UNREAL GHOSTS—Law of Sensorial Illusions—Cases of Nicolai,
Schwedenborg, Joan of Arc—Fetches—Churchyard ghosts.
The projected analysis has been crowned with success. The fumes of
superstition have been driven off, and the ghosts have been reduced to
rational elements. All trace of supernatural agency has vanished; and
in its place are found three principles—one physical, two psychical—by
the help of which every conceivable ghost may in future be alternately
decomposed and recompounded by the merest tyro.
The first of which I shall describe the nature and operation is a
psychical truth, already known to most persons of education. It is of
very general use in ghost-building; it forms the immediate _personnel_
of every ghost; and is of so active a nature that alone, or assisted
by a little credulity, it is enough to constitute the simplest kind—a
common fetch. Mixed with a dose of mental anxiety, or as much remorse
as will lie on the point of a dagger, it will form a troublesome
retrospective ghost. The second principle—a physical one, less
generally known—is the basis of that sturdy apparition the churchyard
ghost, which it will turn out in very fair style aided by fancy
alone; but, to perfect the illusive result, the co-operation of the
first principle is necessary. The third, an entirely new one, is the
foundation of real ghosts—that is, of ghosts which announce unexpected
events, distant in space or time; the same principle is concerned in
true dreams, and in second-sight.
The first of the three principles adverted to is the physiological
fact that, when the blood is heated, the nervous system overstrained,
or digestion out of sorts, the thereby directly or sympathetically
disordered brain is liable to project before us illusory forms, which
are coloured and move like life, and are so far undistinguishable from
reality. Sometimes a second sense is drawn into the phantasmagoria, and
the fictitious beings speak as you do. Almost always the illusion stops
there. But in one or two marvellous cases, the touch has been involved
in the hallucination, and the ghost has been tangible. These phenomena
are termed sensorial illusions. The visual part of them, the first
and commonest, has been the most attended to. The cause immediately
producing it appears to be an affection, not of the organ of vision,
but of that part of the brain in which the nerves of seeing take their
origin. This organ it is which in health realizes our sensations of
colour, and converts them into visual perceptions. Like other parts of
the brain, it is stored with memories of its past impressions, ready
to be evoked—either pure and true by conception, or any how combined
by fancy. In perfect health, a chance moment of warm recollection will
call up from this source the once familiar face transiently, but how
distinctly!
In its morbid state, the beings it projects before us are for the
most part strangers, just as the personages we meet in our dreams are
exceptionally only our living and present acquaintance.
The most instructive case of sensorial illusions on record, as
containing the largest illustration of the phenomena, is that of
Nicolai, the bookseller of Berlin. The narrative was read before
the Academy of Sciences at Berlin, in 1799. Its substance runs
thus:—Nicolai had met with some family troubles, which much disturbed
him. Then, on the first of January, 1791, there stood before him, at
the distance of ten paces, the ghost of his eldest son. He pointed at
it, directing his wife to look. She saw it not, and tried to convince
Nicolai that it was an illusion. In a quarter of an hour it vanished.
In the afternoon, at four o’clock, it came again. Nicolai was alone.
He went to his wife’s room, the ghost followed him. About six other
apparitions joined the first, and they walked about among each other.
After some days the apparition of his son stayed away; but its place
was filled with the figures of a number of persons, some known, some
unknown to Nicolai—some of dead, others of living persons. The known
ones represented distant acquaintances only. The figures of none of
Nicolai’s habitual friends were there. The appearances were almost
always human; occasionally a man on horseback, and birds, and dogs,
would present themselves. The apparitions came mostly after dinner,
at the commencement of digestion; they were just like real persons,
the colouring a thought fainter. The apparitions were equally distinct
whether Nicolai was alone or in society, in the dark as by day; in his
own house or in those of others; but in the latter case they were less
frequent, and they very seldom made their appearance in the streets.
During the first eight days they seemed to take very little notice of
one another, but walked about like people at a fair, only here and
there communing with each other. They took no notice of Nicolai, or
of the remarks he addressed regarding them to his wife and physician.
No effort of his would dismiss them, or bring an absent one back.
