phenomena have been frequently ascribed to purely physical causes, and
in a number of cases the final explanation has confirmed this
suggestion. A hypochondriac artist, for instance, was nightly disturbed
by a low but furious knocking in his bed, which was heard by others as
well as by himself. He prayed, he caused priests to come to his bedside,
he had masses read in his behalf, but all remained in vain. Then came a
plain, sensible friend, who, half in jest and half in earnest, covered
his big toe with a brass wire which he dipped into an alkaline solution,
and behold, the knockings ceased and never returned! (Dupotel, "Animal
Magn.") In another case a somnambulistic woman frightened herself as
well as others by most violent knockings whenever she was disappointed
or thwarted; her physician, suspecting the cause, finally gave her
antispasmodic remedies, and it soon appeared that in her nervous spasms
the muscles had been vibrating forcibly enough to produce these
disturbances. Since these discoveries it has been found that almost
anybody may produce such knockings--which stand in a suspicious
relationship to spirit-rappings--by exerting certain muscles of the leg;
some men, who have practised this trick for scientific purposes, like
Professor Schiff, of Florence, are able to imitate almost all the
various knockings generally ascribed to ghosts and spirits. The public
performances of Mr. Chauncey Burr, in New York, gave very striking
illustrations of this power, and a Mr. Shadrach Barnes rapped with his
toes to perfection.
In a large number of cases such phenomena appear in connection with
persons who suffer of some nervous disease, and then the knockings are,
of course, produced unconsciously, and may be accompanied by evidences
of exceptional powers. It need not be added, however, that the two
symptoms are not necessarily of the same nature; generally the
mechanical knockings precede the development of ecstatic visions. A girl
of eleven years, the child of humble Alsatian parents, presented, in
1852, this succession of symptoms very strikingly. The child had a habit
of falling asleep at all hours; at once mysterious knockings began to
perform a dance or a march, and continued daily for more than an hour.
After some time the poor girl began, also, to talk in her sleep, and to
converse with the knocking agent. She would order him to beat a tattoo,
or to play a quickstep, and immediately it was done. The directions of
bystanders, even when not uttered but merely formed earnestly in their
mind, were obeyed in like manner. Finally the child, getting no doubt
worse and unmercifully excited by the crowds of curious people who
thronged the house, began to admonish her audience, and to preach and
pray; during these exhortations no knockings were heard, but she became
clairvoyant and recognized all the persons present, even with her eyes
closed. She fancied that a black man with a red shawl produced the
knockings and delivered the speeches. Her clairvoyance became at last so
striking that her case excited the deepest interest of persons in high
social position, and several physicians examined it with great care. Her
disease was declared to be neurosis coeliaca ("Magicon," v. 274).
A very peculiar and utterly inexplicable phenomenon belonging to this
class of ghostly appearances is the complete removal of persons by an
unseen power. The idea of such occurrences must have been current among
the Jews, for when "there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire
... and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven" (II. Kings ii. 11),
the sons of the prophets did not at once resign themselves, but sent
fifty strong men to seek him, "lest peradventure the Spirit of the Lord
hath taken him up and cast him upon some mountain or into some valley"
(v. 16). In the New Testament the same mysterious removal is mentioned
in the case of Philip, after his interview with the Ethiopian, whom he
baptized. "The Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch
saw him no more," and "Philip was found at Azotus" (Acts viii. 39, 40).
What in these cases was done by divine power, is said to be occasionally
the work of an unknown and unseen force. Generally, no doubt, men or
children lose themselves by accident, either when they are already from
illness or other cause in a state of semi-consciousness, or when they
become so bewildered and frightened by the accident itself, that they
fancy they must have been carried away by a mysterious power. The best
authenticated case is reported in Beaumont (p. 65). An Irish steward,
crossing a field, saw in it a large company feasting, and was invited to
join their meal. One of them, however, warned him in a whisper not to
accept anything that should be offered. Upon his refusal to eat, the
table vanished and the men were seen dancing to a merry music. He was
again invited to join, and when he refused, all disappeared, and he
found himself alone. He hurried home thoroughly terrified, and fainted
away in his room. During the night he dreamt--or really saw--that one of
the mysterious company appeared at his bedside and announced to him that
if he dare leave the house on the following day, he would be carried
away. He remained at home till the evening, when, thinking himself safe,
he stepped across the threshold. Instantly his companions saw him, with
a rope around his body, hurried away so fast that they could not follow.
