invisible beings will appear less surprising if we consider the common
feats of jugglers, or professors of legerdemain, and recollect that it
is only the frequent exhibition of such powers which reconciles us to
them as matters of course, although they are wonders at which in our
fathers' time men would have cried out either sorcery or miracles. The
spectator also, who has been himself duped, makes no very respectable
appearance when convicted of his error; and thence, if too candid to add
to the evidence of supernatural agency, is yet unwilling to stand
convicted by cross-examination, of having been imposed on, and
unconsciously becomes disposed rather to colour more highly than the
truth, than acquiesce in an explanation resting on his having been too
hasty a believer. Very often, too, the detection depends upon the
combination of certain circumstances, which, apprehended, necessarily
explain the whole story.
For example, I once heard a sensible and intelligent friend in company
express himself convinced of the truth of a wonderful story, told him by
an intelligent and bold man, about an apparition. The scene lay in an
ancient castle on the coast of Morven or the Isle of Mull, where the
ghost-seer chanced to be resident. He was given to understand by the
family, when betaking himself to rest, that the chamber in which he
slept was occasionally disquieted by supernatural appearances. Being at
that time no believer in such stories, he attended little to this hint,
until the witching hour of night, when he was awakened from a dead sleep
by the pressure of a human hand on his body. He looked up at the figure
of a tall Highlander, in the antique and picturesque dress of his
country, only that his brows were bound with a bloody bandage. Struck
with sudden and extreme fear, he was willing to have sprung from bed,
but the spectre stood before him in the bright moonlight, its one arm
extended so as to master him if he attempted to rise; the other hand
held up in a warning and grave posture, as menacing the Lowlander if he
should attempt to quit his recumbent position. Thus he lay in mortal
agony for more than an hour, after which it pleased the spectre of
ancient days to leave him to more sound repose. So singular a story had
on its side the usual number of votes from the company, till, upon
cross-examination, it was explained that the principal person concerned
was an exciseman. After which _eclaircissement_ the same explanation
struck all present, viz., the Highlanders of the mansion had chosen to
detain the exciseman by the apparition of an ancient heroic ghost, in
order to disguise from his vigilance the removal of certain modern
enough spirits, which his duty might have called upon him to seize. Here
a single circumstance explained the whole ghost story.
At other times it happens that the meanness and trifling nature of a
cause not very obvious to observation has occasioned it to be entirely
overlooked, even on account of that very meanness, since no one is
willing to acknowledge that he has been alarmed by a cause of little
consequence, and which he would be ashamed of mentioning. An incident of
this sort happened to a gentleman of birth and distinction, who is well
known in the political world, and was detected by the precision of his
observation. Shortly after he succeeded to his estate and title, there
was a rumour among his servants concerning a strange noise heard in the
family mansion at night, the cause of which they had found it impossible
to trace. The gentleman resolved to watch himself, with a domestic who
had grown old in the family, and who had begun to murmur strange things
concerning the knocking having followed so close upon the death of his
old master. They watched until the noise was heard, which they listened
to with that strange uncertainty attending midnight sounds which
prevents the hearers from immediately tracing them to the spot where
they arise, while the silence of the night generally occasions the
imputing to them more than the due importance which they would receive
if mingled with the usual noises of daylight. At length the gentleman
and his servant traced the sounds which they had repeatedly heard to a
small store-room used as a place for keeping provisions of various kinds
for the family, of which the old butler had the key. They entered this
place, and remained there for some time without hearing the noises which
they had traced thither; at length the sound was heard, but much lower
than it had formerly seemed to be, while acted upon at a distance by the
imagination of the hearers. The cause was immediately discovered. A rat
caught in an old-fashioned trap had occasioned this tumult by its
efforts to escape, in which it was able to raise the trap-door of its
prison to a certain height, but was then obliged to drop it. The noise
of the fall, resounding through the house, had occasioned the
disturbance which, but for the cool investigation of the proprietor,
might easily have established an accredited ghost story. The
circumstance was told me by the gentleman to whom it happened.
There are other occasions in which the ghost story is rendered credible
by some remarkable combination of circumstances very unlikely to have
happened, and which no one could have supposed unless some particular
fortune occasioned a discovery.
An apparition which took place at Plymouth is well known, but it has
been differently related; and having some reason to think the following
edition correct, it is an incident so much to my purpose that you must
pardon its insertion.