When he shut his eyes, they sometimes disappeared, sometimes remained;
when he opened his eyes, they were there as before. After a week they
became more numerous, and began to converse. They conversed with
one another first, and then addressed him. Their remarks were short
and unconnected, but sensible and civil. His acquaintances inquired
after his health, and expressed sympathy with him, and spoke in terms
comforting him. The apparitions were most conversable when he was
alone; nevertheless, they mingled in the conversation when others were
by, and their voices had the same sound as those of real persons. The
illusion went on thus from the 24th of February to the 20th of April;
so that Nicolai, who was in good bodily health, had time to become
tranquillized about the nature of his visiters, and to observe them
at his ease. At last they rather amused him; then the doctors thought
of an efficient plan of treatment. They prescribed leeches; and then
followed the “denouement” of this interesting representation. The
apparitions became pale, and vanished. On the 20th of April, at the
time of applying the leeches, Nicolai’s room was full of figures moving
about among each other. They first began to have a less lively motion;
shortly afterwards their colours became paler, in another half hour
paler still, though the forms still remained. About seven o’clock in
the evening the figures had become colourless, and they moved scarcely
at all; but their outline was still tolerably perfect. Gradually that
became less and less defined; at last they disappeared, breaking into
air, fragments only remaining, which at last all vanished. By eight
o’clock all were gone, and Nicolai subsequently saw no more of them.
In general, as in Nicolai’s case, the sight is the sense at first and
alone affected. Illusions of the hearing, if they occur, follow later.
In some most extraordinary cases, I have observed that the touch has
likewise participated in the affection; the following is an instance:—
Herr von Baczko, already subject to visual hallucinations of a
diseased nervous system, his right side weak with palsy, his right eye
blind, and the vision of the left imperfect, was engaged one evening
shortly after the battle of Jena, as he tells in his autobiography, in
translating a pamphlet into Polish, when he felt a poke in his loins.
He looked round, and found that it proceeded from a Negro or Egyptian
boy, seemingly about twelve years of age. Although he was persuaded the
whole was an illusion, he thought it best to knock the apparition down,
when he felt that it offered a sensible resistance. The Negro then
attacked him on the other side, and gave his left arm a particularly
disagreeable twist, when Baczko again pushed him off. The Negro
continued to visit him constantly during four months, preserving the
same appearance, and remaining tangible; then he came seldomer; and,
finally appearing as a brown-coloured apparition with an owl’s head, he
took his leave.
Sensorial illusions, technically speaking, are not mental delusions;
or they become so only when they are believed to be realities. So
sensorial illusions are not insanity, neither do they menace that
disorder: they are not its customary precursors. Nevertheless, they
may accompany the first outbreak of madness; and they occur much more
frequently in lunatics than in persons of sound mind. In insanity they
are firmly believed in by the patient, whose delusions they may either
suggest or be shaped by. In insanity, illusions of the hearing often
occur alone, which is comparatively rare in sane people.
The objects of visual illusions are commonly men and women; but
animals, and even inanimate objects, sometimes constitute them. A lady
whose sight was failing her had long visions every day of rows of
buildings, houses, and parks, and such like. The subjects of visual
illusions are generally perfectly trivial, like the events of a common
dream. But, though susceptible of change, their custom is to recur with
much the same character daily. One patient could at will summon the
apparition of an acquaintance to join the rest; but, once there, he
could not get rid of him.
Sometimes it happens that sensorial illusions are in accordance with
a congenial train of thought—for instance, with peculiar impressions
referring to religion. They are then very liable to be construed by the
patient into realities, and to materially influence his conversation
and conduct. He remains, no doubt, strictly sane in the midst of these
delusions. But he is apt not to be thought so; or, to use a figure, the
world’s opinion of such a person becomes a polar force, and society is
divided into his admiring followers and those who think him a lunatic.
Such was, and remains, the fate of Schwedenborg.
