The Ghost World

‘St. Thomas quotes as illustrations or instances, St. Paul being taken up to the Third Heaven. Ezekiel, the prophet, was taken by God and shown Jerusalem, whilst at the same time he was sitting in the room with the ancients of the tribe of Judah before him (Ezekiel viii.), &c. In which the soul of man is not wholly detached from the body, being necessary for the purpose of giving life, but is detached from the senses of the body. St. Thomas gives three causes for this phenomenon: (1) Divine power; (2) the power of the Devil; and (3), disease of the body when very violent sometimes.’ Bardinus tells how Marsilius Ficinus appeared at the hour of his death on a white horse to Michael Mercatus, and rode away crying, ‘O Michael, Michael, vera, vera sunt illa,’ that is, the doctrine of a future life is true. Instances of this kind of phenomenon have been common in all ages of the world, and Lucretius suggested the strange fancy that the superficial surfaces of all bodies were continually flying off like the coats of an onion, which accounted for the appearance of apparitions; whilst Jacques Gaffarel suggested that corrupting bodies send forth vapours which, being compressed by the cold night air, appear visible to the eye in the forms of men.309

In one of the notes to ‘Les Imaginations Extravagantes de Monsieur Oufle,’ by the Abbé Bordélon, it is said that the monks and nuns, a short time before their death, have seen the images of themselves seated in their chairs or stalls. Catharine of Russia, after retiring to her bedroom, was told that she had been seen just before to enter the State Chamber. On hearing this she went thither, and saw the exact similitude of herself seated upon the throne. She ordered her guards to fire upon it.

In Scotland and the northern counties of England it was formerly said that the apparition of the person that was doomed to die within a short time was seen wrapped in a winding-sheet, and the higher the winding-sheet reached up towards the head the nearer was death. This apparition was seen during day, and it might show itself to anyone, but only to one, who generally fell into a faint a short time afterwards. If the person who saw the apparition was alone at the time, the fainting fit did not come on till after meeting with others.

In the ‘Statistical Account of Scotland’ (xxi. 148), the writer, speaking of the parish of Monquhitter, says, the ‘fye gave due warning by certain signs of approaching mortality’; and, again (149), ‘the fye has withdrawn his warning.’ Some friends observing to an old woman, when in the ninety-ninth year of her age, that, in the course of nature, she could not long survive, she remarked, with pointed indignation, ‘What fye-token do you see about me?’

In the same work (iii. 380) the minister of Applecross, county of Ross, speaking of the superstitions of that parish, says: ‘The ghosts of the dying, called “tasks,” are said to be heard, their cry being a repetition of the moans of the sick. Some assume the sagacity of distinguishing the voice of their departed friends. The corpse follows the track led by the “tasks” to the place of interment, and the early or late completion of the prediction is made to depend on the period of the night at which the “task” is heard.’

The Scotch wraith and Irish fetch have their parallel in Wales in the Lledrith, or spectre of a person seen before his death. It never speaks, and vanishes if spoken to. It has been seen by miners previous to a fatal accident in the mine. The story is told of a miner who saw himself lying dead and horribly maimed in a phantom tram-car, led by a phantom horse, and surrounded by phantom miners. As he watched this dreadful group of spectres they passed on, looking neither to the right nor the left, and faded away. The miner’s dog was as frightened as its master, and ran away howling. The miner continued to work in the pit, and as the days passed on and no harm came to him he grew more cheerful, and was so bold as to laugh at the superstition. But the day he did this a stone fell from the roof and broke his arm. As soon as he recovered he resumed work in the pit; but a stone crushed him, and he was borne maimed and dead in the tram along the road where his ‘lledrith’ had appeared.310

