Fiends, Ghosts, and Sprites Part 13

The next night Professor Seidler remained with Oeder. The spirit again appeared, but not as formerly, at the press, but near it, close to the white wall. It was visible only to Oeder, his brother professor merely seeing "something white." From this night Oeder burnt a night-lamp, and he no longer saw the apparition; but for some nights, at the same time, from three to five, he was troubled with uneasy sensations, and frequently heard a noise at the clothes-press and knocking at the door.

By degrees these sensations pa.s.sed away, and he discontinued the night-lamp; but the second night after, the spectre again appeared "at the accustomed hour, but visibly darker." It had, moreover, a new sign in its hand--"It was like a picture, and had a hole in the centre, into which the spirit frequently put its hand. After long ruminating and inquiring what the deceased might mean by these signs, so much was at length elicited, that a short time before his illness he had taken some paintings in a magic lantern from a picture-dealer on trial, which had not been returned. The paintings were given to the rightful owner, and from that time Oeder continued undisturbed."

In this story we notice, first, that a report was prevalent in the college, that the ghost of M. Doerien had been seen by several persons; and it is but natural to suppose that such a statement would exercise a powerful effect upon the mind of M. Hoefer, who had been placed in the painful position of being summoned to the death-bed of his friend, to receive a communication "necessary to mention to him," but had arrived in time only to witness the death-struggle. Upwards of three months after the death of M. Doerien, and when M. Hoefer was evidently in a disordered state of health, as is indicated by the swelling of the hand, and subsequent persistence of this swelling for some time, as this gentleman was making his usual rounds by the light of a taper in the dead of night, he witnesses the first apparition in a situation pregnant with a.s.sociations of the deceased. The apparition may have been an illusion, suggested at first by some outlines indistinctly seen; or it may have been, and it is more probable to have been, an hallucination excited by the a.s.sociation of ideas in a person whose system was in a disordered state.

That connection of ideas, similar or dissimilar, which is acquired by habit or otherwise, so that one of them, in whatever manner we may become conscious of it, will suggest and give rise to the others, without the intervention of a voluntary action of the mind, is familiar to most persons.

The a.s.sociation which the mind habitually forms between certain objects and scenes, and persons connected with them, is most evident when a separation has been effected by death or removal to a distance; and, as is well-known, and has probably been painfully experienced by most persons, when the mind has been rallying from a state of abstraction or reverie, the sight of some object, or an indistinct sound, which during the full activity of the faculties would not have been regarded, or would simply have sufficed to arouse an ordinary reminiscence, will cause to flash athwart the mind, a vivid and startling image of the deceased or far distant one.

We well remember some years ago, when a fellow-student, with whom we had been on very intimate terms, was cut off after a few days' illness. He had been in the habit of spending much time in our rooms. For some months after his death, particularly when wearied with study, a slight noise in the pa.s.sage or at the door of the room has given rise to so vivid an impression that he was approaching, or at the door, that it has required an effort of the mind to quell the hallucination.

The apparition which M. Hoefer witnessed, was most probably an hallucination of this kind; the corridor, and position in which it occurred, recalling to memory, in all the vividness of reality, the form and lineaments of that deceased friend who had formerly frequented it along with him.

We have already seen an instance of a somewhat similar character, in the account given in a previous paper of the apparition of a father, then alive, but absent at church, to his daughter at home. In that case the apparition was excited by the sight of the arm-chair generally occupied by the old gentleman, and connected with it alone, the a.s.sociation of the ideas being obvious; and the state of the brain forming, so to speak, the substratum of the hallucination, was induced by uneasiness caused by a heavy thunder-storm acting on a frame debilitated by fever.

The apparition of the following night, which was seen also by Professor Oeder, was, so far as M. Hoefer was concerned, a modification of the hallucination of the preceding night, prompted by the belief that the apparition he had witnessed was supernatural; and the precise similarity of the apparition professed to have been seen by M. Oeder, to that seen by M. Hoefer on that and the preceding night, would lead to the suspicion that in the former gentleman it was a trick of the imagination alone,--a suspicion confirmed by the subsequent progress of the tale.

