Belief in ghosts is natural, general and comforting. In many minds it
is cherished as a good working substitute for religion; in others it
appears to take the place of morality. It is rather more convenient
than either, for it may be disavowed and even reviled without exposing
oneself to suspicion and reproach. As an intellectual conviction it
is, in fact, not a very common phenomenon among people of thought and
education; nevertheless the number of civilized and enlightened human
beings who can pass through a graveyard at midnight without whistling
is not notably greater than the number who are unable to whistle.
It may be noted here as a distinction with a difference that belief
in ghosts is not the same thing as faith in them. Many men believe in
the adversary of souls, but comparatively few, and they not among our
best citizens, have any faith in him. Similarly, the belief in ghosts
has reference only to their existence, not to their virtues. They are,
indeed, commonly thought to harbor the most evil designs against the
continuity of peaceful thoughts and the integrity of sleep. Their
malevolence has in it a random and wanton quality which invests it with
a peculiarly lively interest: there is no calculating upon whom it
will fall: the just and the unjust alike are embraced in its baleful
jurisdiction and subjected to the humiliating indignity of displaying
the white feather. And this leads us directly back to the incident by
which these remarks have the honor to be suggested.
A woman living near Sedalia, Missouri, who had recently been married
alive to a widower, was once passing along a “lonely road” which had
been thoughtfully laid out near her residence. It was late in the
evening, and the lady was, naturally, somewhat apprehensive in a land
known to be infested by Missourians of the deepest dye. She was,
therefore, not in a suitable frame of mind for an interview with an
inhabitant of the other world, and it was with no slight trepidation
that she suddenly discovered in the gloom a tall figure, clad all
in white, standing silent and menacing in the road before her. She
endeavored to run away, but terror fastened her feet to the earth; to
shriek, but her lungs refused their office—the first time that an
office was ever refused in that sovereign commonwealth. In short, to
use a neat and graphic locution of the vicinity, she was utterly “guv
out.” The ghost was tremendously successful. Unluckily it could not
hold its ghost of a tongue, and that spectral organ could accomplish
feats of speech intelligible to ears still in the flesh. The apparition
advanced upon its helpless victim and said in hollow accents: “I am the
spirit of your husband’s first wife: beware, beware!”
Nothing could have been more imprudent. The cowering lady effected a
vertical attitude, grew tall, and expanded. Her terror gave place to
an intrepidity of the most military character, and she moved at once
to the attack. A moment later all that was mortal of that immortal
part, divested of its funeral habiliments, hair, teeth and whatever was
removable—battered, lacerated, gory and unconscious—lay by the roadside
awaiting identification. When the husband arrived upon the scene with
a horrible misgiving and a lantern, his worst fears were not realized;
the grave had bravely held its own; the object by the roadside was what
was left of his deceased wife’s sister. On learning that her victim
was not what she had incautiously represented herself to be, the
victorious lady expressed the deepest regret.
Such incidents as this go far to account for that strong current of
human testimony to the existence of ghosts, which Dr. Johnson found
running through all the ages, and at the same time throw a new and
significant light upon Heine’s suggestion that ghosts are as much
afraid of us as we of them. It would appear that some of the less
judicious of them have pretty good reason.