Reginald Scot on Protestant expulsion of Ghosts. His boast
premature. Savage hauntings. Red Indian example. Classical cases.
Petrus Thyraeus on Haunted Houses. His examples from patristic
literature. Three species of haunting spirits. Demons in
disguises. Hallucinations, visual, auditory, and tactile. Are the
sounds in Haunted Houses real or hallucinatory? All present do not
always hear them. Interments in houses to stop hauntings. Modern
example. The Restoration and Scepticism. Exceptional position of
Dr. Johnson. Frequency of Haunted Houses in modern Folklore.
Researches of the S. P. R. Failure of the Society to see Ghosts.
Uncertain behaviour of Ghosts. The Society need a 'seer' or
'sensitive' comrade. The 'type' or normal kind of Haunted Houses.
Some natural explanations. Historical continuity of type. Case of
Sir Walter Scott. A haunted curacy. Modern instances. Miss
Morton's case: a dumb ghost. Ghost, as is believed, of a man of
letters. Mr. Harry's ghost raises his mosquito curtains. Columns
of light. Mr. Podmore's theory. Hallucinations begotten by natural
causes are 'telepathically' transferred, with variations, to
strangers at a distance. Example of this process. Incredulity of
Mr. Myers. The spontaneous phenomena reproduced at 'seances'. A
ghost who followed a young lady. Singular experience of the writer
in Haunted Houses. Experience negative. Theory of 'dreams of the
dead'. Difficulties of this theory; physical force exerted in
dreams. Theory of Mr. James Sully. His unscientific method and
carelessness as to evidence. Reflections.
Reginald Scot, the humane author who tried, in his Discovery of
Witchcraft, 1584 (xv. 39), to laugh witch trials away, has a
triumphant passage on the decline of superstition. 'Where are the
soules that swarmed in time past? where are the spirits? who heareth
their noises? who seeth their visions?' He decides that the spirits
who haunt places and houses, may have gone to Italy, because masses
are dear in England. Scot, as an ardent Protestant, conceived that
haunted houses were 'a lewd invention,' encouraged, if not
originated, by the priests, in support of the doctrine of purgatory.
As a matter of fact the belief in 'haunting,' dates from times of
savagery, when we may say that every bush has its bogle. The Church
had nothing to do with the rise of the belief, though, early in the
Reformation, some 'psychical phenomena' were claimed as experimental
proofs of the existence of purgatory. Reginald Scot decidedly made
his Protestant boast too soon. After 300 years of 'the Trewth,' as
Knox called it, the haunted houses are as much part of the popular
creed as ever. Houses stand empty, and are said to be 'haunted'.
Here not the fact of haunting, but only the existence of the
superstition is attested. Thus a house in Berkeley Square was long
unoccupied, for reasons perfectly commonplace and intelligible. But
the fact that it had no tenants needed to be explained, and was
explained by a myth,--there were ghosts in the house! On the other
hand, if Reginald Scot asked today, 'Who heareth the noises, who
seeth the visions?' we could answer, 'Protestant clergymen, officers
in the army, ladies, land-agents, solicitors, representatives of all
classes, except the Haunted House Committee of the Psychical
Society'.
Before examining the researches and the results of this learned
body, we may glance at some earlier industry of investigators. The
common savage beliefs are too well known to need recapitulation, and
have been treated by Mr. Tylor in his chapter on 'Animism,' {129}
and by Mr. Herbert Spencer in Principles of Psychology. The points
of difference between these authors need not detain us here. As a
rule the spirits which haunt the bush, or the forest, are but
vaguely conceived of by the Australian blacks, or Red Men: they may
be ghosts of the dead, or they may be casual spirits unattached. An
example analogous to European superstition is given by John Tanner
in his Narrative of a Captivity among the Red Indians, 1830. In
this case one man had slain his brother, or, at least, a man of his
own Totem, and was himself put to death by the kindred. The
spectres of both haunted a place which the Indians shunned, but
Tanner (whose Totem was the same as that of the dead) passed a night
on the scene. His dreams, if not his waking moments, for his
account is indistinct, were disturbed by the ghosts. It is
impossible to ascertain how far this particular superstition was
coloured by European influences. {130}
Over classical tales we need not linger. Pliny, Plutarch,
Suetonius, St. Augustine, Lucian, Plautus (in the Mostellaria),
describe, with more or less of seriousness, the apparitions and
noises which haunted houses, public baths, and other places.
Occasionally a slain man's phantom was anxious that his body should
be buried, and the reported phenomena were akin to those in modern
popular legends. Sometimes, in the middle ages, and later, the law
took cognisance of haunted houses, when the tenant wished to break
his lease. A collection of authorities is given elsewhere, in
Ghosts before the Law. It is to be noticed that Bouchel, in his
Bibliotheque du Droit Francais, chiefly cites classical, not modern,
instances.
Among the most careful and exhaustive post-mediaeval writers on
haunted houses we must cite Petrus Thyraeus of the Society of Jesus,
Doctor in Theology. His work, published at Cologne in 1598, is a
quarto of 352 pages, entitled, 'Loca Infesta; That is, Concerning
Places Haunted by Mischievous Spirits of Demons and of the Dead.
Thereto is added a Tract on Nocturnal Disturbances, which are wont
to bode the deaths of Men.' Thyraeus begins, 'That certain places
are haunted by spectres and spirits, is no matter of doubt,' wherein
a modern reader cannot confidently follow him.
