APPARITIONS.
Partial darkness, or obscurity, are the most powerful means by which the sight is deceived: night is therefore the proper season for apparitions. Indeed the state of the mind, at that time, prepares it for the admission of these delusions of the imagination. The fear and caution which must be observed in the night; the opportunity it affords for ambuscades and assassinations; depriving us of society, and cutting off many pleasing trains of ideas, which objects in the light never fail to introduce, are all circumstances of terror: and perhaps, on the whole, so much of our happiness depends upon our senses, that the deprivation of any one may be attended with a proportionate degree of horror and uneasiness. The notions entertained by the ancients respecting thesoul, may receive some illustrations from these principles. In dark, or twilight, the imagination frequently transforms an inanimate body into a human figure; on approaching the same appearance is not to be found: hence they sometimes fancied they saw their ancestors; but not finding the reality, distinguished these illusions by the name ofshades.
Many of these fabulous narrations might originate fromdreams. There are times of slumber, when we are sensible of being asleep[38]. On this principle, Hobbes has so ingeniously accounted for the spectre which is said to have appeared to Brutus,that we cannot resist the temptation of inserting it in his own words. “We read,” says he, “of M. Brutus, (one that had his life given him by Julius Cæsar, and was also his favourite, and notwithstanding murdered him) that at Philippi, the night before he gave battle to Augustus Cæsar, he saw a fearful apparition, which is commonly related by historians as a vision; but considering the circumstances, one may easily judge it to have been but a short dream. For, sitting in his tent, pensive and troubled with the horror of his rash act, it was not hard for him, slumbering in the cold, to dream of that which most affrighted him; which fear, as by degrees it made him wake, so it must needs make the apparition by degrees to vanish: and having no assurance that he slept, he could have no cause to think it a dream, or any thing but a vision.”—The well-known story told by Clarendon, of the apparition of the Duke of Buckingham’s father, will admit of a similar solution. There was no man in the kingdom so much the subject of conversation as the Duke; and, from the corruptness of his character, he was very likely to fall a sacrifice to the enthusiasm of the times. Sir George Viliers is said to have appeared to the man at midnight—there is therefore the greatest probability that the man was asleep; and the dream affrighting him, made a strong impression, and was likely to be repeated.
It must be confessed, that the popular belief ofdeparted spirits occasionally holding a communication with the human race, is replete with matter of curious speculation. Some Christian divines, with every just reason, acknowledge no authentic source whence the impression of a future state could ever have been communicated to man, but from the Jewish prophets or from our Saviour himself. Yet it is certain, that a belief in our existence after death has, from time immemorial, prevailed in countries, to which the knowledge of the gospel could never have extended, as among certain tribes of America. Can then this notion have been intuitively suggested? Or is it an extravagant supposition, that the belief might often have arisen from those spectral illusions, to which men in every age, from the occasional influence of morbific causes, must have been subject? And what would have been the natural self-persuasion, if a savage saw before him the apparition of a departed friend or acquaintance, endowed with the semblance of life, with motion, and with signs of mental intelligence, perhaps even holding a converse with him? Assuredly, the conviction would scarcely fail to arise of an existence after death. The pages of history attest the fact that:—
“If ancestry can be in aught believ’d,Descending spirits have convers’d with man,And told him secrets of the world unknown.”
“If ancestry can be in aught believ’d,Descending spirits have convers’d with man,And told him secrets of the world unknown.”
“If ancestry can be in aught believ’d,Descending spirits have convers’d with man,And told him secrets of the world unknown.”
“If ancestry can be in aught believ’d,
Descending spirits have convers’d with man,
And told him secrets of the world unknown.”
But if this opinion of a life hereafter, had ever among heathen nations their origin, it must necessarily be imbued with the grossest absurdities, incidental to so fallacious a source of intelligence. Yet still the mind has clung to such extravagancies with avidity; “for,” as Sir Thomas Brown hasremarked, “it is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him that he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no future state to come, unto which this seems progressively and otherwise made in vain.” It has remained therefore for the light of revelation alone, to impart to this belief the consistency and conformation of divine truth, and to connect it with a rational system of rewards and punishments.
