"Think of your breakfast-table," he said; "is your mental picture of it as clearly illuminated and as complete as your actual view of the scene?" Mr. Galton began by questioning friends in the scientific world, F.R.S.'s and other savants. "The earliest results of my inquiry amazed me. . . . The great majority of the men of science to whom I first applied, protested that mental imagery was unknown to them, and they looked on me as fanciful and fantastic in supposing that the words 'mental imagery' really expressed what I believed everybody supposed them to mean." One gentleman wrote: "It is only by a figure of speech that I can describe my recollection of a scene as a 'mental image' which I can 'see' with 'my mind's eye'. I do not see it," so he seems to have supposed that nobody else did.

When he made inquiries in general society, Mr. Galton found plenty of people who "saw" mental imagery with every degree of brilliance or dimness, from "quite comparable to the real object" to "I recollect the table, but do not see it"—my own position.

Mr. Galton was next "greatly struck by the frequency of the replies in which my correspondents" (sane and healthy) "described themselves as subject to 'visions'". These varied in degree, "some were so vivid as actually to deceive the judgment". Finally, "a notable proportion of sane persons have had not only visions, but actual hallucinations of sight at one or more periods of their life. I have a considerable packet of instances contributed by my personal friends." Thus one "distinguished authoress" saw "the principal character of one of her novels glide through the door straight up to her. It was about the size of a large doll." Another heard unreal music, and opened the door to hear it better. Another was plagued by voices, which said "Pray," and so forth.

Thus, on scientific evidence, sane and healthy people may, and "in a notable proportion do, experience hallucinations". That is to say, they see persons, or hear them, or believe they are touched by them, or all their senses are equally affected at once, when no such persons are really present. This kind of thing is always going on, but "when popular opinion is of a matter-of-fact kind, the seers of visions keep quiet; they do not like to be thought fanciful or mad, and they hide their experiences, which only come to light through inquiries such as those that I have been making".

We may now proceed to the waking hallucinations of sane and healthy people, which Mr. Galton declares to be so far from uncommon. Into the causes of these hallucinations which may actually deceive the judgment, Mr. Galton does not enter.

STORY OF THE DIPLOMATIST {56a}

For example, there is a living diplomatist who knows men and cities, and has, moreover, a fine sense of humour. "My Lord," said a famous Russian statesman to him, "you have all the qualities of a diplomatist, but you cannot control your smile." This gentleman, walking alone in a certain cloister at Cambridge, met a casual acquaintance, a well-known London clergyman, and was just about shaking hands with him, when the clergyman vanished. Nothing in particular happened to either of them; the clergyman was not in the seer's mind at the moment.

This is a good example of a solitary hallucination in the experience of a very cool-headed observer. The causes of such experiences are still a mystery to science. Even people who believe in "mental telegraphy," say when a distant person, at death or in any other crisis, impresses himself as present on the senses of a friend, cannot account for an experience like that of the diplomatist, an experience not very uncommon, and little noticed except when it happens to coincide with some remarkable event. {56b} Nor are such hallucinations of an origin easily detected, like those of delirium, insanity, intoxication, grief, anxiety, or remorse. We can only suppose that a past impression of the aspect of a friend is recalled by some association of ideas so vividly that (though we are not consciously thinking of him) we conceive the friend to be actually present in the body when he is absent.

These hallucinations are casual and unsought. But between these and the dreams of sleep there is a kind of waking hallucinations which some people can purposely evoke. Such are the visions of crystal gazing.

Among the superstitions of almost all ages and countries is the belief that "spirits" will show themselves, usually after magical ceremonies, to certain persons, commonly children, who stare into a crystal ball, a cup, a mirror, a blob of ink (in Egypt and India), a drop of blood (among the Maoris of New Zealand), a bowl of water (Red Indian), a pond (Roman and African), water in a glass bowl (in Fez), or almost any polished surface. The magical ceremonies, which have probably nothing to do with the matter, have succeeded in making this old and nearly universal belief seem a mere fantastic superstition. But occasionally a person not superstitious has recorded this experience. Thus George Sand in her Histoire de ma Vie mentions that, as a little girl, she used to see wonderful moving landscapes in the polished back of a screen. These were so vivid that she thought they must be visible to others.

Recent experiments have proved that an unexpected number of people have this faculty. Gazing into a ball of crystal or glass, a crystal or other smooth ring stone, such as a sapphire or ruby, or even into a common ink-pot, they will see visions very brilliant. These are often mere reminiscences of faces or places, occasionally of faces or places sunk deep below the ordinary memory. Still more frequently they represent fantastic landscapes and romantic scenes, as in an historical novel, with people in odd costumes coming, going and acting. Thus I have been present when a lady saw in a glass ball a man in white Oriental costume kneeling beside a leaping fountain of fire. Presently a hand appeared pointing downwards through the flame. The first vision seen pretty often represents an invalid in bed. Printed words are occasionally read in the glass, as also happens in the visions beheld with shut eyes before sleeping.

All these kinds of things, in fact, are common in our visions between sleeping and waking (illusions hypnagogiques). The singularity is that they are seen by people wide awake in glass balls and so forth. Usually the seer is a person whose ordinary "mental imagery" is particularly vivid. But every "visualiser" is not a crystal seer. A novelist of my acquaintance can "visualise" so well that, having forgotten an address and lost the letter on which it was written, he called up a mental picture of the letter, and so discovered the address. But this very popular writer can see no visions in a crystal ball. Another very popular novelist can see them; little dramas are acted out in the ball for his edification. {58}

These things are as unfamiliar to men of science as Mr. Galton found ordinary mental imagery, pictures in memory, to be. Psychology may or may not include them in her province; they may or may not come to be studied as ordinary dreams are studied. But, like dreams, these crystal visions enter the domain of the ghostly only when they are veracious, and contribute information previously unknown as to past, present or future. There are plenty of stories to this effect. To begin with an easy, or comparatively easy, exercise in belief.

UNDER THE LAMP

I had given a glass ball to a young lady, who believed that she could play the "willing game" successfully without touching the person "willed," and when the person did not even know that "willing" was going on. This lady, Miss Baillie, had scarcely any success with the ball. She lent it to Miss Leslie, who saw a large, square, old- fashioned red sofa covered with muslin, which she found in the next country house she visited. Miss Baillie's brother, a young athlete (at short odds for the amateur golf championship), laughed at these experiments, took the ball into the study, and came back looking "gey gash". He admitted that he had seen a vision, somebody he knew "under a lamp". He would discover during the week whether he saw right or not. This was at 5.30 on a Sunday afternoon. On Tuesday, Mr. Baillie was at a dance in a town some forty miles from his home, and met a Miss Preston. "On Sunday," he said, "about half-past five you were sitting under a standard lamp in a dress I never saw you wear, a blue blouse with lace over the shoulders, pouring out tea for a man in blue serge, whose back was towards me, so that I only saw the tip of his moustache."

"Why, the blinds must have been up," said Miss Preston.

"I was at Dulby," said Mr. Baillie, as he undeniably was. {60a}

This is not a difficult exercise in belief. Miss Preston was not unlikely to be at tea at tea-time.

Nor is the following very hard.

THE COW WITH THE BELL

I had given a glass ball to the wife of a friend, whose visions proved so startling and on one occasion so unholy that she ceased to make experiments. One day my friend's secretary, a young student and golfer, took up the ball.

"I see a field I know very well," he said, "but there is a cow in it that I never saw; brown, with white markings, and, this is odd in Scotland, she has a bell hanging from her neck. I'll go and look at the field."

He went and found the cow as described, bell and all. {60b}

In the spring of 1897 I gave a glass ball to a young lady, previously a stranger to me, who was entirely unacquainted with crystal gazing, even by report. She had, however, not infrequent experience of spontaneous visions, which were fulfilled, including a vision of the Derby (Persimmon's year), which enriched her friends. In using the ball she, time after time, succeeded in seeing and correctly describing persons and places familiar to people for whom she "scried," but totally strange to herself. In one case she added a detail quite unknown to the person who consulted her, but which was verified on inquiry. These experiments will probably be published elsewhere. Four people, out of the very small number who tried on these occasions, saw fancy pictures in the ball: two were young ladies, one a man, and one a schoolboy. I must confess that, for the first time, I was impressed by the belief that the lady's veracious visions, however they are to be explained, could not possibly be accounted for by chance coincidence. They were too many (I was aware of five in a few days), too minute, and too remote from the range of ingenious guessing. But "thought transference," tapping the mental wires of another person, would have accounted for every case, with, perhaps, the exception of that in which an unknown detail was added. This confession will, undoubtedly, seem weakly credulous, but not to make it would be unfair and unsportsmanlike. My statement, of course, especially without the details, is not evidence for other people.

The following case is a much harder exercise in belief. It is narrated by the Duc de Saint Simon. {62} The events were described to Saint Simon on the day after their occurrence by the Duc d'Orleans, then starting for Italy, in May, 1706. Saint Simon was very intimate with the duke, and they corresponded by private cypher without secretaries. Owing to the death of the king's son and grandson (not seen in the vision), Orleans became Regent when Louis XIV. died in 1714. Saint Simon is a reluctant witness, and therefore all the better.