A club of persons connected with science and literature was formed at
the great sea-town I have named. During the summer months the society
met in a cave by the sea-shore; during those of autumn and winter they
convened within the premises of a tavern, but, for the sake of privacy,
had their meetings in a summer-house situated in the garden, at a
distance from the main building. Some of the members to whom the
position of their own dwellings rendered this convenient, had a pass-key
to the garden-door, by which they could enter the garden and reach the
summer-house without the publicity or trouble of passing through the
open tavern. It was the rule of this club that its members presided
alternately. On one occasion, in the winter, the president of the
evening chanced to be very ill; indeed, was reported to be on his
death-bed. The club met as usual, and, from a sentiment of respect, left
vacant the chair which ought to have been occupied by him if in his
usual health; for the same reason, the conversation turned upon the
absent gentleman's talents, and the loss expected to the society by his
death. While they were upon this melancholy theme, the door suddenly
opened, and the appearance of the president entered the room. He wore a
white wrapper, a nightcap round his brow, the appearance of which was
that of death itself. He stalked into the room with unusual gravity,
took the vacant place of ceremony, lifted the empty glass which stood
before him, bowed around, and put it to his lips; then replaced it on
the table, and stalked out of the room as silent as he had entered it.
The company remained deeply appalled; at length, after many observations
on the strangeness of what they had seen, they resolved to dispatch two
of their number as ambassadors, to see how it fared with the president,
who had thus strangely appeared among them. They went, and returned with
the frightful intelligence that the friend after whom they had enquired
was that evening deceased.
The astonished party then resolved that they would remain absolutely
silent respecting the wonderful sight which they had seen. Their habits
were too philosophical to permit them to believe that they had actually
seen the ghost of their deceased brother, and at the same time they were
too wise men to wish to confirm the superstition of the vulgar by what
might seem indubitable evidence of a ghost. The affair was therefore
kept a strict secret, although, as usual, some dubious rumours of the
tale found their way to the public. Several years afterwards, an old
woman who had long filled the place of a sick-nurse, was taken very ill,
and on her death-bed was attended by a medical member of the
philosophical club. To him, with many expressions of regret, she
acknowledged that she had long before attended Mr.----, naming the
president whose appearance had surprised the club so strangely, and that
she felt distress of conscience on account of the manner in which he
died. She said that as his malady was attended by light-headedness, she
had been directed to keep a close watch upon him during his illness.
Unhappily she slept, and during her sleep the patient had awaked and
left the apartment. When, on her own awaking, she found the bed empty
and the patient gone, she forthwith hurried out of the house to seek
him, and met him in the act of returning. She got him, she said,
replaced in bed, but it was only to die there. She added, to convince
her hearer of the truth of what she said, that immediately after the
poor gentleman expired, a deputation of two members from the club came
to enquire after their president's health, and received for answer that
he was already dead. This confession explained the whole matter. The
delirious patient had very naturally taken the road to the club, from
some recollections of his duty of the night. In approaching and retiring
from the apartment he had used one of the pass-keys already mentioned,
which made his way shorter. On the other hand, the gentlemen sent to
enquire after his health had reached his lodging by a more circuitous
road; and thus there had been time for him to return to what proved his
death-bed, long before they reached his chamber. The philosophical
witnesses of this strange scene were now as anxious to spread the story
as they had formerly been to conceal it, since it showed in what a
remarkable manner men's eyes might turn traitors to them, and impress
them with ideas far different from the truth.
Another occurrence of the same kind, although scarcely so striking in
its circumstances, was yet one which, had it remained unexplained, might
have passed as an indubitable instance of a supernatural apparition.
A Teviotdale farmer was riding from a fair, at which he had indulged
himself with John Barleycorn, but not to that extent of defying goblins
which it inspired into the gallant Tam o'Shanter. He was pondering with
some anxiety upon the dangers of travelling alone on a solitary road
which passed the corner of a churchyard, now near at hand, when he saw
before him in the moonlight a pale female form standing upon the very
wall which surrounded the cemetery. The road was very narrow, with no
opportunity of giving the apparent phantom what seamen call a wide
berth. It was, however, the only path which led to the rider's home, who
therefore resolved, at all risks, to pass the apparition. He accordingly
approached, as slowly as possible, the spot where the spectre stood,
while the figure remained, now perfectly still and silent, now
brandishing its arms and gibbering to the moon. When the farmer came
close to the spot he dashed in the spurs and set the horse off upon a
gallop; but the spectre did not miss its opportunity. As he passed the
corner where she was perched, she contrived to drop behind the horseman
and seize him round the waist, a manoeuvre which greatly increased the
speed of the horse and the terror of the rider; for the hand of her who
sat behind him, when pressed upon his, felt as cold as that of a corpse.