From the foregoing remarks, we need not be surprised that a conviction of the occasional appearance of ghosts or departed spirits, should, from the remotest antiquity, have been a popular creed, not confined to any distinct tribe or race of people. In Europe, it was the opinion of the Greeks and Romans, that, after the dissolution of the body, every man was possessed of three different kinds of ghosts, which were distinguished by the names of Manes, Anima, and Umbra. These were disposed of after the following manner: the Manes descended into the infernal regions, the Anima ascended to the skies, and the Umbra hovered about the tomb, as being unwilling to quit its connexion with the body. Dido, for instance, when about to die, threatens to haunt Æneas with herumbra; at the same time, she expects that the tidings of his punishment will rejoin hermanesbelow[39].
The opinions regarding ghosts which were entertained during the Christian era, but more particularly during the middle ages, are very multifarious; yet these, with the authorities annexed to them, have been most industriously collected by Reginald Scot. His researches are replete with amusement and instruction. “And, first,” says he, “you shall understand, that they hold, that all the soules in heaven may come downe and appeare to us when they list, and assume anie bodie saving their owne: otherwise (saie they) such soules should not be perfectlie happie. They saie that you may know the good soules from the bad very easilie. For a damned soule hath a very heavie and soure looke; but a saint’s soule hath a cheerful and merrie countenance: these also are white and shining, the other cole black. And these damned soules also may come up out of hell at their pleasure, although Abraham made Dives believe the contrarie. They affirme, that damned soules walke oftenest: next unto them, the soules of purgatorie; and most seldom the soules of saints. Also they saie, that in the old lawe soules did appeare seldom; and after doomsdaie they shall never be seene more: in the time of grace they shall be most frequent. The walking of these soules (saith Michael Andræas) is a moste excellent argument for the proofe of purgatorie; for (saith he) those soules have testified that which the popes have affirmed in that behalfe; to wit, that there is not onelie such a place of punishment, but that they are released from thence by masses, and such other satisfactorie works, whereby the goodness of the masse is also ratified and confirmed.
“These heavenlie or purgatorie soules (saie they) appeare most commonlie to them that are borne upon Ember daies; because we are in best date at that time to praie for the one, and to keepe companie with the other. Also, they saie, that soules appeare oftenest by night; because men may then be at best leisure, and most quiet. Also they never appeare to the whole multitude, seldome to a few, and commonlie to one alone; for so one may tell a lie without controlment. Also, they are oftenest seene by them that are readie to die: as Thrasella saw Pope Fœlix; Ursine, Peter and Paule; Galla Romana, S. Peter; and as Musa the maide sawe our Ladie: which are the most certaine appearances, credited and allowed in the church of Rome; also, they may be seene of some, and of some other in that presence not seene at all; as Ursine saw Peter and Paule, and yet manie at that instant being present could not see anie such sight, but thought it a lie, as I do. Michael Andræas confesseth that papists see more visions than Protestants: he saith also, that a good soule can take none other shape than a man; manie a damned soule may and doth take the shape of a blackmore, or of a beaste, or of a serpent, or speciallie of an heretike.”