THE DEATHBED OF LOUIS XIV.

"Here is a strange story that the Duc d'Orleans told me one day in a tete-a-tete at Marly, he having just run down from Paris before he started for Italy; and it may be observed that all the events predicted came to pass, though none of them could have been foreseen at the time. His interest in every kind of art and science was very great, and in spite of his keen intellect, he was all his life subject to a weakness which had been introduced (with other things) from Italy by Catherine de Medici, and had reigned supreme over the courts of her children. He had exercised every known method of inducing the devil to appear to him in person, though, as he has himself told me, without the smallest success. He had spent much time in investigating matters that touched on the supernatural, and dealt with the future.

"Now La Sery (his mistress) had in her house a little girl of eight or nine years of age, who had never resided elsewhere since her birth. She was to all appearance a very ordinary child, and from the way in which she had been brought up, was more than commonly ignorant and simple. One day, during the visit of M. d'Orleans, La Sery produced for his edification one of the charlatans with whom the duke had long been familiar, who pretended that by means of a glass of water he could see the answer to any question that might be put. For this purpose it was necessary to have as a go-between some one both young and innocent, to gaze into the water, and this little girl was at once sent for. They amused themselves by asking what was happening in certain distant places; and after the man had murmured some words over the water, the child looked in and always managed to see the vision required of her.

"M. le duc d'Orleans had so often been duped in matters of this kind that he determined to put the water-gazer to a severe test. He whispered to one of his attendants to go round to Madame de Nancre's, who lived close by, and ascertain who was there, what they were all doing, the position of the room and the way it was furnished, and then, without exchanging a word with any one, to return and let him know the result. This was done speedily and without the slightest suspicion on the part of any person, the child remaining in the room all the time. When M. le duc d'Orleans had learned all he wanted to know, he bade the child look in the water and tell him who was at Madame de Nancre's and what they were all doing. She repeated word for word the story that had been told by the duke's messenger; described minutely the faces, dresses and positions of the assembled company, those that were playing cards at the various tables, those that were sitting, those that were standing, even the very furniture! But to leave nothing in doubt, the Duke of Orleans despatched Nancre back to the house to verify a second time the child's account, and like the valet, he found she had been right in every particular.

"As a rule he said very little to me about these subjects, as he knew I did not approve of them, and on this occasion I did not fail to scold him, and to point out the folly of being amused by such things, especially at a time when his attention should be occupied with more serious matters. 'Oh, but I have only told you half,' he replied; 'that was just the beginning,' and then he went on to say that, encouraged by the exactitude of the little girl's description of Madame de Nancre's room, he resolved to put to her a more important question, namely, as to the scene that would occur at the death of the king. The child had never seen any one who was about the court, and had never even heard of Versailles, but she described exactly and at great length the king's bedroom at Versailles and all the furniture which was in fact there at the date of his death. She gave every detail as to the bed, and cried out on recognising, in the arms of Madame de Ventadour, a little child decorated with an order whom she had seen at the house of Mademoiselle la Sery; and again at the sight of M. le duc d'Orleans. From her account, Madame de Maintenon, Fagon with his odd face, Madame la duchesse d'Orleans, Madame la duchesse, Madame la princesse de Conti, besides other princes and nobles, and even the valets and servants were all present at the king's deathbed. Then she paused, and M. le duc d'Orleans, surprised that she had never mentioned Monseigneur, Monsieur le duc de Bourgogne, Madame la duchesse de Bourgogne, nor M. le duc de Berri, inquired if she did not see such and such people answering to their description. She persisted that she did not, and went over the others for the second time. This astonished M. le duc d'Orleans deeply, as well as myself, and we were at a loss to explain it, but the event proved that the child was perfectly right. This seance took place in 1706. These four members of the royal family were then full of health and strength; and they all died before the king. It was the same thing with M. le prince, M. le duc, and M. le prince de Conti, whom she likewise did not see, though she beheld the children of the two last named; M. du Maine, his own (Orleans), and M. le comte de Toulouse. But of course this fact was unknown till eight years after."

Science may conceivably come to study crystal visions, but veracious crystal visions will be treated like veracious dreams. That is to say, they will be explained as the results of a chance coincidence between the unknown fact and the vision, or of imposture, conscious or unconscious, or of confusion of memory, or the fact of the crystal vision will be simply denied. Thus a vast number of well- authenticated cases of veracious visions will be required before science could admit that it might be well to investigate hitherto unacknowledged faculties of the human mind. The evidence can never be other than the word of the seer, with whatever value may attach to the testimony of those for whom he "sees," and describes, persons and places unknown to himself. The evidence of individuals as to their own subjective experiences is accepted by psychologists in other departments of the study. {66}



CHAPTER IV

Veracious Waking Hallucinations not recognised by Science; or explained by Coincidence, Imposture, False Memory. A Veracious Hallucination popularly called a Wraith or Ghost. Example of Unveracious Hallucination. The Family Coach. Ghosts' Clothes and other Properties and Practices; how explained. Case of Veracious Hallucination. Riding Home from Mess. Another Case. The Bright Scar. The Vision and the Portrait. Such Stories not usually believed. Cases of Touch: The Restraining Hand. Of Hearing: The Benedictine's Voices; The Voice in the Bath-room. Other "Warnings". The Maoris. The Man at the Lift. Appearances Coincident with Death. Others not Coincident with Anything.

In "crystal-gazing" anybody can make experiments for himself and among such friends as he thinks he can trust. They are hallucinations consciously sought for, and as far as possible, provoked or induced by taking certain simple measures. Unsought, spontaneous waking hallucinations, according to the result of Mr. Galton's researches, though not nearly so common as dreams, are as much facts of sane mental experience. Now every ghost or wraith is a hallucination. You see your wife in the dining-room when she really is in the drawing- room; you see your late great-great-grandfather anywhere. Neither person is really present. The first appearance in popular language is a "wraith"; the second is a "ghost" in ordinary speech. Both are hallucinations.

So far Mr. Galton would go, but mark what follows! Everybody allows the existence of dreams, but comparatively few believe in dream stories of veracious dreams. So every scientific man believes in hallucinations, {68} but few believe in veracious hallucinations. A veracious hallucination is, for our purpose, one which communicates (as veracious dreams do) information not otherwise known, or, at least, not known to the knower to be known. The communication of the knowledge may be done by audible words, with or without an actual apparition, or with an apparition, by words or gestures. Again, if a hallucination of Jones's presence tallies with a great crisis in Jones's life, or with his death, the hallucination is so far veracious in that, at least, it does not seem meaningless. Or if Jones's appearance has some unwonted feature not known to the seer, but afterwards proved to be correct in fact, that is veracious. Next, if several persons successively in the same place, or simultaneously, have a similar hallucination not to be accounted for physically, that is, if not a veracious, a curious hallucination. Once more, if a hallucinatory figure is afterwards recognised in a living person previously unknown, or a portrait previously unseen, that (if the recognition be genuine) is a veracious hallucination. The vulgar call it a wraith of the living, or a ghost of the dead.

Here follow two cases. The first, The Family Coach, {69a} gave no verified intelligence, and would be styled a "subjective hallucination". The second contributed knowledge of facts not previously known to the witness, and so the vulgar would call it a ghost. Both appearances were very rich and full of complicated detail. Indeed, any ghost that wears clothes is a puzzle. Nobody but savages thinks that clothes have ghosts, but Tom Sawyer conjectures that ghosts' clothes "are made of ghost stuff".

As a rule, not very much is seen of a ghost; he is "something of a shadowy being". Yet we very seldom hear of a ghost stark naked; that of Sergeant Davies, murdered in 1749, is one of three or four examples in civilised life. {69b} Hence arises the old question, "How are we to account for the clothes of ghosts?" One obvious reply is that there is no ghost at all, only a hallucination. We do not see people naked, as a rule, in our dreams; and hallucinations, being waking dreams, conform to the same rule. If a ghost opens a door or lifts a curtain in our sight, that, too, is only part of the illusion. The door did not open; the curtain was not lifted. Nay, if the wrist or hand of the seer is burned or withered, as in a crowd of stories, the ghost's hand did not produce the effect. It was produced in the same way as when a hypnotised patient is told that "his hand is burned," his fancy then begets real blisters, or so we are informed, truly or not. The stigmata of St. Francis and others are explained in the same way. {70} How ghosts pull bedclothes off and make objects fly about is another question: in any case the ghosts are not seen in the act.

Thus the clothes of ghosts, their properties, and their actions affecting physical objects, are not more difficult to explain than a naked ghost would be, they are all the "stuff that dreams are made of". But occasionally things are carried to a great pitch, as when a ghost drives off in a ghostly dogcart, with a ghostly horse, whip and harness. Of this complicated kind we give two examples; the first reckons as a "subjective," the second as a veracious hallucination.

