Chapter 2

The cottage to the east of the glen--Ballechin cottage--(there is no reason for not using the name except that B---- is shorter than Ballechin; indeed the public and the Perthshire police should combine to clear the neighbourhood of the gang who have troubled a charming country house)--was once a place for retreat for nuns. The fact was not known to Miss Freer and her friends until several visions of nuns had been seen in the glen.[18]

[Footnote 18: "Haunting of B---- House," p. 136.]

The poor religious women, like the priests, must have been a favourite prey of the hypnotists.

The writer believes that the late Cardinal Manning approved of religious ladies residing with their families and carrying on works of charity, a less wretched life than the usual nun's life often unavoidably must be. English Catholics have not been subjected to the terrors of a _casa de exercitios_ such as broke the courage of Mrs. Grahame's spinster friend.[19] It must have been extremely repulsive to the feelings of a man like Bishop Guerrero, and doubtless did not continue to exist long even in remote Chile.

[Footnote 19: Grahame's "Chile."]

But subdued in spirit as they are, the attacks of hypnotists would be terribly felt by most nuns.

Father H.'s apparition was seen by Miss Langton in a dream or vision. She recognised him when she met him three months later; he may have been shadowed by some of the hypnotists for purposes of information; and the idea that he should be begged to aid in blessing the house and banning the haunters, may have been a thought transferred by a hypnotist to Miss Freer, who is liable to thought transfer, and is a good transferrer herself. Why should not a nun's apparition be transferred as was Father H.'s (to Miss Langton)?

It appears that valiant resistance can inflict this possession upon hypnotists as well as the horrors of a hard and disgusting victory do.

Perhaps the Scin-laeca of Bulwer's "Harold," the apparition of Cerdic, haunted the imaginations of generations of magicians. These were possibly Celts; only one witch-rune on a Saxon sword was found; that was in the Isle of Wight. It was, Professor Stephens said, a solitary instance, as the brave Germans thought magic the art of a coward. The hypnotism from which all the garrison suffered was a slight hypnotism; the eyes remained open and people went about behaving almost normally. Father B. lost his self-control for an instant. Some people would have to be tricked in a complicated way. Thought transfer--audible to the person affected alone, or even inaudible but perceptible like a thought--accounts for the whole of Mrs. Piper's operations; she might have accomplices who would never be seen speaking to her, and who would dictate actions, say, to one of the Pelham or Howard family. These dictated actions, or inchoate plans, would then be reported by Mrs. Piper writing as George Pelham. What Mrs. Piper saw or felt or heard would be--at least at stated times--seen or felt or heard by her fellow conspirators. As in conjuring everything found was placed beforehand in the desired position. Thus facts recounted had been induced. The blackguard who spoke to her as Phinuit was less educated than the one who dictated George Pelham's communications.

Mrs. Piper's education was rather suited to receive the vulgar Phinuit's, than the more refined pseudo Pelham's communications. But the progress from the one stage so revolting to Miss Freer, to the other so delightful, a sign of increased refinement to Mr. Myers, was hardly more a change than the turning on a hot tap after a cold water tap into a basin. The receptacle was the same. But as a strong hypnotist herself, Mrs. Piper could bring off the Sutton matter; she could easily give Mrs. Sutton visual hallucinations. The startling position taken up by Mr. Myers in his article in the _National Review_, is easily explicable. He and Dr. Hodgson were magnetised by Mrs. Piper, and were like wax in her hands. Eusapia Palladius has the same power.

It is a sad declension in an eminent classic, that he, whose reference to the primitive heathen Ulysses torturing the shade of his own mother is rather revolting than elevating, should be full of wonder and delight at it.

After all Ulysses was the worthy ancestor of many a pirate hanged at Malta, more ferocious enemies of man than the Red Indian. Some somnambulists should be perhaps protected from exploitation. Mrs. Piper's trance is presumably feigned, as trances can easily be.