At last they meet a horseman whom they request by signs to arrest the
unhappy victim; he seizes the rope and receives a smart blow, but
rescues the steward. Lord Orrery desired to see the man, and when the
latter presented himself before the earl, he reported that another
nightly visitor had threatened him as before. He was, thereupon, placed
in a large room under the guard of several stout men; a number of
distinguished persons, two bishops among them, went constantly in and
out. In the afternoon he was suddenly lifted into the air; a famous
boxer, Greatrix, who had been specially engaged to guard him, and
another powerful man, seized him by the shoulders, but he was dragged
from their grasp and for some time carried about high above their heads,
till at last he fell into the arms of some of his keepers. During the
night the same apparition stood once more by his bed-side, inviting him
to drink of a gray porridge, which would cure him of all ills and
protect him against further violence. He suffered himself to be
persuaded, when the visitor made himself known as a former friend who
had to attend those mysterious meetings in punishment of the dissolute
life he had led upon earth, and who now wished to save another unhappy
fellow-being from a like sad fate. At the same time he reminded him of
his neglect to pray, and then disappeared. The steward speedily
recovered from his fright, and was no further molested. There can be
little doubt that the man was ill at ease in body and in conscience, and
that this double burden was too heavy to bear for his mind; his thoughts
became disordered, till he felt an apparently external power stronger
than his own will, and thus not only imagined strange visions, but
actually obeyed erratic impulses of his diseased mind, as if they were
acts of violence from without.
A favorite pastime of these pseudo-ghosts is the throwing of stones at
the buildings or even into the rooms of those whom they wish to annoy.
Good Cotton Mather loved to tell stories of such perverse proceedings,
and states at length the sufferings of George Walton, at Portsmouth, in
1682. Invisible hands threw such a hailstorm of stones against his
house, that the door was burst open, although the inhabitants, when hit
by the stones, only felt a slight touch. Then the stones began to fly
about inside, and to destroy the window-panes from within; when picked
up by some of the witnesses, they proved to be burning hot; they were
marked and placed upon a table, whereupon they commenced to fly about
once more. It is characteristic of the whole proceeding that the only
person really injured by the operation was the owner of the house, a
quaker! The learned author delights also in recitals of children who
were plagued by evil spirits, having forks and knives, pins and sharp
scissors stuck into their backs, and whose food, at the moment when it
was to be carried from the plate to the mouth, flew away, leaving yarn,
ashes, and vile things to reach the palate! At other times the
disturbance assumes a somewhat more dignified form, and appears as the
ringing of bells. Thus Baxter tells us of a house at Colne Priory, in
Essex, where, for a time, every morning at two o'clock a large bell was
heard, while in the parish of Wilcot, a smaller bell waked the vicar
night after night with its tinkling, and yet could not be heard outside
of the dwelling. Physicians know very well how readily the pressure of
blood to certain vessels in the head produces the impression of the
ringing of bells, and experience tells us how easily men are made to
believe that they see or hear what others assure them is seen or heard
by everybody. Even the great John Wesley seems not to have been fully
convinced of the purely natural character of such disturbances, when
they annoyed his venerable father at Epworth Rectory; and Dr. Priestley,
a calm and cautious writer, says of these phenomena: "It is perhaps the
best-authenticated and the best-told story of the kind that is anywhere
extant, on which account, and to exercise the ingenuity of some
speculative person, I thought it not undeserved of being published." It
seems that in 1716 the rectory became the scene of strange disturbances,
which were at first ascribed to one of the minister's enemies, Jeffrey.
The inmates heard an incessant walking about, sighing and groaning,
cackling and crowing; a hand-mill was set whirling around by invisible
hands, and the Amen! with which Wesley's father ended the family prayer
was accompanied by a noise like thunder. Even the faithful watchdog was
disturbed and his instinct overawed, for he sought refuge with men, and
barked furiously, till his excitement rose to a state resembling
madness, he even anticipated the coming of the disturbance, and
announced it by his intense agitation.