THE OLD FAMILY COACH

A distinguished and accomplished country gentleman and politician, of scientific tastes, was riding in the New Forest, some twelve miles from the place where he was residing. In a grassy glade he discovered that he did not very clearly know his way to a country town which he intended to visit. At this moment, on the other side of some bushes a carriage drove along, and then came into clear view where there was a gap in the bushes. Mr. Hyndford saw it perfectly distinctly; it was a slightly antiquated family carriage, the sides were in that imitation of wicker work on green panel which was once so common. The coachman was a respectable family servant, he drove two horses: two old ladies were in the carriage, one of them wore a hat, the other a bonnet. They passed, and then Mr. Hyndford, going through the gap in the bushes, rode after them to ask his way. There was no carriage in sight, the avenue ended in a cul-de-sac of tangled brake, and there were no traces of wheels on the grass. Mr. Hyndford rode back to his original point of view, and looked for any object which could suggest the illusion of one old-fashioned carriage, one coachman, two horses and two elderly ladies, one in a hat and one in a bonnet. He looked in vain—and that is all!

Nobody in his senses would call this appearance a ghostly one. The name, however, would be applied to the following tale of

RIDING HOME FROM MESS

In 1854, General Barter, C.B., was a subaltern in the 75th Regiment, and was doing duty at the hill station of Murree in the Punjaub. He lived in a house built recently by a Lieutenant B., who died, as researches at the War Office prove, at Peshawur on 2nd January, 1854. The house was on a spur of the hill, three or four hundred yards under the only road, with which it communicated by a "bridle path," never used by horsemen. That path ended in a precipice; a footpath led into the bridle path from Mr. Barter's house.

One evening Mr. Barter had a visit from a Mr. and Mrs. Deane, who stayed till near eleven o'clock. There was a full moon, and Mr. Barter walked to the bridle path with his friends, who climbed it to join the road. He loitered with two dogs, smoking a cigar, and just as he turned to go home, he heard a horse's hoofs coming down the bridle path. At a bend of the path a tall hat came into view, then round the corner, the wearer of the hat, who rode a pony and was attended by two native grooms. "At this time the two dogs came, and crouching at my side, gave low frightened whimpers. The moon was at the full, a tropical moon, so bright that you could see to read a newspaper by its light, and I saw the party above me advance as plainly as if it were noon-day; they were above me some eight or ten feet on the bridle road. . . . On the party came, . . . and now I had better describe them. The rider was in full dinner dress, with white waistcoat and a tall chimney-pot hat, and he sat on a powerful hill pony (dark-brown, with black mane and tail) in a listless sort of way, the reins hanging loosely from both hands." Grooms led the pony and supported the rider. Mr. Barter, knowing that there was no place they could go to but his own house, cried "Quon hai?" (who is it?), adding in English, "Hullo, what the devil do you want here?" The group halted, the rider gathered up the reins with both hands, and turning, showed Mr. Barter the known features of the late Lieutenant B.

He was very pale, the face was a dead man's face, he was stouter than when Mr. Barter knew him and he wore a dark Newgate fringe.

Mr. Barter dashed up the bank, the earth thrown up in making the bridle path crumbled under him, he fell, scrambled on, reached the bridle path where the group had stopped, and found nobody. Mr. Barter ran up the path for a hundred yards, as nobody could go down it except over a precipice, and neither heard nor saw anything. His dogs did not accompany him.

Next day Mr. Barter gently led his friend Deane to talk of Lieutenant B., who said that the lieutenant "grew very bloated before his death, and while on the sick list he allowed the fringe to grow in spite of all we could say to him, and I believe he was buried with it". Mr. Barter then asked where he got the pony, describing it minutely.

"He bought him at Peshawur, and killed him one day, riding in his reckless fashion down the hill to Trete."

Mr. Barter and his wife often heard the horse's hoofs later, though he doubts if any one but B. had ever ridden the bridle path. His Hindoo bearer he found one day armed with a lattie, being determined to waylay the sound, which "passed him like a typhoon". {74} Here the appearance gave correct information unknown previously to General Barter, namely, that Lieutenant B. grew stout and wore a beard before his death, also that he had owned a brown pony, with black mane and tail. Even granting that the ghosts of the pony and lieutenant were present (both being dead), we are not informed that the grooms were dead also. The hallucination, on the theory of "mental telegraphy," was telegraphed to General Barter's mind from some one who had seen Lieutenant B. ride home from mess not very sober, or from the mind of the defunct lieutenant, or, perhaps, from that of the deceased pony. The message also reached and alarmed General Barter's dogs.

Something of the same kind may or may not explain Mr. Hyndford's view of the family coach, which gave no traceable information.

The following story, in which an appearance of the dead conveyed information not known to the seer, and so deserving to be called veracious, is a little ghastly.

THE BRIGHT SCAR

In 1867, Miss G., aged eighteen, died suddenly of cholera in St. Louis. In 1876 a brother, F. G., who was much attached to her, had done a good day's business in St. Joseph. He was sending in his orders to his employers (he is a commercial traveller) and was smoking a cigar, when he became conscious that some one was sitting on his left, with one arm on the table. It was his dead sister. He sprang up to embrace her (for even on meeting a stranger whom we take for a dead friend, we never realise the impossibility in the half moment of surprise) but she was gone. Mr. G. stood there, the ink wet on his pen, the cigar lighted in his hand, the name of his sister on his lips. He had noted her expression, features, dress, the kindness of her eyes, the glow of the complexion, and what he had never seen before, a bright red scratch on the right side of her face.

Mr. G. took the next train home to St. Louis, and told the story to his parents. His father was inclined to ridicule him, but his mother nearly fainted. When she could control herself, she said that, unknown to any one, she had accidentally scratched the face of the dead, apparently with the pin of her brooch, while arranging something about the corpse. She had obliterated the scratch with powder, and had kept the fact to herself. "She told me she knew at least that I had seen my sister." A few weeks later Mrs. G. died. {75}

Here the information existed in one living mind, the mother's, and if there is any "mental telegraphy," may thence have been conveyed to Mr. F. G.

Another kind of cases which may be called veracious, occurs when the ghost seer, after seeing the ghost, recognises it in a portrait not previously beheld. Of course, allowance must be made for fancy, and for conscious or unconscious hoaxing. You see a spook in Castle Dangerous. You then recognise the portrait in the hall, or elsewhere. The temptation to recognise the spook rather more clearly than you really do, is considerable, just as one is tempted to recognise the features of the Stuarts in the royal family, of the parents in a baby, or in any similar case.

Nothing is more common in literary ghost stories than for somebody to see a spectre and afterwards recognise him or her in a portrait not before seen. There is an early example in Sir Walter Scott's Tapestried Chamber, which was told to him by Miss Anna Seward. Another such tale is by Theophile Gautier. In an essay on Illusions by Mr. James Sully, a case is given. A lady (who corroborated the story to the present author) was vexed all night by a spectre in armour. Next morning she saw, what she had not previously observed, a portrait of the spectre in the room. Mr. Sully explains that she had seen the portrait unconsciously, and dreamed of it. He adds the curious circumstance that other people have had the same experience in the same room, which his explanation does not cover. The following story is published by the Society for Psychical Research, attested by the seer and her husband, whose real names are known, but not published. {76}

THE VISION AND THE PORTRAIT

Mrs. M. writes (December 15, 1891) that before her vision she had heard nothing about hauntings in the house occupied by herself and her husband, and nothing about the family sorrows of her predecessors there.

"One night, on retiring to my bedroom about 11 o'clock, I thought I heard a peculiar moaning sound, and some one sobbing as if in great distress of mind. I listened very attentively, and still it continued; so I raised the gas in my bedroom, and then went to the window on the landing, drew the blind aside, and there on the grass was a very beautiful young girl in a kneeling posture, before a soldier in a general's uniform, sobbing and clasping her hands together, entreating for pardon, but alas! he only waved her away from him. So much did I feel for the girl that I ran down the staircase to the door opening upon the lawn, and begged her to come in and tell me her sorrow. The figures then disappeared gradually, as in a dissolving view. Not in the least nervous did I feel then; went again to my bedroom, took a sheet of writing-paper, and wrote down what I had seen." {77}

Mrs. M., whose husband was absent, began to feel nervous, and went to another lady's room.

She later heard of an old disgrace to the youngest daughter of the proud family, her predecessors in the house. The poor girl tried in vain to win forgiveness, especially from a near relative, a soldier, Sir X. Y.

"So vivid was my remembrance of the features of the soldier, that some months after the occurrence [of the vision] when I called with my husband at a house where there was a portrait of him, I stepped before it and said, 'Why, look! there is the General!' And sure enough it was."

