The Ghost World

At Beverley, in Yorkshire, the headless ghost of Sir Joceline Percy drives four headless horses at night, above its streets, passing over a certain house which was said to contain a chest with one hundred nails in it, one of which dropped out every year. The reason assigned for this nocturnal disturbance is attributed to the fact that Sir Joceline once rode on horseback into Beverley Minster. It has long been considered dangerous to meet such spectral teams, for fear of being carried off by them, so violent and threatening are their movements. In ‘Rambles in Northumberland’ we are told how, ‘when the death-hearse, drawn by headless horses, and driven by a headless driver, is seen about midnight proceeding rapidly, but without noise, towards the churchyard, the death of some considerable personage in the parish is sure to happen at no distant period.’

Night after night, too, when it is sufficiently dark, the headless coach whirls along the rough approach to Langley Hall, near Durham, drawn by black and fiery steeds; and many years ago a headless boggart was supposed to haunt Preston streets and neighbouring lanes. Its presence was often accompanied by the rattling of chains. It presently changed its form, and whether it appeared as a woman or a black dog, it was always headless. The story went that this uncanny apparition was at length ‘laid’ by some magical or religious ceremony in Walton churchyard.151

Many spots where suicides have been buried are supposed to be haunted by headless ghosts attired in white grave-clothes. Some few years ago, as a peasant was passing in a waggon with three horses a ‘four-lane-end’ in Lyneal Lane, Ellesmere, Shropshire, where a man was buried with a forked stake run through the body to keep it down, a woman was seen without a head. The horses took fright, and started off, overturning the waggon, and pitching the man into the Drumby Hole, where the waggon and shaft-horse fell upon him. The other horses broke loose and galloped home, where they arrived covered with foam, and on a search being made, the dead body of the waggoner was found in the hole.152 Exactly twelve months afterwards, his son, it is said, was killed by the same horses on the same spot. As Miss Jackson points out, the headless ghost in this story is of a different sex from the person whose death is supposed to cause its restlessness. The same, she adds, is the case ‘with the ghost of the Mary Way, a now almost forgotten spectre of more than a hundred years ago. The figure of a woman in white was supposed to haunt the spot where a murderer was buried – more probably a suicide – at the cross roads about two miles from Wenlock, on the Bridgnorth road, which is known as the “Mary Way,” no doubt from some chapel, or processional route, in honour of the Virgin.’ Another story is told of the Baschurch neighbourhood, where the ghost of a man who hanged himself at Nesscliff is to be seen ‘riding about in his trap at night without a head.’

A tragic case is recorded by Crofton Croker, who tells how, many years ago, a clergyman belonging to St. Catharine’s Church, Dublin, resided at the old Castle of Donore, in the vicinity of that city. From melancholy, or some other cause, he put an end to his existence by hanging himself out of a window near the top of the castle. After his death, a coach, sometimes driven by a coachman without a head, and occasionally drawn by headless horses, was observed at night driving furiously by Roper’s Rest.

Referring to spots where murders have taken place, a Shropshire tradition informs us how, at a certain house at Hampton’s Wood, near Ellesmere, six illegitimate children were murdered by their parents, and buried in a garden. But, soon after this unnatural event, a ghost in the form of a man, sometimes headless, at other times not so, haunted the stables, rode the horses to water, and talked to the waggoner. Once it appeared to a young lady who was passing on horseback, and rode before her on her horse. Eventually, after much difficulty, this troublesome ghost was laid, but ‘the poor minister was so exhausted by the task that he died.’153

There is a haunted room at Walton Abbey frequented by a spectre known as ‘The Headless Nun of Walton.’ The popular belief is that this is the unquiet spirit of a transgressing nun of the twelfth century, but some affirm it to be that of a lady brutally beheaded in the seventeenth century.154 Another instance is that of Calverley Hall, in the same county. In ‘The Yorkshireman’ for January 5, 1884, the particulars of this strange apparition are given, from which it appears that Walter Calverley, on April 23, 1604, went into a fit of insane frenzy of jealousy, or pretended to do so. Money-lenders were pressing him hard, and he had become desperate. Rushing madly into the house, he plunged a dagger into one and then into another of his children, and then tried to take the life of their mother, a crime for which he was pressed to death at York Castle. But his spirit could not rest, and he was often seen galloping about the district at night on a headless horse, being generally accompanied by a number of followers similarly mounted, who attempted to run down any poor benighted folks whom they chanced to meet. These spectral horsemen nearly always disappeared in a cave in the wood, but this cave has now been quarried away.155