Professor Oeder brooded upon the apparition he had witnessed, and, it is important to mark, made every endeavour for some time to obtain a second sight of it, but failed, until wearied out with his fruitless research, he ceased to hunt after it. Fourteen days afterwards, he states that he was suddenly and rudely awakened "by some external motion" (which is evidently an after-conclusion derived from what followed), and saw the apparition of Doerien standing by the clothes-press.

In other words, he awoke suddenly out of a troubled sleep, and in the transition state between sleeping and waking, in which the mental images are as bright and defined as in dreams, the subject which had occupied his mind so much of late was presented before him in a visible form. As it not unfrequently happens when a dream has made a powerful impression on the mind, it is repeated again, so on the following night M. Oeder's hallucination occurred, but with the addition of a slight creaking noise of the clothes-press door.

Oeder was now fully convinced of the supernatural character of his visitant, and when the spectre again appeared to him, which was after a period of eight days, he having adopted the opinion at that period very prevalent, of troubled spirits, proceeded to inquire as to the cause of its visitations; and noticing a white tobacco-pipe in the spirit's mouth, and _knowing_ that the deceased Doerien had "left some debts to the amount of a few dollars," he asked, "Are you perhaps owing for tobacco?" whereupon the spirit disappeared. Here then we find an hallucination, either in the dreaming or waking state, presenting the precise similitude of the Professor's opinions and conceptions respecting the possible cause of the spectre.

The following night, when the spectre appeared again, a friend was with Oeder, but this friend saw "nothing further than something white,"--no very extraordinary sight in a room which had white walls, and was not perfectly dark.

From this time Oeder used a night-lamp, and the spectre no more appeared, but by certain sensations and noises he knew it was in the apartment.

The invisibility of the spectre, when the light was present, would indicate that a sensation of light excited in the eye by a disordered state of the head, such as we have fully dwelt upon in a previous part of the work, played an important part of the hallucination; and the disturbed sleep for so many nights, and uneasy sensations, point to a circ.u.mstance which we have not yet alluded to, that the Professor's health was not in good condition,--the probable cause of the whole series of hallucinations.

The uneasy sensations ceased, the light was dispensed with, the spectre again came, but it was darker, and contained a new sign in its hand, which, by following out a similar course of reasoning as upon the tobacco-pipe, and by long ruminating and inquiring, the Professor puzzled out to signify some paintings belonging to a magic lantern which Doerien had received on trial before his death, and which had not been returned. They were sought up, sent to their rightful owner, and the apparition vanished to return no more.

It is to be remembered that this story, like most others of a similar nature, has been written under a full belief of the supernatural character of the apparitions, and it has received a colouring accordingly; and our comments suffice to show that no care, no attempt, has been made by the ghost-seer, to ascertain how much the apparitions might depend upon some illusion or hallucinations connected with his bodily health. The progress of the tale further shows that the apparitions occurred, in both M. Hoefer as well as Professor Oeder's case, in connection with symptoms of disordered health, and that they added nothing to what these gentlemen knew, or could work out, as M.

Oeder did, by his own reason and judgment; in short, that they were simple images of ideas they already possessed or arrived at from the information they obtained.

Other sources of error in the judgment could be pointed out, and other causes of illusion and hallucination in the above tale, but we have written sufficient to show its worthlessness.

One of the most formidable objections to the majority of ghost-stories of this nature is the insufficiency of the authority upon which they are given. In many instances we cannot trace them satisfactorily to their origin; in others, we have received them after they have pa.s.sed through the hands of several persons; and in still more (as in the tales we have just a.n.a.lysed) there is intrinsic evidence that no endeavour has been made to obviate or elicit the sources of fallacy to which the ghost-seer has been exposed, and diminish as much as possible the chances of error.

The story of the "Last Hours of Lord Lyttleton" is a singularly interesting example of a ghost-story, based upon insufficient authority, and probably also upon a trivial circ.u.mstance, receiving almost universal credence; and it shows, moreover, how readily the superst.i.tious feelings of the listeners will lead them to receive without due examination, tales which in themselves may be utterly void of satisfactory foundation; and induce them to retail subsequently an account which has probably received its precision and colouring from their imaginations alone.

