Sir Walter Scott on rarity of ghostly evidence. His pamphlet for
the Bannatyne Club. His other examples. Case of Mirabel. The
spectre, the treasure, the deposit repudiated. Trials of Auguier
and Mirabel. The case of Clenche's murder. The murder of Sergeant
Davies. Acquittal of the prisoners. An example from Aubrey. The
murder of Anne Walker. The case of Mr. Booty. An example from
Maryland, the story of Briggs and Harris. The Valogne phantasm.
Trials in the matter of haunted houses. Cases from Le Loyer.
Modern instances of haunted houses before the law. Unsatisfactory
results of legal investigations.
'What I do not know is not knowledge,' Sir Walter Scott might have
said, with regard to bogles and bar-ghaists. His collection at
Abbotsford of such works as the Ephesian converts burned, is
extensive and peculiar, while his memory was rich in tradition and
legend. But as his Major Bellenden sings,
Was never wight so starkly made,
But time and years will overthrow.
When Sir Walter in 1831, wrote a brief essay on ghosts before the
law, his memory was no longer the extraordinary engine, wax to
receive, and marble to retain, that it had been. It is an example
of his dauntless energy that, even in 1831, he was not only toiling
at novels, and histories, and reviews, to wipe out his debts, but
that, as a pure labour of love, he edited, for the Bannatyne Club,
'The trial of Duncan Terig alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane
Macdonald, for the murder of Arthur Davis, sergeant in General
Guise's regiment of foot, June, 1754'.
The trial, as Sir Walter says, in his dedication to the Bannatyne
Club, 'involves a curious point of evidence,' a piece of 'spectral
evidence' as Cotton Mather calls it. In another dedication (for
there are two) Scott addresses Sir Samuel Shepherd, remarking that
the tract deals with 'perhaps the only subject of legal inquiry
which has escaped being investigated by his skill, and illustrated
by his genius'. That point is the amount of credit due to the
evidence of a ghost. In his preface Sir Walter cites the familiar
objection of a learned judge that 'the ghost must be sworn in usual
form, but in case he does not come forward, he cannot be heard, as
now proposed, through the medium' (medium indeed!) 'of a third
party'. It seems to be a rule of evidence that what a dead man said
may be received, on the report of the person with whom he
communicated. A ghost is a dead man, and yet he is deprived,
according to the learned judge's ruling, of his privilege. Scott
does not cite the similar legend in Hibernian Tales, the chap book
quoted by Thackeray in his Irish Sketch-book. In that affair, when
the judge asked the ghost to give his own evidence: 'Instantly
there came a dreadful rumbling noise into the court--"Here am I that
was murdered by the prisoner at the bar"'. The Hibernian Tales are
of no legal authority, nor can we give chapter and verse for another
well-known anecdote. A prisoner on a charge of murder was about to
escape, when the court observed him looking suspiciously over his
shoulder. 'Is there no one present,' the learned judge asked in
general, 'who can give better testimony?' 'My lord,' exclaimed the
prisoner, 'that wound he shows in his chest is twice as big as the
one I gave him.' In this anecdote, however, the prisoner was
clearly suffering from a hallucination, as the judge detected, and
we do not propose to consider cases in which phantasms bred of
remorse drove a guilty man to make confession.
To return to Scott; he remarks that believers in ghosts must be
surprised 'to find how seldom in _any_ country an allusion hath been
made to such evidence in a court of justice'. Scott himself has
only 'detected one or two cases of such apparition evidence,' which
he gives. Now it is certain, as we shall see, that he must have
been acquainted with several other examples, which did not recur to
his memory: the memory of 1831 was no longer that of better years.
Again, there were instances of which he had probably never possessed
any knowledge, while others have occurred since his death. We shall
first consider the cases of spectral evidence (evidence that is of a
dead man's ghost, not of a mere wraith) recorded by Sir Walter, and
deal later with those beyond his memory or knowledge. {250} Sir
Walter's first instance is from Causes Celebres, (vol. xii., La
Haye, 1749, Amsterdam, 1775, p. 247). Unluckily the narrator, in
this collection, is an esprit fort, and is assiduous in attempts to
display his wit. We have not a plain unvarnished tale, but
something more like a facetious leading article based on a trial
Honore Mirabel was a labouring lad, under age, near Marseilles. His
story was that, in May (year not given), about eleven at night, he
was lying under an almond tree, near the farm of a lady named Gay.