To return to Haunted Houses. In a haunted house case, a story suggested by some chronological connection, or the nature of the apparition, is attached to the phenomena. No doubt, in these days where the individuals who perceive the phenomena have a wider experience, such a variety of persons appear that the ghostly appearance loses its individuality if not its authenticity. Mr. Podmore discusses such cases.[20] In Mr. Podmore's book when Poltergeists, Cock-lore ghost affairs, are discussed, it appears that genuine hallucinations may be associated with fraudulent physical phenomena.

[Footnote 20: "Studies," pp. 305-308; Chap. x. Haunted Houses.]

These are, it may be positively stated, hypnotic hallucinations. The two together in some cases, as in the one already mentioned[21] of "Alice," amount to a very good ghost story, the blood on the floor alone excepted. Alice's home was a terrace house in a town. The House at B---- was very large and somewhat lonely.

[Footnote 21: "Podmore," p. 153.]

It is, however, less than 200 yards from a road along the Tay, that river running parallel to its front to the southward of it.

Rights of way from the north-west pass north of the house, and there were some empty lodges there; these might afford shelter to the persons of strong hypnotic power who chose to play the ghost. The continuity of the noises at night would be thus facilitated. The house belonged to the grand-nephew of a retired Indian major. It is apparently suggested that the major's relations with a young housekeeper were suspicious. The two and a native Indian servant are buried in the kirkyard at L----; presumably Logierait.

The haunted house is, as was said, at Ballechin in Perthshire; and it may be noted that to Perthshire Esdaile, the famous Calcutta hypnotist and physician, retired; but that he was unable to effect with the Perthshire people the marvellous cures he had brought about in India. Perhaps the Indian servant may have attracted the attention of some base imitator of the honourable Esdaile. It may be noted that an officer of rank, whose family were friends and not very distant neighbours in the south of England of the late Rev. Lord Sydney Godolphin Osborne, experienced some singular phenomena. Lord Sydney was a great hypnotist, and cured, or believed he cured, many cases of epilepsy. The officer in question suffered at times from a tickling in his face, which annoyed him very much; it seemed to be more on the cheeks than in the corners behind the nostrils.

The connection with hypnotism is seen in the next case. A much younger man, a captain in the Indian army, who had attended many spiritist seances, suffered much the same sort of tickling annoyance. Both were perfectly sane, and were doubtless persecuted. They were intelligent, capable people. A friend informs the writer that when some years ago he visited a fortune-teller of the Mrs. Piper class in London, he had a cold trickling up his feet, doubtless from hypnotism, to help thought reading.

The tickling of the face is the result of a more or less vain attempt to reach the ear or eye. It will be felt by people driving whose ear and eye would otherwise be affected. People sleeping in an exposed place may suffer more, as the fixed recumbent position makes them obnoxious to attack, as was previously remarked. The hyperaesthesia spreads in a slight degree round the eye.

The nature of the eye is hardly understood yet; it is quite possible that subconscious pictures pass before us like a cinematograph, enforcing or enforced by our thoughts. It has been remarked that thought is a species of self-hypnotism. Hypnotism may only make these pictures more distinct and modify them by degrees. In the attempt to inflict a picture on the eye, only the dark image of it may be seen. The writer believes that this means failure to affect the mind. Binet and Féré mention the dark after-shadow.

The extremest direct effect of hypnotism upon the eye, mechanically speaking, is doubtless scarcely more than the shock of thistledown wafted against it by a gentle breeze. It appears to affect the corners of the eye; the electric film is perhaps divided by the approach over the skin to another and damper tissue. But hyperaesthesia sometimes spreads to the upper cheek.

Madame de Maceine saw Rubinstein's hallucinatory picture with the corner of her eye.[22] A shock even as slight as a bit of thistledown blown against the cornea might be ill--timed at a street-crossing. Mr. S. of B---- was run over in the streets of London and killed. He had been previously hypnotically affected, for he heard quantities of raps; these were no friendly signs of spirits, but the affection of his early hypnotists practising against him.

[Footnote 22: _Vide_ a leading article, _Daily News_, July 23.]