When it comes to establishing his position Thyraeus most provokingly
says, 'we omit cases which are recent and of daily occurrence,' such
as he heard narrated, during his travels, in 'a certain haunted
castle'. A modern inquirer naturally prefers recent examples, which
may be inquired into, but the old scholars reposed more confidence
in what was written by respected authors, the more ancient the more
authoritative. However Thyraeus relies on the anthropological test
of evidence, and thinks that his belief is confirmed by the
coincident reports of hauntings, 'variis distinctissimisque locis et
temporibus,' in the most various times and places. There is
something to be said for this view, and the identity of the alleged
phenomena, in all lands and ages, does raise a presumption in favour
of some kind of abnormal occurrences, or of a common species of
hallucinations. Like most of the old authors Thyraeus quotes
Augustine's tale of a haunted house, and an exorcism in De Civitate
Dei (lib. xxii. ch. viii.). St. Gregory has also a story of one
Paschasius, a deacon, who haunted some baths, and was seen by a
bishop. {131a} There is a ghost who rode horses, and frightened the
religious in the Life of Gregory by Joannes Diaconus (iv. 89). In
the Life of Theodorus one Georgius, a disciple of his, mentions a
house haunted by stone-throwing sprites, a very common phenomenon in
the books of Glanvill, and Increase Mather, in witch trials, and in
rural disturbances. Omitting other examples Cardan {131b} is cited
for a house at Parma, in which during a hundred years the phantom of
an old woman was seen before the death of members of the family.
This is a rare case of an Italian Banshie. William of Paris, in
Bodin (iii. ch. vi.) tells of a stone-throwing fiend, very active in
1447. The bogey of Bingen, a rapping ghost of 856, is duly
chronicled; he also threw stones. The dormitory of some nuns was
haunted by a spectre who moaned, tramped noisily around, dragged the
sisters out of bed by the feet, and even tickled them nearly to
death! This annoyance lasted for three years, so Wierus says. {132}
Wodrow chronicles a similar affair at Mellantrae, in Annandale.
Thyraeus distinguishes three kinds of haunting sprites, devils,
damned souls, and souls in purgatory. Some are mites, mild and
sportive; some are truculenti ferocious. Brownies, or fauni, may
act in either character, as Secutores et joculatores. They rather
aim at teasing than at inflicting harm. They throw stones, lift
beds, and make a hubbub and crash with the furniture. Suicides,
murderers, and spirits of murdered people, are all apt to haunt
houses. The sprites occasionally appear in their proper form, but
just as often in disguise: a demon, too, can appear in human shape
if so disposed: demons being of their nature deceitful and fond of
travesty, as Porphyry teaches us and as Law (1680) illustrates.
Whether the spirits of the dead quite know what they are about when
they take to haunting, is, in the opinion of Thyraeus, a difficult
question. Thomas Aquinas, following St. Augustine, inclines to hold
that when there is an apparition of a dead man, the dead man is
unconscious of the circumstance. A spirit of one kind or another
may be acting in his semblance. Thyraeus rather fancies that the
dead man is aware of what is going on.
Hauntings may be visual, auditory, or confined to the sense of
touch. Auditory effects are produced by flutterings of air, noises
are caused, steps are heard, laughter, and moaning. Lares domestici
(brownies) mostly make a noise. Apparitions may be in tactile form
of men or animals, or monsters. As for effects, some ghosts push
the living and drive them along, as the Bride of Lammermoor, in
Law's Memorialls, was 'harled through the house,' by spirits. The
spirits of an amorous complexion seem no longer to be numerous, but
are objects of interest to Thyraeus as to Increase Mather. Thyraeus
now raises the difficult question: 'Are the sounds heard in haunted
houses real, or hallucinatory?' Omnis qui a spiritibus fit,
simulatus est, specie sui fallit. The spirits having no vocal
organs, can only produce _noise_. In a spiritual hurly-burly, some
of the mortals present _hear nothing_ (as we shall note in some
modern examples), but may they not be prevented from hearing by the
spirits? Or again, the sounds may be hallucinatory and only some
mortals may have the power of hearing them. If there are visual,
there may also be auditory hallucinations. {133} On the whole
Thyraeus thinks that the sounds may be real on some occasions, when
all present hear them, hallucinatory on others. But the sounds need
not be produced on the furniture, for example, when they seem to be
so produced. 'Often we think that the furniture has been all tossed
about, when it really has not been stirred.' The classical instance
of the disturbances which aroused Scott at Abbotsford, on the death
of his agent Bullock, is in point here. 'Often a hammer is heard
rapping, when there is no hammer in the house' (p. 82). These are
curious references to phenomena, however we explain them, which are
still frequently reported.
Thyraeus thinks that the air is agitated when sounds are heard, but
that is just the question to be solved.
As for visual phantasms, these Thyraeus regards as hallucinations
produced by spirits on the human senses, not as external objective
entities. He now asks why the sense of _touch_ is affected usually
as if by a cold body. Beyond assuming the influence of spirits over
the air, and, apparently, their power of using dead bodies as
vehicles for themselves, Thyraeus comes to no distinct conclusion.
He endeavours, at great length, to distinguish between haunters who
are ghosts of the dead, and haunters who are demons, or spirits
unattached. The former wail and moan, the latter are facetious. He
decides that to bury dead bodies below the hearth does not prevent
haunting, for 'the hearth has no such efficacy'. Such bodies are
not very unfrequently found in old English houses, the reason for
this strange interment is not obvious, but perhaps it is explained
by the superstition which Thyraeus mentions. One might imagine that
to bury people up and down a house would rather secure haunting than
prevent it. And, indeed, at Passenham Rectory, where the Rev. G. M.
Capell found seven skeletons in his dining-room, in 1874, Mrs.