‘Examining,’ says Dr. Tylor,311 ‘the position of the doctrine of wraiths among the higher races, we find it specially prominent in three intellectual districts: Christian hagiology, popular folk-lore, and modern spiritualism. St. Anthony saw the soul of St. Ammonius carried to heaven in the midst of choirs of angels, the same day that the holy hermit died five days’ journey off in the desert of Nitria. When St. Ambrose died on Easter Eve, several newly-baptized children saw the holy bishop and pointed him out to their parents; but these, with their less pure eyes, could not behold him.’ Numerous instances of wraith-seeing have been chronicled from time to time, some of which are noteworthy. It is related how Ben Jonson, when staying at Sir Robert Cotton’s house, was visited by the apparition of his eldest son, with a mark of a bloody cross upon his forehead, at the moment of his death by the plague. Lord Balcarres, it is said, when in confinement in Edinburgh Castle under suspicion of Jacobitism, was one morning lying in bed when the curtains were drawn aside by his friend Viscount Dundee, who looked upon him steadfastly, and then left the room. Shortly afterwards the news came that he had fallen about the same hour at Killiecrankie. Lord Mohun, who was killed in a duel in Chelsea Fields, is reported to have appeared at the moment of his death, in the year 1642, to a lady in James Street, Covent Garden, and also to the sister of Glanvill, famous as the author of ‘Sadducismus Triumphatus.’ It is related how the second Earl of Chesterfield, in 1652, saw, when walking, a spectre with long white robes and black face. Regarding it as an intimation of some illness of his wife, then visiting her father at Networth, he set off early to inquire, and met a servant from Lady Chesterfield, describing the same apparition. Anna Maria Porter, when living at Esher, was visited by an old gentleman, a neighbour, who frequently came in to tea. On this occasion, the story goes, he left the room without speaking; and, fearing that something had happened, she sent to inquire, and found that he had died at the moment of his appearance. Similarly Maria Edgeworth, when waiting with her family for an expected guest, saw in a vacant chair the apparition of a sailor cousin, who suddenly stated that his ship had been wrecked and he himself the only one saved. The event proved the contrary – he alone was drowned.312

One of the most striking and best authenticated cases on record is known as the Birkbeck Ghost, and is thus related in the ‘Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society’: ‘In 1789, Mrs. Birkbeck, wife of William Birkbeck, banker, of Settle, and a member of the Society of Friends, was taken ill and died at Cockermouth while returning from a journey to Scotland, which she had undertaken alone – her husband and three children, aged seven, five, and four years respectively, remaining at Settle. The friends at whose house the death occurred made notes of every circumstance attending Mrs. Birkbeck’s last hours, so that the accuracy of the several statements as to time as well as place was beyond the doubtfulness of man’s memory, or of any even unconscious attempt to bring them into agreement with each other. One morning, between seven and eight o’clock, the relation to whom the care of the children had been entrusted, and who kept a minute journal of all that concerned them, went into their bedroom, as usual, and found them all sitting up in bed in great excitement and delight. “Mamma has been here,” they cried; and the little one said, “She called, ‘Come, Esther!’” Nothing could make them doubt the fact, and it was carefully noted down to entertain the mother when she came home. That same morning, as their mother lay on her dying bed at Cockermouth, she said, “I should be ready to go if I could but see my children.” She then closed her eyes, to reopen them, as they thought, no more. But after ten minutes of perfect stillness she looked up brightly, and said, “I am ready now; I have been with my children;” and at once passed peacefully away. When the notes taken at the two places were compared, the day, hour, and minutes were the same.’

Baxter, in his ‘World of Spirits,’ records a very similar case of a dying woman visiting her children in Rochester, and in a paper on ‘Ghosts and Goblins,’ which appeared in the ‘Cornhill’ (1873, xxvii. 457), the writer relates how, in a house in Ireland, a girl lay dying. Her mother and father were with her, and her five sisters were praying for her in a neighbouring room. This room was well lit, but overhead was a skylight, and the dark sky beyond. One of the sisters, looking towards this skylight, saw there the face of her dying sister looking sorrowfully down upon them. She seized another sister and pointed to the skylight; one after another the sisters looked where she pointed. They spoke no word; and in a few moments their father and mother called them to the room where their sister had just died. But when afterwards they talked together about what had happened that night, it was found that they had all seen the vision and the sorrowful face. But, as the writer observes, ‘in stories where a ghost appears for some useful purpose, the mind does not reject the event as altogether unreasonable, though the circumstances may be sufficiently preposterous;’ but one can conceive no reason why the vision of a dying sister should look down through a skylight.

According to a Lancashire belief, the spirits of persons about to die, especially if the persons be in distant lands, are supposed to return to their friends, and thus predict the event. While the spirit is thus away, the person is supposed to be in a swoon, and unaware of what is passing. But his desire to see his friends is necessary; and he must have been thinking of them.313

It is related from Devonshire, of the well-known Dr. Hawker, that, when walking one night, he observed an old woman pass by him, to whom he was in the habit of giving a weekly charity. As soon as she had passed, he felt somebody pull his coat, and on looking round he recognised her, and put his hand in his pocket to seek for a sixpence, but on turning to give it to her she was gone. On his return home he heard she was dead, but his family had forgotten to mention the circumstance.314

A correspondent of ‘Notes and Queries’ (3rd S. vi. 182) tells how a judge of the Staffordshire County Courts, being on one occasion in the North, went with his sisters into the church of the place to inspect its monuments. While there they were surprised to see a lady, whom they knew to be in Bath, walk in at one door and out through another. They immediately followed, but could neither see nor hear anything further of her. On writing to her friends, it was found that she was dead, and a second letter elicited the fact that she had died at the very same time at which she had been seen by them in the North.

Patrick Kennedy, in his ‘Legendary Fiction of the Irish Celt,’ speaking of the Irish fetch, gives the following tale of ‘The Doctor’s Fetch,’ based, it is stated, on the most authentic sources: ‘In one of our Irish cities, and in a room where the mild moonbeams were resting on the carpet and on a table near the window, Mrs. B., wife of a doctor in good practice and general esteem, looking towards the window from her pillow, was startled by the appearance of her husband standing near the table just mentioned, and seeming to look with attention on the book which was lying open on it. Now, the living and breathing man was by her side apparently asleep, and, greatly as she was surprised and affected, she had sufficient command of herself to remain without moving, lest she should expose him to the terror which she herself at the moment experienced. After gazing on the apparition for a few seconds, she bent her eyes upon her husband to ascertain if his looks were turned in the direction of the window, but his eyes were closed. She turned round again, although now dreading the sight of what she believed to be her husband’s fetch, but it was no longer there. She remained sleepless throughout the remainder of the night, but still bravely refrained from disturbing her partner.

‘Next morning, Mr. B., seeing signs of disquiet on his wife’s countenance while at breakfast, made some affectionate inquiries, but she concealed her trouble, and at his ordinary hour he sallied forth to make his calls. Meeting Dr. C. in the street, and falling into conversation with him, he asked his opinion on the subject of fetches. “I think,” was the answer, “and so I am sure do you, that they are mere illusions produced by a disturbed stomach acting upon the excited brain of a highly imaginative or superstitious person.” “Then,” said Dr. B., “I am highly imaginative or superstitious, for I distinctly saw my own outward man last night standing at the table in the bedroom, and clearly distinguishable in the moonlight. I am afraid my wife saw it too, but I have been afraid to speak to her on the subject.”

‘About the same hour on the ensuing night the poor lady was again roused, but by a more painful circumstance. She felt her husband moving convulsively, and immediately afterwards he cried to her in low, interrupted accents, “Ellen, my dear, I am suffocating; send for Dr. C.” She sprang up, huddled on some clothes, and ran to his house. He came with all speed, but his efforts for his friend were useless. He had burst a large blood-vessel in the lungs, and was soon beyond human aid. In her lamentations the bereaved wife frequently cried out, “Oh! the fetch, the fetch!” and at a later period told the doctor of the appearance the night before her husband’s death.’ But, whilst many stories of this kind are open to explanation, it is a singular circumstance how even several persons may be deceived by an illusion such as the following. A gentleman who had lately lost his wife, looking out of window in the dusk of evening, saw her sitting in a garden-chair. He called one of his daughters and asked her to look out into the garden. ‘Why,’ she said, ‘mother is sitting there.’ Another daughter was called, and she experienced the same illusion. Then the gentleman went out into the garden, and found that a garden-dress of his wife’s had been placed over the seat in such a position as to produce the illusion which had deceived himself and his daughters.