A double image is seen, the eye being curiously affected, when for instance the knobs of a chest of drawers appeared through the apparition.

The vision is in the veil or mist of Ibn Khaldoon. Does not this cast a light upon the conceptive and receptive powers of the eye. The conceptive power is shown, as Binet and Féré remark, by the fact that our imagination has done away with the end of a nerve which should be seen at every instant of our lives. Light images may be given by feeble hypnotists of which but the dark reaction can be detected only once in a way. Compare Binet and Féré. They are perhaps noted when hypnotic speech does not come off and is not heard. The small vision in one eye only is separate from the landscape, and practically does not much influence the mind of the person on whom it is inflicted, who continues aware that it is a mere delusion, causing scarcely anything but trifling interruption. This is perhaps only the case with the few, more numerous however amongst the strong nations than amongst the weaker ones, who are impervious to ordinary hypnotism, or could only be hypnotised if extraordinarily fatigued.

The development of intelligence and perhaps endurance increases the number of these. I imagine the students in Germany, whom Heidenhain found so superior to our British students, were not only better educated, as is usual, but were also fighting club men, hardened to pain, and very superior to the bulk of their British contemporaries in courage and endurance.

The word skin-deep hypnotism might well be applied to the cases just mentioned. To show instances of its criminal use. Hypnotism has been used, there is reason to believe, against an Austrian ambassador in Petersburg, who found his papers in disorder, and saw a pale young man in his study. Ordering the gates to be closed, he was told by the porter that no one had entered, but that the ghost of the son of a former ambassador--a lad the writer knew who died at the Embassy--haunted the house. The ghost was therefore a hallucination inflicted on the ambassador. Stepniak's death at a level-crossing on a railway, might be brought about as Mr. Stewart's was in the street. Prince Alexander of Battenburg's mental prostration might be brought about by the same means when he was kidnapped.

At the time of the dispute between England and Russia, caused by Penjdeh, a Greek naval officer showed a slightly indiscreet attachment for England. Shortly afterwards he was removed for a time from the post he held, as he was considered not quite sane; he had been at Copenhagen, He was, however, restored to the navy, as it was considered rather good for his health than otherwise that he should go to sea. He and an English diplomatist at Copenhagen had been at Fiume together on duty, and the former was undoubtedly tricked by hypnotists, pretending to be acting for freemasonry, a trick played since on another person, and before in England on a third. It has also been played in Italy long ago. The voices would be taken for ventriloquists, whilst scenes heard would be considered to be perceived in catalepsy by a person in good health, and in full possession of his faculties, if not a doctor. At Fiume is the Whitehead torpedo manufactory, but as the hammering and other noises connected with it would prevent the chief persons in charge of the factory from being got at, the hypnotists were doubtless foiled there. Of course they may have got some information indirectly, but nothing of high value.

The alarm produced at B---- House was brought about less by the phenomena than by the pressure on the vagus nerve or heart. Whether fatal syncope can be produced by modifying the heart beats, as Mr. Vincent suggests it can, is of course a question for a doctor. He seems to think such cases not uncommon. A gentleman attacked by hypnotists twice suffered from syncope. He was previously suffering from exhaustion brought on by rowing a party for their lives in a squall, and took strychnine at a doctor's orders; that medicament, as is known, makes the nerves more sensitive. Further rascally attempts were a failure in better-situated houses. The terror of hearing a voice suddenly is in those circumstances very great; against one in good health it is less, no doubt. The trouble given at B---- was particularly great in the case of Miss Moore,[23] who scarcely slept for a week; she was Miss Freer's comrade in No. 1, the S.W. corner room of the house at B----, and the most exposed room where voices were chiefly heard; and that, too, by almost every one who slept there, Miss N., the Rev. Mr. Q., Father MacL., and Madame Boisseaux. The road ran nearest to it there. The writer believes that the remarkable fact that No. 1, the S.W. room, No. 2, the W. room, No. 3, the N.W. room, showed a far higher average of phenomena than the other five--_i.e._ the three eastern and the north and south centre rooms--is accounted for by the following circumstances.