Montague Crackanthrope and her nurse were 'obsessed' by 'a feeling
that some one was in the room,' when some one was _not_. {135}
Perhaps seven burials were not sufficient to prevent haunting. The
conclusion of the work of Thyraeus is devoted to exorcisms, and
orthodox methods of expelling spirits. The knockings which herald a
death are attributed to the Lares, a kind of petty mischievous
demons unattached. Such is the essence of the learned Jesuit's
work, and the strange thing is that, in an age of science, people
are still discussing his problems, and, stranger still, that the
reported phenomena remain the same.
That the Church in the case of Thyraeus, and many others; that
medical science, in the person of Wierus (b. 1515); that law, in the
book of Bouchel, should have gravely canvassed the topic of haunted
houses, was, of course, very natural in the dark ages before the
restoration of the Stuarts, and the founding of the Royal Society.
Common-sense, and 'drolling Sadduceeism,' came to their own, in
England, with the king, with Charles II. After May 29, 1660,
Webster and Wagstaffe mocked at bogles, if Glanvill and More took
them seriously.
Before the Restoration it was distinctly dangerous to laugh at
witchcraft, ghosts and hauntings. But the laughers came in with the
merry monarch, and less by argument than by ridicule, by inveighing
against the horror, too, of the hideous witch prosecutions, the
laughers gradually brought hauntings and apparitions into contempt.
Few educated people dared to admit that their philosophy might not
be wholly exhaustive. Even ladies sneered at Dr. Johnson because
he, having no dread of common-sense before his eyes, was inclined to
hold that there might be some element of truth in a world-old and
world-wide belief; and the romantic Anna Seward told, without
accepting it, Scott's tale of 'The Tapestried chamber'. That a
hundred years after the highday and triumph of common-sense, people
of education should be found gravely investigating all that common-
sense had exploded, is a comfortable thought to the believer in
Progress. The world does not stand still.
A hundred years after the blue stockings looked on Johnson as the
last survivor, the last of the Mohicans of superstition, the
Psychical Society can collect some 400 cases of haunted houses in
England.
Ten years ago, in 1884, the society sifted out nineteen stories as
in 'the first class,' and based on good first-hand evidence. Their
analysis of the reports led them to think that there is a certain
genuine _type_ of story, and, that when a tale 'differs widely from
the type, it proves to be incorrect, or unattainable from an
authentic source'. This is very much the conclusion to which the
writer is brought by historical examination of stories about
hauntings. With exceptions, to be indicated, these tales all
approximate to a type, and that is not the type of the magazine
story.
It may be well, in the first place, to make some negative statements
as to what the committee does _not_ discover. First, it has never
yet hired haunted house in which the sights and sounds continued
during the tenancy of the curious observers. {137} The most obvious
inference is that the earlier observers who saw and heard abnormal
things were unscientific, convivial, nervous, hysterical, or
addicted to practical joking. This, however, is not the only
possible explanation. As a celebrated prophet, by his own avowal
had been 'known to be steady for weeks at a time,' so, even in a
regular haunted house, the ghost often takes a holiday. A case is
well known to the writer in which a ghost began his manoeuvres soon
after a family entered the house. It made loud noises, it opened
doors, turning the handle as the lady of the house walked about, it
pulled her hair when she was in bed, plucked her dress, produced
lights, and finally appeared visibly, a hag dressed in grey, to
several persons. Then as if sated, the ghost struck work for years,
when it suddenly began again, was as noisy as ever, and appeared to
a person who had not seen it before, but who made a spirited if
unsuccessful attempt to run it to earth.
The truth is, that magazine stories and superstitious exaggerations
have spoiled us for ghosts. When we hear of a haunted house, we
imagine that the ghost is always on view, or that he has a benefit
night, at certain fixed dates, when you know where to have him.
These conceptions are erroneous, and a house _may_ be haunted,
though nothing desirable occurs in presence of the committee.
Moreover the committee, as far as the writer is aware, have
neglected to add a seer to their number. This mistake, if it has
been made, is really wanton. It is acknowledged that not every one
has 'a nose for a ghost,' as a character of George Eliot's says, or
eyes or ears for a ghost. It is thought very likely that, where
several people see an apparition simultaneously, the spiritual or
psychical or imaginative 'impact' is addressed to one, and by him,
or her (usually her) handed on to the rest of the society. Now, if
the committee do not provide themselves with a good 'sensitive'
comrade, what can they expect, but what they get, that is, nothing?
A witch in an old Scotch trial says, of her 'Covin,' or 'Circle,'
'We could do no great thing without our Maiden'. The committee
needs a Maiden, as a Covin needed one, and among the visionaries of
the Psychical Society, there must be some young lady who should be
on the House Committee. Yet one writer in the Society's Proceedings
who has a very keen scent for an impostor, if not for a ghost, avers
that, from the evidence, she believes that they are examining facts,
and not the origin of fables.
These facts, as was said, differ from the stories in 'Christmas
numbers'. The ghost in typical reports seldom or never _speaks_.
It has no message to convey, or, if it has a message, it does not
convey it. It does not unfold some tragedy of the past: in fact it
is very seldom capable of being connected with any definite known
dead person. The figure seen sometimes 'varies with the seer'.
{139} In other cases, however, different people attest having seen
the same phantasm. Finally a new house seems just as likely to be
haunted as an old house, and the committee appears to have no
special knowledge of very ancient family ghosts, such as Pearlin
Jean, the Luminous Boy of Corby, or the rather large company of
spectres popularly supposed to make themselves at home at Glamis
Castle.
What then is the type, the typical haunted house, from which, if
narratives vary much, they are apt to break down under cross-
examination?
The phenomena are usually phenomena of sight, or sound, or both. As
a rule the sounds are footsteps, rustling of dresses, knocks, raps,
heavy bangs, noises as of dragging heavy weights, and of
disarranging heavy furniture. These sometimes occur freely, where
nobody can testify to having _seen_ anything spectral. Next we have
phantasms, mostly of figures beheld for a moment with 'the tail of
the eye' or in going along a passage, or in entering a room where
nobody is found, or standing beside a bed, perhaps in a kind of
self-luminous condition. Sometimes these spectres are taken by
visitors for real people, but the real people cannot be found;
sometimes they are at once recognised as phantasms, because they are
semi-transparent, or look very malignant, or because they glide and
do not walk, or are luminous, or for some other excellent reason.
The combination, in due proportions, of pretty frequent inexplicable
noises, with occasional aimless apparitions, makes up the _type_ of
orthodox modern haunted house story. The difficulty of getting
evidence worth looking at (except for its uniformity) is obviously
great. Noises may be naturally caused in very many ways: by winds,
by rats, by boughs of trees, by water pipes, by birds. The writer
has known a very satisfactory series of footsteps in an historical
Scotch house, to be dispelled by a modification of the water pipes.
Again he has heard a person of distinction mimic the noises made by
_his_ family ghosts (which he preserved from tests as carefully as
Don Quixote did his helmet) and the performance was an admirable
imitation of the wind in a spout. There are noises, however, which
cannot be thus cheaply disposed of, and among them are thundering
whacks on the walls of rooms, which continue in spite of all efforts
to detect imposture. These phenomena, says Kiesewetter, were known
to the Acadians of old, a circumstance for which he quotes no
authority. {140a}
Paracelsus calls the knocks pulsatio mortuorum, in his fragment on
'Souls of the Dead,' and thinks that the sounds predict misfortune,
a very common belief. {140b} Lavaterus says, that such
disturbances, in unfinished houses are a token of good luck!
Again there is the noise made apparently by violent movement of
heavy furniture, which on immediate examination (as in Scott's case
at Abbotsford) is found not to have been moved. The writer is
acquainted with a dog, a collie, which was once shut up alone in a
room where this disturbance occurred. The dog was much alarmed and
howled fearfully, but it soon ceased to weigh on his spirits. When
phantasms are occasionally seen by respectable witnesses, where
these noises and movements occur, the haunted house is of a healthy,
orthodox, modern type. But the phenomena are nothing less than
modern, for Mather, Sinclair, Paracelsus, Wierus, Glanvill, Bovet,
Baxter and other old writers are full of precisely these
combinations of sounds and sights, while many cases occur in old
French literature, old Latin literature, and among races of the
lower barbaric and savage grades of culture. One or two curious
circumstances have rather escaped the notice of philosophers though
not of Thyraeus. First, the loudest of the unexplained sounds are
_occasionally_ not audible to all, so that (as when the noise seems
to be caused by furniture dragged about) we may conjecture with
Thyraeus, that there is no real movement of the atmosphere, that the
apparent crash is an auditory hallucination. The planks and heavy
objects at Abbotsford had _not_ been stirred, as the loud noises
overhead indicated, when Scott came to examine them.
In a dreadfully noisy curacy vouched for by 'a well-known Church
dignitary,' who occupied the place, there was usually a frightful
crash as of iron bars thrown down, at 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning.
All the boxes and heavy material in a locked set of attics, seemed
to be dancing about, but were never found to have been stirred. Yet
this clergyman discovered that 'the great Sunday crash might
manifest itself to some persons in the house without his wife or
himself being conscious of it. Knowing how overwhelming the sound
always appeared to me when I did hear it, I cannot but consider this
one of the most wonderful things in the whole business.' {142}
In this case, in a house standing hundreds of yards apart from any
neighbour, and occupied only by a parson, his wife, and one servant,
these phenomena lasted for a year, with great regularity. There
were the usual footsteps, the ordinary rappings were angry when
laughed at, and the clergyman when he left at the end of a year, was
as far as ever from having detected any cause. Indeed it is not
easy to do so. A friend of the writer's, an accomplished man of
law, was once actually consulted, in the interests of an enraged
squire, as to how he could bring a suit against _somebody_ for a
series of these inexplicable disturbances. But the law contained no
instrument for his remedy.
From the same report of the S. P. R. we take another typical case.
A lady, in an old house, saw, in 1873, a hideous hag watching her in
bed; she kept the tale to herself, but, a fortnight later, her
brother, a solicitor, was not a whit less alarmed by a similar and
similarly situated phenomenon. In this house dresses were plucked
at, heavy blows were struck, heavy footsteps went about, there were
raps at doors, and nobody was ever any the wiser as to the cause.
Here it may be observed that a ghost's power of making a noise, and
exerting what seems to be great physical energy, is often in inverse
ratio to his power of making himself generally visible, or, at all
events, to his inclination so to do. Thus there is a long record of
a haunted house, by the chief observer, Miss Morton, in P. S. P. R.,
pt. xxii. p. 311. A lady had died of habits too convivial, in 1878.
In April, 1882, Miss Morton's family entered, but nobody saw the
ghost till Miss Morton viewed it in June. The appearance was that
of a tall lady in widow's weeds, hiding her face with a
handkerchief. From 1882 to 1884, Miss Morton saw the spectre six
times, but did not name it to her family. Her sister saw the
appearance in 1882, a maid saw it in 1883, and two boys beheld it in
the same year. Miss Morton used to follow the appearance downstairs
and speak to it, but it merely gave a slight gasp, and seemed unable
to converse. By way of testing the spectre, Miss Morton stretched
threads at night from the railing of the stair to the wall, but the
ghost descended without disturbing them. Yet her footsteps sounded
on the stairs. This is, in fact, a crucial difficulty about ghosts.
They are material enough to make a noise as they walk, but _not_
material enough to brush away a thread! This ghost, whose visible
form was so much en evidence, could, or did, make no noise at all,
beyond light pushes at doors, and very light footsteps. In the
curacy already described, noises were made enough to waken a parish,
but no form was ever seen. Briefly, for this ghost there is a cloud
of witnesses, all solemnly signing their depositions. These two
examples are at the opposite poles between which ghostly
manifestations vary, in haunted houses.
A brief precis of 'cases' may show how these elements of noise, on
one side, and apparitions, on the other, are commonly blended. In a
detached villa, just outside 'the town of C.,' Mrs. W. remarks a
figure of a tall dark-haired man peeping round the corner of a
folding door. She does not mention the circumstance. Two months
later she sees the same sorrowful face in the drawing-room. This
time she tells her husband. Later in the same month, when playing
cricket with her children, she sees the face 'peeping round from the
kitchen door'. Rather later she heard a deep voice say in a
sorrowful tone, 'I can't find it'; something slaps her on the back.
Her step-daughter who had not heard of the phantasm, sees the same
pale dark-moustached face, 'peeping round the folding doors'. She
is then told Mrs W.'s story. Her little brother, later, sees the
figure simultaneously with herself. She also hears the voice say,
'I can't find it,' at the same moment as Mrs. W. hears it. A year
later, she sees the figure at the porch, _in a tall hat_! Neither
lady had enjoyed any other hallucination. Nothing is known of the
melancholy spectre, probably the ghost of a literary person,
searching, always searching, for a manuscript poem by some total
stranger who had worried him into his grave, and not left him at
peace even there. This is a very solemn and touching story, and
appeals tenderly and sadly to all persons of letters who suffer from
the unasked for manuscripts of the general public.
2. Some ladies and servants in a house in Hyde Park Place, see at
intervals a phantom housemaid: she is also seen by a Mr. Bird.
There is no story about a housemaid, and there are no noises. This
is _not_ an interesting tale.
3. A Hindoo native woman is seen to enter a locked bath-room, where
she is not found on inquiry. A woman had been murdered there some
years before. The percipient, General Sir Arthur Becher, had seen
other uncanny visions. A little boy, wakened out of sleep, said he
saw an ayah. Perhaps he did.
4. A Mr. Harry, in the South of Europe, saw a white female figure
glide through his library into his bedroom. Later, his daughters
beheld a similar phenomenon. Mr. Harry, a gentleman of sturdy
common-sense, 'dared his daughters to talk of any such nonsense as
ghosts, as they might be sure apparitions were only in the
imagination of nervous people'. He himself saw the phantasm seven
or eight times in his bedroom, and twice in the library. On one
occasion it lifted up the mosquito curtains and stared at Mr. Harry.
As in the case of meeting an avalanche, 'a weak-minded man would
pray, sir, would pray; a strong-minded man would swear, sir, would
swear'. Mr. Harry was a strong-minded man, and behaved 'in a
concatenation accordingly,' although Petrus Thyraeus says that there
is no use in swearing at ghosts. The phantasm seemed to be about
thirty-five, her features were described as 'rather handsome,' and
(unromantically) as 'oblong'. A hallucination, we need hardly say,
would not raise the mosquito curtains, this ghost had more heart in
it than most.
5. Various people see 'a column of light vaguely shaped like a
woman,' moving about in a room of a house in Sussex. One servant,
who slept in the room in hopes of a private view, saw 'a ball of
light with a sort of halo round it'. Again, in a very pretty story,
the man who looked after an orphan asylum saw a column of light
above the bed of one of the children. Next morning the little boy
declared that his mother had come to visit him, probably in a dream.
On this matter of lights {146} Mr. Podmore enters into argument with
Mr. Frederick Myers. Mr. Myers, on the whole, believes that the
phenomena of haunted houses are caused by influences of some sort
from the minds of the dead. Mr. Podmore, if we understand him holds
that some living person has had some empty hallucination, in a
house, and that this is 'telepathically' handed on, perhaps to the
next tenant, who may know nothing about either the person or the
vision. Thus, a Miss Morris, much vexed by ghostly experiences,
left a certain house in December, 1886. Nearly a year later, in
November, 1887, a Mrs. G. came in. Mrs. G. did not know Miss
Morris, nor had she heard of the disturbances. However sobs, and
moans, and heavy thumps, and noises of weighty objects thrown about,
and white faces, presently drove Mrs. G. to seek police protection.
This only roused the ghost's ambition, and he 'came' as a man with
freckles, also he walked about, shook beds, and exhibited lights. A
figure in black, with a white face, now displayed itself:
barristers and clergymen investigated, but to no purpose. They saw
figures, heard crashes, and the divine did a little Anglican
exorcism. The only story about the house showed that a woman had
hanged herself with a skipping rope in the 'top back bedroom,' in
1879. Here are plenty of phenomena, apparitions male and female.
But Miss Morris, in addition to hearing noises, only saw a pale
woman in black.
Mr. Podmore's theory comes in thus: 'the later experiences may have
been started by thought transference from Miss Morris, whose
thoughts, no doubt, occasionally turned to the house in which she
had suffered so much agitation and alarm'. Moreover 'real noises'
may have 'suggested' the visual hallucinations to Miss Morris. {147}
Mr. Podmore certainly cannot be accused of ordinary superstition.
There is a house, and there is a tenant. She hears footsteps
pounding up- and down-stairs, and all through her room, she says
nothing and gets used to it. Let it be granted that these noises
are caused by rats. After conquering her dislike to the sounds,
three weeks after her entry to the house, Miss Morris meets a total
stranger, deadly pale, in deep black, who vanishes. This phantasm
has gathered round the nucleus which the rats provided by stamping
up- and down-stairs, and through Miss Morris's room. It is natural
that a person who hears rats, or wind, or waterpipes, and makes up
her mind not to mind it, should then see a phantasm of a pale woman
in black; also should hear loud knocks at the door of her chamber.
Miss Morris goes away, a year later comes Mrs. G., and Mrs. G., her
children, her servants, a barrister and an exorcist, are all
disturbed by
Noises.
Knocks.
Sobs.
Moans.
Thumps.
Dragging of heavy weights.
One dreadful white face.
One little woman.
Lights.
One white skirt hanging from the ceiling.
One footfall which played two notes on the piano (!).
One figure in brown.
One man with freckles.
Two human faces.
One shadow.
One 'part of the dress of a super-material being' (Barrister).
One form (Exorcist).
One small column of misty vapour.
Now all this catalogue of prodigies which drove Mrs. G. into the
cold, bleak world, was caused, 'by thought transference from Miss
Morris,' who had been absent for a year, and whose own
hallucinations were caused by noises which may have been produced by
rats, or what not.
This ingenious theory is too much for Mr. Myers's powers of belief:
'The very first effect of Miss Morris's ponderings was a heavy
thump, followed by a deep sob and moan, and a cry of, "Oh, do
forgive me," all disturbing poor Mrs. G. who had the ill luck to
find herself in a bedroom about which Miss Morris was possibly
thinking. . . . Surely the peace of us all rests on a very
uncertain tenure.' Meanwhile Mr. Myers prefers to regard the whole
trouble as more probably caused by the 'dreams of the dead' woman
who hanged herself with a skipping rope, than by the reflections of
Miss Morris. In any case the society seem to have occupied the
house, and, with their usual bad luck, were influenced neither by
the ponderings of Miss Morris, nor by the fredaines of the lady of
the skipping rope. {149} It may be worth noticing that the raps,
knocks, lights, and so forth of haunted houses, the 'spontaneous'
disturbances, have been punctually produced at savage, classical,
and modern seances. If these, from the days of the witch of Endor
to our own, and from the polar regions to Australia, have all been
impostures, at least they all imitate the 'spontaneous' phenomena
reported to occur in haunted houses. The lights are essential in
the seances described by Porphyry, Eusebius, Iamblichus: they were
also familiar to the covenanting saints. The raps are known to
Australian black fellows. The phantasms of animals, as at the
Wesleys' house, may be beasts who play a part in the dead man's
dream, or they may be incidental hallucinations, begotten of rats,
and handed on by Miss Morris or any one else.
There remains a ghost who illustrates the story, spread all over
Europe, of the farmer who was driven from his house by a bogle. As
his carts went along the road, the bogle was heard exclaiming,
'We're flitting today,' and it faithfully stayed with the family.
This tale, current in Italy as well as in Northern England, might be
regarded as a mere piece of folklore, if the incident had not
reproduced itself in West Brompton. In 1870 the T.'s took a house
here: now mark the artfulness of the ghost, it did nothing for
eighteen months. In autumn, 1871, Miss T. saw a figure come out of
the dining-room, and the figure was often seen, later, by five
independent witnesses. It was tall, dressed in grey, and was
chiefly fond of haunting Miss T.'s own room. It did not walk, it
glided, making no noise. Mr. T. met it in the hall, once, when he
came in at night, and from the street he saw it standing in the
drawing-room window. It used to sigh and make a noise as of steps,
when it was not visible, it knocked and moved furniture about, and
dropped weights, but these sounds were sometimes audible only to
one, or a few of the observers. In 1877 the T.'s left for another
house, to which Miss T. did not repair till 1879. Then the noises
came back as badly as ever,--the bogle had flitted,--and, on
Christmas Day, 1879, Miss T. saw her old friend the figure. Several
members of the family never saw it at all. One lady, in another
case, Miss Nettie Vatas-Simpson, tried to flap a ghost away with a
towel, {150} but he was not thus to be exorcised. He presently went
out through a locked door.
Such are the ordinary or typical phenomena of haunted houses. It is
plainly of no use to take a haunted house for a month and then say
it is not haunted because you see no ghosts. Even where they have
been seen there are breaks of years without any 'manifestations'.
Besides, the evidence shows that it is not every one who can see a
ghost when he is there: Miss Morton's father could not see the lady
in black, when she was visible to Miss Morton.
It is difficult to write with perfect seriousness about haunted
houses. The writer will frankly confess that, when living in
haunted houses (as he has done at various times when suffering from
illness and overwork), he takes a very solemn view of the matter
about bed-time. If 'expectant attention' on a mind strained by the
schools, and a body enfeebled by bronchitis, could have made a man,
who was the only occupant of the haunted wing of an old Scotch
castle, see a ghost, the writer would have seen whatever there was
to see. To be sure he could not rationally have regarded a spectre
beheld in these conditions, as a well-authenticated ghost. {151} As
far as his experience of first-hand tales is concerned, the persons
known to him who say they have seen ghosts in haunted houses, were
neither unhealthy, nor, except in one solitary case, imaginative,
nor were they _expecting_ a ghost. The apparition was 'a little
pleasant surprise'. The usual seer is not an invalid, nor a
literary person who can always be dismissed as 'imaginative,' though
he is generally nothing of the kind. But it cannot be denied that
ladies either see more ghosts than men or are less reluctant to
impart information. The visionary lady who keeps up a regular
telepathic correspondence with several friends is likely to see a
ghost, and should certainly be entered at 'fixed local ghosts,' but
there are slight objections to such evidence, as not free from
suspicion of fancifulness.
Turning from the seers to the seen, it is difficult or impossible
even to suggest an hypothesis which will seem to combine the facts.
The most plausible fancy is that which likens the apparitions to
figures in a feverish dream. Could we imagine a more or less bad
man or woman dead, and fitfully living over again, 'in that sleep of
death,' old events among old scenes, could we go further and believe
that these dreams were capable of being made objective and visible
to the living, then we might find a kind of theory of the process.
But even if it were possible to demonstrate the existence of such a
process, we are as far as ever from accounting for the force which
causes noises, or hallucinations of noises, a force of considerable
vigour, according to observers. Still less could we explain the
rare cases in which a ghost produces a material effect on the
inanimate or animate world, as by drawing curtains, or pulling
people's hair and clothes,--all phenomena as well vouched for as the
others. A picture projected by one mind on another, cannot
conceivably produce these effects. They are such as ghosts have
always produced, or been said to produce. Since the days of ancient
Egypt, ghosts have learned, and have forgotten nothing. Unless we
adopt the scientific and popular system of merely saying 'Fudge!' we
find no end to the conundrums of the ghostly world. Ghosts seem to
know as little about themselves as we do, so that, if we are to
discover anything, we must make haste, before we become ghosts
ourselves.
Writers on Psychology sometimes make a push at a theory of haunted
houses. Mr. James Sully, for example, has done so in his book
styled Illusions. {153} Mr. Sully appears well pleased with his
hypothesis, and this, granting the accuracy of a tale for which he
is indebted to a gentleman who need not be cited here, argues an
easily contented disposition. Here is the statement:--
'A lady was staying at a country house. During the night and
immediately on waking up she had (sic) an apparition of a strange-
looking man in mediaeval costume, a figure by no means agreeable,
and which seemed altogether unfamiliar to her. The next morning, on
rising, she recognised the original of her hallucinatory image in a
portrait hanging on the wall of her bedroom, which must have
impressed itself on her brain before the occurrence of the
apparition, though she had not attended to it. Oddly enough, she
now learned for the first time that the house at which she was
staying had the reputation of being haunted, and by the very same
somewhat repulsive-looking mediaeval personage that had troubled her
inter-somnolent moments. The case seems to me to be typical with
respect to the genesis of ghosts, and of the reputation of haunted
houses.'
This anecdote affords much joy to the superstitious souls who deal
in Psychical Research, or Ghost Hunting. Mr. Sully's manner of
narrating it clearly proves the difference between Science and
Superstition. For a Ghost Hunter or Psychical Researcher would not
venture to publish a modern ghost story (except for mere amusement),
if he had it not at first hand, or at second hand with corroboration
at first hand. Science, however, can adduce a case without
indicating the evidence on which it rests, as whether Mr. Sully's
informant had the tale from the lady, or at third, fourth, fifth, or
a hundredth hand. So much for the matter of evidence. Next, Mr.
Sully does not tell us whether the lady 'had an apparition,' when
she supposed herself to be awake, or asleep, or 'betwixt and
between'. From the phrase 'inter-somnolent,' he appears to prefer
the intermediate condition. But he does not pretend to have
interrogated the lady, the 'percipient'. Again, the figure wore a
'mediaeval costume,' the portrait represented a 'mediaeval
personage'. Does Mr. Sully believe that the portrait was an
original portrait of a real person? and how many portraits of
mediaeval people does he suppose to exist in English country houses?
Taking the Middle Ages as lasting till the beginning of the reign of
Henry VIII., say till Holbein, we can assure Mr. Sully that they
have left us very few portraits indeed. But perhaps it was a modern
picture, a fanciful study of a man in mediaeval costume. In that
event, Mr. Sully's case is greatly strengthened, but he does not
tell us whether the work of art was, or was not, contemporary with
the Middle Ages. Neither does he tell us whether the lady was in
the habit of seeing hallucinations.
The weakest point in the whole anecdote and theory is in the
statement, 'oddly enough, she now learned for the first time that
the house at which she was staying had the reputation of being
haunted' by the mediaeval personage. It certainly would be very odd
if one picture in a house troubled 'the inter-somnolent moments' of
a succession of people, who, perhaps, had never seen, or, like the
lady, never attended to it. Such 'troubles' are very rare: very
few persons have seen a dream which, in Mr. Sully's words, 'left
behind, for an appreciable interval after waking, a vivid after-
impression, and in some cases, even the semblance of a sense
perception'. Mathematicians may calculate the chances against a
single unnoticed portrait producing this very rare effect, in a
series of cases, so as to give rise to a belief in haunting, by mere
casual coincidence. In the records of the Psychical Society, one
observer speaks of seeing a face and figure at night, which he
recognises next morning in a miniature on his chimney-piece. But,
in this case, there was no story of haunting, there had been no
series of similar impressions on successive occupants of the room,
_that_ is the circumstance which Mr. Sully finds 'odd enough,' a
sentiment in which we may all agree with him. This is exactly the
oddity which his explanation does not explain.