Such is the accounts which Scot has given regarding the Popish opinion of departed spirits. In another part of his work, he triumphantly asks, “Where are the soules that swarmed in time past? Where are the spirits? Who heareth their noises? Who seeth their visions? Where are the soules that made such monefor trentals, whereby to be eased of their pains in purgatorie? Are they all gone to Italie, because masse are growne deere here in England?—The whole course may be perceived to be a false practice, and a counterfeit vision, or rather a lewd invention. For in heaven men’s soules remaine not in sorrow and care, neither studie they there how to compasse and get a worshipfull burial here in earth. If they did they would not have foreslowed so long. Now, therefore, let us not suffer ourselves to be abused anie longer, either with conjuring priests, or meloncholicall witches; but be thankfull to God that hath delivered us from such blindness and error[40].” This is the congratulation of a true Protestant at an early period of the reformation; and it is certain, that with the disbelief of that future state of purgatory, taught by the Romish church, the communication of the living with the dead became less frequent. Still, however, some belief of the kind prevailed, though less tinctured with superstition. An author, styling himself Theophilus Insulanus, who, half a century ago, wrote on the second-sight of Scotland, affixes the termirreligiousto those who should entertain a doubt on the reality of apparitions of departed souls. “Such ghostly visitants,” he gravely affirms, “are not employed on an errand of a frivolous concern to lead us into error, but are employed as so many heralds by the great Creator, for the more ample demonstration of his power, to proclaim tidings for our instruction; and, as we are prone to despondin religious matter, to confirm our faith of the existence of spirits, (the foundation of all religions,) and the dignity of human nature.” With due deference, however, to this anonymous writer, whom we should scarcely have noticed, if he had not echoed in this assertion an opinion which was long popular, we shall advert to the opposite sentiments expressed on the subject by a far more acute, though less serious author. The notion, for instance, of the solemn character of ghosts, and that they are never employed on frivolous errands, is but too successfully ridiculed by Grose[41]. “In most of the relations of ghosts,” says this pleasant writer, “they are supposed to be mere aërial beings without substance, and that they can pass through walls and other solid bodies at pleasure. The usual time at which ghosts make their appearance is midnight, and seldom before it is dark; though some audacious spirits have been said to appear even by daylight. Ghosts commonly appear in the same dress they usually wore when living: though they are sometimes clothed all in white; but that is chiefly the church-yard ghosts, who have no particular business, but seem to appearpro bono publico, or to scare drunken rustics from tumbling over their graves. I cannot learn that ghosts carry tapers in their hands, as they are sometimes depicted, though the room in which they appear, if without fire or candle, is frequently said to be as light as day. Dragging chains is not the fashion of Englishghosts; chains and black vestments being chiefly the accoutrements of foreign spectres, seen in arbitrary governments: dead or alive, English spirits are free. If, during the time of an apparition, there is a lighted candle in the room, it will burn extremely blue: this is so universally acknowledged, that many eminent philosophers have busied themselves in accounting for it, without ever doubting the truth of the fact. Dogs too have the faculty of seeing spirits[42].”
There are several other minute particulars respecting ghosts given by this author, for the insertion of which we have not room; yet it would be inexcusable to omit noticing the account which he has subjoined, of the awfully momentous errands upon which spirits are sent. “It is somewhat remarkable,” he adds, “that ghosts do not go about their business like the persons of this world. In cases of murder, a ghost, instead of going to the next justice of peace, and laying its information, or to the nearest relation of the person murdered, appears to some poor labourer who knows none of the parties; draws the curtain of some decrepit nurse, or alms-woman; or hovers about the place where the body is deposited. The same circuitous road is pursued with respect to redressing injured orphans or widows; when it seems as if the most certain way would be to go to the personguilty of the injustice, and haunt him continually till he be terrified into a restitution. Nor are the pointing out lost writings generally managed in a more summary way; the ghost commonly applying to a third person, ignorant of the whole affair, and a stranger to all concerned. But it is presumptuous to scrutinize far into these matters: ghosts have undoubtedly forms and customs peculiar to themselves.”
The view which Grose has taken of the character of departed spirits is pretty correct, although I have certainly read of some spirits whose errands to the earth have been much more direct. One ghost, for instance, has terrified a man into the restitution of lands, which had been bequeathed to the poor of a village. A second spirit has adopted the same plan for recovering property of which a nephew had been wronged; but a third has haunted a house for no other purpose than to kick up a row in it—to knock about chairs, tables, and other furniture. Glanville relates a story, of the date of 1632, in which a man, upon the alleged information of a female spirit, who came by her death foully, led the officers of justice to a pit, where a mangled corpse was concealed, charged two individuals with her murder; and upon this fictitious story, the poor fellows were condemned and executed, although they solemnly persevered to the last in maintaining their innocence. It is but too evident, in this case, by whom the atrocious deed had been committed.
Other apparitions of this kind may be considered as the illusions of well-known diseases. Thus there can be no difficulty in considering the followingapparition, given on the authority of Aubery and Turner, as having had its origin in the Delirium Tremens of drunkenness. “Mr. Cassio Burroughs,” says the narrator of this very choice, yet, we believe, authentic story, “was one of the most beautiful men in England, and very valiant, but very proud and blood thirsty. There was in London a very beautiful Italian lady,” (whom he seduced.) “The gentlewoman died; and afterwards, in a tavern in London, he spake of it, (contrary to his sacred promise,) “and then going” (out of doors) the ghost of the gentlewoman did appear to him. He was afterwards troubled with the apparition of her, even sometimes in company when he was drinking. Before she did appear, he did find a kind of chilness upon his spirits. She did appear to him in the morning before he was killed in a duel.”