The subject is one of extreme difficulty because of the large number of
cases in which all such disturbances have been clearly traced to the
agency of dissatisfied servants, hidden enemies, or envious neighbors,
whose sole purpose was a desire to drive the occupant from his house, or
to diminish its value. It is characteristic of human nature that the
cunning and the skill displayed on such occasions even by ignorant
servants and awkward rustics are perfectly amazing, a fact which proves
anew the assertion of old divines, that the Devil is vastly better
served than the Lord of Heaven. Even the best authenticated case of such
mysterious disturbances, Kerner's so-called Seeress of Prevorst, is not
entirely free from all suspicion. Mrs. Hauffe, a lady of delicate
health, great nervous irritability, and a mind which was, to say the
least, not too well balanced, became the patient of Dr. Justinus Kerner,
in southern Germany. Besides her mysterious power to reveal unknown
things, to read the future, and to prescribe for herself and others, of
which mention has been made before; she was also pursued by every
variety of strange noises. Plates and glasses, tables and chairs were
violently thrown about in the house in which she lived; a medicine phial
rose slowly into the air and had to be brought back by one of the
bystanders, and an easy-chair was lifted up to the ceiling, but came
down again quite gently. The suffering woman was the only one who knew
the cause of these phenomena; she ascribed them all to a dark spirit,
Belon's companion, who appeared to her as a black column of smoke, with
a hideous head, and whose approach oppressed even some of the
bystanders--especially the patient's sister. He was not content with
disturbing Mrs. Hauffe only, but carried his wantonness even into the
homes of distant friends and kinsmen. A pious minister, who frequently
visited the poor sufferer, was contagiously affected by the ill-fated
atmosphere of her house; night after night he was waked up, by a "bright
spirit," who coughed and sighed and sobbed in his presence, till a
fervent prayer drove him away; if the poor divine, however, prayed only
faintly or entertained doubts in his heart, the spirit mocked him with
increased energy. Later even the minister's wife succumbed, saw the same
luminous appearances and heard the same mysterious noises, till the
whole matter was suddenly brought to an end by an amulet! To this class
of occurrences belongs also the experience of the Rev. Dr. Phelps of
Stratford, Connecticut. One fine day he found, upon returning from
church, that all the doors of his house, which he had carefully locked,
were open and everything in the lower rooms in a state of boundless
confusion. Nothing, however, had been stolen. In the upper story a room
was found to be occupied by eight or ten persons diligently reading in
an open Bible, which each one held close to his face. Upon examination
these readers were discovered to be bundles of clothes carefully and
most cunningly arranged so as to represent living beings. Everything was
cleared away and the room was locked; but in three minutes, the
clothing, which had been put aside, disappeared, and when the door was
opened the same scene was presented. For seven long months the house was
haunted by most extraordinary phenomena; noises of every kind were
heard by day as well as by night; utensils and window-panes were broken
before the eyes of numerous witnesses by invisible hands, and the son of
the house, eleven years old, was bodily lifted up and carried away to
some distance. The most searching inquiry led to no result, until at
last Dr. Phelps, almost in despair, applied to some spiritualists, and
in consequence of the hints he received was enabled to bring the
disturbances to a speedy end (_Rechenberg_, p. 58).
Stone-throwing seems to be a favorite amusement with Eastern ghosts
also; at least we are told that it is quite frequent in the western part
of the Island of Java, where the Sunda people live amid gigantic
mountains and still active volcanoes. They believe in good and evil
spirits, and are firmly convinced that constant intercourse is kept up
between earth-born men and heavenly beings. The whole Indian Archipelago
is filled with the latter, and hence, the throwing of stones, sand and
gravel, by invisible hands, has a name of its own, it is called
Gundarua. Some thirty years ago, a German happened to be
Assistant-Resident at Sumadang, in the service of the Dutch government.
His wife had taken a fancy to a native child ten years old, who was
allowed to go in and out the house at will. One morning during the
German's absence, the child's white dress was found to be soiled all
over with red betel-juice, and at the moment when her patroness made
this discovery, a stone fell apparently from the ceiling, at her feet.