Oft as the story has been told, we are necessitated again to quote it in part, in order to show more fully the nature of the authority upon which it depends.

A gentleman, who was on a visit to Lord Lyttleton, writes:--

"I was at Pitt Place, Epsom, when Lord Lyttleton died; Lord Fortescue, Lady Flood, and the two Miss Amphletts, were also present. Lord Lyttleton had not long been returned from Ireland, and frequently had been seized with suffocating fits; he was attacked several times by them in the course of the preceding month, while he was at his house in Hill Street, Berkeley Square. It happened that he dreamt, three days before his death, that he saw a fluttering bird; and afterwards, that a woman appeared to him in white apparel, and said to him, 'Prepare to die, you will not exist three days.' His Lordship was much alarmed, and called to a servant from a closet adjoining, who found him much agitated, and in a profuse perspiration: the circ.u.mstance had a considerable effect all the next day on his Lordship's spirits. On the third day, while his Lordship was at breakfast with the above personages, he said, 'If I live over to-night, I shall have jockied the ghost, for this is the third day.'

The whole party presently set off for Pitt Place, where they had not long arrived before his Lordship was visited by one of his accustomed fits; after a short interval, he recovered. He dined at five o'clock that day, and went to bed at eleven, when his servant was about to give him rhubarb and mint-water; but his Lordship perceiving him stir it with a tooth-pick, called him a slovenly dog, and bade him go and fetch a tea-spoon; but on the man's return, he found his master in a fit, and the pillow being placed high, his chin bore hard upon his neck, when the servant, instead of relieving his Lordship on the instant from his perilous situation, ran in his fright and called out for help, but on his return he found his Lordship dead."

The circ.u.mstances attending the apparition, as related by Lord Lyttleton, according to the statement of a relative of Lady Lyttleton's, were as follows:

"Two nights before, on his retiring to bed, after his servant was dismissed and his light extinguished, he had heard a noise resembling the fluttering of a dove at his chamber window. This attracted his attention to the spot; when, looking in the direction of the sound, he saw the figure of an unhappy female whom he had seduced and deserted, and who, when deserted, had put a violent end to her own existence, standing in the aperture of the window from which the fluttering sound had proceeded. The form approached the foot of the bed, the room was preternaturally light, the objects of the chamber were distinctly visible; raising her head and pointing to a dial which stood on the mantel-piece of the chimney, the figure, with a severe solemnity of voice and manner, announced to the appalled and conscience-stricken man that, at that very hour, on the third day after the visitation, his life and his sins would be concluded, and nothing but their punishment remain, if he availed himself not of the warning to repentance which he had received. The eye of Lord Lyttleton glanced upon the dial, the hand was upon the stroke of twelve; again the apartment was involved in total darkness, the warning spirit disappeared, and bore away at her departure all the lightness of heart and buoyancy of spirit, ready flow of wit, and vivacity of manner, which had formerly been the pride and ornament of the unhappy being to whom she had delivered her tremendous summons."

From a pa.s.sage in the Memoirs of Sir Nathanial Wraxall, it would seem that the sole authority for the above story was his Lordship's _valet-de-chambre_, for he writes:--

"Dining at Pitt Place, about four years after the death of Lord Lyttleton, in the year 1783, I had the curiosity to visit the bedchamber, where the cas.e.m.e.nt-window, at which Lord Lyttleton a.s.serted the dove appeared to flutter, was pointed out to me; and at his stepmother's, the Dowager Lady Lyttleton's, in Portugal Street, Grosvenor Square, I have frequently seen a painting, which she herself executed, in 1780, expressly to commemorate the event; it hung in a conspicuous part of her drawing-room. There the dove appears at the window, while a female figure, habited in white, stands at the foot of the bed, announcing to Lord Lyttleton his dissolution. Every part of the picture was faithfully designed, _after the description given to her by the valet-de-chambre who attended him, to whom his master related all the circ.u.mstances_."

