Part 11

Calmet, the well-known Benedictine Abbot of Senon, in Lorraine, who was one of the most renowned theological writers of the eighteenth century, says (i. 17): "Apparitions of ghosts would be more readily understood if spirits had a body; but the Holy Church has decided that angels, devils and the spirits of the departed are pure immaterial spirits. Since this question transcends our mental faculties, we must submit to the judgment of the Church, which cannot err." Another great theologian, the German Bengel, on the contrary, assumed that "probably the apparitions of the departed have a prescribed limit and then cease; they continue probably as long as all the ties between body and soul are not fully dissolved." This question of the nature of our existence during the time immediately following death, is, it is well known, one of the most vexed of our day, for while most divines of the Protestant Church assume an immediate decision of our eternal fate, others admit the probability of an intermediate state, and the Catholic Church has its well-known probationary state in purgatory. It may as well be stated here at once that the whole theory of ghosts is admissible only if we assume that there follows after death a period during which the soul undergoes, not an immediate rupture, but a slow, gradual separation from its body, accompanied by a similar gradual adaptation to its new mode of existence. Whether the spirit, during this time, is still sufficiently akin to earthy substances to be able to clothe itself into some material perceptible to the senses of living men, is of comparatively little importance. The idea of such an "ethereal body" is very old, and has never ceased to be entertained. Thus, in 1306, already Guido de la Tones, who died in Verona, appeared during eight days to his wife, his neighbors, and a number of devout priests, and declared in answer to their questions that the spirits of the departed possessed the power to clothe themselves with air, and thus to become perceptible to living beings. Bayle also, in his article on Spinoza (note 2), advocates the possibility, at least, of physical effects being produced by agents whose presence we are not able to perceive by the use of our ordinary senses. Even so eminently practical a mind as Lessing's was bewildered by the difficulties surrounding this question, and he declared that "here his wits were at an end."

Another great German writer, Goerres, in his "Christian Mystic" (iii. p. 307), not only admits the existence of ghosts, but explains them as "the higher prototypal form of man freed from the earthy form, the spectrum relieved of its envelope, which can be present wherever it chooses within the prescribed limits of its domain." This view is, however, not supported by the experience of those who believe they have seen ghosts; for the latter appear only occasionally in a higher, purified form, resembling ethereal beings, as a mere whitish vapor or a shape formed of faint light; by far more generally they are seen in the form and even the costume of their earthy existence. The only evidence of really supernatural or magic powers accompanying such phenomena consists in the ineffable dread which is apt to oppress the heart and to cause intense bodily suffering; in the cold chill which invariably precedes the apparition, and in the profound and exquisitely painful emotion which is never again forgotten throughout life.

As yet, the subject has been so little studied by candid inquiries, that there are but a few facts which can be mentioned as fully established. The form and shape under which ghosts appear, are the result of the imagination of the ghost seer only, whether he beholds angels or devils, men or animals. If his receptive power is highly developed, he will see them in their completeness, and discern even the minutest details; weak persons, on the other hand, perceive nothing more than a faint, luminous or whitish appearance, mere fragmentary and embryonic visions. These powers of perception may, however, be improved by practice, and those who see ghosts frequently, are sure to discover one feature after another, until the whole form stands clearly and distinctly before their mind's eye. The ear is generally more susceptible than the eye to the approach of ghosts, and often warns the mind long before the apparition becomes visible. The noises heard are apt to be vague and ill defined, consisting mainly of a low whispering or restless rustling, a strange moving to and fro, or the blowing of cold air in various directions. Many sounds, however, are so peculiar, that they are never heard except in connection with ghosts, and hence, baffle all description. It need not be added, that the great majority of such sounds also exist only in the mind of the hearer, but as the latter is, in his state of excitement, fully persuaded that he hears them, they are to him as real as if they existed outside of his being. Nor are they always confined to the ghost seer. On the contrary, the hearing of such sounds is as contagious as the seeing of such sights; and not only men are thus affected, and see and hear what others experience, but even the higher animals, horses and dogs, share in this susceptibility. When ghosts appear to speak, the voice is almost always engastrimantic, that is, the ghost seer produces the words himself, in a state of ecstatic unconsciousness, and probably by a kind of instinctive ventriloquism. To these phenomena of sight and hearing must be added, thirdly, the occasional violent moving about of heavy substances. Furniture seems to change its place, ponderous objects disappear entirely, or the whole surrounding scene assumes a new order and arrangement. These phenomena, as far as they really exist, must be ascribed to higher, as yet unexplained powers, and suggest the view entertained by many writers on the subject, that disembodied spirits, as they are freed from the mechanical laws of nature, possess also the power to suspend them in everything with which they come in contact. The last feature in ghost-seeing, which is essential, is the cold shudder, the ineffable dread, which falls upon poor mortal man, at the moment when he is brought into contact with an unknown world. Already Job said: "Fear came upon me and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up" (iv. 14, 15). This sense of vague, and yet almost intolerable dread, resembles the agony of the dying man; it is perfectly natural, since the seeing of ghosts, that is, of disembodied spirits, can only become possible by the more or less complete suspension of the ordinary life in the flesh. For a moment, all bodily functions are suspended, the activity of the brain ceases, and consciousness itself is lost as in a fit of fainting. This rarely happens without a brief instinctive struggle, and the final victory of an unseen and unknown power, which deprives the mind of its habitual mastery over the body, is necessarily accompanied by intense pain and overwhelming anguish.