Schwedenborg, the son of a Swedish clergyman of the name of Schwedberg,
ennobled as Schwedenborg, was up to the year 1743, which was the
fifty-fourth of his age, an ordinary man of the world, distinguished
only in literature, having written many volumes on philosophy and
science, and being professor in the Mineralogical School, where he was
much respected. On a sudden, in the year 1743, he believed himself to
have got into a commerce with the world of spirits, which so fully
took possession of his thoughts, that he not only published their
revelations, but was in the habit of detailing their daily chat with
him. Thus he says, “I had a conversation the other day on that very
point with the apostle Paul,” or with Luther, or some other dead
person. Schwedenborg continued in what he believed to be constant
communion with spirits till his death, in 1772. He was, without doubt,
in the fullest degree convinced of the reality of his spiritual
commerce. So in a letter to the Wurtemburg Prelate, Oetinger, dated
November 11, 1766, he uses the following words: “If I have spoken with
the apostles? To this I answer, I conversed with St. Paul during a
whole year, particularly with reference to the text, Romans iii. 28.
I have three times conversed with St. John, once with Moses, and a
hundred times with Luther, who allowed that it was against the warning
of an angel that he professed _fidem solam_, and that he stood alone
upon the separation from the Pope. With angels, finally, have I these
twenty years conversed, and converse daily.”
Of the angels, he says, “They have human forms, the appearance of
men, as I have a thousand times seen; for I have spoken with them
as a man with other men—often with several together—and I have seen
nothing in the least to distinguish them from other men.” They had, in
fact, exactly the same appearance as Nicolai’s visiters. “Lest any
one should call this an illusion, or imaginary perception, it is to
be understood that I am accustomed to see them when myself perfectly
wide awake, and in full exercise of my observation. The speech of an
angel, or of a spirit, sounds like and as loud as that of a man; but
it is not heard by the bystanders. The reason is, that _the speech of
an angel, or a spirit, finds entrance first into a man’s thoughts, and
reaches his organs of hearing from within_.” A wonderful instance this
last reason how it is possible _cum ratione insanire_; he analyzes the
illusion perfectly, even when he is most deceived by it.
“The angels who converse with men speak not in their own language, but
in the language of the country; and likewise in other languages which
are known to a man, not in languages which he does not understand.”
Schwedenborg here interrupted the angels, and, to explain the matter,
observed that they most likely appeared to speak his mother tongue,
_because, in fact_, it was not they who spoke, but himself after their
suggestions. The angels would not allow this, and went away at the
close of the conversation unpersuaded.
The following fiction is very fine: “When approaching, the angels often
appear like a ball of light; and they travel in companies so grouped
together—they are allowed so to unite by the Lord—that they may act as
one being, and share each other’s ideas and knowledge; and in this form
they bound through the universe, from planet to planet.”
A still more interesting example of the influence of sensorial
illusions on human conduct is furnished by the touching history of Joan
of Arc.
“It is now seven years ago,” so spoke before her judges the simple but
high-minded maiden—“it was a summer day, towards the middle hour,
I was about thirteen years old, and was in my father’s garden, that
I heard for the first time, on my right hand, towards the church, a
voice, and there stood a figure in a bright radiance before my eyes.
It had the appearance and look of a right good and virtuous man, bore
wings, was surrounded with light on all sides, and by the angels of
heaven. It was the archangel Michael. The voice seemed to me to command
respect; but I was yet a child, and was frightened at the figure, and
doubted very much whether it were the archangel. I saw him and the
angels as distinctly before my eyes as I now see you, my judges.” With
words of encouragement the archangel announced to her that God had
taken pity upon France, and that she must hasten to the assistance of
the King. At the same time he promised her that St. Catharine and St.
