to our day. Then it was the spirit of Caligula, which could not be quiet
so long as his body, which had only been half burned, remained in that
disgraceful condition. Night after night his house and his garden were
visited by strange apparitions, till the palace was destroyed by fire
and the emperor's sisters rendered the last honors to his remains.
Thus the disposition of modern inquiries to trace back all popular
accounts of great events, all familiar anecdotes and fairy tales, and
even proverbs and maxims, to the ancients, has been fully gratified in
this case also. They were not only known to antiquity, but formed a
staple of popular tales. Thus the younger Pliny tells us one which he
had frequently heard related. At Athens there stood a large, comfortable
mansion, which, however, was ill-reputed. Night after night, it was
said, chains were heard rattling, first at a distance, and then coming
nearer, till a pale, haggard shape was seen approaching, wearing beard
and hair in long dishevelled locks and clanking the chains it bore on
hands and feet. The occupants of the house could not sleep, were
terrified, sickened and died. Thus it came about that the fine building
stood empty, year after year, and was at last offered for sale at a low
price. About that time the philosopher Athenodorus came to Athens and
saw the notice; he had his suspicions aroused by the small sum demanded
for the house, inquired about the causes and rented the house. For he
was a man of courage and meant to fathom the mystery.