Well-authenticated cases of the appearance of spirits of departed persons are mentioned in the earliest writings. Valerius Maximus relates in graphic words the experience of the poet Simonides, who was about to enter a vessel for the purpose of undertaking a long journey with some of his friends, when he discovered a dead body lying unburied on the sea-shore. Shocked by the impiety of the unknown man's friends, he delayed his departure to give to the corpse a decent funeral. During the following night, the spirit of this man appeared to him and advised him not to sail on the next day. He obeys the warning; his friends leave without him, and perish miserably in a great tempest. Deeply moved by his sad loss, but equally grateful for his own miraculous escape, he erected to the memory of his unknown friend a noble monument in verses, unmatched in beauty and pathos. Phlegon, also, the freedman of the Emperor Hadrian, has left us in his work, _De Mirabilibus_, one of the most touching instances of such ghost-seeing; it is the well-known story of Machates and Philimion, which Goethe reproduced in his "Bride of Corinth." Nor must we forget the numerous examples of visions in dreams, by which the Almighty chose to reveal His will to his beloved among the chosen people--a series of apparitions, which the Church has taken care to continue during the earlier ages, in almost unbroken succession from saint to saint. Pagans were converted by such revelations, martyrs were comforted, the wounded healed, and even an Emperor, Constantine, cured of leprosy, by the appearance of the two apostles, Peter and Paul.

The truth, which lies at the bottom of all such appearances, is probably, that ghostly disturbances are uniformly the acts of men, but of men who have ceased for a time to be free agents, and who have, for reasons to be explained presently, acquired exceptional powers. Thus, a famous jurist, Counselor Hellfeld, in Jena, was one evening on the point of signing the death warrant of a cavalry soldier. The subject had deeply agitated his mind for days, and before seizing his pen, he invoked, as was his custom in such cases, the "aid of the Almighty through His holy spirit." At that moment--it was an hour before midnight--he hears heavy blows fall upon his window, which sound as if the panes were struck with a riding-whip. His clerk also hears the blows distinctly, and begins to tremble violently. This apparent accident induces the judge to delay his action; he devotes the next day to a careful re-perusal of the evidence, and is now led to the conviction that the crime deserves only a minor punishment. Ere the year has closed, another criminal is caught, and volunteers the confession that he was the perpetrator of the crime for which the soldier was punished. In that solemn moment, it was, of course, only the judge's own mind, deeply moved and worn out by painful work, which warned him in a symbolic manner not to be precipitate, and the very fact that the blows sounded as if they had been produced by a whip proved his unconscious association of the noise with the cavalry soldier. And yet he and his clerk believed and solemnly affirmed, that they had heard the mysterious blows! This dualism, which, as it were, divides man into two beings, one of whom follows and watches the other, while both are unconscious of their identity, is the magic element in these phenomena. This unconsciousness, proving--as in dreams--the inactivity of our reason, produces the natural effect, that we fancy all ghostly appearances are foolish, wanton and wicked. The fact is, moreover that they almost always proceed from a more or less diseased or disturbed mind, and acquire importance only in so far as it is our duty here also to eliminate truth from error. Thus only can we hope to counteract their mischievous tendency, and to prevent still stronger delusions from obtaining a mastery over weak minds. This is the purpose of a club formed in London in 1869, the members of which find amusement and useful employment in investigating all cases of haunted houses and other ghostly appearances.