Margaret would shortly visit her: he told her that she should do what
they commanded her, because they were sent by God to guide and conduct
her. “Upon this,” continued Joan, “St. Catharine and St. Margaret
appeared to me, as the archangel had foretold. They ordered me to get
ready to go to Robert de Beaudricourt, the King’s captain. He would
several times refuse me, but at last would consent, and give me people
who would conduct me to the King. Then should I raise the siege of
Orleans. I replied to them that I was a poor child, who understood
nothing about riding on horseback and making war. They said I should
carry my banner with courage; God would help me, and win back for my
king his entire kingdom. As soon as I knew,” continued Joan, “that I
was to proceed on this errand, I avoided as much as I could taking part
in the sports and amusements of my young companions.” “So have the
saints conducted me during seven years, and have given me support and
assistance in all my need and labours; and now at present,” said she to
her judges, “no day goes by but they come to see me.” “I seldom see
the saints that they are not surrounded with a halo of light; they wear
rich and precious crowns, as it is reasonable they should. I see them
always under the same forms, and have never found in their discourse
any discrepancies. I know how to distinguish one from the other, and
distinguish them as well by the sound of their voices as by their
salutation. They come often without my calling upon them. But when they
do not come, I pray to the Lord that he will send them to me; and never
have I needed them but they have visited me.”
Such is part of the defence of the heroic Joan of Arc, who was taken
prisoner by the Duke of Burgundy on the 23d of May, 1430—sold by him
for a large sum to the English, and by them put on her trial as a
heretic, idolatress, and magician—condemned, and finally burned alive
on the 30th of May, 1431!
Her innocence, simplicity, and courage incense one sadly against her
judges; but it is likely there were at that time many good and sensible
persons who approved of her sentence, and never suspected its cruelty
and injustice. Making allowance for the ignorance and barbarity of the
age, her treatment was, perhaps, not worse than that of Abd-el-Kader
now. Her visions—they were palpably the productions of her own fancy,
the figures of saints and angels, which she had seen in missals,
projected before her mental sight; and their cause the instinctive
workings, unknown to herself, of her young high-couraged and
enthusiastic heart, shaping its suggestions into holy prophesyings—the
leading facts of which her resolute will realized, while their actual
discrepancies with subsequent events she pardonably forgot.[1]
[Footnote 1: I cannot deny that another principle, afterwards to be
explained, may have been additionally in operation in this interesting
case.]
I will present yet another and less pleasing picture, where the subject
of sensorial illusions was of infirm mind, and they struck upon the
insane chord, and reason jangled harshly out of tune. It would be a
curious question whether such a sensorial illusion as overthrew the
young seer’s judgment in the following case, could have occurred to a
mind previously sane; whether, for instance, it could have occurred to
Schwedenborg, and, in that event, how he would have dealt with it.
Arnold (a German writer) relates, in his history of the church and of
heresy, how there was a young man in Königsberg, well educated, the
natural son of a priest, who had the impression that he was met near a
crucifix on the wayside by seven angels, who revealed to him that he
was to represent God the Father on earth, to drive all evil out of the
world, &c. The poor fellow, after pondering upon this illusion a long
time, issued a circular, beginning thus:
“We John, Albrecht, Adelgreif, Syrdos, Amata, Kanemata, Kilkis,
Mataldis, Schmalkilimundis, Sabrandis, Elioris, Hyperarch-High-priest
and Emperor, Prince of Peace of the whole world, Hyperarch-King of the
holy kingdom of Heaven, Judge of the living and of the dead, God and
Father, in whose divinity Christ will come on the last day to judge the
world, Lord of all lords, King of all kings,” &c.
He was thereupon thrown into prison at Königsberg, where every means
were used by the clergy to reclaim him from these blasphemous and
heretical notions. To all their entreaties, however, he listened only
with a smile of pity—“that they should think of reclaiming God the
Father.” He was then put to the torture, and as what he endured made no
alteration in his convictions, he was condemned to have his tongue torn
out with red-hot tongs, to be cut in four quarters, and then burned
under the gallows. He wept bitterly, not at his own fate, but that they
should pronounce such a sentence on the Deity. The executioner was
touched with pity, and implored him to make a final recantation. But
he persisted that he was God the Father, whether they pulled his tongue
out by the roots or not; and so he was executed!
From the preceding forcible illustrations of the working of sensorial
illusions on individual minds, it is to descend a little in interest
to trace their ministry in giving rise to the rickety forms of popular
superstition. However, the material may be the same, whether it be
cast for the commemoration of a striking event or coined for vulgar
currency. And here is a piece of the latter description, with the
recommendation of being at least fresh from the mint, and spic-and-span
new—an instance of superstition surviving in England in the middle of
the nineteenth century.