[Footnote 23: "Alleged Haunting of B---- House," p. 118.]

No. 8, the south room, was much exposed, but unlike No. 1, it had no door in a line with another door and a window. Upon No. 1 an almost direct attack could be made from northward or southward; for the partition walls of the house, as well as the outer walls, were very thick.[24]

[Footnote 24: "Alleged Haunting of B---- House," p. 94; _ibid._, p. 140, _note_.]

In the new part of the house these were less so, but people in them were less affected than had been the case when the H. family stayed there.

Rooms Nos. 1, 2, and 3 could be raked from north or south. Nearly all the persons in the house were affected, and leaving out one or two men who objected to being reported, it appears that the ladies, who spent in the aggregate 237 nights in the house, had sixty-two nocturnal experiences, whilst men spending 108 nights had twenty experiences (between bedtime and breakfast was considered night-time). But three of the eleven ladies were very sensitive; only one man out of fourteen was so. Therefore, on a fair estimate, men and women were about equally sensitive; and this is the case with hypnotism generally. A further proof of the nature of the attack.

With regard to rooms Nos. 1 and 2, the following curious fact is noted by Miss Langton. "The knocks on the door between Nos. 1 and 2 have been audible in this room; No. 2 in my experience only when No. 2 is empty; and in No. 1 only when No. 2 is empty."[25] This looks as if attacks were made from the opposite side of the house to make detection less easy, especially by daylight. The maid-servants in the attics were often more impressed than the people in the rooms below. This seems due to the construction of the house; the attics are more approachable than the rooms from the staircase. The electricity follows the track of a person far better on a stair than on a ladder, it may be remarked. Thick walls, high window-sills, a commanding position, and a murmuring brook, are great securities against hypnotism, and these would be found in older Scotch castles. Another element of safety, the purling brook, is here mentioned; all noise is a good antidote; it is perhaps the case that with hypnotism from a distance the hypnotic state is continually waxing and waning, one link, generally a weaker one, succeeding another in the chain of impressions on the temperament. The diminution being continual, the force is renewed by people getting near enough to get a strong hold again, otherwise it dies out.

[Footnote 25: "Alleged Haunting of B---- House," p. 169.]

These approaches were doubtless most dangerous on railway journeys; hypnotism acts better in a small room than in a large one, and therefore a person in a railway carriage is more affected. Here discomfort and oppression helps hypnotism, but the hypnotist if in the train is in a favourable position, as the distance is preserved very closely and need not be very great.

Carriages are of the same size, and this is doubtless a help to the operator. The frequency of phenomena being observed on the night of arrival has been noticed. Miss N., who drove over, was not affected. The average recurrence of phenomena to each person was every fourth night; other people besides those previously mentioned as suffering on first nights, were on the second visit Miss Langton and Miss Duff. The latter was only very restless. This resembles the experimental result obtained by Mr. Rose; he attempted to impress two ladies in the same house: the elder saw his apparition, the younger was only restless.[26]

[Footnote 26: "Podmore," p. 252.]

It may be noted that in intercourse with other people, some effort is commonly made to secure their attention; this no doubt is connected with the greater facility for causing one's own apparition to be presented.

Thus to resume the question of place of hypnotism, on the second sojourn four people suffered in the night of first arrival. Was the gang larger, or were the assailants operators who had been afraid of the cold before?

Possibly Miss Langton had been followed to St. Andrews, where she had spent Easter, and had a vision of the phantom nun. In other cases where the absence had been longer only two people were attacked.

Several other persons felt a restlessness like Miss Duff's--woke without any cause, &c.--Mrs. M., Mr. T., Mr. L.F., and others. If any doubt be felt about the appearances and noises being from hypnotism, the experimental cases should remove it, the resemblance of the feelings of the "garrison" to those hypnotized should be dwelt on, the times of recurrence, and finally later mentioned the peculiarity of the apparition's nature--corresponding to those produced by hypnotism. The argument that Féré and Binet are fond of, that hypnotism much resembles what can be seen every day, is no doubt true.