Mrs. M. had not heard that the portrait was in the room where she saw it. Mr. M. writes that he took her to the house where he knew it to be without telling her of its existence. Mrs. M. turned pale when she saw it. Mr. M. knew the sad old story, but had kept it to himself. The family in which the disgrace occurred, in 1847 or 1848, were his relations. {78}

This vision was a veracious hallucination; it gave intelligence not otherwise known to Mrs. M., and capable of confirmation, therefore the appearances would be called "ghosts". The majority of people do not believe in the truth of any such stories of veracious hallucinations, just as they do not believe in veracious dreams. Mr. Galton, out of all his packets of reports of hallucinations, does not even allude to a veracious example, whether he has records of such a thing or not. Such reports, however, are ghost stories, "which we now proceed," or continue, "to narrate". The reader will do well to remember that while everything ghostly, and not to be explained by known physical facts, is in the view of science a hallucination, every hallucination is not a ghost for the purposes of story-telling. The hallucination must, for story-telling purposes, be veracious.

Following our usual method, we naturally begin with the anecdotes least trying to the judicial faculties, and most capable of an ordinary explanation. Perhaps of all the senses, the sense of touch, though in some ways the surest, is in others the most easily deceived. Some people who cannot call up a clear mental image of things seen, say a saltcellar, can readily call up a mental revival of the feeling of touching salt. Again, a slight accidental throb, or leap of a sinew or vein, may feel so like a touch that we turn round to see who touched us. These familiar facts go far to make the following tale more or less conceivable.

THE RESTRAINING HAND

"About twenty years ago," writes Mrs. Elliot, "I received some letters by post, one of which contained 15 pounds in bank notes. After reading the letters I went into the kitchen with them in my hands. I was alone at the time. . . . Having done with the letters, I made an effort to throw them into the fire, when I distinctly felt my hand arrested in the act. It was as though another hand were gently laid upon my own, pressing it back. Much surprised, I looked at my hand and then saw it contained, not the letters I had intended to destroy, but the bank notes, and that the letters were in the other hand. I was so surprised that I called out, 'Who's here?'" {80a}

Nobody will call this "the touch of a vanished hand". Part of Mrs. Elliot's mind knew what she was about, and started an unreal but veracious feeling to warn her. We shall come to plenty of Hands not so readily disposed of.

Next to touch, the sense most apt to be deceived is hearing. Every one who has listened anxiously for an approaching carriage, has often heard it come before it came. In the summer of 1896 the writer, with a lady and another companion, were standing on the veranda at the back of a house in Dumfriesshire, waiting for a cab to take one of them to the station. They heard a cab arrive and draw up, went round to the front of the house, saw the servant open the door and bring out the luggage, but wheeled vehicle there was none in sound or sight. Yet all four persons had heard it, probably by dint of expectation.

To hear articulate voices where there are none is extremely common in madness, {80b} but not very rare, as Mr. Galton shows, among the sane. When the voices are veracious, give unknown information, they are in the same case as truthful dreams. I offer a few from the experience, reported to me by himself, of a man of learning whom I shall call a Benedictine monk, though that is not his real position in life.

THE BENEDICTINE'S VOICES

My friend, as a lad, was in a strait between the choice of two professions. He prayed for enlightenment, and soon afterwards heard an internal voice, advising a certain course. "Did you act on it?" I asked.

"No; I didn't. I considered that in my circumstances it did not demand attention."

Later, when a man grown, he was in his study merely idling over some books on the table, when he heard a loud voice from a corner of the room assert that a public event of great importance would occur at a given date. It did occur. About the same time, being abroad, he was in great anxiety as to a matter involving only himself. Of this he never spoke to any one. On his return to England his mother said, "You were very wretched about so and so".

"How on earth did you know?"

"I heard —-'s voice telling me."

Now —- had died years before, in childhood.

In these cases the Benedictine's own conjecture and his mother's affection probably divined facts, which did not present themselves as thoughts in the ordinary way, but took the form of unreal voices.

There are many examples, as of the girl in her bath who heard a voice say "Open the door" four times, did so, then fainted, and only escaped drowning by ringing the bell just before she swooned.

Of course she might not have swooned if she had not been alarmed by hearing the voices. These tales are dull enough, and many voices, like Dr. Johnson's mother's, when he heard her call his name, she being hundreds of miles away, lead to nothing and are not veracious. When they are veracious, as in the case of dreams, it may be by sheer accident.

In a similar class are "warnings" conveyed by the eye, not by the ear. The Maoris of New Zealand believe that if one sees a body lying across a path or oneself on the opposite side of a river, it is wiser to try another path and a different ford.

THE MAN AT THE LIFT

In the same way, in August, 1890, a lady in a Boston hotel in the dusk rang for the lift, walked along the corridor and looked out of a window, started to run to the door of the lift, saw a man in front of it, stopped, and when the lighted lift came up, found that the door was wide open and that, had she run on as she intended, she would have fallen down the well. Here part of her mind may have known that the door was open, and started a ghost (for there was no real man there) to stop her. Pity that these things do not occur more frequently. They do—in New Zealand. {82}

These are a few examples of useful veracious waking dreams. The sort of which we hear most are "wraiths". A, when awake, meets B, who is dead or dying or quite well at a distance. The number of these stories is legion. To these we advance, under their Highland title, spirits of the living.



CHAPTER V

"Spirits of the Living." Mistakes of Identity. Followed by Arrival of Real Person. "Arrivals." Mark Twain's Phantom Lady. Phantom Dogcart. Influence of Expectant Attention. Goethe. Shelley. The Wraith of the Czarina. Queen Elizabeth's Wraith. Second Sight. Case at Ballachulish. Experiments in sending Wraiths. An "Astral Body". Evidence discussed. Miss Russell's Case. "Spirits of the Dying." Maori Examples. Theory of Chance Coincidence. In Tavistock Place. The Wynyard Wraith. Lord Brougham's Wraith Story. Lord Brougham's Logic. The Dying Mother. Comparison with the Astral Body. The Vision of the Bride. Animals as affected by the supposed Presence of Apparitions. Examples. Transition to Appearances of the Dead.

"Spirits of the living" is the Highland term for the appearances of people who are alive and well—but elsewhere. The common Highland belief is that they show themselves to second-sighted persons, very frequently before the arrival of a stranger or a visitor, expected or unexpected. Probably many readers have had the experience of meeting an acquaintance in the street. He passes us, and within a hundred yards we again meet and talk with our friend. When he is of very marked appearance, or has any strong peculiarity, the experience is rather perplexing. Perhaps a few bits of hallucination are sprinkled over a real object. This ordinary event leads on to what are called "Arrivals," that is when a person is seen, heard and perhaps spoken to in a place to which he is travelling, but whither he has not yet arrived. Mark Twain gives an instance in his own experience. At a large crowded reception he saw approaching him in the throng a lady whom he had known and liked many years before. When she was near him, he lost sight of her, but met her at supper, dressed as he had seen her in the "levee". At that moment she was travelling by railway to the town in which he was. {85a}

A large number of these cases have been printed. {85b} In one case a gentleman and lady from their window saw his brother and sister-in-law drive past, with a horse which they knew had not been out for some weeks. The seers were presently joined by the visitors' daughter, who had met the party on the road, she having just left them at their house. Ten minutes later the real pair arrived, horse and all. {85c}

This last affair is one of several tales of "Phantom Coaches," not only heard but seen, the coach being a coach of the living. In 1893 the author was staying at a Highland castle, when one of the ladies observed to her nephew, "So you and Susan did drive in the dogcart; I saw you pass my window". "No, we didn't; but we spoke of doing it." The lady then mentioned minute details of the dress and attitudes of her relations as they passed her window, where the drive turned from the hall door through the park; but, in fact, no such journey had been made. Dr. Hack Tuke published the story of the "Arrival" of Dr. Boase at his house a quarter of an hour before he came, the people who saw him supposing him to be in Paris. {86}

When a person is seen in "Arrival" cases before he arrives, the affair is not so odd if he is expected. Undoubtedly, expectation does sometimes conjure up phantasms, and the author once saw (as he supposed) a serious accident occur which in fact did not take place, though it seemed unavoidable.

Curiously enough, this creation of phantasms by expectant attention seems to be rare where "ghosts" are expected. The author has slept in several haunted houses, but has never seen what he was led to expect. In many instances, as in "The Lady in Black" (infra), a ghost who is a frequent visitor is never seen when people watch for her. Among the many persons who have had delusions as to the presence of the dead, very few have been hoping, praying for and expecting them.

"I look for ghosts, but none will force Their way to me: 'Tis falsely said That there was ever intercourse Between the living and the dead, For surely then I should have sight Of him I wait for day and night With love and longings infinite."

