XLISPOOKS
There are intelligent and well-educated persons who believe in ghosts—I mean they believe in the actual reappearance on earth in visible form of certain individuals who have for some time been dead and buried. These are the genuine ghosts, not the creations of fear or fancy, but as the French call them,revenants, those who come back. Hamlet’s father was a true ghost, seen by a number of reliable witnesses; the bloody Banquo at the dinner table was the painting of Macbeth’s fear, actually not there at all.
The late William De Morgan was a devout believer in ghosts, was convinced that he had himself seen a sufficient number for purposes of verification, and hence did not scruple to introduce them into his novels.
I have not been so fortunate. I cannot even say as many do, “I do not believe in ghosts, but I am afraid of them.” I will not say that I do not believe in them, but I am not afraid of them.I never saw one. I have never seen or heard anything that could not be explained in some commonplace fashion. There are many who affirm that they have seen in broad daylight the face and figure of a friend, and as they have drawn nearer in order to converse, the appearance became a disappearance, without any rational explanation. The friend may be living, or he may have long since died. A great many persons are “seeing things,” and I rather envy them. Others have distinctly felt a touch on the shoulder, and on turning, no one was discoverable. I have always, alas, found the responsible party.
But though I have never seen spooks, I have had a few spooky experiences, of which I will mention two.
One night, with the exception of the maids on the top floor, I was alone in the house. I had not been well for many days, and felt particularly miserable when I went to bed. I had lain uneasily for some hours, and had finally lapsed into semi-consciousness. At half-past two I was startled by the loud ringing of the front door bell. Accoutred as I was, I descended, and opened the door. There was no one. For a few moments, like the man in Poe’s poem, I stood, deep into the darkness peering. But thedarkness gave no token, and wonderingly I shut the door. I had not got half-way up the stairs, when once again the doorbell rang with violence. It is easy enough to tell this lightly now, but then, alone in the house, and ill, it was worse than mysterious. I ran to the door, and flung it wide open. Not a soul in sight, the street silent and deserted. Then I thought it might after all not have been the doorbell, but the telephone. Accordingly I rang up Central, only to be informed that no one had called my number. While I was considering this, the doorbell once more reverberated through the empty house. Again I opened the door. No one.
I decided that some one with a deficient or perverted sense of humour was making me a victim. Accordingly I shut the front door, and crouched directly behind it, with the intention of leaping out and seizing the humorist as soon as he rang again. In a few moments the bell rang loudly; I jerked back the door and sprang outside. But there was absolutely no one, and there was no sound of retreating steps.
I stood outside the door, lost in amazement and fear, for I was terrified. I gazed wonderingly at the button, half-expecting to see some spirit-finger push it; when, to my utter dismay, the bell rang shriller and louder than ever.
If I had really believed in ghosts, that would have been sufficient evidence. As it is, I shall never forget my distress while the bell continued ringing and I was looking directly at the only means of making it ring. I closed the door, and had a bad night.
In the morning I consulted a specialist, not on nerves, but on doorbells. The explanation was simple. A mouse was enjoying the flavour of the paraffin in which the wires in the cellar were wrapped, and every time he gave a particularly fervent bite, the bell rang. I hope it scared him as much as it did me, but if so, his hunger triumphed over his fear, for he kept returning to the feast.
On another occasion I was out shooting in a desolate place in Michigan. I was accompanied by my friend, A. K. Merritt, now Registrar of Yale College, who will vouch for the truth of the story. Dusk was falling; there was no wind. We had wandered into a scene of stagnant desolation. Dead trees had fallen in rotten ruin across the trail, and the swampy pools were covered with a green mantle of decay. Merritt was walking in front and I close behind him. The gloom and depression of the scene in the deepening dusk had affected our spirits, so that we had not spoken for some time. Suddenly Ithought of the scenery of Browning’s poem,Childe Roland. The lines of that masterpiece of horror would well describe this place, I thought; and I began to repeat them in my mind without saying a word aloud. Then methought there was only one thing needed to make the picture complete. That was the horrible horse, which in the poem stood alone and sinister in the gathering night. If that horse were here, I said to myself, this would indeed be the veritable country of Childe Roland. Something impelled me to look behind my back, and, to my unutterable surprise and horror, I found myself looking directly into the eyes of a forlorn old horse. I let out a yell of sheer uncontrollable terror.
Merritt was as startled by the yell as I had been by its cause. I asked him if the horse was really there. It was bad to have him there, but worse if he were not. Merritt reassured me on that point.
I suppose the poor old horse had been pensioned off by some farmer, and had silently followed us on the spongy ground, either because he was lonesome or because he wanted salt. But he gave me the shock of my life.
I have thought much about it since, and I am unable to determine whether the appearanceof the horse at the precise moment when I was thinking of him was a coincidence—or was I all the time subconsciously aware of his presence? That is to say, did the nearness of the horse, even though I had no conscious knowledge of it, suggest to my subconscious mind the lines from the poem? I wish I knew.