Fiends, Ghosts, and Sprites Part 14

It is well known that sensations from without will not only frequently excite dreaming, but will also often determine the character of the dreams. The following story is evidently an example of a dream of this nature.

On the 30th July, 1853, the dead body of a young woman was discovered in a field at Littleport, in the Isle of Ely. There could be little doubt that the woman had been murdered; and at the adjourned inquest held before Mr. W. Marshall, one of the coroners for the isle, on the 29th August, the following extraordinary evidence was given:--

"James Jessop, an elderly respectable-looking labourer, with a face of the most perfect stolidity, and who possessed a most curiously shaped skull, broad and flat at the top, and projecting greatly on each side over the ears, deposed: 'I live about a furlong and a half from where the body was found. I have seen the body of the deceased. I had never seen her before her death. On the night of Friday, the 29th of July, I dreamt three successive times that I heard the cry of murder issuing from near the bottom of a close called Little Ditchment Close (the place where the body was found). The first time I dreamt I heard the cry, it woke me. I fell asleep again, and dreamt the same again. I then woke again, and told my wife. I could not rest; but I dreamt it again after that. I got up between four or five o'clock, but I did not go down to the Close, the wheat and barley in which have since been cut. I dreamt once, about twenty years ago, that I saw a woman hanging in a barn, and on pa.s.sing the next morning the barn which appeared to me in my dream, I entered, and did find a woman there hanging, and cut her down just in time to save her life. I never told my wife I heard any cries of murder, but I have mentioned it to several persons since. I saw the body on the Sat.u.r.day it was found. I did not mention my dream to any one till a day or two after that. I saw the field distinctly in my dream, and the trees thereon, but I saw no person in it. On the night of the murder the wind lay from that spot to my house."

"Rhoda Jessop, wife of the last witness, stated that her husband related his dreams to her, on the evening of the day the body was found."[72]

It is highly probable, that in this instance, the screams of the unfortunate woman, borne upon the wind, were the exciting cause of the dreams, and the direction from which the sound came would be sufficient to call up the a.s.sociated idea of the fields in which the murder occurred. The powerful impression made upon the mind of the man, according to his own account, will sufficiently account for the repet.i.tion of the dreams; and the statement that the particulars of the dream were not related until after the finding of the body, must induce a little caution to the reception of the above version as an actual detail of the facts of the case. This remark applies also to the dream interpolated in the evidence.

Among the most vivid and connected dreams, are those excited by a dominant or absorbing train of thought, which has engaged the mind during waking hours, or by powerful or protracted emotion.

M. Boismont relates a dream, which he conceives is to be cla.s.sed among the inexplicable phenomena of this nature, but which, with all deference to that distinguished psychologist, is rather to be placed in the category we have just named.

Miss R., gifted with an excellent judgment, and religious without bigotry, lived, before her marriage, at the house of an uncle, a celebrated physician, and a member of the Inst.i.tute. She was at that time separated from her mother, who had been attacked, in the country, by a severe illness. One night, this young lady dreamed that she saw her mother before her, pale, disfigured, about to render the last breath, and showing particularly lively grief at not being surrounded by her children, of whom one, cure of one of the parishes in Paris, had emigrated to Spain, and the other was in Paris. Presently she heard her call upon her many times by her Christian name; whereupon the persons who surrounded her mother, supposing that she called her grand-daughter, who bore the same name, went to seek her in the neighbouring room, but a sign from the invalid apprised them that it was not the grand-daughter, but the daughter who resided in Paris, that she wished to see. Her appearance expressed the grief she felt at her absence; suddenly her features changed, became covered with the paleness of death, and she fell without life on the bed.

The lady had died during that night; and it was subsequently ascertained, that the circ.u.mstances delineated in the dream, simulated those which had occurred by the death-bed.

What are the circ.u.mstances of this case?--A mother dangerously ill--her children away from home. What more likely to occur to a child cognisant of these facts, than the train of thought which engendered and caused this dream? The events attending a death-bed scene under such circ.u.mstances were all but inevitable, and we cannot, justifiably, consider this case in any other light than that of a "simple coincidence."

Many physiologists and metaphysicians are of opinion, and there is much ground for the belief, that every sensation which has been actually experienced, may become the subject of perception at some future time, although, in the interval, all trace of its existence may have been lost, and it is beyond the power of the will to recall.

The phenomena upon which this opinion has been princ.i.p.ally founded, have been observed in the delirium of certain febrile diseases, and in dreaming.