The Affliction of Margaret has been the affliction of most of us. There are curious historical examples of these appearances of the living. Goethe declares that he once met himself at a certain place in a certain dress, and several years later found himself there in that costume. Shelley was seen by his friends at Lerici to pass along a balcony whence there was no exit. However, he could not be found there. The story of the wraith of Catherine the Great is variously narrated. We give it as told by an eye-witness, the Comte de Ribaupierre, about 1862 to Lady Napier and Ettrick. The Count, in 1862, was a very old man, and more than thirty years have passed since he gave the tale to Lady Napier, whose memory retains it in the following form:—

THE WRAITH OF THE CZARINA

"In the exercise of his duties as one of the pages-in-waiting, Ribaupierre followed one day his august mistress into the throne-room of the palace. When the Empress, accompanied by the high officers of her court and the ladies of her household, came in sight of the chair of state which she was about to occupy, she suddenly stopped, and to the horror and astonished awe of her courtiers, she pointed to a visionary being seated on the imperial throne. The occupant of the chair was an exact counterpart of herself. All saw it and trembled, but none dared to move towards the mysterious presentment of their sovereign.

"After a moment of dead silence the great Catherine raised her voice and ordered her guard to advance and fire on the apparition. The order was obeyed, a mirror beside the throne was shattered, the vision had disappeared, and the Empress, with no sign of emotion, took the chair from which her semblance had passed away." It is a striking barbaric scene!

"Spirits of the living" of this kind are common enough. In the Highlands "second sight" generally means a view of an event or accident some time before its occurrence. Thus an old man was sitting with a little boy on a felled tree beside a steep track in a quarry at Ballachulish. Suddenly he jerked the boy to one side, and threw himself down on the further side of the tree. While the boy stared, the old man slowly rose, saying, "The spirits of the living are strong to-day!" He had seen a mass of rock dashing along, killing some quarrymen and tearing down the path. The accident occurred next day. It is needless to dwell on second sight, which is not peculiar to Celts, though the Highlanders talk more about it than other people.

These appearances of the living but absent, whether caused by some mental action of the person who appears or not, are, at least, unconscious on his part. {88} But a few cases occur in which a living person is said, by a voluntary exertion of mind, to have made himself visible to a friend at a distance. One case is vouched for by Baron von Schrenck-Notzig, a German psychologist, who himself made the experiment with success. Others are narrated by Dr. Gibotteau. A curious tale is told by several persons as follows:—

AN "ASTRAL BODY"

Mr. Sparks and Mr. Cleave, young men of twenty and nineteen, were accustomed to "mesmerise" each other in their dormitory at Portsmouth, where they were students of naval engineering. Mr. Sparks simply stared into Mr. Cleave's eyes as he lay on his bed till he "went off". The experiments seemed so curious that witnesses were called, Mr. Darley and Mr. Thurgood. On Friday, 15th January, 1886, Mr. Cleave determined to try to see, when asleep, a young lady at Wandsworth to whom he was in the habit of writing every Sunday. He also intended, if possible, to make her see him. On awaking, he said that he had seen her in the dining-room of her house, that she had seemed to grow restless, had looked at him, and then had covered her face with her hands. On Monday he tried again, and he thought he had frightened her, as after looking at him for a few minutes she fell back in her chair in a kind of faint. Her little brother was in the room with her at the time. On Tuesday next the young lady wrote, telling Mr. Cleave that she had been startled by seeing him on Friday evening (this is an error), and again on Monday evening, "much clearer," when she nearly fainted.

All this Mr. Sparks wrote to Mr. Gurney in the same week. He was inviting instructions on hypnotic experiments, and "launched a letter into space," having read something vague about Mr. Gurney's studies in the newspapers. The letter, after some adventures, arrived, and on 15th March Mr. Cleave wrote his account, Mr. Darley and Mr. Thurgood corroborating as to their presence during the trance and as to Mr. Cleave's statement when he awoke. Mr. Cleave added that he made experiments "for five nights running" before seeing the lady. The young lady's letter of 19th January, 1886, is also produced (postmark, Portsmouth, 20th January). But the lady mentions her first vision of Mr. Cleave as on last Tuesday (not Friday), and her second, while she was alone with her little brother, at supper on Monday. "I was so frightened that I nearly fainted."

These are all young people. It may be said that all five were concerned in a complicated hoax on Mr. Gurney. Nor would such a hoax argue any unusual moral obliquity. Surtees of Mainsforth, in other respects an honourable man, took in Sir Walter Scott with forged ballads, and never undeceived his friend. Southey played off a hoax with his book The Doctor. Hogg, Lockhart, and Wilson, with Allan Cunningham and many others, were constantly engaged in such mystifications, and a "ghost-hunter" might seem a fair butt.

But the very discrepancy in Miss —-'s letter is a proof of fairness. Her first vision of Mr. Cleave was on "Tuesday last". Mr. Cleave's first impression of success was on the Friday following.

But he had been making the experiment for five nights previous, including the Tuesday of Miss —-'s letter. Had the affair been a hoax, Miss —- would either have been requested by him to re-write her letter, putting Friday for Tuesday, or what is simpler, Mr. Sparks would have adopted her version and written "Tuesday" in place of "Friday" in his first letter to Mr. Gurney. The young lady, naturally, requested Mr. Cleave not to try his experiment on her again.

A similar case is that of Mrs. Russell, who tried successfully, when awake and in Scotland, to appear to one of her family in Germany. The sister corroborates and says, "Pray don't come appearing to me again". {91a}

These spirits of the living lead to the subject of spirits of the dying. No kind of tale is so common as that of dying people appearing at a distance. Hundreds have been conscientiously published. {91b} The belief is prevalent among the Maoris of New Zealand, where the apparition is regarded as a proof of death. {91c} Now there is nothing in savage philosophy to account for this opinion of the Maoris. A man's "spirit" leaves his body in dreams, savages think, and as dreaming is infinitely more common than death, the Maoris should argue that the appearance is that of a man's spirit wandering in his sleep. However, they, like many Europeans, associate a man's apparition with his death. Not being derived from their philosophy, this habit may be deduced from their experience.

As there are, undeniably, many examples of hallucinatory appearances of persons in perfect health and ordinary circumstances, the question has been asked whether there are more cases of an apparition coinciding with death than, according to the doctrine of chances, there ought to be. Out of about 18,000 answers to questions on this subject, has been deduced the conclusion that the deaths do coincide with the apparitions to an extent beyond mere accident. Even if we had an empty hallucination for every case coinciding with death, we could not set the coincidences down to mere chance. As well might we say that if "at the end of an hour's rifle practice at long-distance range, the record shows that for every shot that has hit the bull's eye, another has missed the target, therefore the shots that hit the target did so by accident." {92} But as empty hallucinations are more likely to be forgotten than those which coincide with a death; as exaggeration creeps in, as the collectors of evidence are naturally inclined to select and question people whom they know to have a good story to tell, the evidence connecting apparitions, voices, and so on with deaths is not likely to be received with favour.

One thing must be remembered as affecting the theory that the coincidence between the wraith and the death is purely an accident. Everybody dreams and out of the innumerable dreams of mankind, a few must hit the mark by a fluke. But hallucinations are not nearly so common as dreams. Perhaps, roughly speaking, one person in ten has had what he believes to be a waking hallucination. Therefore, so to speak, compared with dreams, but a small number of shots of this kind are fired. Therefore, bull's eyes (the coincidence between an appearance and a death) are infinitely less likely to be due to chance in the case of waking hallucinations than in the case of dreams, which all mankind are firing off every night of their lives. Stories of these coincidences between appearances and deaths are as common as they are dull. Most people come across them in the circle of their friends. They are all very much alike, and make tedious reading. We give a few which have some picturesque features.

IN TAVISTOCK PLACE {93}

"In the latter part of the autumn of 1878, between half-past three and four in the morning, I was leisurely walking home from the house of a sick friend. A middle-aged woman, apparently a nurse, was slowly following, going in the same direction. We crossed Tavistock Square together, and emerged simultaneously into Tavistock Place. The streets and squares were deserted, the morning bright and calm, my health excellent, nor did I suffer from anxiety or fatigue. A man suddenly appeared, striding up Tavistock Place, coming towards me, and going in a direction opposite to mine. When first seen he was standing exactly in front of my own door (5 Tavistock Place). Young and ghastly pale, he was dressed in evening clothes, evidently made by a foreign tailor. Tall and slim, he walked with long measured strides noiselessly. A tall white hat, covered thickly with black crape, and an eyeglass, completed the costume of this strange form. The moonbeams falling on the corpse-like features revealed a face well known to me, that of a friend and relative. The sole and only person in the street beyond myself and this being was the woman already alluded to. She stopped abruptly, as if spell-bound, then rushing towards the man, she gazed intently and with horror unmistakable on his face, which was now upturned to the heavens and smiling ghastly. She indulged in her strange contemplation but during very few seconds, then with extraordinary and unexpected speed for her weight and age she ran away with a terrific shriek and yell. This woman never have I seen or heard of since, and but for her presence I could have explained the incident: called it, say, subjection of the mental powers to the domination of physical reflex action, and the man's presence could have been termed a false impression on the retina.