Of the causes of many apparitions which have been recorded, it is not so easy as the foregoing narrative, to obtain a satisfactory explanation. Such is the case of the story related of Viscount Dundee, whose ghost about the time he fell at the battle of Killicranky, appeared to Lord Balcarras, then under confinement, upon the suspicion of Jacobitism, at the Castle of Edinburgh. The spectre drew aside the curtain of his friend’s bed, looked stedfastly at him, leaned for some time on the mantlepiece, and then walked out of the room. The Earl, not aware at the time that he was gazing on a phantom, called upon Dundee to stop. News soon arrived of the unfortunate hero’s fate. Now, regarding this, and other stories of the kind, howeverauthentic they may be, the most interesting particulars are suppressed. Of the state of Lord Balcarras’s health at the time, it has not been deemed necessary that a syllable should transpire. No argument, therefore, either in support of, or in opposition to, the popular belief in apparitions, can be gathered from an anecdote so deficient in any notice of the most important circumstances upon which the developement of truth depends. With regard to the spectre of Dundee appearing just at the time he fell in battle, it must be considered, that agreeable to the well-known doctrine of chances, which mathematicians have so well investigated, the event might as well occur then as at any other time, while a far greater proportion of other apparitions, less fortunate in such a supposed confirmation of their supernatural origin, are quietly allowed to sink into oblivion. Thus, it is the office of superstition to carefully select all successful coincidences of this kind, and register them in her marvellous volumes, where for ages they have served to delude and mislead the world.
To this story we shall add another, from Beaumont’s World of Spirits, for no other reason, than because it is told better than most ghost stories with which I am acquainted. It is dated in the year 1662, and it relates to an apparition seen by the daughter of Sir Charles Lee, immediately preceding her death. No reasonable doubt can be placed on the authenticity of the narrative, as it was drawn up by the Bishop of Gloucester, from the recital of the young lady’s father.
“Sir Charles Lee, by his first lady, had only onedaughter, of which she died in child-birth; and when she was dead, her sister, the Lady Everard, desired to have the education of the child, and she was by her very well educated, till she was marriageable, and a match was concluded for her with Sir William Perkins, but was then prevented in an extraordinary manner. Upon a Thursday night, she, thinking she saw a light in her chamber, after she was in bed, knocked for her maid, who presently came to her; and she asked, ‘Why she left a candle burning in her chamber?’ The maid said, ‘She left none, and there was none but what she brought with her at that time.’ Then she said it was the fire, but that, her maid told her, was quite out; and said she believed it was only a dream. Whereupon she said, it might be so, and composed herself again to sleep. But about two of the clock she was awakened again, and saw the apparition of a little woman between her curtain and her pillow, who told her she was her mother, that she was happy, and that by twelve of the clock that day she should be with her. Whereupon she knocked again for her maid, called for her clothes, and when she was dressed, went into her closet, and came not out again till nine, and then brought out with her a letter sealed by her father; brought it to her aunt, the Lady Everard, told her what had happened, and declared, that as soon as she was dead, it might be sent to him. The lady thought she was suddenly fallen mad, and thereupon sent presently away to Chelmsford for a physician and surgeon, who both came immediately; but the physician could discern no indication ofwhat the lady imagined, or of any indisposition of her body: notwithstanding the lady would needs have her let blood, which was done accordingly. And when the young woman had patiently let them do what they would with her, she desired that the chaplain might be sent to read prayers; and when prayers were ended, she took her guitar and psalm-book, and sat down upon a chair without arms, and played and sung so melodiously and admirably, that her music-master, who was then there, admired at it. And near the stroke of twelve, she rose and sat herself down in a great chair with arms, and presently fetching a strong breathing or two, immediately expired, and was so suddenly cold, as was much wondered at by the physician and surgeon. She died at Waltham, in Essex, three miles from Chelmsford, and the letter was sent to Sir Charles, at his house in Warwickshire; but he was so afflicted with the death of his daughter, that he came not till she was buried, but when he came he caused her to be taken up, and to be buried with her mother, at Edmonton, as she desired in her letter.”