There is a case on record of a woman, who, during the delirium of fever, repeated long pa.s.sages in the Hebrew and Chaldaic tongues. When in health she was perfectly ignorant of these languages; and it was ascertained, that the sentences she spoke in her delirium, were correct pa.s.sages from known writers in them. It was subsequently discovered, that at one period of her life she had lived with a clergyman who was in the habit of walking up and down the pa.s.sage, reading aloud from Hebrew and Chaldaic works, and it was the sensations thus derived, and retained unconsciously to herself, which had been revivified by the changes induced during the progress of the fever.

A case is also recorded by Dr. Abercrombie, in which a servant-girl who had manifested no "ear" for, or pleasure in music, during sleep was heard to imitate the sounds of a violin, even the tuning, and to perform most complicated and difficult pieces of music. This girl had slept for some time, and much to her annoyance, in a room adjoining that occupied by an itinerant violinist who was somewhat of an enthusiast in his art, and was accustomed to spend a portion of the night in practising difficult pieces of music, often preventing this female from sleeping.

The music she had thus heard, registered in the mind, so to speak, was repeated, unconsciously, during the disturbed action of the brain consequent upon imperfect health and dreaming.

The principle which has been deduced from these and similar cases, gives a ready explanation to numerous stories which it has been customary to regard as coming within the pale of the supernatural.

Those instances in which, during a dream, the places in which doc.u.ments of value, which had been lost or misplaced, have been revealed, are examples of revivified sensations which had been lost sight of, and of which the return had been determined by the protracted exercise of the mind to recover the missing traces.

Sir Walter Scott, in his notes to "The Antiquary," relates the following highly interesting ill.u.s.tration:--

"Mr. R----d, of Bowland, a gentleman of landed property in the vale of Gala, was prosecuted for a very considerable sum, the acc.u.mulated arrears of tiend (or t.i.the), for which he was said to be indebted to a n.o.ble family, the t.i.tulars (lay improprietors of the t.i.thes). Mr. R----d was strongly impressed with the belief, that his father had, by a form of process peculiar to the law of Scotland, purchased those lands from the t.i.tular; and therefore, that the present prosecution was groundless. But after an industrious search among his father's papers, an investigation of the public records, and a careful inquiry among all persons who had transacted law business for his father, no evidence could be recovered to support his defence. The period was now near at hand, when he conceived the loss of the lawsuit to be inevitable, and he had formed his determination to ride to Edinburgh next day, and make the best bargain he could in the way of compromise. He even went to bed with this resolution, and with all the circ.u.mstances of the case floating upon his mind, had a dream to the following purpose.

"His father, who had been many years dead, appeared to him, he thought, and asked him why he was disturbed in his mind. In dreams men are not supprised at such apparitions. Mr. R----d thought he informed his father of the cause of his distress, adding, that the payment of a considerable sum of money was the more unpleasant to him, because he had a strong consciousness that it was not due, though he was unable to acquire any evidence in support of his belief. 'You are right, my son,' replied the paternal shade; 'I did acquire right to these tiends, for payment of which you are now prosecuted. The papers relating to the transaction are in the hands of Mr. ----, a writer (or attorney), who is now retired from professional business, and resides at Inveresk, near Edinburgh. He was a person whom I employed on that occasion for a particular reason, but who never, on any other occasion, transacted business on my account.

It is very possible,' pursued the vision, 'that Mr. ---- may have forgotten a matter which is now of a very old date; but you may call it to his recollection by this token,--that when I came to pay his account, there was difficulty in getting change for a Portugal piece of gold, and that we were forced to drink out the balance at a tavern.'

"Mr. R----d awoke in the morning with all the words of the vision imprinted on his mind, and thought it worth while to ride across the country to Inveresk, instead of going straight to Edinburgh. When he came there, he waited on the gentleman mentioned in the dream, a very old man; without saying anything of the vision, he inquired whether he remembered having conducted such a matter for his deceased father. The old gentleman could not at first bring the circ.u.mstance to his recollection, but on mention of the Portugal piece of gold, the whole returned upon his memory; he made an immediate search for the papers, and recovered them; so that Mr. R----d carried to Edinburgh the doc.u.ments necessary to gain the cause which he was on the verge of losing.

"The author's theory is, that the dream was only the recapitulation of information which Mr. R----d had really received from his father while in life, but which at first he merely recalled as a general impression that the claim was settled. It is not uncommon for persons to recover, during sleep, the thread of ideas which they have lost during waking hours.

"It may be added, that this remarkable circ.u.mstance was attended with bad consequences to Mr. R----d, whose health and spirits were afterwards impaired by the attention which he thought himself obliged to pay to the visions of the night."