At his own house at length he arrived, and bid the servants who came to
attend him, "Tak aff the ghaist!" They took off accordingly a female in
white, and the poor farmer himself was conveyed to bed, where he lay
struggling for weeks with a strong nervous fever. The female was found
to be a maniac, who had been left a widow very suddenly by an
affectionate husband, and the nature and cause of her malady induced
her, when she could make her escape, to wander to the churchyard, where
she sometimes wildly wept over his grave, and sometimes, standing on the
corner of the churchyard wall, looked out, and mistook every stranger on
horseback for the husband she had lost. If this woman, which was very
possible, had dropt from the horse unobserved by him whom she had made
her involuntary companion, it would have been very hard to have
convinced the honest farmer that he had not actually performed part of
his journey with a ghost behind him.
There is also a large class of stories of this sort, where various
secrets of chemistry, of acoustics, ventriloquism, or other arts, have
been either employed to dupe the spectators, or have tended to do so
through mere accident and coincidence. Of these it is scarce necessary
to quote instances; but the following may be told as a tale recounted by
a foreign nobleman known to me nearly thirty years ago, whose life, lost
in the service of his sovereign, proved too short for his friends and
his native land.
At a certain old castle on the confines of Hungary, the lord to whom it
belonged had determined upon giving an entertainment worthy of his own
rank and of the magnificence of the antique mansion which he inhabited.
The guests of course were numerous, and among them was a veteran officer
of hussars, remarkable for his bravery. When the arrangements for the
night were made this officer was informed that there would be difficulty
in accommodating the company in the castle, large as was, unless some
one would take the risk of sleeping in a room supposed to be haunted,
and that, as he was known to be above such prejudices, the apartment was
in the first place proposed for his occupation, as the person least
likely to suffer a bad night's rest from such a cause. The major
thankfully accepted the preference, and having shared the festivity of
the evening, retired after midnight, having denounced vengeance against
any one who should presume by any trick to disturb his repose; a threat
which his habits would, it was supposed, render him sufficiently ready
to execute. Somewhat contrary to the custom in these cases, the major
went to bed, having left his candle burning and laid his trusty pistols,
carefully loaded, on the table by his bedside.
He had not slept an hour when he was awakened by a solemn strain of
music. He looked out. Three ladies, fantastically dressed in green, were
seen in the lower end of the apartment, who sung a solemn requiem. The
major listened for some time with delight; at length he tired. "Ladies,"
he said, "this is very well, but somewhat monotonous--will you be so
kind as to change the tune?" The ladies continued singing; he
expostulated, but the music was not interrupted. The major began to grow
angry: "Ladies," he said, "I must consider this as a trick for the
purpose of terrifying me, and as I regard it as an impertinence, I shall
take a rough mode of stopping it." With that he began to handle his
pistols. The ladies sung on. He then get seriously angry: "I will but
wait five minutes," he said, "and then fire without hesitation." The
song was uninterrupted--the five minutes were expired. "I still give you
law, ladies," he said, "while I count twenty." This produced as little
effect as his former threats. He counted one, two, three accordingly;
but on approaching the end of the number, and repeating more than once
his determination to fire, the last numbers,
seventeen--eighteen--nineteen, were pronounced with considerable pauses
between, and an assurance that the pistols were cocked. The ladies sung
on. As he pronounced the word twenty he fired both pistols against the
musical damsels--but the ladies sung on! The major was overcome by the
unexpected inefficacy of his violence, and had an illness which lasted
more than three weeks. The trick put upon him may be shortly described
by the fact that the female choristers were placed in an adjoining room,
and that he only fired at their reflection thrown forward into that in
which he slept by the effect of a concave mirror.
Other stories of the same kind are numerous and well known. The
apparition of the Brocken mountain, after having occasioned great
admiration and some fear, is now ascertained by philosophers to be a
gigantic reflection, which makes the traveller's shadow, represented
upon the misty clouds, appear a colossal figure of almost immeasurable
size. By a similar deception men have been induced, in Westmoreland and
other mountainous countries, to imagine they saw troops of horse and
armies marching and countermarching, which were in fact only the
reflection of horses pasturing upon an opposite height, or of the forms
of peaceful travellers.