In ‘Phantasms of the Living’315 very many strange and startling cases are recorded, in which the mysterious ‘double’ has appeared, sometimes speaking, and sometimes without speech, although such manifestations have not always been omens of death. Thus the late Lord Dorchester316 is said to have seen the phantom of his daughter standing at the window, having his attention aroused by its shadow, which fell across the book he was reading at the time. She had accompanied a fishing expedition, was caught in a storm, and was distressed at the thought that her father would be anxious on her account.

In Fitzroy’s ‘Cruise of the Beagle’ an anecdote is told of a young Fuegian, Jemmy Button, and his father’s ghost. ‘While at sea, on board the “Beagle,” about the middle of the year 1842, he said one morning to Mr. Byno, that in the night some man came to the side of his hammock, and whispered in his ear that his father was dead. Mr. Byno tried to laugh him out of the idea, but ineffectually. He fully believed that such was the case, and maintained his opinion up to the time of finding his relations in Beagle Channel, when, I regret to say, he found that his father had died some months previously.’ This story is interesting, especially as Mr. Lang says it is the only one he has encountered among savages, of a warning conveyed to a man by a ghost as to the death of a friend.317

CHAPTER XXVII

GHOSTLY TIMES AND SEASONS

Shakespeare, quoting from an early legend, has reminded us that at Christmastide ‘no spirit dares stir abroad.’ And yet, in spite of this time-honoured belief, Christmas would seem to be one of the favourite seasons of the year for ghosts to make their presence felt in all kinds of odd ways. Many an old baronial hall, with its romantic associations and historic legends, is occasionally, as Christmastime comes round, disturbed by certain uncanny sounds, which timidity is only too ready to invest with the most mysterious and unaccountable associations. One reason for this nervous credulity may be ascribed to the fact that, as numerous old country seats are supposed to be haunted, Christmas is a fitting opportunity for the ghost to catch a glimpse of the family revelry and mirth. But, judging from the many legendary tales which have been handed down in connection with Christmas, it would seem that these spirit-members of the family intrude their presence on their relatives in the flesh in various ways. In Ireland, the ill-fated Banshee has selected this season on more than one occasion, to warn the family of coming trouble. According to one tale told from Ireland, one Christmas Eve, when the family party were gathered round the festive board in an old castle in the South of Ireland, the prancing of horses was suddenly heard, and the sharp cracking of the driver’s whip. Imagining that one of the absent members of the family had arrived, some of the young people moved to the door, but found that it was the weird apparition of the ‘headless coach and horseman.’

Many such stories might be enumerated, which, under one form or another, have imparted a dramatic element to the season. With some of our country peasantry, there is a deep-rooted dread of encountering anything either bordering on, or resembling, the supernatural, as sometimes spirits are supposed at Christmastide to be unfriendly towards mankind. In Northamptonshire, for instance, there is a strange notion that the ghosts of unfortunate individuals buried at cross-roads have a particular license to wander about on Christmas Eve, at which time they wreak their evil designs upon defenceless and unsuspecting persons. But conduct of this kind seems to be the exception, and ghosts are oftentimes invoked at Christmastide by those anxious to have a foretaste of events in store for them. Thus, the anxious maiden, in her eager desire to know something of her matrimonial prospects, has often subjected herself to the most trying ordeal of ‘courting a ghost.’ In many countries, at the ‘witching hour of midnight, on Christmas Eve,’ the candidate for marriage goes into the garden and plucks twelve sage leaves, ‘under a firm conviction that she will be favoured with a glimpse of the shadowy form of her future husband as he approaches her from the opposite end of the garden.’ But a ceremony observed in Sweden, in years past, must have required a still more strong-minded person to take advantage of its prophetic powers. It was customary in the morning twilight of Christmas Day, to go into a wood, without making the slightest noise, or uttering a word; total abstinence from eating and drinking being another necessary requirement. If these rules were observed, it was supposed that the individual as he went along the path leading to the church, would be favoured with a sight of as many funerals as would pass that way during the ensuing year. With this practice may be compared one current in Denmark, where, it is said, when a family are sitting together on Christmas Eve, if anyone is desirous of knowing whether a death will occur amongst them during the ensuing year, he must go outside, and peep silently through the window, and the person who appears at table sitting without a head, will die before Christmas comes round again. The feast of St. Agnes was formerly held in high veneration by women who wished to know when and whom they should marry. It was required that on this day they should not eat – which was called ‘fasting St. Agnes’ fast’ – if they wished to have visions of delight, a piece of superstition on which Keats has founded his poem, ‘The Eve of St. Agnes:’