An instance which is related by Mrs. Crowe, receives its explanation also from this source.

"A case occurred not many years since in the North of Scotland, where a murder having been committed, a man came forward, saying, that he had dreamt that the pack of the murdered pedlar was hidden in a certain spot; whereon, a search being made, it was actually found. They at first concluded he was himself the a.s.sa.s.sin, but the real criminal was afterwards discovered; and it being a.s.serted, though I have been told erroneously, that the two men had pa.s.sed some time together, since the murder, in a state of intoxication, it was decided that the crime, and the place of concealment, had been communicated to the pretended dreamer," &c.

If the statement that the murderer and the dreamer had spent some time together in a state of intoxication, after the murder had been committed, be correct, the supposition that the murder had been communicated to the dreamer, forgotten when the state of intoxication had pa.s.sed away, but subsequently recalled during the progress of a dream, affords an easy and natural explanation of the whole matter.

As an example of that cla.s.s of dreams which are inexplicable, but which, unfortunately, are of little weight from the imperfect authority upon which they are given, and from the fact that they bear intrinsic evidence of having been received without inquiry into the circ.u.mstances under which they occurred, and the fallacies to which the dreamer and subsequent details had been exposed, we quote the following from the works of the Rev. John Wesley.[73]

"Among the congregation at Ambleside were a gentleman and his wife, who gave me a remarkable relation. She said she had often heard her brother relate, what an intimate acquaintance had told her, that her husband was concerned in the rebellion of 1745. He was tried at Carlisle, and found guilty. The evening before he was to die, sitting and musing in her chair, she fell fast asleep. She dreamed one came to her and said, 'Go to such a part of the wall, and among the loose stones you will find a key, which you must carry to your husband.' She waked; but thinking it a common dream, paid no attention to it. Presently she fell asleep again, and dreamed the very same dream. She started up, put on her cloak and hat, and went to that part of the wall, and among the loose stones found a key. Having, with some difficulty, procured admission into the gaol, she gave this to her husband. It opened the door of his cell, as well as the lock of the prison door.(!) So at midnight he escaped for life."

It is not uncommon to find persons a.s.serting that they have had dreams which have prefigured events, often trivial, in the common run of life.

Probably, without exception, these are irrelevant conclusions: the affirmative instances being marked, to the total neglect of the negative. For example:--A lady with whom we are acquainted was accustomed to relate a dream which she had had, in which she thought that she was in the nursery watching one of her children play, when suddenly it tripped over the fender, and fell against the ribs of the grate, and before it could be extricated, the face was severely burned.

On the following day the child she had seen in her dream, happened to have an accident in the nursery very similar to that she had seen occur in the dream.

On inquiry, however, it proved that dreams of this nature respecting her children were quite usual to the lady, and that at one time or other she had witnessed while sleeping almost all those accidents occur to which infant life is exposed. This was the only instance in which any one had apparently come true; and _until_ this had occurred she had very properly and correctly attributed her dreams to the anxiety she naturally entertained respecting her young family.

Of all the divisions, or rather branches, of supernatural lore, none has obtained more universal credence, none has been more persistent, than that of _presentiments_.

A history of _presentiments_ would form a curious, if not very instructive work, and it alone would almost suffice to indicate the absurdity of the belief in its main features.

We have instances of _high spirits_ foreboding evil; _low spirits_ foreboding the same; _sudden illness_ shadowing forth calamity, _not_ to the person affected, but to a companion; _sudden dullness of sight_ presaging death--indeed a collection of these instances would show that every obscure sensation, every variation of emotion or pa.s.sion, preceding an evil occurrence, has at one time or other been regarded as a presentiment of that evil.

Jung-Stilling has so well described the nature of the faculty of presentiment, and the circ.u.mstances under which it is most commonly developed, that we cannot do better than quote the words of that celebrated writer on this subject. He writes:--

"As the developed faculty of presentiment is a capability of experiencing the arrangements which are made in the world of spirits, and executed in the visible world, second-sight certainly belongs also under this head. And as those who possess this capability are generally simple people, it again follows from hence, that a developed faculty of presentiment is by no means a quality which belongs solely to devout and pious people, or that it should be regarded as a divine gift; I take it, on the contrary, for a disease of the soul, which we ought rather to endeavour to heal than promote.