A very curious case of this kind was communicated to me by the son of
the lady principally concerned, and tends to show out of what mean
materials a venerable apparition may be sometimes formed. In youth this
lady resided with her father, a man of sense and resolution. Their house
was situated in the principal street of a town of some size. The back
part of the house ran at right angles to an Anabaptist chapel, divided
from it by a small cabbage-garden. The young lady used sometimes to
indulge the romantic love of solitude by sitting in her own apartment in
the evening till twilight, and even darkness, was approaching. One
evening, while she was thus placed, she was surprised to see a gleamy
figure, as of some aerial being, hovering, as it were, against the
arched window in the end of the Anabaptist chapel. Its head was
surrounded by that halo which painters give to the Catholic saints; and
while the young lady's attention was fixed on an object so
extraordinary, the figure bent gracefully towards her more than once, as
if intimating a sense of her presence, and then disappeared. The seer of
this striking vision descended to her family, so much discomposed as to
call her father's attention. He obtained an account of the cause of her
disturbance, and expressed his intention to watch in the apartment next
night. He sat accordingly in his daughter's chamber, where she also
attended him. Twilight came, and nothing appeared; but as the gray light
faded into darkness, the same female figure was seen hovering on the
window; the same shadowy form, the same pale light-around the head, the
same inclinations, as the evening before. "What do you think of this?"
said the daughter to the astonished father. "Anything, my dear," said
the father, "rather than allow that we look upon what is supernatural."
A strict research established a natural cause for the appearance on the
window. It was the custom of an old woman, to whom the garden beneath
was rented, to go out at night to gather cabbages. The lantern she
carried in her hand threw up the refracted reflection of her form on the
chapel window. As she stooped to gather her cabbages the reflection
appeared to bend forward; and that was the whole matter.
Another species of deception, affecting the credit of such supernatural
communications, arises from the dexterity and skill of the authors who
have made it their business to present such stories in the shape most
likely to attract belief. Defoe--whose power in rendering credible that
which was in itself very much the reverse was so peculiarly
distinguished--has not failed to show his superiority in this species of
composition. A bookseller of his acquaintance had, in the trade phrase,
rather overprinted an edition of "Drelincourt on Death," and complained
to Defoe of the loss which was likely to ensue. The experienced
bookmaker, with the purpose of recommending the edition, advised his
friend to prefix the celebrated narrative of Mrs. Veal's ghost, which he
wrote for the occasion, with such an air of truth, that although in fact
it does not afford a single tittle of evidence properly so called, it
nevertheless was swallowed so eagerly by the people that Drelincourt's
work on death, which the supposed spirit recommended to the perusal of
her friend Mrs. Bargrave, instead of sleeping on the editor's shelf,
moved off by thousands at once; the story, incredible in itself, and
unsupported as it was by evidence or enquiry, was received as true,
merely from the cunning of the narrator, and the addition of a number of
adventitious circumstances, which no man alive could have conceived as
having occurred to the mind of a person composing a fiction.
It did not require the talents of Defoe, though in that species of
composition he must stand unrivalled, to fix the public attention on a
ghost story. John Dunton, a man of scribbling celebrity at the time,
succeeded to a great degree in imposing upon the public a tale which he
calls the Apparition Evidence. The beginning of it, at least (for it is
of great length), has something in it a little new. At Mynehead, in
Somersetshire, lived an ancient gentlewoman named Mrs. Leckie, whose
only son and daughter resided in family with her. The son traded to
Ireland, and was supposed to be worth eight or ten thousand pounds. They
had a child about five or six years old. This family was generally
respected in Mynehead; and especially Mrs. Leckie, the old lady, was so
pleasant in society, that her friends used to say to her, and to each
other, that it was a thousand pities such an excellent, good-humoured
gentlewoman must, from her age, be soon lost to her friends. To which
Mrs. Leckie often made the somewhat startling reply: "Forasmuch as you
now seem to like me, I am afraid you will but little care to see or
speak with me after my death, though I believe you may have that
satisfaction." Die, however, she did, and after her funeral was
repeatedly seen in her personal likeness, at home and abroad, by night
and by noonday.