It would seem that in years gone by one of the punishments assigned to evil doers guilty of a lesser crime than that of murder, was their ceaselessly frequenting those very spots where in their lifetime they had committed their wicked acts, carrying their heads under their arms. Numerous tales of this kind have been long current on the Continent, and at the present day are told by the simple-minded peasantry of many a German village with the most implicit faith. It is much the same in this country, and Mr. Henderson156 has given several amusing anecdotes. At Dalton, near Thirsk, there was an old barn, said to be haunted by a headless woman. One night a tramp went into it to sleep; at midnight he was awakened by a light, and, sitting up, he saw a woman coming towards him from the end of the barn, holding her head in her hands like a lantern, with light streaming out of the eyes, nostrils, and mouth. Hunt, too, in his ‘Popular Romances,’ notices this superstition as existing in the West of England; and Mrs. Latham, in her ‘Sussex Superstitions,’ tells us how spirits are reported to walk about without their heads; others carry them under their arms; and one haunting a dark lane is said to have ‘a ball of fire upon its shoulders in lieu of the natural finial.’ At Haddington, Worcestershire, there is an avenue of trees locally known as ‘Lady Winter’s Walk,’ where, it is said, the lady of Thomas Winter, who was obliged to conceal himself on account of his share in the Gunpowder Plot, was in the habit of awaiting her husband’s further visits, and here the headless spectre of her ladyship used to be seen occasionally pacing up and down beneath the sombre shade of the aged trees.

Lady Wilde157 has given a laughable specimen of the headless ghost as believed in by the Irish peasantry. One Denis Molony, a cow-jobber, was on his way to the great fair at Navan when he was overtaken by night. He laid down under a hedge, but ‘at that moment a loud moaning and screaming came to his ear, and a woman rushed past him all in white, as if a winding sheet were round her, and her cries of despair were terrible to hear. Then, after her, a great black coach came thundering along the road, drawn by two black horses. But when Denis looked close at them he saw that the horses had no heads, and the coachman had no head; and out sprang two men from the coach, and they had no heads either; and they seized the woman and carried her by force into the carriage and drove off.’

It appears that the woman Denis saw was ‘an evil liver and a wicked sinner, and no doubt the devils were carrying her off from the churchyard, for she had been buried that morning. To make sure, they went next morning to the churchyard to examine the grave, and there, sure enough, was the coffin, but it was open, and not a trace of the dead woman was to be seen. So they knew that an evil fate had come on her, and that her soul was gone to eternal tortures.’158

Connected also with the legend of the headless ghost is the old belief that persons prior to their death occasionally appear to their friends without their heads. Dr. Ferrier, in his ‘Theory of Apparitions,’ tells of an old Northern chieftain who informed a relative of his ‘that the door of the room in which they and some ladies were sitting had appeared to open, and that a little woman without a head had entered the room; and that the apparition indicated the sudden death of some person of his acquaintance.’ The ‘Glasgow Chronicle’ (January, 1826) records how, on the occasion of some silk-weavers being out of work, mourning-coaches drawn by headless horses were seen about the town; and some years ago a very unpleasant kind of headless ghost used to drive every Saturday night through the town of Doneraile, Ireland, and to stop at the doors of different houses, when, if anyone were so foolhardy as to open the door, a basin of blood was instantly flung in his face.