This is one of the most interesting ghost-stories on record. Yet, when strictly examined, the manner in which a leading circumstance in the case is reported, affects but too much the supernatural air imparted to other of its incidents. For whatever might have been averred by a physician of theolden time, with regard to the young lady’s sound state of health during the period she saw her mother’s ghost, it may be asked—if any practitioner of the present day would have been proudof such an opinion, especially when death followed so promptly after the spectral impression.
——“There’s bloom upon her cheek;But now I see it is no living hue,But a strange hectic—like the unnatural redWhich autumn plants upon the perish’d leaf.”
——“There’s bloom upon her cheek;But now I see it is no living hue,But a strange hectic—like the unnatural redWhich autumn plants upon the perish’d leaf.”
——“There’s bloom upon her cheek;But now I see it is no living hue,But a strange hectic—like the unnatural redWhich autumn plants upon the perish’d leaf.”
——“There’s bloom upon her cheek;
But now I see it is no living hue,
But a strange hectic—like the unnatural red
Which autumn plants upon the perish’d leaf.”
Probably the languishing female herself might have unintentionally contributed to the more strict verification of the ghost’s prediction. It was an extraordinary exertion which her tender frame underwent, near the expected hour of dissolution, in order that she might retire from all her scenes of earthly enjoyment, with the dignity of a resigned christian. And what subject can be conceived more worthy the masterly skill of a painter, than to depict a young and lovely saint cheered with the bright prospect of futurity before her, and ere the quivering flame of life which for a moment was kindled up into a glow of holy ardour, had expired for ever, sweeping the strings of her guitar with her trembling fingers, and melodiously accompanying the notes with her voice, in a hymn of praise to her heavenly Maker? Entranced with such a sight, the philosopher himself would dismiss for the time his usual cold and cavelling scepticism, and giving way to the superstitious impressions of less deliberating bye-standers, partake with them in the most grateful of religious solaces, which the spectacle must have irresistibly inspired.
Regarding the confirmation, which the ghost’s mission is, in the same narrative, supposed to have received from the completion of a foreboded death,all that can be said of it is, that the coincidence was afortunateone; for, without it, the story would, probably, never have met with a recorder, and we should have lost one of the sweetest anecdotes that private life has ever afforded. But, on the other hand, a majority of popular ghost-stories might be adduced, wherein apparitions have either visited our world, without any ostensible purpose and errand whatever, or, in the circumstances of their mission, have exhibited all the inconsistency of conduct so well exposed in the quotation which I have given from Grose, respecting departed spirits. “Seldom as it may happen,” says Nicolai, in the memoir which he read to the Society of Berlin, on the appearance of spectres occasioned by disease, “that persons believe they see human forms, yet examples of the case are not wanting. A respectable member of this academy, distinguished by his merit in the science of Botany, whose truth and credulity are unexceptionable, once saw in this very room in which we are now assembled, the phantom of the late president Maupertius.” But it appears that this ghost was seen by a philosopher, and, consequently, no attempt was made to connect it with superstitious speculations. The uncertainty, however, of ghostly predictions, is not unaptly illustrated in the table-talk of Johnson. “An acquaintance,” remarks Boswell, “on whose veracity I can depend, told me, that walking home one evening at Kilmarnock, he heard himself called from a wood, by the voice of a brother, who had gone to America; and the next packet brought an account of that brother’s death.Mackbean asserted that this inexplicablecallingwas a thing very well known. Dr. Johnson said that one day at Oxford, as he was turning the key of his chamber, he heard his mother distinctly callingSam. She was then at Litchfield; butnothing ensued.” This casual admission, which, in the course of conversation, transpired from a man,himselfstrongly tainted with superstition, precludes any farther remarks on the alleged nature and errand of ghosts, which would now, indeed, be highly superfluous. “A lady once asked me,” says Mr. Coleridge, “if I believed in ghosts and apparitions? I answered with truth and simplicity, No, Madam! I have seen far too many myself[43].”