A young gentleman, who has recently left Oxford, told me that he was
one evening at a supper-party in college, when they were joined by a
common friend on his return from hunting. They expected him, but were
struck with his appearance. He was pale and agitated. On questioning
him, they learned the cause. During the latter part of his ride home,
he had been accompanied by a horseman, who kept exact pace with him,
the rider and horse being close facsimiles of himself and the steed
he rode, even to the copy of a new fangled bit which he sported that
day for the first time. He had, in fact, seen his “double” or “Fetch,”
and it had shaken his nerves pretty considerably. His friends advised
him to consult the college-tutor, who failed not to give him some good
advice, and hoped the warning would not be thrown away. My informant,
who thought the whole matter very serious, and was inclined to believe
the unearthly visit to have been no idle one, added that it had made
the ghost-seer, for the time at least, a wiser and better man.
Such a visionary duplicate of one’s-self—one’s fetch—is a not
unfrequent form of sensorial illusion. In more ignorant days the
appearance of a fetch excited much apprehension. It was supposed to
menace death or serious calamity to its original. Properly viewed,
unless it proceed from hard work and overstrained thought, (from which
you can desist,) it indicates something wrong in your physical health,
and its warning goes no further than to consult a doctor, to learn,
“what rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug will drive the spectre
hence.” The efficiency of such means was shown in the case of Nicolai.
Yet in this case, I may remark, the originating cause of the attack
had been anxiety about the very son whose apparition was the first of
the throng to visit him. Had the illusion continued limited to the
figure of the son, it would have been more questionable what art could
do towards dismissing it. At all events, in such a case, the first
thing is to remove the perilous stuff that weighs upon the mind. So the
personage whose words I have been using was doubtless right, in his own
case, to “throw physic to the dogs.”
In the tragedy of _Macbeth_, sensorial illusions are made to play their
part with curious physiological correctness. The mind of Macbeth is
worn by the conflict between ambition and duty. At last his better
resolves give way; and his excited fancy projects before him the fetch
of his own dagger, which marshals him the way that he shall go. The
spectator is thus artistically prepared for the further working of
the same infirmity in the apparition of Banquo, which, unseen by his
guests, is visible only to the conscience-stricken murderer. With a
scientific precision no less admirable, the partner of his guilt—_a
woman_—is made to have attacks of trance, (_to which women are more
liable than men_,) caused by her disturbed mind; and in her trance
the exact physiological character of one form of that disorder is
portrayed—_she enacts a dream_, which is the essence of somnambulism.
One almost doubts whether Shakspeare was aware of the philosophic truth
displayed in these master-strokes of his own art. The apparitions
conjured up in the witch scenes of the same play, and the ghost in
_Hamlet_, are moulded on the pattern of vulgar superstition. He employs
indifferently the baser metal and the truthful inspirations of his own
genius—realizing Shelley’s strange figure of
“a poet hidden
In the light of thought.”
So they say the sun is himself dark as a planet, and his atmosphere
alone the source of light, through the gaps in which his common earth
is seen. I am tempted—but it would be idle, and I refrain—to quote
an expression or two, or a passage, from Shakspeare, exemplifying
his wonderful turn for approximating to truths of which he must have
been ignorant—where lines of admired and unaccountable beauty have
unexpectedly acquired lucidity and appositeness through modern science.
While, to make a quaint comparison, his great contemporary, Bacon,
employed the lamp of his imagination to illuminate the paths to the
discovery of truth, Shakspeare would, with random intuition, seize
on the undiscovered truths themselves, and use them to vivify the
conceptions of his fancy.
Let me now turn to explain a ghost of a more positive description—the
churchyard ghost. The ghost will perhaps exclaim against so trivial
a title, and one so unjust in reference to old superstition; but it
will be seen he deserves no better. In popular story he had a higher
office; his duty was to watch the body over which church rites had not
been performed, that had been rudely inearthed after violent death. As
thus—
There was a cottage in a village I could name to which a bad report
attached. More than one who had slept in it had seen, at midnight, the
radiant apparition of a little child standing on the hearth-stone. At
length suspicion was awakened. The hearth-stone was raised, and there
were found buried beneath it the remains of an infant. A story was now
divulged how the last tenant and a female of the village had abruptly
quitted the neighbourhood. The ghost was real and significant enough.