CHAPTER XI

PHANTOM BUTTERFLIES

Departed souls, according to a Cornish piece of folk-lore, are occasionally said to take the form of moths, and in Yorkshire, writes a correspondent of ‘Notes and Queries,’ ‘the country people used, and perhaps do still, call night-flying white moths, especially the Hepialus humuli, which feeds while in the grub state on the roots of docks and other coarse plants, “souls.”’ By the Slavonians the butterfly seems to have been universally accepted as an emblem of the soul. Mr. Ralston, in his ‘Songs of the Russian People’ (p. 117), says that in the Government of Yaroslaw one of its names is dushichka, a caressing diminutive of dusha, the soul. In that of Kherson it is believed that if the usual alms are not distributed at a funeral, the dead man’s soul will reveal itself to its relatives in the form of a moth flying about the flame of a candle. The day after receiving such a warning visit they call together the poor and distribute food among them. In Bohemia there is a popular tradition that if the first butterfly a man sees in the spring-time is a white one, he is destined to die within the year. According to a Servian belief, the soul of a witch often leaves her body while she is asleep, and flies abroad in the shape of a butterfly. If, during its absence, her body be turned round, so that her feet are placed where her head was before, the soul will not be able to find her mouth, and so will be shut out from her body. Thereupon the witch will die. The Bulgarians believe that at death the soul assumes the form of a butterfly, and flits about on the nearest tree till the funeral is over. The Karens of Burma ‘will run about pretending to catch a sick man’s wandering soul, or, as they say with the ancient Greeks, his “butterfly,” and at last drop it down upon his head.’159 The idea is an old one, and, as Gubernatis remarks in his ‘Zoological Mythology’ (ii. 213), ‘the butterfly was both a phallic symbol and a funereal one, with promises of resurrection and transformation; the souls of the departed were represented in the forms of butterflies carried towards Elysium by the dolphin.’ According to another belief, the soul was supposed to take the form of a bee, an old tradition telling us that ‘the bees alone of all animals descended from Paradise.’ In the Engadine, in Switzerland, it is believed that the souls of men emigrate from the world and return to it in the forms of bees. In this district bees are considered messengers of death. When someone dies, the bee is invoked as follows, ‘almost as if requesting the soul of the departed,’ says De Gubernatis, ‘to watch for ever over the living’:160

Bienchen, unser Herr ist todt,Verlass mich nicht in meiner Noth.

In Russia gnats and flies are often looked upon as equally spiritual creatures. ‘In Little Russia,’ says Mr. Ralston,161 ‘the old women of a family will often, after returning from a funeral, sit up all night watching a dish in which water and honey in it have been placed, in the belief that the spirit of their dead relative will come in the form of a fly, and sip the proffered liquid.’

Among North American tribes we are told how the Ojibways believe that innumerable spirits appear in the varied forms of insect life,162 while some tribes supposed that ‘most souls went to a common resort near their living habitat, but returned in the daytime in the shape of flies in order to get something to eat.’163

CHAPTER XII

RAISING GHOSTS

The trade of raising spirits has probably existed at all times in which superstition has been sufficiently prevalent to make such a practice a source of power or of profit, and nations – the most polished as well as the most barbarous – have admitted the claims of persons who professed to be able to control spirits. One of the most graphic illustrations of an incantation for evoking spirits is in connection with the appearance of the shade of Darius in the ‘Persæ’ of Æschylus, which is very nobly given. After receiving news of the great defeat of her son Xerxes at Salamis, Atossa has prepared the requisite offerings to the dead – milk from a white cow, honey, water from a pure fountain, unadulterated wine, olives, and flowers – and she instructs the ancient counsellors of the deceased king to evoke his shade. They who form the tragic chorus commence an incantation from which we quote the following:

Royal lady, Persia’s pride,Thine offerings in earth’s chamber hide;We, meanwhile, with hymns will sueThe powers who guard hell’s shadowy crew,Till they to our wish incline.Gods below, ye choir divine,Earth, Hermes, and thou King of night,Send his spirit forth to light!If he knows worse ills impending,He alone can teach their ending.&c., &c., &c.

The incantation is successful, but Darius assures his friends that exit from below is far from easy, and that the subterranean gods are far more willing to take than to let go. Indeed, the raising of spirits was a trick of magic much in use in ancient times, and the scene that took place at Endor when Saul had recourse to a professor of the art is familiar to all. The Egyptian magicians, Simon Magus, and Elymas the sorcerer, all, it is said, exhibited such corporeal deceptions. Tertullian, in his tract ‘De Anima,’ inquires whether a departed soul, either at his own will, or in obedience to the command of another, can return from the ‘Inferi‘? After discussing the subject, he sums up thus: ‘If certain souls have been recalled into their bodies by the power of God, as manifest proof of His prerogative, that is no argument that a similar power should be conferred on audacious magicians, fallacious dreamers, and licentious poets.’