In addition it would appear, according to Lord Fortescue, that the only foundation upon which this story rests, is as follows:--

"I heard Lord Fortescue once say," writes a friend of Sir Walter Scott, "that he was in the house with him (Lord Lyttleton) at the time of the supposed visitation, and he mentioned the following circ.u.mstances as the only foundation for the extraordinary superstructure at which the world has wondered:--A woman of the party had one day lost a favourite bird, and all the men tried to recover it for her. Soon after, on a.s.sembling at breakfast, Lord Lyttleton complained of having pa.s.sed a very bad night, and having been worried in his dreams by a repet.i.tion of the chase of the lady's bird. His death followed, as stated in the story."[69]

It would seem highly probable, therefore, that this story has been framed much after the same fashion as that of the "three black crows,"

and the singular differences which we find in the versions we have given, fully confirm this view.

Connected with the foregoing story is another of the apparition of Lord Lyttleton, on the night of his death, to Miles Peter Andrews, one of his most intimate friends. This apparition occurred at Dartford Mills, where Mr. Andrews was then staying, and doubtless, in its origin and mode of development, the story is in every respect similar to that of Lord Lyttleton's.

The March number of "_Household Words_,"[70] for 1853, contains a ghost-story which exhibits another form of the belief, differing from those which we have already dwelt upon, and it is interesting from its comparatively recent occurrence, and from its having to a certain extent received the confirmation of a law-court.

In the colony of New South Wales, at a place called Penrith, distant from Sydney about thirty-seven miles, lived a farmer named Fisher. He was unmarried, about forty-five years old, and his lands and stock were worth not less than 4000. Suddenly Fisher disappeared, and a neighbour, named Smith, gave out that he had gone to England for two or three years, and produced a written doc.u.ment authorizing him to act as his agent during his absence. As Fisher was an eccentric man, this sudden departure did not create much surprise, and it was declared to be "exactly like him."

About six months after Fisher's disappearance, an old man called Ben Weir, who had a small farm near Penrith, and who always drove his own cart to market, was returning from Sydney one night, when he beheld, seated on a rail which bounded the road--Fisher. _The night was very dark, and the distance of the fence from the middle of the road was at least twelve yards._ Weir, nevertheless, saw Fisher's figure seated on the rail. He pulled his old mare up, and called out, "Fisher, is that you?" No answer was returned, but there, still on the rail, sat the form of the man with whom he had been on the most intimate terms. Weir, who was not drunk, though he had had several gla.s.ses of strong liquor, jumped off his cart, and approached the rail. To his surprise, the form vanished.

Weir noticed that the ghost was marked by "a cruel gash" on the forehead, and that there was the appearance of fresh blood about it; and before leaving the spot, he marked it by breaking several branches of a sapling close by.

On returning home he told his story to his wife, who, however, told him that he was drunk, and ridiculed him.

On the following Thursday night, when old Ben was returning from market,--again in his cart,--he saw seated upon the same rail, the identical apparition. He had purposely abstained from drinking that day, and was in the full possession of all his senses.

Weir again told his wife of the apparition, to be again ridiculed by her, and he remarked, "Smith is a bad un! Do you think Fisher would ever have left this country without coming to bid you and me good-bye?"

The next morning Ben waited on a Mr. Grafton, a justice of the peace, who lived near to him, and told his tale. The magistrate was at first disposed to treat the account lightly, but after consideration, he summoned one of the aboriginal natives, and at sunrise met Weir at the place where the apparition had occurred, and which was sufficiently marked by the dead and broken branches of the sapling.

The rail was found to be stained in several places, and the native, without any previous intimation of the object of the search, was directed to examine them, and he shortly p.r.o.nounced them to be "_white man's blood_," and searching about, he pointed out a spot whereon a body had been laid. "Not a single shower of rain had fallen for several months previously,--not sufficient to lay even the dust upon the roads.