"He that has a natural disposition for it, and then fixes his imagination long and intensely, and therefore _magically_, upon a certain object, may at length be able, with respect to this object, to foresee things which have reference to it. Grave-diggers, nurses, and such as are employed to undress and shroud the dead, watchmen, and the like, are accustomed to be continually reflecting on objects which stand in connexion with death and interment; what wonder, therefore, if their faculty of presentiment at length develop itself on these subjects; and I am inclined to maintain, that it may be promoted by drinking ardent spirits."[74]

In addition to this, Mrs. Crowe remarks:--

"It is worthy of observation that idiots often possess some gleams of this faculty of second-sight or presentiment; and it is probably on this account that they are in some countries held sacred. Presentiment, which I think may very probably be merely the vague and imperfect recollection of what we _knew_ in our sleep, is often observed in drunken people."[75]

Cicero,[76] after relating the myth of the apparition of Tages, in Etruria, adds:--

"But I should indeed be more foolish than they who credit these things, if I seriously argue the matter."

Equally foolish it would be for us to attempt to show the absurdity of the foregoing opinions; and we fear it would be a bootless and inutile task to argue with those who regard the statements of the studiously and transcendentally superst.i.tious and ignorant, the incoherence of the drunkard, the depressed feelings experienced after a debauch, or the vague gleams of understanding in an idiot, as evidences of communication with the spirit-world.

We know two ladies gifted with the faculty of ordinary presentiment, and who boast (if we may use that expression) that they are members of a family of which no scion has died for years without some supernatural indication of its occurrence. We well remember _after_ the information had been received by them of the death of the last male representative of one branch of the family, that they told how on the night of the death they happened to be awake in bed, when certain strange noises were heard about the bed-curtains, "as of a mouse" scrambling upon them, and immediately afterwards a blow was struck upon a large chest of drawers which stood opposite the foot of the bed, and the sound was as though the chest had been broken to pieces. We did not draw the inference which the ladies did from this circ.u.mstance, namely, that it was an intimation of the death of their relative, for, unfortunately for the romantic view of the question, we knew that such nightly occurrences as these were somewhat common with them, and that a simple and comfortable house in a densely-populated manufacturing district had been peopled by them with nightly noises and sounds, audible alone to them, to such an extent, that the adaptation of a presentiment to any particular occurrence was a matter of little difficulty.

We also well remember, some years ago, when an infant brother lay dying, that our mother and the nurse were startled in the dead of night by a strange fluttering at the window. On the curtain being raised, the light of the candle showed a bird fluttering and beating against one of the panes. Was it an omen of death, and an emblem of the happy transition of the baby-spirit to another world? A few moments' examination soon showed that it was no spectre bird, but apparently a robin, which had been disturbed in the darkness, and was attracted by the light, and no sooner was the window darkened than it flew away.

Three days ago, we saw a woman who had been for some months in a delicate state of health. "Sir," she said, "what I have most to complain of is, that I always feel as if some great evil was about to befall myself or family." This feeling is common, in a greater or less degree, to that depressed state of the system preceding attacks of febrile and many other diseases, and is often marked in hypocondriacism. Who, when suffering from slight indisposition, has not often felt this feeling of foreboding, of which the lowest grade is expressed in the ordinary phrase, low-spirits? This feeling, and thus derived, has been the substratum for those vague, so-called presentiments, which const.i.tute the great bulk of instances in that doctrine; and the fallacy has been, that the mind, more readily affected by affirmative than by negative examples, has held to the former and neglected the latter, and deluded itself by an imperfect and too contracted view of the facts.

Boismont, the most recent writer on the doctrine of presentiments, writes:--

"In the greatest number of cases, they are not realised; in those where the event justifies them, they are only a reminiscence--a simple coincidence;--we admit all this. It is not the less true, that an unforeseen event, a strong prepossession, great restlessness, a sudden change in habits, any fear whatsoever, gives rise, at the moment, to presentiments which it would be difficult to deny by systematic credulity."[77]

Let us examine one or two of the cases which would lead so distinguished a psychologist to give a certain degree of credence to this belief.

The Prince de Radzvil had adopted one of his nieces, an orphan. He inhabited a chateau in Gallicia, and this chateau had a large hall which separated the apartments of the Prince from those occupied by the children, and in order to communicate between the two suites of rooms it was necessary either to traverse the hall or the court.

The young Agnes, aged from five to six years, always uttered piercing cries every time that they caused her to traverse the great hall. She indicated, with an expression of terror, an enormous picture which was suspended above the door, and which represented the Sibyl of c.u.ma. They endeavoured for a length of time to vanquish this repugnance, which they attributed to infant obstinacy; but as serious accidents happened from this violence, they ended by permitting her no more to enter the hall; and the young girl loved better, during ten or twelve years, to traverse in rain, snow, or cold, the vast court or the gardens, rather than pa.s.s under this door, which made so disagreeable an impression upon her.