That the belief in ghostly disturbances is not a modern error, we see from St. Augustine, who already mentions the farm of a certain Hasparius as disquieted by loud noises till the prayer of a pious priest restored peace. The Catholic Church has a St. Cæsarius, who purified in like manner the house of the physician Elpidius in Ravenna, which was filled with evil spirits and only admitted the owner after he had passed through a shower of stones. Another saint, Hubertus, was himself annoyed by ghosts in his residence at Camens, and never succeeded in obtaining peace till he died, in 958. Wicked or interested men take, of course, but too readily advantage of the credulity of men and employ similar disturbances for personal purposes; such was the case with the ghosts that haunted the Council house in Constance and the palace at Woodstock in Cromwell's time. The case of a scrupulously conscientious Protestant minister in Germany, which created in 1719 a great excitement throughout the empire, is well calculated to show the real nature of a number of such ghostly disturbances. He had been called to the death-bed of a notorious sinner, a woman, who desired at the last moment to receive the comforts of religion. Unfortunately he reached her house too late; she was already unconscious, and died in his presence, as he thought, unreconciled with her God and with himself, whom she had often insulted and cursed in life. Deeply disturbed he returned home, and after having dwelt upon the painful subject with intense anxiety for several days he began to hear footsteps in his house. Gradually they became more frequent; then he distinguished them clearly as a woman's step, and at last they were accompanied by the dragging of a gown. Watches were set, sand was strewn, dogs were kept in the house--but all in vain; no trace of man was found, and still the sounds continued. The unhappy man prayed day and night, and the noise disappeared for a fortnight. When he ceased praying they returned, louder than ever. He sternly bids the ghost desist, and behold! the ghost obeys. When he asks if it is a good angel or a demon, no answer is given; but the question: Art thou the Devil? finds an immediate reply in rapid steps up and down the house--for the poor man's mind was filled with the idea that such things can be done only by the Evil One. At last he summons all his remaining energy and in a tone of command he orders the ghost to depart and never to reappear. From that moment all disturbances cease--and very naturally, for the haunted, disturbed man, had fully recovered the command over himself; the dualism that produced all the spectral phenomena had ceased, and the restored mind accomplished its own cure. As these phenomena are thus produced from within, it appears perfectly natural also that they should be reported as occurring most frequently in the month of November. Religious minds and superstitious dispositions have brought this fact into a quaint connection with the approach of Advent-time, but the cause is probably purely physical; the dark and dismal month with its dense fogs emblematic of coming winter predisposes the mind to gloomy thoughts and renders it less capable of resisting atmospheric influences.

A very general belief ascribes such disturbances, under the name of "haunted houses," to the souls of deceased persons who can find no rest beyond the grave. The series of ghost stories based upon this supposition begins with the account of Suetonius and continues unbroken to our day. Then it was the spirit of Caligula, which could not be quiet so long as his body, which had only been half burned, remained in that disgraceful condition. Night after night his house and his garden were visited by strange apparitions, till the palace was destroyed by fire and the emperor's sisters rendered the last honors to his remains.

Thus the disposition of modern inquiries to trace back all popular accounts of great events, all familiar anecdotes and fairy tales, and even proverbs and maxims, to the ancients, has been fully gratified in this case also. They were not only known to antiquity, but formed a staple of popular tales. Thus the younger Pliny tells us one which he had frequently heard related. At Athens there stood a large, comfortable mansion, which, however, was ill-reputed. Night after night, it was said, chains were heard rattling, first at a distance, and then coming nearer, till a pale, haggard shape was seen approaching, wearing beard and hair in long dishevelled locks and clanking the chains it bore on hands and feet. The occupants of the house could not sleep, were terrified, sickened and died. Thus it came about that the fine building stood empty, year after year, and was at last offered for sale at a low price. About that time the philosopher Athenodorus came to Athens and saw the notice; he had his suspicions aroused by the small sum demanded for the house, inquired about the causes and rented the house. For he was a man of courage and meant to fathom the mystery.

On the evening of the first day he dismissed his servants and remained alone in the front room, writing and occupying himself, purposely, with grave and abstract questions, so as to allow no opening for his imagination. As soon as all was quiet around him the clanking and rattling of chains begins; but he pays no heed and continues to write. The noise approaches and enters the room; as he looks up he sees the well-known weird shape before him. It beckons him, but he demands patience and writes on as before; then the ghost shakes his chains over his head and beckons once more imperatively. Now he rises, takes his lamp, and follows his visitor through the passages into a court-yard, where the ghost disappears. The philosopher pulls up some grass on the spot and marks the place. On the following day he appeals to the authorities to cause the place to be dug up; and when this is done, the bones of an old man, loaded with heavy chains, are found. From that time the house was left undisturbed, as if the departed had only desired to induce some intelligent person to bestow upon him the honors of a decent burial, which among the ancients were held all-important. ("Letter to Sera," l. vii. 27.) The story told by Lucian ("Philopseudes," xxx.) is almost identical with that of Pliny. Here, also, a house in Corinth, once belonging to Eubatides, was left unoccupied, for the same reasons, and began to decay, when the Pythagorean, Arignotus, determined to ascertain the reality of these nightly appearances. He goes there after midnight, places his lamp on the floor, lies down and begins to read. Soon a horrible monster appears, black as night, and changes from one disgusting beast into another, till at last it yields to the stern command of the intrepid philosopher and disappears in a corner of the large room. When day breaks, workmen are brought in to take up the floor; a skeleton is found and decently interred, and from that day the house is left to its usual peace and quiet. ("Epist." l. vii. 27.) Plutarch, also, in his "Life of Cimon," states that the baths at Chæronea were haunted by the ghost of Damon, who had there found his death; the doors were walled up and the place forsaken, but up to his day no relief had been devised, and fearful sights and terrible sounds continued to render the place uninhabitable.

