Cock Lane and Common-Sense

Mental suggestion on this limited scale, is a phenomenon much less startling to belief than the reality, and causal nature, of coincidental hallucinations, of wraiths. But it is plain that, as far as general opinion goes, the doctrine of chances, applied to such statistics of hallucinations as have been collected, can at most, only ‘produce uncertainty, disquietude, and doubt’. Yet if even these are produced, a step has been made beyond the blank negation of Hibbert.

The general reader, even if credulously inclined, is more staggered by a few examples of non-coincidental hallucinations, than confirmed by a pile of coincidental examples. Now it seems to be a defect in the method of the friends of wraiths, that they do not publish, with full and impressive details, as many examples of non-coincidental as of coincidental hallucinations. It is the story that takes the public: if we are to be fair we must give the non-coincidental story in all its features, as is done in the matter of wraiths with a kind of message or meaning.

Let us set a good example, by adducing wraiths which, in slang phrase, were ‘sells’. Those which we have at first hand are marked ‘(A),’ those at second-hand ‘(B)’. But the world will accept the story of a ghost that failed on very poor evidence indeed.

1. (A) A young lady, in the dubious state between awake and asleep, unable, in fact, to feel certain whether she was awake or asleep, beheld her late grandmother. The old lady wept as she sat by the bedside.

‘Why do you weep, grandmamma, are you not happy where you are?’ asked the girl.

‘Yes, I am happy, but I am weeping for your mother.’

‘Is she going to die?’

‘No, but she is going to lose you.’

‘Am I going to die, grandmamma?’

‘Yes, my dear.’

‘Soon?’

‘Yes, my dear, very soon.’

The young lady, with great courage, concealed her dream from her mother, but confided it to a brother. She did her best to be good while she was on earth, where she is still, after an interval of many years.

Except for the conclusion, and the absence of a mystic bright light in the bedroom, this case exactly answers to that of Miss Lee, in 1662. Dr. Hibbert would have liked this example.

2. (B) A lady, staying with a friend, observed that one morning she was much depressed. The friend confided to her that, in the past night, she had seen her brother, dripping wet. He told her that he had been drowned by the upsetting of a boat, which was attached by a rope to a ship. At this time, he was on his way home from Australia. The dream, or vision, was recorded in writing. When next the first lady met her friend, she was entertaining her brother at luncheon. He had never even been in a boat dragged behind a ship, and was perfectly safe.

3. (B) A lady, residing at a distance from Oxford wrote to tell her son, who was at Merton College, that he had just entered her room and vanished. Was he well? Yes, he was perfectly well, and bowling for the College Eleven.

4. (B) A lady in bed saw her absent husband. He announced his death by cholera, and gave her his blessing, she, of course, was very anxious and miserable, but the vision was a lying vision. The husband was perfectly well.

In all these four cases, anxiety was caused by the vision, and in three at least, action was taken, the vision was recorded orally, or in writing. In the following set, the visions were waking hallucinations of sane persons never in any other instance hallucinated.

5. (A) A person of distinction, walking in a certain Cambridge quadrangle, met a very well-known clergyman. The former held out his hand, but there was before him only open space. No feeling of excitement or anxiety followed.

6. (A) The writer, standing before dinner, at a table in a large and brilliantly lit hall, saw the door of the drawing-room open, and a little girl, related to himself, come out, and run across the hall into another room. He spoke to her, but she did not answer. He instantly entered the drawing-room, where the child was sitting in a white evening-dress. When she ran across the hall, the moment before, she was dressed in dark blue serge. No explanation of the puzzle could be discovered, but it is fair to add that no anxiety was excited.

7. (A) A young lady had a cold, and was wearing a brown shawl. After lunch she went to her room. A few minutes later, her sister came out, saw her in the hall, and went upstairs after her, telling her an anecdote. At the top of the stairs, the brown-shawled sister vanished. The elder sister was in her room, in a white shawl. She was visible, when absent on another occasion, to another spectator.

In two other cases (A) ladies, in their usual health, saw their husbands in their rooms, when, in fact, they were in the drawing-room or study. Here then are eight cases of non-coincidental hallucination, some of people awake, some of people probably on the verge of sleep, which are wholly without ‘coincidence,’ wholly unveridical. None of the ‘percipients’ was addicted to seeing ‘visions about.’ 132

On the other side, though the writer knows several people who have ‘seen ghosts’ in haunted houses, and other odd phenomena, he knows nobody, at first hand, who has seen a ‘veridical hallucination,’ or rather, knows only one, a very young one indeed. Thus, between these personally collected statistics of spectral ‘sells’ on one part, and the world-wide diffusion of belief in ‘coincidental’ hallucination on the other, the human mind is left in a balance which mathematics, and the Calculus of Probabilities (especially if one does not understand it) fail to affect.