Among certain Australian tribes the necromants are called Birraark. It is said that a Birraark was supposed to be initiated by the ‘mrarts’ (ghosts) when they met him wandering in the bush. It was from the ghosts that he obtained replies to questions concerning events passing at a distance, or yet to happen, which might be of interest or moment to his tribe. An account of a spiritual séance in the bush is given in ‘Kamilaroi and Kurnai’ (p. 254): ‘The fires were let down; the Birraark uttered the cry “Coo-ee” at intervals. At length a distant reply was heard, and shortly afterwards the sound as of persons jumping on the ground in succession. A voice was then heard in the gloom asking in a strange intonation, “What is wanted?” At the termination of the séance, the spirit voice said, “We are going.” Finally, the Birraark was found in the top of an almost inaccessible tree, apparently asleep.’

In Japan, ghosts can be raised in various ways. One mode is to ‘put into an andon’ (a paper lantern in a frame) ‘a hundred rushlights, and repeat an incantation of a hundred lines. One of these rushlights is taken out at the end of each line, and the would-be ghost-seer then goes out in the dark with one light still burning, and blows it out, when the ghost ought to appear. Girls who have lost their lovers by death often try that sorcery.’164

Shakespeare has several allusions to the popular belief of certain persons being able to exorcise, or raise, spirits, and he represents Ligarius, in ‘Julius Cæsar’ (iv. 2) as saying:

Soul of Rome!Brave son, derived from honourable loins!Thou, like an exorcist, has conjured upMy mortified spirit. Now bid me run,And I will strive with things impossible;Yea, get the better of them.

In days gone by, it would seem, numerous formalities were observed by the person whose object was to ‘constrain’ some spirit to appear before him. It was necessary to fix upon a spot proper for such a purpose, ‘which had to be either in a subterranean vault hung round with black, and lighted by a magical torch, or else in the centre of some thick wood or desert, or upon some extensive unfrequented plain, where several roads met, or amidst the ruins of ancient castles, abbeys, monasteries, &c., or amongst the rocks on the sea-shore, in some private detached churchyard, or any other solemn melancholy place, between the hours of twelve and one in the morning, either when the moon shone very bright, or else when the elements were disturbed with storms of thunder, lightning, wind, and rain, for in these places, times, and seasons it was contended that spirits could with less difficulty manifest themselves to mortal eyes, and continue visible with the least pain in this elemental external world.’165 Great importance was attached to the magic circle in the invocation of spirits, the mode of procedure being thus: ‘A piece of ground was usually chosen, nine feet square, at the full extent of which parallel lines were drawn, one within the other, having sundry crosses and triangles described between them, close to which was formed the first or outer circle; then, about half a foot within the same, a second circle was described, and within that another square correspondent to the first, the centre of which was the spot where the master and associate were to be placed. The vacancies formed by the various lines and angles of the figure were filled up by the holy names of God, having crosses and triangles described between them… The reason assigned for the use of circles was, that so much ground being blessed and consecrated by such holy words and ceremonies as they made use of in forming it, had a secret force to expel all evil spirits from the bounds thereof, and being sprinkled with pure sanctified water, the ground was purified from all uncleanness; besides, the holy names of God being written over every part of it, its force became so powerful that no evil spirits had ability to break through it, or to get at the magician and his companion, by reason of the antipathy in nature they bore to these sacred names. And the reason given for the triangles was, that if the spirit was not easily brought to speak the truth, they might by the exorcist be conjured to enter the same, where, by virtue of the names of the essence and divinity of God, they could speak nothing but what was true and right.’166 We are further informed, that if the ghost of a deceased person was to be raised, the grave had to be resorted to at midnight, when a special form of conjuration was deemed necessary; and there was another for ‘any corpse that hath hanged, drowned, or otherwise made away with itself.’ And in this case, it is added, ‘the conjurations are performed over the body, which will at last arise, and, standing upright, answer with a faint and hollow voice the questions that are put to it.’