But here is a still better instance from a trustworthy German work, P.
Kieffer’s _Archives_. The narrative was communicated by Herr Ehrman of
Strasburg, son-in-law of the well-known writer Pfeffel, from whom he
received it.
The ghost-seer was a young candidate for orders, eighteen years of age,
of the name of Billing. He was known to have very excitable nerves, had
already experienced sensorial illusions, and was particularly sensitive
to the presence of human remains, which made him tremble and shudder
in all his limbs. Pfeffel, being blind, was accustomed to take the arm
of this young man, and they walked thus together in Pfeffel’s garden,
near Colmar. At one spot in the garden, Pfeffel remarked that his
companion’s arm gave a sudden start, as if he had received an electric
shock. Being asked what was the matter, Billing replied, “Nothing.” But
on their going over the same spot again, the same effect recurred. The
young man being pressed to explain the cause of his disturbance, avowed
that it arose from a peculiar sensation which he always experienced
when in the vicinity of human remains; that it was his impression a
human body must be interred there; but that, if Pfeffel would return
with him at night, he should be able to speak with greater confidence.
Accordingly they went together to the garden when it was dark, and
as they approached the spot, Billing observed a faint light over it.
At ten paces from it he stopped, and would go no farther, for he saw
hovering over it, or self-supported in the air—its feet only a few
inches from the ground—a luminous female figure, nearly five feet high,
with the right arm folded on her breast, the left hanging by her side.
When Pfeffel himself stepped forward and placed himself about where
the figure appeared to be, Billing said it was now on his right hand,
now on his left, now behind, now before him. When Pfeffel cut the air
with his stick, it seemed as if it went through and divided a light
flame, which then united again. The visit, repeated the next night, in
company with some of Pfeffel’s relatives, gave the same result. They
did not see any thing. Pfeffel then, unknown to the ghost-seer, had
the ground dug up, when there was found at some depth, beneath a layer
of quicklime, a human body in progress of decomposition. The remains
were removed, and the earth carefully replaced. Three days afterwards,
Billing, from whom this whole proceeding had been kept concealed,
was again led to the spot by Pfeffel. He walked over it now without
experiencing any unusual impression whatever.
The explanation of this mysterious phenomenon has been but recently
arrived at. The discoveries of Von Reichenbach, of which I gave a
sketch in the first letter, announce the principle on which it depends.
Among these discoveries is the fact that the Od force makes itself
visible as a dim light or waving flame to highly sensitive subjects.
Such persons, in the dark, see flames issuing from the poles of magnets
and crystals. Von Reichenbach eventually discovered that the Od force
is distributed universally, although in varying quantities. But among
the causes which excite its evolution, one of the most active is
chemical decomposition. Then, happening to remember Pfeffel’s ghost
story, it occurred to Von Reichenbach that what Billing had seen was
possibly Od light. To test the soundness of this conjecture, Miss
Reichel, a very sensitive subject, was taken at night to an extensive
burying-ground near Vienna, where interments take place daily, and
there are many thousand graves. The result did not disappoint Von
Reichenbach’s expectations. Whithersoever Miss Reichel turned her
eyes, she saw masses of flame. This appearance manifested itself most
about recent graves. About very old ones it was not visible. She
described the appearance as resembling less bright flame than fiery
vapour, something between fog and flame. In several instances the light
extended four feet in height above the ground. When Miss Reichel placed
her hand on it, it seemed to her involved in a cloud of fire. When she
stood in it, it came up to her throat. She expressed no alarm, being
accustomed to the appearance.
The mystery has thus been entirely solved; for it is evident that the
spectral character of the luminous apparition, in the two instances
which I have narrated, had been supplied by the seers themselves. So
the superstition has vanished; but, as usual, it veiled a truth.