Meanwhile, we still do not know what causes these solitary hallucinations of the sane. They can hardly come from diseased organs of sense, for these would not confine themselves to a single mistaken message of great vivacity. And why should either the ‘sensory centre’ or the ‘central terminus’ just once in a lifetime develop this uncanny activity, and represent to us a person to whom we may be wholly indifferent? The explanation is less difficult when the person represented is a husband or child, but even then, why does the activity occur once, and only once, and not in a moment of anxiety?

The coincidental hallucinations are laid to the door of ‘telepathy,’ to ‘a telepathic impact from the mind of an absent agent,’ who is dying, or in some other state of rare or exciting experience, perhaps being married, as in Col. Meadows Taylor’s case. This is a theory as old as Lavaterus, and was proclaimed by Mayo in the middle of the century; while, substituting ‘angels’ for human agents, Frazer of Tiree used it, in 1700, to explain second sight. Nay, it is the Norse theory of a ‘sending’ by a sorcerer, as we read in the Icelandic sagas. But, admitting that telepathy may be a cause of hallucinations, we often find the effect where the cause is not alleged to exist. Nobody, perhaps, will explain our nine empty hallucinations by ‘telepathy,’ yet, from the supposed effects of telepathy they were indistinguishable. Are all such cases of casual hallucination in the sane to be explained by telepathy, by an impact of force from a distant brain on the central terminus of our own brains? At all events, a casual hallucination of the presence of an absent friend need obviously cause us very little anxiety. We need not adopt the hypothesis of the Maoris.

The telepathic theory has the advantage of cutting down the marvellous to the minimum. It also accounts for that old puzzle, the clothes worn by the ghosts. These are reproduced by the ‘agent’s’ theory of himself, perhaps with some unconscious assistance from ‘the percipient’. For lack of this light on the matter, M. d’Assier, a positivist, who believed in spectres had to suggest that the ghosts wear the ghosts of garments! Thus positivism, in this disciple, returned to the artless metaphysics of savages. Telepathy saves the believer from such a humiliating relapse, and, perhaps, telepathy also may be made to explain ‘collective’ hallucinations, when several people see the same apparition. If a distant mind can thus demoralise the central terminus of one brain, it may do as much for two or more brains, or they may demoralise each other.

All this is very promising, but telepathy breaks down when the apparition causes some change in the relations of material objects. If there be a physical effect which endures after the phantasm has vanished, then there was an actual agent, a real being, a ‘ghost’ on the scene. For instance, the lady in Scott’s ballad, ‘The Eve of St. John,’ might see and might hear the ghost of her lover by a telepathic hallucination of two senses. But if

The sable score, of fingers four,

Remained on the board impressed

by the spectre, then there was no telepathic hallucination, but an actual being of an awful kind was in Smailholm Tower. Again, the cases in which dogs and horses, as Paracelsus avers, display terror when men and women behold a phantasm, are not easily accounted for by telepathy, especially when the beast is alarmed before the man or woman suspects the presence of anything unusual. There is, of course, the notion that the horse shies, or the dog turns craven, in sympathy with its master’s exhibition of fear. Owners of dogs and horses may counterfeit horror and see whether their favourites do sympathise. Cats don’t. In one of three cases known to us where a cat showed consciousness of a spectral presence, the apparition took the form of a cat. The evidence is only that of Richard Bovet, in his Pandemonium; or, the Devil’s Cloyster (1684). In Mr. J. G. Wood’s Man and Beast, a lady tells a story of being alone, in firelight, playing with a favourite cat, Lady Catherine. Suddenly puss bristled all over, her back rose in an arch, and the lady, looking up, saw a hideously malignant female watching her. Lady Catherine now rushed wildly round the room, leaped at the upper panels of the door, and seemed to have gone mad. This new terror recalled the lady to herself. She shrieked, and the phantasm vanished. She saw it on a later day. In a third case, a cat merely kept a watchful eye on the ghost, and adopted a dignified attitude of calm expectancy. If beasts can be telepathically affected, then beasts have more of a ‘psychical’ element in their composition than they usually receive credit for; whereas if a ghost is actually in view, there is no reason why beasts should not see it.

The best and most valid proof that an abnormal being is actually present was that devised by the ghost of Sir Richard of Coldinghame in the ballad, and by the Beresford ghost, who threw a heavy curtain over the bed-pole. Unluckily, Sir Richard is a poetical figment, and the Beresford ghost is a myth, like William Tell: he may be traced back through various mediæval authorities almost to the date of the Norman Conquest. We have examined the story in a little book of folklore, Etudes Traditionistes. Always there is a compact to appear, always the ghost burns or injures the hand or wrist of the spectator. A version occurs in William of Malmesbury.