In the moonlight he saw a man at an upper window of a building
distant five or six paces, the house belonged to a Madame Placasse.
Mirabel asked the person what he was doing there; got no answer,
entered, and could see nobody. Rather alarmed he went to a well,
drew some water, drank, and then heard a weak voice, bidding him dig
there for treasure, and asking that masses might be said for the
soul of the informant. A stone then fell on a certain spot; stone-
throwing is a favourite exercise with ghosts everywhere.
With another labourer, one Bernard, Mirabel dug, found a packet of
dirty linen, and, fearing that it might hold the infection of
plague, dipped it in wine, for lack of vinegar. The parcel
contained more than a thousand Portuguese gold coins. Bernard and
his mistress were present at the opening of the parcel, but Mirabel
managed to conceal from them the place where he hid it, not a very
likely story. He was grateful enough to pay for the desired masses,
and he had himself bled four times to relieve his agitation.
Mirabel now consulted a merchant in Marseilles, one Auguier, who
advised him to keep his old coins a mystery, as to put them into
circulation would lead to inquiry and inconvenience. He lent
Mirabel some ready money, and, finally, induced Mirabel to entrust
the Portuguese hoard to his care. The money was in two bags, one
fastened with gold-coloured ribbon, the other with linen thread.
Auguier gave a receipt, and now we get a date, Marseilles, September
27, 1726. Later Auguier (it seems) tried to murder Mirabel, and
refused to return the deposit. Mirabel went to law with him:
Auguier admitted that Mirabel had spoken to him about having found a
treasure which he would entrust to Auguier, but denied the rest. In
his house was found a ribbon of a golden hue, such as Mirabel used
to tie up his bag, and a little basket which has no obvious
connection with the matter. The case was allowed to come on, there
were sixteen witnesses. A woman named Caillot swore to Mirabel's
having told her about the ghost: she saw the treasure excavated,
saw the bags, and recognised the ribbon. A man had seen Mirabel on
his way to give Auguier his bags, and, indeed, saw him do so, and
receive a piece of paper. He also found, next day, a gold coin on
the scene of the interview. A third witness, a woman, was shown the
treasure by Mirabel.
The narrator here makes the important reflection that Providence
could not allow a ghost to appear merely to enrich a foolish
peasant. But, granting ghosts (as the narrator does), we can only
say that, in ordinary life, Providence permits a number of
undesirable events to occur. Why should the behaviour of ghosts be
an exception?
Other witnesses swore to corroborating circumstances. Auguier
denied everything, experts admitted that the receipt was like his
writing, but declared it to be forged; the ribbon was explained as
part of his little daughter's dress. The judge decided--no one will
guess what--_that Auguier should be put to the torture_!
Auguier appealed: his advocate urged the absurdity of a ghost-story
on a priori grounds: if there was no ghost, then there was no
treasure: if there was a treasure, would not the other digger have
secured his share? That digger, Bernard, was not called. Then
Auguier pled an alibi, he was eight leagues away when he was said to
have received the treasure. Why he did not urge this earlier does
not appear.
Mirabel's advocate first defended from the Bible and the Fathers,
the existence of ghosts. The Faculty of Theology, in Paris, had
vouched for them only two years before this case, in 1724. The
Sorbonne had been as explicit, in 1518. 'The Parliament of Paris
_often_ permitted the tenant of a haunted house to break his
contract.' {253} Ghosts or no ghosts, Mirabel's counsel said, there
_was_ a treasure. In his receipt Auguier, to deceive a simple
peasant, partially disguised his hand. Auguier's alibi is
worthless, he might easily have been at Marseilles and at Pertuis on
the same day: the distance is eight leagues.
Bernard was now at last called in; he admitted that Mirabel told him
of the ghost, that they dug, and found some linen, but that he never
saw any gold. He had carried the money from Mirabel to pay for the
masses due to the ghost. Mirabel had shown him a document, for
which he said he had paid a crown, and Bernard (who probably could
not read) believed it to be like Auguier's receipt. Bernard, of
course, having been denied his share, was not a friendly witness. A
legal document was put in, showing that Madame Placasse (on whose
land the treasure lay) summoned Mirabel to refund it to her. The
document was a summons to him. But this document was forged, and
Mirabel, according to a barrister whom he had consulted about it,
said it was handed to him by a man unknown. Why the barrister
should have betrayed his client is not clear. Mirabel and
Marguerite Caillot, his first witness, who had deposed to his
telling her about the ghost, and to seeing the excavation of the
packet, were now arrested, while Auguier remained in prison.