The same phenomenon was repeated over and over again, till the lady, in
her distress, appealed to a neighboring native sovereign, who promised
his assistance. He sent immediately a large force of armed men, who
surrounded the house and watched the room; nevertheless, the red spots
reappeared and stones fell as before. Towards evening, a Mohammedan
mufti, of high rank, was sent for; but he had scarcely opened his Koran,
to read certain sentences for the purpose of exorcising the demons, when
the sacred book was hurled to one side and the lamp to another. The lady
took the child to the prince's residence to spend the night there, and
no disturbance occurred. But when her husband, for whom swift messengers
had been sent out, returned on the following day, the same trouble
occurred; the child was spit at with betel-juice and stones kept falling
from on high. Soon the report reached the Governor-General at
Breitenzorg, who thereupon sent a man of great military renown, a Major
Michiels, to investigate the matter. Once more the house was surrounded
by an armed force, even the neighboring trees were carefully guarded,
and the major took the little girl upon his knees. In spite of all these
precautions, her dress was soon covered with red spots, and stones flew
about as before. No one, however, was injured. They were gathered up,
proved to be wet or hot, as if just picked up in the road, and at night
filled a huge box. The same process continued, when a huge sheet of
linen had been stretched from wall to wall, so as to form an inner
ceiling under the real ceiling; and now not only stones, but also fruit
from the surrounding trees, freshly gathered, and mortar from the
kitchen fell into the newly formed tent. At the same time the furniture
was repeatedly disturbed, tumblers and wineglasses tossed about, and
marks left on the large mirror as if a moist hand had been passed over
the surface. The marvelous occurrences were duly reported to the home
government, and the king, William II., ordered that no pains should be
spared to clear up the matter. But no explanation was ever obtained;
only the fact was ascertained that similar phenomena had been repeatedly
observed in other parts of the island also, and were considered quite
ordinary occurrences by the natives. Certain families, it may be added,
claim to have inherited from their ancestors the power to make
themselves invisible, a gift which is almost invariably accompanied by
the Gundarua; as these native families gradually die out, the symptoms
of the latter also disappear more and more. There is no doubt that here,
as in the Russian _poganne_ (cursed places which are haunted by ghosts),
the belief in such appearances, bequeathed through long ages from father
to son, has finally obtained a force which renders it equal to reality
itself. Reason is not only biased, but actually held bound; the mind is
wrought up to a state of excitement in which it ceases to see clearly,
and finally visions assume an overwhelming force, which ends in symptoms
of what is called magic. The same law applies, for instance, to the
ancient home of charmers and magicians, the land of the Nile, where
also the studies of the ancient Magi have been assumed by a succession
of learned men, till they were taken up by fanatic Mohammedans, whose
creed arranges invisible beings, angels, demons, and others, in regular
order, and assigns them a home in distinct parts of the universe. It is
not without interest to observe that even Europeans, after a long
residence in the Orient, become deeply imbued with such notions, and men
like Bayle St. John, in his account of magic performances which he
witnessed, do not seem able to remain altogether impartial.
One of the most remarkable phenomena belonging to this branch of magic
is the appearance of living or recently deceased persons to friends or
supplicants. The peculiarity in this case consists in the constantly
changing character of the appearance: the double--as it is called--is
the vision of the dying man, which appears to others or to his own
senses. The former class of cases was well known in antiquity, for
Pythagoras already had, according to popular report, appeared to
numerous friends before he died. Herodotus and Maximus Tyrius state
both, that Aristaeus sent his spirit into different lands to acquire
knowledge, and Epimenides and Hernestinus, from Claromenae, were
popularly believed to be able to visit, when in a state of ecstasy, all
distant countries, and to return at pleasure. St. Augustine, also,
states ("Sermon," 123) that he, himself, had appeared to two persons who
had known him only by reputation, and advised them to go to Hippons in
order to obtain their health there by the intercession of St. Stephen.
They really went to the place and recovered from their disease. At
another time his form appeared to a famous teacher of eloquence in
Carthage and explained to him several most difficult passages in
Cicero's writings (_De cura pro mortuis_, ch. ii). The saints of the
Catholic church having possessed the gift of being in several places at
once, apparently so very generally, that the miracle has lost its
interest, except where peculiar circumstances seem to suggest the true
explanation. Such was, for instance, the last-mentioned case, recited by
St. Augustine (_De Civ. Dei._ l. 8. ch. 18). Praestantius requested a
philosopher to solve to him some doubts, but received no answer. The
following night, however, when Praestantius lay awake, troubled by his
difficulties, he suddenly saw his learned friend standing by his bedside
and heard from his lips all he desired to know. Upon meeting him next
day, he inquired why he had been unwilling to explain the matter in the
daytime, and thus caused himself the trouble of coming at midnight to
his house. "I never came to your house," was the reply, "but I dreamt
that I did." Here was very evidently a case of magic activity on the
part of the philosopher, whose mind was, in his sleep, busily engaged in
solving the propounded mystery and thus affected not himself only, but
his absent friend likewise.