Nor are Eastern lands unacquainted with this popular belief. Egypt has its haunted houses in nearly every village, and in Cairo there are a great number, while in Tunis whole streets were abandoned to ghostly occupants. In Nankin a great mandarin owned a spacious building which he could neither occupy himself nor rent to others, because of its evil reputation. At last the Jesuit Riccius, a missionary, offered to take it for his order; the fathers moved into it, conquered the ghosts by some means best known to themselves, and not only obtained a good house but great prestige with the natives for their triumph over the spirits (C. Hasart. _Hist. Eccles. Sinica_, p. 4, ch. iii.).

The same singular belief is not only met with in every age and among the most enlightened nations, but even in our own century a similar case occurred and is well authenticated. The Duke Charles Alexander of Würtemberg of unholy memory, died at the town of Ludwigsburg, perhaps by murder. For years afterwards the palace was the scene of most violent disturbances; even the sentinels, powerful and well-armed men, were bodily lifted up and thrown across the parapet of the terrace. At other times the whole building appeared to be filled with people; doors were opened and closed, lights were seen in the apartments and dim figures flitted to and fro. Large detachments of troops under the command of officers, specially selected for the purpose, were ordered to march through the palace more than once, on such occasions, but never discovered a trace of human agency (Kerner. _Bilder._ p. 143). Even the great Frederick of Prussia, a man whose thoroughly skeptical mind might surely be supposed to have been free from all superstition, was once forced to admit his inability to explain by natural causes an occurrence of the kind. A Catholic priest in Silesia lost his cook, who had been specially dear to him; her ghost--as it was called--continued to haunt the house, and, most strange of all, not in order to disturb its peace, but to perform the usual domestic service. The floors were swept, the fires made, and linen washed, all by invisible hands. Frederick, who accidentally heard of the matter, ordered a captain and a lieutenant of his guard to investigate it; they were received by the beating of drums and then allowed to witness the same household performances. When the grim old captain broke out in a fearful curse, he received a severe box on the ears and retreated utterly discomfited. Upon his report to the king the house was pulled down and a new parsonage erected at some distance from the place. The occurrence is mentioned in many historical works and quoted without comment even by the great historian Menzel. Another striking case of a somewhat different character, was fully reported to the Colonial Office in London. The scene was a large vault in the island of Barbadoes, hewn out of the live rock and accessible only through a huge iron door, fastened in the usual way by strong bolts and a lock, the key to which was kept at the Government House. During the year 1819 it was opened four times for purposes of interment, and each time it was observed that all the coffins in the vault had been violently thrown about. The Governor, Lord Combermere, went himself, accompanied by his staff and a number of officers, to examine the place, and found the vault itself in perfect order and without a trace of violence. He ordered the door to be closed with cement and placed his seal upon the latter, an example followed by nearly all the bystanders. Eight months later, the 28th of April, 1820, he had the vault opened in the presence of a large company of friends and within sight of a crowd of several thousands. The cement and the seals were found to be perfect and uninjured; the sand which had been carefully strewn over the floor of the vault showed no footmark or sign whatever, but the coffins were again thrown about in great confusion. One, of such weight that it required eight men to move it, was found standing upright, and a child's coffin had been violently dashed against the wall. A carefully drawn up report with accompanying drawings was sent home, but no explanation has ever been discovered. Scientific men were disposed to ascribe the disturbance to earthquakes, but the annals of the island report none during those years; there remains, however, the possibility that the examination of the vault was after all imperfect, and that the sea might have had access to it through some hidden cleft. In that case an unusually high tide might very well have been the invisible agent.

Even the Indian of our far West cherishes the same superstitious belief, and in his lodge on the slopes of the Rocky Mountains, he hears mysterious knockings. To him they are the kindly warning of a spirit, whom he calls the Great Bear, which announces some great calamity.