Marguerite now denied her original deposition, she had only spoken
to oblige Mirabel. One Etienne Barthelemy was next arrested: he
admitted that he had 'financed' Mirabel during the trial, but denied
that he had suborned any witnesses. Two experts differed, as usual,
about Auguier's receipt; a third was called in, and then they
unanimously decided that it was not in his hand. On February 18,
1729, Auguier was acquitted, Mirabel was condemned to the torture,
and to the galley, for life. Marguerite Caillot was fined ten
francs. _Under torture_ Mirabel accused Barthelemy of having made
him bring his charge against Auguier, supplying him with the forged
receipt and with the sham document, the summons to restore the gold
to Madame Placasse. Oddly enough he still said that he had handed
sacks of coin to Auguier, and that one of them was tied up with the
gold-coloured ribbon. Two of his witnesses, _under torture_, stuck
to their original statements. They were sentenced to be hung up by
the armpits, and Barthelemy was condemned to the galleys for life.
It is a singular tale, and shows strange ideas of justice. Once
condemned to the galleys, Mirabel might as well have made a clean
breast of it; but this he did not do: he stuck to his bags and
gold-coloured ribbon. Manifestly Mirabel would have had a better
chance of being believed in court if he had dropped the ghost
altogether. It is notable that Sir Walter probably gave his version
of this affair from memory: he says that Mirabel 'was non-suited
upon the ground that, if his own story was true, the treasure, by
the ancient laws of France, belonged to the crown'.
Scott's next case is very uninteresting, at least as far as it is
given in Howell's State Trials, vol. xii. (1692), p. 875.
A gentleman named Harrison had been accused of beguiling a Dr.
Clenche into a hackney coach, on pretence of taking him to see a
patient. There were two men in the coach, besides the doctor. They
sent the coachman on an errand, and when he came back he found the
men fled and Clenche murdered. He had been strangled with a
handkerchief. On evidence which was chiefly circumstantial,
Harrison was found guilty, and died protesting his innocence. Later
a Mrs. Milward declared that her husband, before his death,
confessed to her that he and a man named Cole were the murderers of
Dr. Clenche. The ghost of her husband persecuted her, she said,
till Cole was arrested. Mr. Justice Dolben asked her in court for
the story, but feared that the jury would laugh at her. She
asserted the truth of her story, but, if she gave any details, they
are not reported. Cole was acquitted, and the motives of Mrs.
Milward remain obscure.
Coming to the tract which he reprints, Sir Walter says that his
notice was first drawn to it, in 1792, by Robert McIntosh, Esq., one
of the counsel in the case, which was heard in Edinburgh, June 10,
1754. Grant of Prestongrange, the Lord Advocate well known to
readers of Mr. Stevenson's Catriona, prosecuted Duncan Terig or
Clerk, and Alexander Bain Macdonald, for the murder of Sergeant
Arthur Davies on September 28, 1749. They shot him on Christie
Hill, at the head of Glenconie. There his body remained concealed
for some time, and was later found with a hat marked with his
initials, A. R. D. They are also charged with taking his watch, two
gold rings, and a purse of gold, whereby Clerk, previously
penniless, was enabled to take and stock two farms.
Donald Farquharson, in Glendee, deposes that, in June, 1750,
Alexander Macpherson sent for him, and said that he was much
troubled by the ghost of the serjeant, who insisted that he should
bury his bones, and should consult Farquharson. Donald did not
believe this quite, but trembled lest the ghost should vex him. He
went with Macpherson, who showed the body in a peat-moss. The body
was much decayed, the dress all in tatters. Donald asked Macpherson
whether the apparition denounced the murderers: he replied that the
ghost said it would have done so, had Macpherson not asked the
question. They buried the body on the spot, Donald attested that he
had seen the Serjeant's rings on the hand of Clerk's wife. For
three years the prisoners had been suspected by the country side.
Macpherson declared that he had seen an apparition of a man in blue,
who said, 'I am Serjeant Davies,' that he at first took this man for
a brother of Donald Farquharson's, that he followed the man, or
phantasm, to the door, where the spectre repeated its assertions,
and pointed out the spot where the bones lay. He found them, and
then went, as already shown, to Donald Farquharson. Between the
first vision and the burying, the ghost came to him naked, and this
led him to inter the remains. On the second appearance, the ghost
denounced the prisoners. Macpherson gave other evidence, not
spectral, which implicated Clerk. But, when asked what language the
ghost spoke in, he answered, 'as good Gaelic as he had ever heard in
Lochaber'. 'Pretty well,' said his counsel, Scott's informant,
McIntosh, 'for the ghost of an English serjeant.' This was probably
conclusive with the jury, for they acquitted the prisoners, in the
face of the other incriminating evidence. This was illogical.