Notwithstanding this, however, the native succeeded in tracking the footsteps of one man to the unfrequented side of a pond at some distance. He gave it as his opinion that another man had been dragged thither. The savage walked round and round the pond, eagerly examining its borders, and the sedges and weeds springing up around it. At first he seemed baffled,--no clue had been washed ash.o.r.e to show that anything unusual had been sunk in the pond; but having finished this examination, he laid himself down on his face, and looked keenly along the surface of the smooth and stagnant water. Presently he jumped up, uttered a cry peculiar to the natives when gratified by finding some long-sought object, clapped his hands, and pointing to the middle of the pond, to where the decomposition of some sunken substance had produced a slimy coating streaked with prismatic colours, he exclaimed, '_White man's fat!_' The pond was immediately searched; and, below the spot indicated, the remains of a body were discovered. A large stone and a rotted silk handkerchief were found near the body; these had been used to sink it."

By the teeth, and b.u.t.tons upon the waistcoat, the body was identified as that of Fisher. Smith was arrested, and, upon this evidence, tried before the late Sir Francis Forbes, found guilty, sentenced to death, and hung; but previous to the execution, "he confessed that he, and he alone, committed the murder, and that it was upon the very rail where Weir swore that he had seen Fisher's ghost sitting, and that he had knocked out Fisher's brains with a tomahawk."

We quote this story as an interesting example of one of the best and most consistent of the tales of this kind, although it is probable that a more thorough investigation of the circ.u.mstances connected with it, would show an origin of a nature similar to that of the "Last Hours of Lord Lyttleton."

Several statements in the story require confirmation, and throw doubt upon the whole.

The a.s.sertion that Weir, on a "very dark" night, saw seated upon a rail, at a distance of _twelve yards_, a resemblance of Fisher which he took to be real, and was not aware of the actual nature of the appearance until he advanced towards it, is a statement too improbable to be worthy of credence unless supported by other and less objectionable evidence; and notwithstanding the extraordinary degree to which the visual and other senses of the aboriginal natives are, as we are aware, often developed, yet that they will enable them to state that an old blood-stain is produced by the blood of a white man, or that an iridescent sc.u.m floating at a distance on water is produced by the fat of the white man, are statements which cannot be admitted without strong confirmatory evidence.

It not unfrequently happens that dreams appear to foreshadow events, the occurrence of which could not be antic.i.p.ated by the reasoning faculties.

Many of the instances recorded of this kind are after-conclusions founded upon imperfectly remembered dreams, and are consequently worthless. Such, for example, is the story stated by Mrs. Crowe of a gentleman "who has several times been conscious on awaking that he had been conversing with some one, whom he has been subsequently startled to hear had died at that period."[71]

Other dreams have received a verification from the natural results of the dreamer's superst.i.tious folly.

Mrs. Crowe has quoted the following example from a continental newspaper:--

"A letter from Hamburg contains the following curious story relative to the verification of a dream. It appears that a locksmith's apprentice, one morning lately, informed his master (Claude Soller), that on the previous night he dreamt that he had been a.s.sa.s.sinated on the road to Bergsdorff, a little town at about two hours' distance from Hamburg. The master laughed at the young man's credulity, and to prove that he himself had little faith in dreams, insisted upon sending him to Bergsdorff, with 140 rix dollars (22 8_s._), which he owed to his brother-in-law who resided in the town. The apprentice, after in vain imploring his master to change his intention, was compelled to set out at about eleven o'clock. On arriving at the village of Billwaerder, about halfway between Hamburg and Bergsdorff, he recollected his dream with terror but perceiving the baillie of the village at a little distance talking to some of his workmen, he accosted him, and acquainted him with his singular dream, at the same time requesting, that as he had money about his person, one of his workmen might be allowed to accompany him for protection across a small wood which lay in his way. The baillie smiled, and in obedience to his orders, one of the men set out with his young apprentice. The next day the corpse of the latter was conveyed by some peasants to the baillie, along with a reaping-hook, which had been found by his side, and with which the throat of the murdered youth had been cut. The baillie immediately recognized the instrument as one which he had on the previous day given to the workman who had served as the apprentice's guide, for the purpose of pruning some willows. The workman was apprehended, and on being confronted with the body of his victim, made a full confession of his crime, adding that the recital of the dream had alone prompted him to commit the horrible act. The a.s.sa.s.sin, who is thirty-five years of age, was a native of Billwaerder, and previously to the perpetration of the murder, had always borne an irreproachable character."