"A week after this event, news of this very friend's death reached me. It occurred on the morning in question. From the family I learned that according to the rites of the Greek Church and the custom of the country he resided in, he was buried in his evening clothes made abroad by a foreign tailor, and strange to say, he wore goloshes over his boots, according also to the custom of the country he died in. . . . When in England, he lived in Tavistock Place, and occupied my rooms during my absence." {95a}

THE WYNYARD WRAITH {95b}

"In the month of November (1785 or 1786), Sir John Sherbrooke and Colonel Wynyard were sitting before dinner in their barrack room at Sydney Cove, in America. It was duskish, and a candle was placed on a table at a little distance. A figure dressed in plain clothes and a good round hat, passed gently between the above people and the fire. While passing, Sir J. Sherbrooke exclaimed, 'God bless my soul, who's that?'

"Almost at the same moment Colonel W. said, 'That's my brother John Wynyard, and I am sure he is dead'. Colonel W. was much agitated, and cried and sobbed a great deal. Sir John said, 'The fellow has a devilish good hat; I wish I had it'. (Hats were not to be got there and theirs were worn out.) They immediately got up (Sir John was on crutches, having broken his leg), took a candle and went into the bedroom, into which the figure had entered. They searched the bed and every corner of the room to no effect; the windows were fastened up with mortar. . . .

"They received no communication from England for about five months, when a letter from Mr. Rush, the surgeon (Coldstream Guards), announced the death of John Wynyard at the moment, as near as could be ascertained, when the figure appeared. In addition to this extraordinary circumstance, Sir John told me that two years and a half afterwards he was walking with Lilly Wynyard (a brother of Colonel W.) in London, and seeing somebody on the other side of the way, he recognised, he thought, the person who had appeared to him and Colonel Wynyard in America. Lilly Wynyard said that the person pointed out was a Mr. Eyre (Hay?), that he and John Wynyard were frequently mistaken for each other, and that money had actually been paid to this Mr. Eyre in mistake."

A famous tale of an appearance is Lord Brougham's. His Lordship was not reckoned precisely a veracious man; on the other hand, this was not the kind of fable he was likely to tell. He was brought up under the regime of common-sense. "On all such subjects my father was very sceptical," he says. To disbelieve Lord Brougham we must suppose either that he wilfully made a false entry in his diary in 1799, or that in preparing his Autobiography in 1862, he deliberately added a falsehood—and then explained his own marvel away!

LORD BROUGHAM'S STORY

"December 19, 1799.

" . . . At one in the morning, arriving at a decent inn (in Sweden), we decided to stop for the night, and found a couple of comfortable rooms. Tired with the cold of yesterday, I was glad to take advantage of a hot bath before I turned in. And here a most remarkable thing happened to me—so remarkable that I must tell the story from the beginning.

"After I left the High School, I went with G—-, my most intimate friend, to attend the classes in the University. . . . We actually committed the folly of drawing up an agreement, written with our blood, to the effect that whichever of us died the first should appear to the other, and thus solve any doubts we had entertained of 'the life after death'. G—- went to India, years passed, and," says Lord Brougham, "I had nearly forgotten his existence. I had taken, as I have said, a warm bath, and while lying in it and enjoying the comfort of the heat, I turned my head round, looking towards the chair on which I had deposited my clothes, as I was about to get out of the bath. On the chair sat G—-, looking calmly at me. How I got out of the bath I know not, but on recovering my senses I found myself sprawling on the floor. The apparition, or whatever it was that had taken the likeness of G—-, had disappeared. . . . So strongly was I affected by it that I have here written down the whole history, with the date, 19th December, and all the particulars as they are now fresh before me. No doubt I had fallen asleep" (he has just said that he was awake and on the point of leaving the bath), "and that the appearance presented so distinctly to my eyes was a dream I cannot for a moment doubt. . . ."

On 16th October, 1862, Lord Brougham copied this extract for his Autobiography, and says that on his arrival in Edinburgh he received a letter from India, announcing that G—- had died on 19th December. He remarks "singular coincidence!" and adds that, considering the vast number of dreams, the number of coincidences is perhaps fewer than a fair calculation of chances would warrant us to expect.

This is a concession to common-sense, and argues an ignorance of the fact that sane and (apparently) waking men may have hallucinations. On the theory that we may have inappreciable moments of sleep when we think ourselves awake, it is not an ordinary but an extraordinary coincidence that Brougham should have had that peculiar moment of the "dream" of G—- on the day or night of G—-'s death, while the circumstance that he had made a compact with G—- multiplies the odds against accident in a ratio which mathematicians may calculate. Brougham was used to dreams, like other people; he was not shocked by them. This "dream" "produced such a shock that I had no inclination to talk about it". Even on Brougham's showing, then, this dream was a thing unique in his experience, and not one of the swarm of visions of sleep. Thus his including it among these, while his whole language shows that he himself did not really reckon it among these, is an example of the fallacies of common-sense. He completes his fallacy by saying, "It is not much more wonderful than that a person whom we had no reason to expect should appear to us at the very moment we had been thinking or speaking of him". But Lord Brougham had not been speaking or thinking of G—-; "there had been nothing to call him to my recollection," he says. To give his logic any value, he should constantly when (as far as he knew) awake, have had dreams that "shocked" him. Then one coincidence would have had no assignable cause save ordinary accident.

If Lord Brougham fabled in 1799 or in 1862, he did so to make a "sensation". And then he tried to undo it by arguing that his experience was a thoroughly commonplace affair.

We now give a very old story, "The Dying Mother". If the reader will compare it with Mr. Cleave's case, "An Astral Body," in this chapter, he will be struck by the resemblance. Mr. Cleave and Mrs. Goffe were both in a trance. Both wished to see persons at a distance. Both saw, and each was seen, Mrs. Goffe by her children's nurse; Mr. Cleave by the person whom he wished to see, but not by a small boy also present.

THE DYING MOTHER {101}

"Mary, the wife of John Goffe of Rochester, being afflicted with a long illness, removed to her father's house at West Mulling, about nine miles from her own. There she died on 4th June, this present year, 1691.

"The day before her departure (death) she grew very impatiently desirous to see her two children, whom she had left at home to the care of a nurse. She prayed her husband to 'hire a horse, for she must go home and die with the children'. She was too ill to be moved, but 'a minister who lives in the town was with her at ten o'clock that night, to whom she expressed good hopes in the mercies of God and a willingness to die'. 'But' said she, 'it is my misery that I cannot see my children.'

"Between one and two o'clock in the morning, she fell into a trance. One, widow Turner, who watched with her that night, says that her eyes were open and fixed and her jaw fallen. Mrs. Turner put her hand upon her mouth and nostrils, but could perceive no breath. She thought her to be in a fit; and doubted whether she were dead or alive.

"The next morning the dying woman told her mother that she had been at home with her children. . . . 'I was with them last night when I was asleep.'

"The nurse at Rochester, widow Alexander by name, affirms, and says she will take her oath on't before a Magistrate and receive the sacrament upon it, that a little before two o'clock that morning she saw the likeness of the said Mary Goffe come out of the next chamber (where the elder child lay in a bed by itself) the door being left open, and stood by her bedside for about a quarter of an hour; the younger child was there lying by her. Her eyes moved and her mouth went, but she said nothing. The nurse, moreover, says that she was perfectly awake; it was then daylight, being one of the longest days in the year. She sat up in bed and looked steadfastly on the apparition. In that time she heard the bridge clock strike two, and a while after said, 'In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, what art thou?' Thereupon the apparition removed and went away; she slipped on her clothes and followed, but what became on't she cannot tell.

"Mrs. Alexander then walked out of doors till six, when she persuaded some neighbours to let her in. She told her adventure; they failed to persuade her that she had dreamed it. On the same day the neighbour's wife, Mrs. Sweet, went to West Mulling, saw Mrs. Goffe before her death, and heard from Mrs. Goffe's mother the story of the daughter's dream of her children, Mrs. Sweet not having mentioned the nurse's story of the apparition." That poor Mrs. Goffe walked to Rochester and returned undetected, a distance of eighteen miles is difficult to believe.

Goethe has an obiter dictum on the possibility of intercommunion without the aid of the ordinary senses, between the souls of lovers. Something of the kind is indicated in anecdotes of dreams dreamed in common by husband and wife, but, in such cases, it may be urged that the same circumstance, or the same noise or other disturbing cause, may beget the same dream in both. A better instance is

THE VISION OF THE BRIDE

Colonel Meadows Taylor writes, in The Story of my Life (vol. ii., p. 32): "The determination (to live unmarried) was the result of a very curious and strange incident that befel me during one of my marches to Hyderabad. I have never forgotten it, and it returns to this day to my memory with a strangely vivid effect that I can neither repel nor explain. I purposely withhold the date of the year. In my very early life I had been deeply and devotedly attached to one in England, and only relinquished the hope of one day winning her when the terrible order came out that no furlough to Europe would be granted.