Modern students of ghosts, of course, would not have been staggered
by the ghost's command of Gaelic: they would explain it as a
convenient hallucinatory impression made by the ghost on the mind of
the 'percipient'. The old theologians would have declared that a
good spirit took Davies's form, and talked in the tongue best known
to Macpherson. Scott's remark is, that McIntosh's was 'no sound
jest, for there was nothing more ridiculous in a ghost speaking a
language which he did not understand when in the body, than there
was in his appearing at all'. But jurymen are not logicians.
Macpherson added that he told his tale to none of the people with
him in the sheiling, but that Isobel McHardie assured him she 'saw
such a vision'. Isobel, in whose service Macpherson had been,
deponed that, while she lay at one end of the sheiling and
Macpherson at the other, 'she saw something naked come in at the
door, which frighted her so much that she drew the clothes over her
head'. Next day she asked Macpherson what it was, and he replied
'she might be easy, for that it would not trouble them any more'.
The rest of the evidence went very strongly against the accused, but
the jury unanimously found them 'Not Guilty'.
Scott conjectures that Macpherson knew of the murder (as indeed he
had good reason, if his non-spectral evidence is true), but that he
invented the ghost, whose commands must be obeyed, that he might
escape the prejudice entertained by the Celtic race against citizens
who do their duty. Davies, poor fellow, was a civil good-humoured
man, and dealt leniently (as evidence showed) with Highlanders who
wore the tartan. Their national costume was abolished, as we all
know, by English law, after the plaid had liberally displayed
itself, six miles south of Derby, in 1745.
So far it is plain that 'what the ghost said is not evidence,' and
may even ruin a very fair case, for there can be little doubt as to
who killed Serjeant Davies. But examples which Scott forgot, for of
course he knew them, prove that, in earlier times, a ghost's
testimony was not contemned by English law. Cases are given, with
extracts from documents, in a book so familiar to Sir Walter as
Aubrey's Miscellanies. Aubrey (b. 1626, d. 1697) was a F.R.S., and,
like several other contemporary Fellows of the Royal Society, was a
keen ghost hunter. He published {259} 'A full and true Relation of
the Examination and Confession of William Barwick, and Edward
Mangall, of two horrid murders'.
Barwick killed his wife, who was about to bear a child, near Cawood
in Yorkshire, on April 14, 1690. Barwick had intrigued with his
wife before marriage, and perhaps was 'passing weary of her love'.
On April 14, Palm Monday, he went to his brother-in-law, Thomas
Lofthouse, near York, who had married Mrs. Barwick's sister. He
informed Lofthouse that he had taken Mrs. Barwick, for her
confinement, to the house of his uncle, Harrison, in Selby. On
September 17, at York assizes, Lofthouse swore that on Easter
Tuesday (eight days after Palm Monday, namely April 22), he was
watering a quickset hedge, at mid-day, when he saw 'the apparition
in the shape of a woman walking before him'. She sat down opposite
the pool whence he drew water, he passed her as he went, and,
returning with his pail filled, saw her again. She was dandling on
her lap some white object which he had not observed before. He
emptied his pail, and, 'standing in his yard' looked for her again.
She was no longer present. She wore a brown dress and a white hood,
'such as his wife's sister usually wore, and her face looked extream
pale, her teeth in sight, no gums appearing, her visage being like
his wife's sister'.
It certainly seems as if this resemblance was an after-thought of
Lofthouse's, for he dismissed the matter from his mind till prayers,
when it 'discomposed his devotions'. He then mentioned the affair
to his wife, who inferred that her sister had met with foul play.
On April 23, that is the day after the vision, he went to Selby,
where Harrison denied all knowledge of Mrs. Barwick. On April 24,
Lofthouse made a deposition to this effect before the mayor of York,
but, in his published statement of that date, he only avers that
'hearing nothing of the said Barwick's wife, he imagined Barwick had
done her some mischief'. There is not a word hereof the phantasm
sworn to by Lofthouse at the assizes on September 17. Nevertheless,
on April 24, Barwick confessed to the mayor of York, that 'on Monday
was seventh night' (there seems to be an error here) he 'found the
conveniency of a pond' (as Aubrey puts it) 'adjoining to a quickwood
hedge,' and there drowned the woman, and buried her hard by. At the
assizes, Barwick withdrew his confession, and pleaded 'Not Guilty'.