They told me how, upon St. Agnes’ Eve,Young virgins might have visions of delight,And soft adorings from their love receive,Upon the honey’d middle of the night,If ceremonies due they did aright;As supperless to bed they must retire,And couch supine their beauties, lily white,Nor look behind, nor sideways, but requireOf heaven, with upward eyes, for all that they desire.

Laying down on her back that night, with her hands under her head, the anxious maiden was led to expect that her future spouse would appear in a dream, and salute her with a kiss. Various charms have long been observed on St. Valentine’s Eve, and Poor Robin’s Almanack tells us how:

On St. Mark’s Eve, at twelve o’clock,The fair maid will watch her smock,To find her husband in the dark,By praying unto good St. Mark.

But St. Mark’s Eve was a great day for apparitions. Allusion has been made in a previous chapter to watching in the church porch for the ghosts of those who are to be buried in the churchyard during the following months; and Jamieson tells us of a practice kept up in the northern counties, known as ‘ash-ridlin.’ The ashes being sifted, or riddled, on the hearth, if any one of the family ‘be to die within the year, the mark of the shoe, it is supposed, will be impressed on the ashes; and many a mischievous wight has made some of the credulous family miserable, by slyly coming downstairs after the rest have retired to bed, and marking the ashes with the shoe of one of the members.’

In Peru it is interesting to trace a similar superstitious usage. As soon as a dying man draws his last breath, ashes are strewed on the floor of the room, and the door is securely fastened. Next morning the ashes are carefully examined to ascertain whether they show any impression of footsteps, and imagination readily traces marks, which are alleged to have been produced by the feet of birds, dogs, cats, oxen, or llamas. The destiny of the dead person is construed by the footmarks which are supposed to be discernible. The soul has assumed the form of that animal whose tracks are found.318

There is St. John’s, or Midsummer Eve, around which many weird and ghostly superstitions have clustered. Grose informs us that if anyone sit in the church porch, he will see the spirits of those destined to die that year come and knock at the church door in the order of their decease. In Ireland there is a popular belief that on St. John’s Eve the souls of all persons leave their bodies, and wander to the place, by land or sea, where death shall finally separate them from the tenement of the clay. The same notion of a temporary liberation of the soul gave rise to a host of superstitious observances at this time, resembling those connected with Hallow Eve. Indeed, this latter night is supposed to be the time of all others when supernatural influences prevail. ‘It is the night,’ we are told, ‘set apart for a universal walking abroad of spirits, both of the visible and invisible world; for one of the special characteristics attributed to this mystic evening is the faculty conferred on the immaterial principle in humanity to detach itself from its corporeal tenement and wander abroad through the realms of space. Divination is then believed to attain its highest power, and the gift asserted by Glendower of calling spirits “from the vast deep” becomes available to all who choose to avail themselves of the privileges of the occasion.’319 Similarly, in Germany on St. Andrew’s Eve, young women try various charms in the hope of seeing the shadow of their sweethearts; one of the rhymes used on the occasion being this:

St. Andrew’s Eve is to-day;Sleep all people,Sleep all children of menWho are between heaven and earth,Except this only man,Who may be mine in marriage.

The story goes that a girl once summoned the shadow of her future husband. Precisely as the clock struck twelve he appeared, drank some wine, laid a three-edged dagger on the table and vanished. The girl put the dagger into her trunk. Some years afterwards there came a man from a distant part to the town where the girl dwelt, bought property there, and married her. He was, in fact, the identical person whose form had appeared to her. Some time after their marriage the husband by chance opened the trunk, and there found the dagger, at the sight of which he became furious. ‘Thou art the girl,’ said he, ‘who years ago forced me to come hither from afar in the night, and it was no dream. Die, therefore!’ and with these words he thrust the dagger into her heart.320