"One evening I was at the village of Dewas Kudea, after a very long afternoon and evening march from Muktul, and I lay down very weary; but the barking of village dogs, the baying of jackals and over- fatigue and heat prevented sleep, and I was wide awake and restless. Suddenly, for my tent door was wide open, I saw the face and figure so familiar to me, but looking older, and with a sad and troubled expression; the dress was white and seemed covered with a profusion of lace and glistened in the bright moonlight. The arms were stretched out, and a low plaintive cry of 'Do not let me go! Do not let me go!' reached me. I sprang forward, but the figure receded, growing fainter and fainter till I could see it no more, but the low plaintive tones still sounded. I had run barefooted across the open space where my tents were pitched, very much to the astonishment of the sentry on guard, but I returned to my tent without speaking to him. I wrote to my father. I wished to know whether there were any hope for me. He wrote back to me these words: 'Too late, my dear son—on the very day of the vision you describe to me, A. was married'."

The colonel did not keep his determination not to marry, for his Life is edited by his daughter, who often heard her father mention the incident, "precisely in the same manner, and exactly as it is in the book". {103}

If thinking of friends and lovers, lost or dead, could bring their forms and voices before the eye and ear of flesh, there would be a world of hallucinations around us. "But it wants heaven-sent moments for this skill," and few bridal nights send a vision and a voice to the bed of a wakeful lover far away.

Stories of this kind, appearances of the living or dying really at a distance, might be multiplied to any extent. They are all capable of explanation, if we admit the theory of telepathy, of a message sent by an unknown process from one living man's mind to another. Where more than one person shares the vision, we may suppose that the influence comes directly from A to B, C and D, or comes from A to B, and is by him unconsciously "wired" on to B and C, or is "suggested" to them by B's conduct or words.

In that case animals may be equally affected, thus, if B seems alarmed, that may frighten his dog, or the alarm of a dog, caused by some noise or smell, heard or smelt by him, may frighten B, C and D, and make one or all of them see a ghost.

Popular opinion is strongly in favour of beasts seeing ghosts. The people of St. Kilda, according to Martin, held that cows shared the visions of second-sighted milk-maids. Horses are said to shy on the scene of murders. Scott's horse ran away (home) when Sir Walter saw the bogle near Ashiestiel. In a case given later the dog shut up in a room full of unexplained noises, yelled and whined. The same dog (an intimate friend of my own) bristled up his hair and growled before his master saw the Grey Lady. The Rev. J. G. Wood gives a case of a cat which nearly went mad when his mistress saw an apparition. Jeremy Taylor tells of a dog which got quite used to a ghost that often appeared to his master, and used to follow it. In "The Lady in Black," a dog would jump up and fawn on the ghost and then run away in a fright. Mr. Wesley's mastiff was much alarmed by the family ghost. Not to multiply cases, dogs and other animals are easily affected by whatever it is that makes people think a ghost is present, or by the conduct of the human beings on these occasions.

Absurd as the subject appears, there are stories of the ghosts of animals. These may be discussed later; meanwhile we pass from appearances of the living or dying to stories of appearances of the dead.



CHAPTER VI

Transition to Appearances of the Dead. Obvious Scientific Difficulties. Purposeless Character of Modern Ghosts. Theory of Dead Men's Dreams. Illustrated by Sleep-walking House-maid. Purposeful Character of the Old Ghost Stories. Probable Causes of the Difference between Old and New Ghost Stories. Only the most Dramatic were recorded. Or the Tales were embellished or invented. Practical Reasons for inventing them. The Daemon of Spraiton. Sources of Story of Sir George Villier's Ghost. Clarendon. Lilly, Douch. Wyndham. Wyndham's Letter. Sir Henry Wotton. Izaak Walton. Anthony Wood. A Wotton Dream proved Legendary. The Ghost that appeared to Lord Lyttleton. His Lordship's Own Ghost.

APPEARANCES OF THE DEAD

We now pass beyond the utmost limits to which a "scientific" theory of things ghostly can be pushed. Science admits, if asked, that it does not know everything. It is not inconceivable that living minds may communicate by some other channel than that of the recognised senses. Science now admits the fact of hypnotic influence, though, sixty years ago, Braid was not allowed to read a paper on it before the British Association. Even now the topic is not welcome. But perhaps only one eminent man of science declares that hypnotism is all imposture and malobservation. Thus it is not wholly beyond the scope of fancy to imagine that some day official science may glance at the evidence for "telepathy".

But the stories we have been telling deal with living men supposed to be influencing living men. When the dead are alleged to exercise a similar power, we have to suppose that some consciousness survives the grave, and manifests itself by causing hallucinations among the living. Instances of this have already been given in "The Ghost and the Portrait," "The Bright Scar" and "Riding Home after Mess". These were adduced as examples of veracity in hallucinations. Each appearance gave information to the seer which he did not previously possess. In the first case, the lady who saw the soldier and the suppliant did not know of their previous existence and melancholy adventure. In the second, the brother did not know that his dead sister's face had been scratched. In the third, the observer did not know that Lieutenant B. had grown a beard and acquired a bay pony with black mane and tail. But though the appearances were veracious, they were purposeless, and again, as in each case the information existed in living minds, it may have been wired on from them.

Thus the doctrine of telepathy puts a ghost of the dead in a great quandary. If he communicates no verifiable information, he may be explained as a mere empty illusion. If he does yield fresh information, and if that is known to any living mind, he and his intelligence may have been wired on from that mind. His only chance is to communicate facts which are proved to be true, facts which nobody living knew before. Now it is next to impossible to demonstrate that the facts communicated were absolutely unknown to everybody.

Far, however, from conveying unknown intelligence, most ghosts convey none at all, and appear to have no purpose whatever.

It will be observed that there was no traceable reason why the girl with a scar should appear to Mr. G., or the soldier and suppliant to Mrs. M., or Lieutenant B. to General Barker. The appearances came in a vague, casual, aimless way, just as the living and healthy clergyman appeared to the diplomatist. On St. Augustine's theory the dead persons who appeared may have known no more about the matter than did the living clergyman. It is not even necessary to suppose that the dead man was dreaming about the living person to whom, or about the place in which, he appeared. But on the analogy of the tales in which a dream or thought of the living seems to produce a hallucination of their presence in the minds of other and distant living people, so a dream of the dead may (it is urged) have a similar effect if "in that sleep of death such dreams may come". The idea occurred to Shakespeare! In any case the ghosts of our stories hitherto have been so aimless and purposeless as to resemble what we might imagine a dead man's dream to be.

This view of the case (that a "ghost" may be a reflection of a dead man's dream) will become less difficult to understand if we ask ourselves what natural thing most resembles the common idea of a ghost. You are reading alone at night, let us say, the door opens and a human figure glides into the room. To you it pays no manner of attention; it does not answer if you speak; it may trifle with some object in the chamber and then steal quietly out again.

It is the House-maid walking in her Sleep.

This perfectly accountable appearance, in its aimlessness, its unconsciousness, its irresponsiveness, is undeniably just like the common notion of a ghost. Now, if ordinary ghosts are not of flesh and blood, like the sleep-walking house-maid, yet are as irresponsive, as unconscious, and as vaguely wandering as she, then (if the dead are somewhat) a ghost may be a hallucination produced in the living by the unconscious action of the mind of the dreaming dead. The conception is at least conceivable. If adopted, merely for argument's sake, it would first explain the purposeless behaviour of ghosts, and secondly, relieve people who see ghosts of the impression that they see "spirits". In the Scotch phrase the ghost obviously "is not all there," any more than the sleep walker is intellectually "all there". This incomplete, incoherent presence is just what might be expected if a dreaming disembodied mind could affect an embodied mind with a hallucination.

But the good old-fashioned ghost stories are usually of another type. The robust and earnest ghosts of our ancestors "had their own purpose sun-clear before them," as Mr. Carlyle would have said. They knew what they wanted, asked for it, and saw that they got it.

As a rule their bodies were unburied, and so they demanded sepulture; or they had committed a wrong, and wished to make restitution; or they had left debts which they were anxious to pay; or they had advice, or warnings, or threats to communicate; or they had been murdered, and were determined to bring their assassins to the gibbet.

Why, we may ask, were the old ghost stories so different from the new? Well, first they were not all different. Again, probably only the more dramatic tales were as a rule recorded. Thirdly, many of the stories may have been either embellished—a fancied purpose being attributed to a purposeless ghost—or they may even have been invented to protect witnesses who gave information against murderers. Who could disobey a ghost?

In any case the old ghost stories are much more dramatic than the new. To them we turn, beginning with the appearances of Mr. and Mrs. Furze at Spraiton, in Devonshire, in 1682. Our author is Mr. Richard Bovet, in his Pandaemonium, or the Devil's Cloister opened (1683). The motive of the late Mr. Furze was to have some small debts paid; his wife's spectre was influenced by a jealousy of Mr. Furze's spectre's relations with another lady.