Mrs. Anna Kingsford appears to have been often hypnotised by some unknown rascal, but her gentle admirable character seems to have suffered but little, though her life was possibly shortened.

But when Professor Maitland talks of building walls round her, he emphasises the advantage that society gives against witchcraft. Of four people whose lives have been destroyed or grievously injured by hypnotism, whose circumstances are known to the writer, three were childless married men (two were unhappily married), and the fourth case was a bachelor's, a poor young man's.

It may be noted that in the North of Europe, at least half a small class of men were attacked, and the others were more or less connected with these. The most were diplomatists and consuls.

The advantage of society must be referred to a great extent to the stream of thought-transfer from hypnotists being checked and broken up; for the effect of this stream being made indirect or semi-direct, its dominating power is thereby greatly diminished.

On the other hand, in three cases where attacks were defeated, the subjects were happily married men, and in two, if not in the three (the third case the writer gathered at second hand and fortunately remembered later), they had children. On the third visit of Miss Freer to B---- that lady notes that "the influence is evil and horrible. The worn features at breakfast were really a dismal sight."[27]

[Footnote 27: "Haunting of B----House," p. 210.]

On this occasion it looks as if more than three persons (Miss Langton on the 19th of February had noted three voices) were engaged in the attack.

The writer has no doubt, from personal and observed experience, that sometimes transfer is used, but is doubtful to what extent.

Boxes on the ear, slaps on the back, nay a flip as with a towel on the bare back, are felt, the last even by a clothed person. In Poltergeist cases, as in Alice's, a slap on the back was felt; perhaps she hypnotised Miss K. and slapped her on the back and transferred the slap to her (Alice's) mother.

This would be like the two engineer students' case, where the hypnotised one appeared to a friend.

In Poltergeist cases, one person perhaps does the mischief; in inferior haunted house cases two would be enough. The Poltergeist raisers are often subject to fits; the people who are vicious attackers, like the assailants of the occupants of B----, must be semi-maniacs. The terror is sometimes brought about by two people operating; one producing a terrifying effect, the other intensifying the terror. In attempting to weaken a person to whom speech has been made intelligible at a distance, a sensation would be transferred after the speech, so that he might believe it affected him, and cease jeering at and despising the operator. A man with some knowledge of mesmerism, and living a life with good interests in it, could defy them: such a case has happened. For nearly fifty years a gentleman was tormented at times, and died and lived sane.

The attack has perhaps been more developed in the last twenty or thirty years, the influence of above-board hypnotism acted upon that practised by criminal scoundrels. A combination possible is, for instance, one rascal showing a faint image of a fiend, and another transmitting a sound like a scratching at a window; this was a failure, the percipient believing that the devil acted under the authority of the Almighty, and had no business with innocent people. It was given to a person in a semi-sleeping condition. Pain combined was efficient. The pain is partly by affection of cutaneous nerves--partly by affection of the ear; but no one on the watch would be driven into lunatic acts by it. Of course after exhaustion (and pain makes this easier) the victim may be in a stupefied condition and obey: this is the post-hypnotic state, which will not come off with people who have been instructed against this villainous game. Miss Freer's admirable nerve was doubtless due to the habit of studying phenomena. The worn features at breakfast, mentioned before, included those of two secular priests. Miss Freer had failed to get permission for three well--known priests belonging to societies (perhaps Jesuits) to come. The gentleman already mentioned who had first told Lord Bute of the haunting of B---- was among these.

An interesting light on the effect of prayer would probably be brought out by struggles against witchcraft, struggles doubtless very common amongst early Christians. Indeed, the devils who were cast out must sometimes have been baffled hypnotists confronted by One who was stronger than they; the departing into the swine is much more intelligible on this hypothesis than on Dean Farrar's, of the swine's terror, which suppresses the "devils'" request.