Lofthouse, his wife, and a third person swore, however, that the
dead woman was found buried in her clothes by the pond side, and on
the prisoner's confession being read, he was found guilty, and
hanged in chains. Probably he was guilty, but Aubrey's dates are
confused, and we are not even sure whether there were two ponds, and
two quickset hedges, or only one of each. Lofthouse may have seen a
stranger, dressed like his sister-in-law, this may have made him
reflect on Barwick's tale about taking her to Selby; he visited that
town, detected Barwick's falsehood, and the terror of that discovery
made Barwick confess.
Surtees, in his History of Durham, published another tale, which
Scott's memory did not retain. In 1630, a girl named Anne Walker
was about to have a child by a kinsman, also a Walker, for whom she
kept house. Walker took her to Dame Care, in Chester le Street,
whence he and Mark Sharp removed her one evening late in November.
Fourteen days afterwards, late at night, Graime, a fuller, who lived
six miles from Walker's village, Lumley, saw a woman, dishevelled,
blood-stained, and with five wounds in her head, standing in a room
in his mill. She said she was Anne Walker, that Mark Sharp had
slain her with a collier's pick, and thrown her body into a coal-
pit, hiding the pick under the bank. After several visitations,
Graime went with his legend to a magistrate, the body and pick-axe
were discovered, Walker and Sharp were arrested, and tried at
Durham, in August, 1631. Sharp's boots, all bloody, were found
where the ghost said he had concealed them 'in a stream'; how they
remained bloody, if in water, is hard to explain. Against Walker
there was no direct evidence. The prisoners, the judge summing up
against them, were found guilty and hanged, protesting their
innocence.
It is suggested that Graime himself was the murderer, else, how did
he know so much about it? But Walker and Sharp were seen last with
the woman, and the respectable Walker was not without a motive,
while, at this distance, we can conjecture no motive in the case of
Graime. {262} Cockburn's Voyage up the Mediterranean is the
authority (ii. 35) for a very odd trial in the Court of King's
Bench, London. The logs of three ships, under Captains Barnaby,
Bristow and Brown, were put in to prove that, on Friday, 15th May,
1687, these men, with many others, were shooting rabbits on
Stromboli: that when beaters and all were collected, about a
quarter to four, they _all_ saw a man in grey, and a man in black
run towards them, the one in grey leading, that Barnaby exclaimed,
'The foremost is old Booty, my next door neighbour,' that the
figures vanished into the flames of the volcano. This occurrence,
by Barnaby's desire, they noted in their journals. They were all
making merry, on October 6, 1687, at Gravesend, when Mrs. Barnaby
remarked to her husband: 'My dear, old Booty is dead!' The captain
replied: 'We all saw him run into hell'. Mrs. Booty, hearing of
this remark, sued Barnaby for libel, putting her damages at 1000
pounds. The case came on, the clothes of old Booty were shown in
court: the date and hour of his death were stated, and
corresponded, within two minutes, to the moment when the mariners
beheld the apparition in Stromboli, 'so the widow lost her cause'.
A mediaeval legend has been revived in this example.
All these curious legal cases were, no doubt, familiar to Sir Walter
Scott. He probably had no access to an American example which was
reprinted four years after his death, by a member of the club which
he founded, the Bannatyne Club, {263} in 1836.
The evidence of the ghost-seer was republished by Mrs. Crowe, in her
Night Side of Nature. But Mrs. Crowe neither gives the facts of the
trial correctly, nor indicates the sources of the narrative. The
source was a periodical, The Opera Glass, February 3, 1827, thirty
years after the date of the trial. The document, however, had
existed 'for many years,' in the possession of the anonymous
contributor to The Opera Glass. He received it from one of the
counsel in the case, Mr. Nicholson, afterwards a judge in Maryland,
who compiled it from attested notes made by himself in court.
The suit was that of James, Fanny, Robert, and Thomas Harris,
devisees of Thomas Harris, v. Mary Harris, relict and administratrix
of James Harris, brother of Thomas, aforesaid (1798-99). Thomas
Harris had four illegitimate children. He held, as he supposed, a
piece of land in fee, but, in fact, he was only seized in tail.