THE DAEMON OF SPRAITON IN DEVON {111} ANNO 1682

"About the month of November in the year 1682, in the parish of Spraiton, in the county of Devon, one Francis Fey (servant to Mr. Philip Furze) being in a field near the dwelling-house of his said master, there appeared unto him the resemblance of an aged gentleman like his master's father, with a pole or staff in his hand, resembling that he was wont to carry when living to kill the moles withal. The spectrum approached near the young man, whom you may imagin not a little surprized at the appearance of one that he knew to be dead, but the spectrum bid him not be afraid of him, but tell his master (who was his son) that several legacies which by his testament he had bequeathed were unpaid, naming ten shillings to one and ten shillings to another, both which persons he named to the young man, who replyed that the party he last named was dead, and so it could not be paid to him. The ghost answered he knew that, but it must be paid to the next relation, whom he also named. The spectrum likewise ordered him to carry twenty shillings to a gentlewoman, sister to the deceased, living near Totness in the said county, and promised, if these things were performed, to trouble him no further; but at the same time the spectrum, speaking of his second wife (who was also dead) called her wicked woman, though the gentleman who writ the letter knew her and esteemed her a very good woman. And (having thus related him his mind) the spectrum left the young man, who according to the direction of the spirit took care to see the small legacies satisfied, and carried the twenty shillings that was appointed to be paid the gentlewoman near Totness, but she utterly refused to receive it, being sent her (as she said) from the devil. The same night the young man lodging at her house, the aforesaid spectrum appeared to him again; whereupon the young man challenged his promise not to trouble him any more, saying he had performed all according to his appointment, but that the gentlewoman, his sister, would not receive the money.

"To which the spectrum replied that was true indeed; but withal directed the young man to ride to Totness and buy for her a ring of that value, which the spirit said she would accept of, which being provided accordingly, she received. Since the performance of which the ghost or apparition of the old gentleman hath seemed to be at rest, having never given the young man any further trouble.

"But the next day after having delivered the ring, the young man was riding home to his master's house, accompanyed by a servant of the gentlewoman's near Totness, and near about the time of their entrance (or a little before they came) into the parish of Spraiton aforesaid, there appeared to be upon the horse behind the young man, the resemblance of the second wife of the old gentleman spoken of before.

"This daemon often threw the young man off his horse, and cast him with such violence to the ground as was great astonishment, not only to the gentlewoman's servant (with him), but to divers others who were spectators of the frightful action, the ground resounding with great noise by reason of the incredible force with which he was cast upon it. At his coming into his master's yard, the horse which he rid, though very poor and out of case, leaped at one spring twenty-five foot, to the amazement of all that saw it. Soon after the she-spectre shewed herself to divers in the house, viz., the aforesaid young man, Mistress Thomasin Gidly, Ann Langdon, born in that parish, and a little child, which, by reason of the troublesomeness of the spirit, they were fain to remove from that house. She appeared sometimes in her own shape, sometimes in forms very horrid; now and then like a monstrous dog belching out fire; at another time it flew out at the window, in the shape of a horse, carrying with it only one pane of glass and a small piece of iron.

"One time the young man's head was thrust into a very strait place betwixt a bed's head and a wall, and forced by the strength of divers men to be removed thence, and that not without being much hurt and bruised, so that much blood appeared about it: upon this it was advised he should be bleeded, to prevent any ill accident that might come of the bruise; after bleeding, the ligature or binder of his arm was removed from thence and conveyed about his middle, where it was strained with such violence that the girding had almost stopp'd his breath and kill'd him, and being cut asunder it made a strange and dismal noise, so that the standers by were affrighted at it. At divers other times he hath been in danger to be strangled with cravats and handkerchiefs that he hath worn about his neck, which have been drawn so close that with the sudden violence he hath near been choaked, and hardly escaped death.

"The spectre hath shewed great offence at the perriwigs which the young man used to wear, for they are often torn from his head after a very strange manner; one that he esteemed above the rest he put in a small box, and that box he placed in another, which he set against the wall of his chamber, placing a joint-stool with other weight a top of it, but in short time the boxes were broken in sunder and the perriwig rended into many small parts and tatters. Another time, lying in his master's chamber with his perriwig on his head, to secure it from danger, within a little time it was torn from him and reduced into very small fragments. At another time one of his shoe-strings was observed (without the assistance of any hand) to come of its own accord out of its shoe and fling itself to the other side of the room; the other was crawling after it, but a maid espying that, with her hand drew it out, and it strangely clasp'd and curl'd about her hand like a living eel or serpent; this is testified by a lady of considerable quality, too great for exception, who was an eye-witness. The same lady shewed Mr. C. one of the young man's gloves, which was torn in his pocket while she was by, which is so dexterously tatter'd and so artificially torn that it is conceived a cutler could not have contrived an instrument to have laid it abroad so accurately, and all this was done in the pocket in the compass of one minute. It is further observable that if the aforesaid young man, or another person who is a servant maid in the house, do wear their own clothes, they are certainly torn in pieces on their backs, but if the clothes belong to any other, they are not injured after that manner.

"Many other strange and fantastical freaks have been done by the said daemon or spirit in the view of divers persons; a barrel of salt of considerable quantity hath been observed to march from room to room without any human assistance.

"An hand-iron hath seemed to lay itself cross over-thwart a pan of milk that hath been scalding over the fire, and two flitches of bacon have of their own accord descended from the chimney where they were hung, and placed themselves upon the hand-iron.

"When the spectre appears in resemblance of her own person, she seems to be habited in the same cloaths and dress which the gentlewoman of the house (her daughter-in-law) hath on at the same time. Divers times the feet and legs of the young man aforesaid have been so entangled about his neck that he hath been loosed with great difficulty; sometimes they have been so twisted about the frames of chairs and stools that they have hardly been set at liberty. But one of the most considerable instances of the malice of the spirit against the young man happened on Easter Eve, when Mrs. C. the relator, was passing by the door of the house, and it was thus:—

"When the young man was returning from his labour, he was taken up by the skirt of his doublet by this female daemon, and carried a height into the air. He was soon missed by his Master and some other servants that had been at labour with him, and after diligent enquiry no news could be heard of him, until at length (near half an hour after) he was heard singing and whistling in a bog or quagmire, where they found him in a kind of trance or extatick fit, to which he hath sometimes been accustomed (but whether before the affliction he met with from this spirit I am not certain). He was affected much after such sort, as at the time of those fits, so that the people did not give that attention and regard to what he said as at other times; but when he returned again to himself (which was about an hour after) he solemnly protested to them that the daemon had carried him so high that his master's house seemed to him to be but as a hay-cock, and that during all that time he was in perfect sense, and prayed to Almighty God not to suffer the devil to destroy him; and that he was suddenly set down in that quagmire.

The workmen found one shoe on one side of his master's house, and the other on the other side, and in the morning espied his perriwig hanging on the top of a tree; by which it appears he had been carried a considerable height, and that what he told them was not a fiction.

"After this it was observed that that part of the young man's body which had been on the mud in the quagmire was somewhat benummbed and seemingly deader than the other, whereupon the following Saturday, which was the day before Low Sunday, he was carried to Crediton, alias Kirton, to be bleeded, which being done accordingly, and the company having left him for some little space, at their return they found him in one of his fits, with his forehead much bruised, and swoln to a great bigness, none being able to guess how it happened, until his recovery from that fit, when upon enquiry he gave them this account of it: that a bird had with great swiftness and force flown in at the window with a stone in its beak, which it had dashed against his forehead, which had occasioned the swelling which they saw.

"The people much wondering at the strangeness of the accident, diligently sought the stone, and under the place where he sat they found not such a stone as they expected but a weight of brass or copper, which it seems the daemon had made use of on that occasion to give the poor young man that hurt in his forehead.

"The persons present were at the trouble to break it to pieces, every one taking a part and preserving it in memory of so strange an accident. After this the spirit continued to molest the young man in a very severe and rugged manner, often handling him with great extremity, and whether it hath yet left its violences to him, or whether the young man be yet alive, I can have no certain account."

I leave the reader to consider of the extraordinary strangeness of the relation.

The reader, considering the exceeding strangeness of the relation, will observe that we have now reached "great swingeing falsehoods," even if that opinion had not hitherto occurred to his mind. But if he thinks that such stories are no longer told, and even sworn to on Bible oath, he greatly deceives himself. In the chapter on "Haunted Houses" he will find statements just as hard narrated of the years 1870 and 1882. In these, however, the ghosts had no purpose but mischief. {118}

We take another "ghost with a purpose".

SIR GEORGE VILLIERS' GHOST.

The variations in the narratives of Sir George Villiers' appearance to an old servant of his, or old protege, and the warning communicated by this man to Villiers' son, the famous Duke of Buckingham, are curious and instructive. The tale is first told in print by William Lilly, the astrologer, in the second part of a large tract called Monarchy or No Monarchy in England (London, 1651), twenty-three years after Buckingham's murder. But while prior in publication, Lilly's story was probably written after, though independent of Lord Clarendon's, in the first book of his History of the Rebellion, begun on 18th March, 1646, that is within eighteen years of the events. Clarendon, of course, was in a position to know what was talked of at the time. Next, we have a letter of Mr. Douch to Glanvil, undated, but written after the Restoration, and, finally, an original manuscript of 1652.