The mode of procedure as practised in Scotland was thus. The haunted room was made ready. He ‘who was to do the daring deed, about nightfall entered the room, bearing with him a table, a chair, a candle, a compass, a crucifix if one could be got, and a Bible. With the compass he cast a circle on the middle of the floor, large enough to hold the chair and the table. He placed within the circle the chair and the table, and on the table he laid the Bible and the crucifix beside the lighted candle. If he had not a crucifix, then he drew the figure of a cross on the floor within the circle. When all this was done, he seated himself on the chair, opened the Bible, and waited for the coming of the spirit. Exactly at midnight the spirit came. Sometimes the door opened slowly, and there glided in noiselessly a lady sheeted in white, with a face of woe, and told her story to the man on his asking her in the name of God what she wanted. What she wanted was done in the morning, and the spirit rested ever after. Sometimes the spirit rose from the floor, and sometimes came forth from the wall. One there was who burst into the room with a strong bound, danced wildly round the circle, and flourished a long whip round the man’s head, but never dared to step within the circle. During a pause in his frantic dance he was asked, in God’s name, what he wanted. He ceased his dance and told his wishes. His wishes were carried out, and the spirit was in peace.’167

In Wraxall’s ‘Memoirs of the Courts of Berlin, Dresden, Warsaw, and Vienna’168 there is an amusing account of the raising of the ghost of the Chevalier de Saxe. Reports had been circulated that at his palace at Dresden there was secreted a large sum of money, and it was urged that if his spirit could be compelled to appear, that interesting secret might be extorted from him. Curiosity, combined with avarice, accordingly prompted his principal heir, Prince Charles, to try the experiment, and on the appointed night, Schrepfer was the operator in raising the apparition. He commenced his proceedings by retiring into a corner of the gallery, where, kneeling down with many mysterious ceremonies, he invoked the spirit to appear. At length a loud clatter was heard at all the windows on the outside, resembling more the effect produced by a number of wet fingers drawn over the edge of glasses than anything else to which it could well be compared. This sound announced the arrival of the good spirits, and was shortly followed by a yell of a frightful and unusual nature, which indicated the presence of malignant spirits. Schrepfer continued his invocations, when ‘the door suddenly opened with violence, and something that resembled a black ball or globe rolled into the room. It was enveloped in smoke or cloud, in the midst of which appeared a human face, like the countenance of the Chevalier de Saxe, from which issued a loud and angry voice, exclaiming in German, “Carl, was wollte du mit mich?” – Charles, what would thou do with me?’ By reiterated exorcisms Schrepfer finally dismissed the apparition, and the terrified spectators dispersed, fully convinced of his magical powers.169 Roscoe has given an interesting account170 of Benvenuto Cellini’s experiences of raising spirits by incantation, but the Sicilian priest who acquainted him with the mysteries of his art of necromancy, as it has been remarked, had far greater knowledge of ‘chemistry and pharmacy than he required for his thurible or incense pot.’ His accomplices, of course, could see and report sights of any wonderful kind. Those who penetrate into ‘magic circles may expect startling sights, overpowering smells, strange sounds, and even demoniacal dreams.’ Instances, it is stated, are recorded of many who perished by raising up spirits, particularly ‘Chiancungi,’ the famous Egyptian fortune-teller, who was so famous in England in the seventeenth century. He undertook for a wager to raise up the spirit ‘Bokim,’ and having described the circle, he seated his sister Napula by him as his associate. ‘After frequently repeating the form of exorcism, and calling upon the spirit to appear, and nothing as yet answering his demand, they grew impatient of the business, and quitted the circle; but it cost them their lives, for they were instantaneously seized and crushed to death by that infernal spirit, who happened not to be sufficiently constrained till that moment to manifest himself to human eyes.’

Among the many curious stories told of ghost-raising may be mentioned a somewhat whimsical one related by a correspondent of a Bradford paper, who tells how, in his youthful days, he assisted in an attempt to raise the ghost of the wicked old squire of Calverley Hall. ‘About a dozen scholars,’ to quote his words, ‘used to assemble close to the venerable church of Calverley, and then put their hats and caps on the ground, in a pyramidal form. Then taking hold of each other’s hands, they formed a “magic circle,” holding firmly together, and making use of an old refrain: