The Ghost World

Then there is the ghost of ‘Madam Pigott,’ once the terror of Chetwynd and Edgmond. Twelve of the neighbouring clergy were summoned to lay her by incessantly reading psalms till they had succeeded in making her obedient to their power. ‘Mr. Foy, curate of Edgmond,’ says Miss Jackson,191 ‘has the credit of having accomplished this, for he continued reading after all the others were exhausted.’ But, ‘ten or twelve years after his death, some fresh alarm of Madam Pigott arose, and a party went in haste to beg a neighbouring rector to come and lay the ghost; and to this day Chetwynd Hall has the reputation of being haunted.’ It is evident that ‘laying a ghost’ was far from an easy task. A humorous anecdote is told192 of a haunted house at Homersfield, in Suffolk, where an unquiet spirit so worried and harassed the inmates that they sent for a parson. On his arrival he commenced reading a prayer, but instantly the ghost got a line ahead of him. Happily one of the family hit on this device: the next time, as soon as the parson began his exorcism, two pigeons were let loose; the spirit stopped to look at them, the priest got before him in his prayer, and the ghost was laid.

Clegg Hall, Lancashire, was the scene of a terrible tragedy, for tradition tells how a wicked uncle destroyed the lawful heirs – two orphans that were left to his care – by throwing them over a balcony into the moat, in order that he might seize on their inheritance. Ever afterwards the house was the reputed haunt of a troubled and angry spirit, until means were taken for its expulsion. Mr. William Nuttall, in a ballad entitled ‘Sir Roland and Clegg Hall Boggart,’ makes Sir Roland murder the children in bed with a dagger. Remorse eventually drove him mad, and he died raving during a violent storm. The hall was ever after haunted by the children’s ghosts, and also by demons, till St. Anthony, with a relic from the Virgin’s shrine, exorcised and laid the evil spirits. According to Mr. Nuttall there were two boggarts of Clegg Hall, and it is related how the country people ‘importuned a pious monk to exorcise or lay the ghost.’ Having provided himself with a variety of charms and spells, he quickly brought the ghosts to a parley. They demanded as a condition of future quiet the sacrifice of a body and a soul. Thereupon the cunning monk said, ‘Bring me the body of a cock and the sole of a shoe.’ This being done, the spirits were forbidden to appear till the whole of the sacrifice was consumed, and so ended the laying of the Clegg Hall boggarts. But, for some reason or other, the plan of this wily priest did not prove successful, and these two ghosts have continued to walk.193

With this idea of sacrifice as necessary for laying ghosts may be mentioned the apparition of a servant at Waddow Hall, known as ‘Peg o’ Nell.’ On one occasion, the story goes, she had a quarrel with the lord or lady of Waddow Hall, who, in a fit of anger, wished that she ‘might fall and break her neck.’ In some way or other Peggy did fall and break her neck, and to be revenged on her evil wisher she haunted the Hall, and made things very uncomfortable. In addition to these perpetual annoyances, ‘every seven years Peg required a life, and it is said that “Peg’s night,” as the time of sacrifice at each anniversary was called, was duly observed; and if no living animal were ready as a septennial offering to her manes, a human being became inexorably the victim. Consequently, it grew to be the custom on “Peg’s night” to drown a bird, or a cat, or a dog in the river; and a life being thus given, Peg was appeased for another seven years.’194

At Beoley, Worcestershire, at the commencement of the present century, the ghost of a reputed murderer managed to keep undisputed possession of a certain house, until a conclave of clergymen chained him to the Red Sea for fifty years. At the expiration of this term of imprisonment, the released ghost reappeared, and more than ever frightened the inmates of the said house, slamming the doors, and racing through the ceilings. At last, however, they took heart and chased the restless spirit, by stamping on the floor from one room to another, under the impression that could they once drive him to a trap door opening in the cheese-room, he would disappear for a season.195

A curious case of laying a ghost occurs in ‘An account of an apparition attested by the Rev. W. Ruddell, minister at Launceston, in Cornwall,’ 1665, quoted in Gilbert’s ‘Historical Survey of Cornwall.’ A schoolboy was haunted by Dorothy Dingley, and he pined. He was thought to be in love, and when, at the wishes of his friends, the parson questioned him, he told him of his ghostly visitor, and showed him the spectral Dorothy. Then comes the story of the ghost-laying.

‘The next morning being Thursday, I went out very early by myself, and walked for about an hour’s space in meditation and prayer in the field adjoining to the Quartills. Soon after five I stepped over the stile into the disturbed field, and had not gone above thirty or forty paces when the ghost appeared at the further stile. I spoke to it with a loud voice in some such sentences as the way of these dealings directed me; thereupon it approached, but slowly, and when I came near it, it moved not. I spoke again, and it answered again in a voice which was neither very audible nor intelligible. I was not the least terrified, therefore I persisted till it spoke again, and gave me satisfaction. But the work could not be finished this time, wherefore the same evening, an hour after sunset, it met me again near the same place, and after a few words on each side it quietly vanished, and neither doth appear since, nor ever will more to any man’s disturbance.’

Local tradition still tells us that ‘Madam Dudley’s ghost did use to walk in Cumnor Park, and that it walked so obstinately, that it took no less than nine parsons from Oxford “to lay her.” That they at last laid her in a pond, called “Madam Dudley’s Pond,” and, moreover, wonderful to relate, the water in that pond was never known to freeze afterwards.’ Heath Old Hall, near Wakefield, is haunted by the ghost of Lady Bolles, who is commonly reported to have been conjured down into a hole of the river, locally known as ‘Bolles Pit.’ But, as in many other cases of ghost-laying, ‘the spell was not so powerful, but that she still rises, and makes a fuss now and then.’ Various reasons have been assigned for her ‘walking,’ such as the non-observance by her executors of certain clauses in her will, whilst a story current in the neighbourhood tells us that a certain room in the Hall which had been walled up for a certain period, owing to large sums of money having been gambled away in it, was opened before the stipulated time had expired. Others assert that her unhappy condition is on account of her father’s mysterious death, which was ascribed to demoniacal agency.196

But of all places the most common, in years gone by, for laying ghosts was the Red Sea, and hence, in one of Addison’s plays, we read, ‘There must be a power of spirits in that sea.’ ‘This is a locality,’ says Grose, ‘which ghosts least like, it being related in many instances that ghosts have most earnestly besought the exorcists not to confine them in that place. It is, nevertheless, considered as an indisputable fact that there are an infinite number laid there, perhaps from its being a safer prison than any other nearer at hand.’ But when such exiled ghosts did happen to re-appear, they were thought more audacious, being seen by day instead of at night.

In an amusing poem entitled ‘The Ghost of a Boiled Scrag of Mutton,’ which appeared in the ‘Flowers of Literature’ many years ago, the following verse occurs embodying the idea:

The scholar was versed in all magical lore,Most famous was he throughout college;To the Red Sea full many an unquiet ghost,To repose with King Pharaoh and his mighty host,He had sent through his proverbial knowledge.

Addison tells us in the ‘Spectator,’ alluding to his London lodgings at a good-natured widow’s house one winter, how on one occasion he entered the room unexpectedly, where several young ladies, visitors, were telling stories of spirits and apparitions, when, on being told that it was only the gentleman, the broken conversation was resumed, and ‘I seated myself by the candle that stood at one end of the table, and, pretending to read a book that I took out of my pocket, heard several stories of ghosts that, pale as ashes, had stood at the bed’s foot, or walked over a churchyard by moonlight; and others that had been conjured into the Red Sea for disturbing people’s rest.’ As it has been humorously remarked, it is not surprising that many a strange ghost story has been told by the sea-faring community, when we remember how many spirits have been banished to the Red Sea.

CHAPTER XIV

GHOSTS OF THE DROWNED

On the coast of Brittany there is the ‘Bay of the Departed,’ where, it is said, in the dead hour of night the boatmen are summoned by some unseen power to launch their boats and to ferry to a sacred island the souls of men who have been drowned. On such occasions the boat is so crowded with invisible passengers as to sink quite low in the water, while the wails and cries of the shipwrecked are clearly heard as the melancholy voyage progresses. On reaching the island of Sein, the invisible passengers are numbered by unseen hands, after which the wondering, awestruck sailors return to await in readiness the next supernatural summons. At Guildo, on the same coast, small phantom skiffs are reported to dart out from under the castle cliffs, manned by spectral figures, ferrying over the treacherous sands the souls of those unfortunate persons whose bodies lie engulfed in the neighbourhood. So strong is the antipathy to this weird spot that, after nightfall, none of the seafaring community will approach near it.197 Similar superstitions are found elsewhere, and in Cornwall, sailors dislike walking at night near those parts of the shore where there have been wrecks, as they are supposed to be haunted by the ghosts of drowned sailors, and the ‘calling of the dead has frequently been heard.’ ‘I have been told,’ writes Mr. Hunt,198 ‘that, under certain circumstances, especially before the coming of storms, but always at night, these callings are common. Many a fisherman has declared he has heard the voices of dead sailors “hailing their own names.”’ He further tells how a fisherman, or a pilot, was walking one night on the sands at Porth-Towan, when all was still save the monotonous fall of the light waves upon the sand. Suddenly, he distinctly heard a voice from the sea exclaiming: ‘The hour is come, but not the man.’

This was repeated three times, when a black figure, like that of a man, appeared on the top of the hill. It paused for a moment, then rushed impetuously down the steep incline, over the sands, and was lost in the sea. In different forms the story is current all round the Cornish shores, and on the Norfolk coast, when any person is drowned, a voice is said to be heard from the water, ominous of a squall.

On the Continent the same belief, with certain variations, is found. Lord Teignmouth, in his ‘Reminiscences of Many Years,’ speaking of Ullesvang, in Norway, writes: ‘A very natural belief that the voice of a person drowned is heard wailing amidst the storm is, apparently, the only acknowledged remnant of ancient superstition still lingering along the shores of the fiords.’ In Germany, it is said that whenever a man is drowned at sea, he announces his death to his relations, and haunts the sea-shore. Such ghosts are supposed to make their appearance at evening twilight, in the clothes in which they were drowned.199 According to a Schleswig version of this belief, the spirits of the drowned do not enter the house, but linger about the threshold to announce their sad errand. A story is told of a young lad who was forced by his father to go to sea against his will. Before starting, he bid farewell to his mother, and said, ‘As you sit on the shore by the lake think of me.’ Shortly his ghost appeared to her there, and she only knew too well afterwards that he had perished.

Among Maine fishermen there are similar stories of the ghost of the drowned being seen. Mr. W. H. Bishop, in ‘Harper’s Magazine’ (Sept. 1880) tells us ‘there was particularly the story of the Hascall. She broke loose from her moorings during a gale on George’s banks, and ran into and sank the Andrew Johnson, and all on board. For years afterwards the spectres of the drowned men were reported to come on board the Hascall at midnight, and go through the dumb show of fishing over the side, so that no one in Gloucester could be got to sail her, and she would not have brought sixpence in the market.’ A Block Island tradition affirms that the ghosts of certain refugees, drowned in the surf during the revolution, are often seen struggling to reach the shore, and occasionally their cries are distinctly heard.200

There is the well-known anecdote which Lord Byron, says Moore,201 used sometimes to mention, and which Captain Kidd related to him on the passage. ‘This officer stated that, being asleep one night in his berth, he was awakened by the pressure of something heavy on his limbs, and there being a faint light in the room, could see, as he thought, distinctly the figure of his brother, who was at that time in the same service in the East Indies, dressed in his uniform, and stretched across the bed. Concluding it to be an illusion, he shut his eyes, and made an effort to sleep. But still the same pressure continued; and as often as he ventured to take another look, he saw the figure lying across him in the same position. To add to the wonder, on putting his hand forth to touch this form, he found the uniform in which he appeared dripping wet. On the entrance of one of his brother officers, to whom he called out in alarm, the apparition vanished, but, in a few months afterwards, he received the startling intelligence that on that night his brother had been drowned in the Indian Seas. Of the supernatural character of this appearance, Captain Kidd himself did not appear to have the slightest doubt.’

A strange antipathy has long existed against rescuing a drowning man, one reason being that the person saved would at some time or other do injury to the man who rescued him. In China, however, this reluctance to give help to a drowning man arises from another form of the same superstitious dread, the idea being that the spirit of a person who has been drowned continues to flit along the surface of the water, until it has caused by drowning the death of a fellow creature. A person, therefore, who is bold enough to attempt to rescue another from drowning is believed to incur the hatred of the unquiet spirit, which is supposed to be desirous, even at the expense of a man’s life, of escaping from its unceasing wandering. The Bohemian fisherman shrinks from snatching a drowning man from the water, fearing that the water-demons would take away his luck in fishing, and drown him at the first opportunity. This, as Dr. Tylor points out,202 is a lingering survival of the ancient significance of this superstition, the explanation being that the water spirit is naturally angry at being despoiled of his victim, and henceforth bears a special grudge against the unlucky person who has dared to frustrate him. Thus, when a person is drowned in Germany the remark is often made, ‘The river spirit claims his yearly sacrifice,’ or ‘The Nix has taken him.’

Similarly the Siamese dreads the Pnük, or water spirit, that seizes unwary bathers, and drags them underneath the water; and the Sioux Indians tell how men have been drowned by Unktahe, the water demon. Speaking of the ghosts of the drowned among savage tribes, Herbert Spenser says:203 ‘An eddy in the river, where floating sticks are whirled round and engulfed, is not far from the place where one of the tribe was drowned and never seen again. What more manifest, then, than that the double of this drowned man, malicious as the unburied dead ever are, dwells thereabouts, and pulls these things under the surface – nay, in revenge, seizes and drags down persons who venture near? When those who knew the drowned man are all dead, when, after generations, the details of the story, thrust aside by more recent stories, have been lost, there survives only the belief in a water demon haunting the place.’ We may compare the practice of the Kamchadals, who, instead of helping a man out of the water, would drown him by force. If rescued by any chance, no one would receive such a man into his house, or give him food, but he was reckoned as dead.

CHAPTER XV

GHOST SEERS

According to the popular creed, some persons have the peculiar faculty of seeing ghosts, a privilege which, it would seem, is denied to others. It has been urged, however, that under certain conditions of health there are those who are endowed with special powers of perception, whereby they are enabled to see objects not visible at other times. Thus, as Sir William Hamilton has observed, ‘however astonishing, it is now proved, beyond all rational doubt, that in certain abnormal states of the nervous organism, perceptions are possible through other than the ordinary channels of the senses.’ But, without entering into this metaphysical question, folk-lore holds that persons born at a particular time of the day have the power of seeing ghosts. Thus it is said in Lancashire, that children born during twilight are supposed to have this peculiarity, and to know who of their acquaintance will next die. Some say that this property belongs also to those who happen to be born exactly at twelve o’clock at night, or, as the peasantry say in Somersetshire, ‘a child born in chime-hours will have the power to see spirits.’ The same belief prevails in Yorkshire, where it is commonly supposed that children born during the hour after midnight have the privilege through life of seeing the spirits of the departed. Mr. Henderson says204 that ‘a Yorkshire lady informed him she was very near being thus distinguished, but the clock had not struck twelve when she was born. When a child she mentioned this circumstance to an old servant, adding that mamma was sure her birthday was the 23rd, not the 24th, for she had inquired at the time. “Ay, ay,” said the old woman, turning to the child’s nurse, “mistress would be very anxious about that, for bairns born after midnight see more things than other folk.”’

This superstition prevails on the Continent, and, in Denmark, Sunday children have prerogatives far from enviable. Thorpe205 tells how ‘in Fyer there was a woman who was born on a Sunday, and, like other Sunday children, had the faculty of seeing much that was hidden from others. But, because of this property, she could not pass by the church at night without seeing a hearse or a spectre. The gift became a perfect burden to her; she therefore sought the advice of a man skilled in such matters, who directed her, whenever she saw a spectre, to say, “Go to Heaven!” but when she met a hearse, “Hang on!” Happening some time after to meet a hearse, she, through lapse of memory, cried out, “Go to Heaven!” and straightway the hearse rose in the air and vanished. Afterwards meeting a spectre, she said to it, “Hang on!” when the spectre clung round her neck, hung on her back, and drove her down into the earth before it. For three days her shrieks were heard before the spectre would put an end to her wretched life.’

It is a popular article of faith in Scotland that those who are born on Christmas Day or Good Friday have the power of seeing spirits, and even of commanding them, a superstition to which Sir Walter Scott alludes in his ‘Marmion’ (stanza xxii.). The Spaniards imputed the haggard and downcast looks of their Philip II. to the disagreeable visions to which this privilege subjected him.

Among uncultured tribes it is supposed that spirits are visible to some persons and not to others. The ‘natives of the Antilles believed that the dead appeared on the roads when one went alone, but not when many went together; and among the Finns the ghosts of the dead were to be seen by the Shamans, but not by men generally unless in dreams.’206 It is, too, as already noticed,207 a popular theory with savage races that the soul appears in dreams to visit the sleeper, and hence it has been customary for rude tribes to drink various intoxicating substances, under the impression that when thrown into a state of ecstasy they would have pleasing visions. On this account certain tribes on the Amazon use certain narcotic plants, producing an intoxication lasting twenty-four hours. During this period they are said to be subject to extraordinary visions, in the course of which they acquire information on any subject they may specially require. For a similar reason the inhabitants of North Brazil, when anxious to discover some guilty person, were in the habit of administering narcotic drinks to seers, in whose dreams the criminal made his appearance. The Californian Indians would give children certain intoxicants, in order to gain from the ensuing vision information about their enemies. And the Darien Indians used the seeds of the Datura sanguinea to produce in children prophetic delirium, during which they revealed the whereabouts of hidden treasure.

In our own country various charms have been practised from time immemorial for invoking spirits, and, as we shall show in a succeeding chapter, it is still a widespread belief that, by having recourse to certain spells at special seasons in the year, one, if so desirous, may be favoured with a view of the spirits of departed friends.

CHAPTER XVI

GHOSTLY DEATH-WARNINGS

The belief in death-omens peculiar to certain families has long been a fruitful source of superstition, and has been embodied in many a strange legendary romance. Such family forewarnings of death are of a most varied description, and are still said to be of frequent occurrence. An ancient Roman Catholic family in Yorkshire, of the name of Middleton, is supposed to be apprised of the death of any one of its members by the apparition of a Benedictine nun; and Sir Walter Scott, in his ‘Peveril of the Peak,’ tells us how a certain spirit is commonly believed to attend on the Stanley family, warning them by uttering a loud shriek of some approaching calamity, and especially ‘weeping and bemoaning herself before the death of any person of distinction belonging to the family.’ In his ‘Waverley,’ too, towards the end of Fergus MacIvor’s history, he alludes to the Bodach Glas, or dark grey man. Mr. Henderson says,208 ‘Its appearance foretold death in the Clan of – , and I have been informed on the most credible testimony of its appearance in our own day. The Earl of E – , a nobleman alike beloved and respected in Scotland, was playing on the day of his decease on the links of St. Andrews at golf. Suddenly he stopped in the middle of the game, saying, “I can play no longer, there is the Bodach Glas. I have seen it for the third time; something fearful is going to befall me.” He died that night as he was handing a candlestick to a lady who was retiring to her room.’ According to Pennant, most of the great families in Scotland had their death-omens. Thus it is reported ‘the family of Grant Rothiemurcus had the “Bodach au Dun,” or the Ghost of the Hill; and the Kinchardines the “Lham-dearg,” or the Spectre of the Bloody Hand, of whom Sir Walter Scott has given the subjoined account from Macfarlane’s MSS.: “There is much talk of a spirit called ‘Ly-erg,’ who frequents the Glenmore. He appears with a red hand, in the habit of a soldier, and challenges men to fight with him. As lately as the year 1669 he fought with three brothers, one after another, who immediately died therefrom.”’

The family of Gurlinbeg was haunted by Garlin Bodacher, and Tulloch Gorms by May Moulach, or the Girl with the Hairy Left Hand.209 The Synod gave frequent orders that inquiry should be made into the truth of this apparition, and one or two declared that they had seen one that answered the description. An ancestor of the family of McClean, of Lochburg, was commonly reported, before the death of any of his race, to gallop along the sea-beach announcing the death by dismal lamentations; and the Banshee of Loch Nigdal used to be arrayed in a silk dress of greenish hue.

Reference is made elsewhere to the apparition of the Black Friar, the evil genius of the Byrons, supposed to forebode misfortune to the member of the family to whom it appeared, and Mr. Hunt has described the death-token of the Vingoes. It seems that above the deep caverns in a certain part of their estate rises a cairn. On this, it is asserted, chains of fire were formerly seen ascending and descending, which were frequently accompanied by loud and frightful noises. But it is affirmed that these warnings have not been heard since the last male of the family came to a violent end.210 Whenever two owls are seen perched on the family mansion of the family of Arundel of Wardour, it is said that one of its members will shortly die. The strange appearance of a white-breasted bird211 was long thought to be a warning of death to a family of the name of Oxenham, in Devonshire.