Thus he could not sell or devise it, and his brother James was heir
in tail, the children being bastards. These legal facts were
unknown both to James and Thomas. Thomas made a will, leaving James
his executor, and directing that the land should be sold, and the
money divided among his own children. James, when Thomas died, sold
the land, and, in drawing the conveyance, it was discovered that he
had no right to do so for Thomas, as it was held by Thomas in tail.
James then conveyed his right to the purchaser, and kept the money
as legal heir. Why James could sell, if Thomas could not, the
present writer is unable to explain. In two years, James died
intestate, and the children of Thomas brought a suit against James's
widow. Before James's death, the ghost of Thomas had appeared
frequently to one Briggs, an old soldier in the Colonial Revolt,
bidding James 'return the proceeds of the sale to the orphans'
court, and when James heard of this from Briggs he did go to the
orphans' court, and returned himself to the estate of his brother,
to the amount of the purchase money of the land'.
Now, before the jury were sworn, the counsel, Wright and Nicholson
for the plaintiffs, Scott and Earle for the defendant, privately
agreed that the money could not be recovered, for excellent legal
reasons. But they kept this to themselves, and let the suit go on,
merely for the pleasure of hearing Briggs, 'a man of character, of
firm, undaunted spirit,' swear to his ghost in a court of law. He
had been intimate with Thomas Harris from boyhood. It may be said
that he invented the ghost, in the interest of his friend's
children. He certainly mentioned it, however, some time before he
had any conversation with it.
Briggs's evidence may be condensed very much, as the learned Mrs.
Crowe quotes it correctly in her Night Side of Nature. In March,
1791, about nine a.m., Briggs was riding a horse that had belonged
to Harris. In a lane adjoining the field where Harris was buried,
the horse shied, looked into the field where the tomb was, and
'neighed very loud'. Briggs now saw Harris coming through the
field, in his usual dress, a blue coat. Harris vanished, and the
horse went on. As Briggs was ploughing, in June, Harris walked by
him for two hundred yards. A lad named Bailey, who came up, made no
remark, nor did Harris tell him about the hallucination. In August,
after dark, Harris came and laid his arms on Briggs's shoulder.
Briggs had already spoken to James Harris, 'brither to the corp,'
about these and other related phenomena, a groan, a smack on the
nose from a viewless hand, and so forth. In October Briggs saw
Harris, about twilight in the morning. Later, at eight o'clock in
the morning, he was busy in the field with Bailey, aforesaid, when
Harris passed and vanished: Bailey saw nothing. At half-past nine,
the spectre returned, and leaned on a railing: Briggs vainly tried
to make Bailey see him. Briggs now crossed the fence, and walked
some hundreds of yards with Harris, telling him that his will was
disputed. Harris bade Briggs go to his aforesaid brother James, and
remind him of a conversation they had held, 'on the east side of the
wheat-stacks,' on the day when Harris's fatal illness began. James
remembered the conversation, and said he would fulfil his brother's
desire which he actually did. There was a later interview between
Briggs and Harris, the matter then discussed Briggs declined to
impart to the court, and the court overruled the question. 'He had
never related to any person the last conversation, and never would.'
Bailey was sworn, and deposed that Briggs had called his attention
to Harris, whom _he_ could not see, had climbed the fence, and
walked for some distance, 'apparently in deep conversation with some
person. Witness saw no one.'
It is plain that the ghost never really understood the legal
question at issue. The dates are difficult to reconcile. Thomas
Harris died in 1790. His ghost appeared in 1791. Why was there no
trial of the case till 'about 1798 or 1799'? Perhaps research in
the Maryland records would elucidate these and other questions; we
do but give the tale, with such authority as it possesses. Possibly
it is an elaborate hoax, played off by Nicholson, the plaintiffs'
counsel, on the correspondent of The Opera Glass, or by him on the
editor of that periodical.
The hallucinations of Briggs, which were fortunate enough, it is
said, to get into a court of justice, singularly resemble those of
M. Bezuel, in July and August, 1697, though these were not matter of
a sworn deposition. The evidence is in Histoire d'une Apparition
Arrivee a Valogne. {267} The narrator of 1708, having heard much
talk of the affair, was invited to meet Bezuel, a priest, at dinner,
January 7, 1708. He told his one story 'with much simplicity'.
In 1695, when about fifteen, Bezuel was a friend of a younger boy,
one of two brothers, Desfontaines. In 1696, when Desfontaines minor
was going to study at Caen, he worried Bezuel into signing, in his
blood, a covenant that the first who died should appear to the
survivor. The lads corresponded frequently, every six weeks. On
July 31, 1697, at half-past two, Bezuel, who was hay-making, had a
fainting fit. On August 1, at the same hour, he felt faint on a
road, and rested under a shady tree. On August 2, at half-past two,
he fainted in a hay-loft, and vaguely remembered seeing a half-naked
body. He came down the ladder, and seated himself on a block, in
the Place des Capucins. Here he lost sight of his companions, but
did see Desfontaines, who came up, took his left arm, and led him
into an alley. The servant followed, and told Bezuel's tutor that
he was talking to himself. The tutor went to him, and heard him
asking and answering questions. Bezuel, for three-quarters of an
hour, conversed, as he believed, with Desfontaines, who said that he
had been drowned, while bathing, at Caen, about half-past two on
July 31. The appearance was naked to the waist, his head bare,
showing his beautiful yellow locks. He asked Bezuel to learn a
school task that had been set him as a penalty, the seven
penitential psalms: he described a tree at Caen, where he had cut
some words; two years later Bezuel visited it and them; he gave
other pieces of information, which were verified, but not a word
would he say of heaven, hell, or purgatory; 'he seemed not to hear
my questions'. There were two or three later interviews, till
Bezuel carried out the wishes of the phantasm.
When the spectral Desfontaines went away, on the first occasion,
Bezuel told another boy that Desfontaines was drowned. The lad ran
to the parents of Desfontaines, who had just received a letter to
that effect. By some error, the boy thought that the _elder_
Desfontaines had perished, and said so to Bezuel, who denied it,
and, on a second inquiry, Bezuel was found to be right.
The explanation that Bezuel was ill (as he certainly was), that he
had heard of the death of his friend just _before_ his
hallucination, and had forgotten an impressive piece of news, which,
however, caused the apparition, is given by the narrator of 1708.
The kind of illusion in which a man is seen and heard to converse
with empty air, is common to the cases of Bezuel and of Briggs, and
the writer is acquainted, at first hand, with a modern example.
Mrs. Crowe cites, on the authority of the late Mr. Maurice Lothian,
solicitor for the plaintiff, a suit which arose out of 'hauntings,'
and was heard in the sheriff's court, at Edinburgh, in 1835-37. But
we are unable to discover the official records, or extracts of
evidence from them. This is to be regretted, but, by way of
consolation, we have the pleadings on both sides in an ancient
French case of a haunted house. These are preserved in his Discours
des Spectres, a closely printed quarto of nearly 1000 pages, by
Pierre le Loyer, Conseiller du Roy au Siege Presidial d'Angers.
{269} Le Loyer says, 'De gayete de coeur semble m'estre voulu
engager au combat contre ceux qui impugnent les spectres!' As Le
Loyer observes, ghosts seldom come into court in civil cases, except
when indicted as nuisances, namely, when they make a hired house
uninhabitable by their frolics. Then the tenant often wants to quit
the house, and to have his contract annulled. The landlord resists,
an action is brought, and is generally settled in accordance with
the suggestion of Alphenus, in his Digests, book ii. Alphenus says,
in brief, that the fear must be a genuine fear, and that reason for
no ordinary dread must be proved. Hence Arnault Ferton, in his
Customal of Burgundy, advises that 'legitimate dread of phantasms
which trouble men's rest and make night hideous' is reason good for
leaving a house, and declining to pay rent after the day of
departure. Covarruvias, a Spanish legist, already quoted, agrees
with Arnault Ferton. The Parliament of Grenada, in one or two
cases, decided in favour of the tenant, and against the landlord of
houses where spectres racketed. Le Loyer now reports the pleadings
in a famous case, of which he does not give the date. Incidentally,
however, we learn that it can hardly have been earlier than 1550.
The cause was heard, on appeal, before the Parlement de Paris.
Pierre Piquet, guardian of Nicolas Macquereau (a minor), let to
Giles Bolacre a house in the suburbs of Tours. Poor Bolacre was
promptly disturbed by a noise and routing of _invisible_ spirits,
which suffered neither himself nor his family to sleep o' nights.
He then cited Piquet, also Daniel Macquereau, who was concerned in
the letting of the house, before the local seat of Themis. The case
was heard, and the judge at Tours broke the lease, the hauntings
being insupportable nuisances. But this he did without letters
royal. The lessors then appealed, and the case came before the Cour
de Parlement in Paris. Maitre Chopin was for the lessors, Nau
appeared for the tenant. Chopin first took the formal point, the
Tours judge was formally wrong in breaking a covenant without
letters royal, a thing particularly bad in the case of a minor,
Nicolas Macquereau.