While psychological science, in this example, seems to treat matters
of evidence rather laxly, psychical conjecture, on the other hand,
leaves much unexplained. Thus Mr. Myers puts forward a theory which
is, in origin, due to St. Augustine. The saint had observed that
any one of us may be seen in a dream by another person, while our
intelligence is absolutely unconscious of any communication. Apply
this to ghosts in haunted houses. We may be affected by a
hallucination of the presence of a dead man or woman, but he, or she
(granting their continued existence after death), may know nothing
of the matter. In the same way, there are stories of people who
have consciously tried to make others, at a distance, think of them.
The subjects of these experiments have, it is said, had a
hallucination of the presence of the experimenter. But _he_ is
unaware of his success, and has no control over the actions of what
old writers, and some new theosophists, call his 'astral body'.
Suppose, then, that something conscious endures after death.
Suppose that some one thinks he sees the dead. It does not follow
that the surviving consciousness (ex hypothesi) of the dead person
who seems to be seen, is aware that he is 'manifesting' himself. As
Mr. Myers puts it, 'ghosts must therefore, as a rule, represent--not
conscious or central currents of intelligence--but mere automatic
projections from consciousnesses which have their centres
elsewhere,' [Greek]: as Homer makes Achilles say, 'there is no
heart in them.' {156} All this is not inconceivable. But all this
does not explain the facts, namely, the noises, often very loud, and
the movements of objects, and the lights which are the common or
infrequent accompaniments of apparitions in haunted houses. Now we
have (always on much the same level of evidence) accounts of similar
noises, and movements of untouched objects, occurring where living
persons of peculiar constitution are present, or in haunted houses.
These things we discuss in an essay on 'The Logic of Table-turning'.
By parity of reasoning, or at least by an obvious analogy, we are
led to infer that more than 'an automatic projection from the
consciousness' of a dead man is present where he is not only seen,
but heard, making noises, and perhaps moving objects. If this be
admitted then psychical conjecture is pushed back on something very
like the old theory of haunted houses, namely, that a ghost, or
spiritual entity, is present and active there.
Long ago, in a little tale called 'Castle Perilous' (published in a
volume named The Wrong Paradise), the author made an affable sprite
explain all these phenomena. 'We suffer, we ghosts,' he said in
effect, 'from a malady akin to aphasia in the living. We know what
we want to say, and how we wish to appear, but, just as a patient in
aphasia uses the wrong word, we use the wrong manifestation.' This
he illustrated by a series of apparitions on his own part, which, he
declared, were involuntary and unconscious: when they were
described to him by the percipient, he admitted that they were
vulgar and distressing, though, as far as he was concerned, merely
automatic.
These remarks of the ghost, were, at least, explicit and
intelligible. The theory which he stated with an honourable
candour, and in language perfectly lucid, appears to have been
adopted by Mr. Frederick Myers, but he puts it in a different style.
'I argue that the phantasmogenetic agency at work--whatever that may
be--may be able to produce effects of light more easily than
definite figures. . . . A similar argument will hold good in the
case of the vague hallucinatory noises which frequently accompany
definite veridical phantasms, and frequently also occur apart from
any definite phantasm in houses reputed haunted.' {158a} Now where
Mr. Myers says 'phantasmogenetic agency,' we say 'ghost'. J'appelle
un chat, un chat, et Rollet un fripon. We urge that the ghost
cannot, as it were, express himself as plainly as he would like to
do, that he suffers from aphasia. Now he shows as a black dog, now
as a green lady, now as an old man, and often he can only rap and
knock, or display a light, or tug the bed-clothes. Thus the Rev. F.
G. Lee tells us that a ghost first sat on his breast invisibly, then
glided about his room like a man in grey, and, finally, took to
thumping on the walls, the bed and in the chimney. Dr. Lee kindly
recited certain psalms, and was greeted with applause, 'a very
tornado of knocks . . . was the distinct and intelligible response'.
{158b} Now, on our theory, the ghost, if he could, would have said,
'Thank you very much,' or the like, but he could not, so his
sentiments translated themselves into thumps. On another occasion,
he might have merely shown a light, or he might have sat on Dr.
Lee's chest, 'pressed unduly on my chest,' says the learned divine,--
or pulled his blankets off, as is not unusual. Such are the
peculiarities of spectral aphasia, or rather asemia. The ghost can
make signs, but not the right signs.
Very fortunately for science, we have similar examples of imperfect
expression in the living. Thus Dr. Gibotteau, formerly interne at a
hospital in Paris, published, in Annales des Sciences, Psychiques
(Oct. and Dec, 1892), his experiments on a hospital nurse, and her
experiments on him. She used to try to send him hallucinations.
Once at 8 p.m. in summer as he stood on a balcony, he saw a curious
reflet blanc, 'a shining shadow' like that in The Strange Story. It
resembled the reflection of the sun from a window, 'but there was
neither sun, nor moon, nor lighted lamps'. This white shadow was
the partial failure of Berthe, the nurse, 'to show herself to me on
the balcony'. In precisely the same way, lights in haunted houses
are partial failures of ghosts to appear in form As for the knocks,
Dr. Binns, in his Anatomy of Sleep, mentions a gentleman who could
push a door at a distance,--if he could push, he could knock.
Perhaps a rather larger collection of such instances is desirable,
still, these cases illustrate our theory. That theory certainly
does drive the cold calm psychical researcher back upon the
primitive explanation: 'A ghaist's a ghaist for a' that!' We must
come to this, we must relapse into savage and superstitious
psychology, if once we admit a 'phantasmogenetic agency.' But
science is in quest of Truth, regardless of consequences.