So much for the point of form; as to the matter, Maitre Chopin
laughed at the bare idea of noisy spirits. This is notable because,
in an age when witches were burned frequently, the idea of a haunted
house could be treated by the learned counsel as a mere waggery.
Yet the belief in haunted houses has survived the legal prosecution
of witches. 'The judge in Tours has merely and mischievously
encouraged superstition.' All ghosts, brownies, lutins, are mere
bugbears of children; here Maitre Chopin quotes Plato, and Philo
Judaeus in the original, also Empedocles, Marcus Aurelius,
Tertullian, Quintilian, Dioscorides. Perhaps Bolacre and his family
suffer from nightmare. If so, a physician, not a solicitor, is
their man. Or again, granting that their house _is_ haunted, they
should appeal to the clergy, not to the law.
Manifestly this is a point to be argued. Do the expenses of
exorcism fall on landlord or tenant? This, we think, can hardly be
decided by a quotation from Epictetus. Alexis Comnenus bids us seek
a bishop in the case of psychical phenomena ([Greek]). So Maitre
Chopin argues, but he evades the point. Is it not the business of
the owner of the house to 'whustle on his ain parten,' to have his
own bogie exorcised? Of course Piquet and Macquereau may argue that
the bogie is Bolacre's bogie, that it flitted to the house with
Bolacre; but that is a question of fact and evidence.
Chopin concludes that a lease is only voidable in case of material
defect, or nuisance, as of pestilential air, not in a case which,
after all, is a mere vice d'esprit. Here Maitre Chopin sits down,
with a wink at the court, and Nau pleads for the tenant. First, why
abuse the judge at Tours? The lessors argued the case before him,
and cannot blame him for credulity. The Romans, far from rejecting
such ideas (as Chopin had maintained), used a ritual service for
ejecting spooks, so Ovid testifies. Greek and Roman hauntings are
cited from Pliny, Plutarch, Suetonius; in the last case (ghost of
Caligula), the house had to be destroyed, like the house at Wolflee
where the ghost, resenting Presbyterian exorcism, killed the Rev.
Mr. Thomson of Southdean, father of the author of The Castle of
Indolence. 'As to Plato, cited by my learned brother, Plato
believed in hauntings, as we read in the Phaedo,' Nau has him here.
In brief, 'the defendants have let a house as habitable, well
knowing the same to be infested by spirits'. The Fathers are then
cited as witnesses for ghosts. The learned counsel's argument about
a vice d'esprit is a pitiable pun.
The decision of the court, unluckily, is not preserved by Le Loyer.
The counsel for Bolacre told Le Loyer that the case was adjourned on
the formal point, but, that, having obtained letters royal for his
client, he succeeded in getting the remainder of the lease declared
void. Comparing, however, Bouchel, s. v. Louage, in his
Bibliotheque du droit Francois, one finds that the higher court
reversed the decision of the judge at Tours. In the Edinburgh case,
1835, the tenant, Captain Molesworth, did not try to have his lease
quashed, but he did tear up floors, pull down wainscots, and bore a
hole into the next house, that of his landlord, Mr. Webster, in
search of the cause of the noises. Mr. Webster, therefore, brought
an action to restrain him from these experiments.
Le Loyer gives two cases of ghosts appearing to denounce murderers
in criminal cases. He possessed the speech of the President Brisson
(at that time an advocate), in which he cited the testimony of the
spectre of Madame de Colommiers, mysteriously murdered in full day,
with her children and their nurse. Her ghost appeared to her
husband, when wide awake, and denounced her own cousins. As there
was no other evidence, beyond the existence of motive, the accused
were discharged. In another well-known case, before the Parlement
de Bretagne, the ghost of a man who had mysteriously vanished,
guided his brother to the spot where his wife and her paramour had
buried him, after murdering him. Le Loyer does not give the date of
this trial. The wife was strangled, and her body was burned.
Modern times have known dream-evidence in cases of murder, as in the
Assynt murder, and the famous Red Barns affair. But Thomas Harris's
is probably the last ghost cited in a court of law. On the whole,
the ghosts have gained little by these legally attested appearances,
but the trials do throw a curious light on the juridical procedure
of our ancestors. The famous action against the ghosts in the
Eyrbyggja Saga was not before a Christian court, and is too well
known for quotation. {273}