What we need, to prove a ghost, and disprove an exclusively telepathic theory, is a ghost who is not only seen, heard, or even touched, but a ghost who produces some change in physical objects. Most provokingly, there are agencies at every successful séance, and in every affair of the Poltergeist, who do lift tables, chairs, beds, bookcases, candles, and so forth, while others play accordions. But then nobody or not everybody sees these agencies at work, while the spontaneous phantasms which are seen do not so much as lift a loo-table, generally speaking. In the spiritualistic cases, we have the effect, with no visible cause; in ghost stories, we have the visible presence, but he very seldom indeed causes any physical change in any object. No ghost who does not do this has any strict legal claim to be regarded as other than a telepathic hallucination at best, though, as we shall see, some presumptions exist in favour of some ghosts being real entities.

These rare facts have not escaped a ghost-hunter so intelligent as Mrs. Henry Sidgwick. This lady is almost too sportsmanlike, for a psychical researcher, in her habit of giving an apparition the benefit of every imaginable doubt which may absolve him from the charge of being a real genuine ghost. ‘It is true,’ she says, ‘that ghosts are alleged sometimes to produce a physical effect on the external world;’ but to admit this is ‘to come into prima facie collision with the physical sciences’ (an awful risk to run), so Mrs. Sidgwick, in a rather cavalier manner leaves ghosts who produce physical effects to be dealt with among the phenomena alleged to occur at séances. Now this is hardly fair to the spontaneous apparition, who is doing his very best to demonstrate his existence in the only convincing way. The phenomena of séances are looked on with deserved distrust, and, generally, may be regarded as an outworn mode of swindling. Yet it is to this society that Mrs. Sidgwick relegates the most meritorious and conscientious class of apparitions.

Let us examine a few instances of the ghost who visibly moves material objects. We take one (already cited) from Mrs. Sidgwick’s own article. 133 In this case a gentleman named John D. Harry scolded his daughters for saying that they had seen a ghost, with which he himself was perfectly familiar. ‘The figure,’ a fair woman draped in white, ‘on seven or eight occasions appeared in my bedroom, and twice in the library, and on one occasion it lifted up the mosquito-curtains, and looked closely into my face’. Now, could a hallucination lift a mosquito-curtain, or even produce the impression that it did so, while the curtain was really unmoved? Clearly a hallucination, however artful, and well got up, could do no such thing. Therefore a being – a ghost with very little maidenly reserve – haunted the bedroom of Mr. Harry, if he tells a true tale. Again (p. 115), a lady (on whose veracity I am ready to pledge my all) had doors opened for her frequently, ‘as if a hand had turned the handle’. And once she not only saw the door open, but a grey woman came in. Another witness, years afterwards, beheld the same figure and the same performance. Once more, Miss A. M.’s mother followed a ghost, who opened a door and entered a room, where she could not be found when she was wanted (p. 121). Again, 134 a lady saw a ghost which, ‘with one hand, the left, drew back the curtain’. There are many other cases in which apparitions are seen in houses where mysterious thumps and raps occur, especially in General Campbell’s experience (p. 483). If the apparition gave the thumps then he (or, in this instance, she) was material, and could produce effects on matter. Indeed, this ghost was seen to take up and lay down some books, and to tuck in the bed-clothes. Hallucinations (which are all in one’s eye or sensory centre, or cerebral central terminus), cannot draw curtains, or open doors, or pick up books, or tuck in bed-clothes, or cause thumps – not real thumps, hallucinatory thumps are different. Consequently, if the stories are true, some apparitions are ghosts, real objective entities, filling space. The senses of a hallucinated person may be deceived as to touch, and as to feeling the breath of a phantasm (a likely story), as well as in sight and hearing. But a visible ghost which produces changes in the visible world cannot be a hallucination. On the other hand Dr. Binns, in his Anatomy of Sleep tells us of ‘a gentleman who, in a dream, pushed against a door in a distant house, so that those in the room were scarcely able to resist the pressure’. 135 Now if this rather staggering anecdote be true, the spirit of a living man, being able to affect matter, is also, so to speak, material, and is an actual entity, an astral body. Moreover, Mrs. Frederica Hauffe, when in the magnetic sleep, ‘could rap at a distance’.

These arguments, then, make in favour of the old-fashioned theory of ghosts and wraiths, as things objectively existing, which is very comforting to a conservative philosopher. Unluckily, just as many, or more, anecdotes look quite the other way. For instance, General Barter sees, hears, and recognises the dead Lieutenant B., wearing a beard which he had grown since the general saw him in life. He also sees the hill-pony ridden by Mr. B., and killed by him – a steed with which, in its mortal days, the general had no acquaintance. This is all very well: a dead pony may have a ghost, like Miss A. B.’s dog which was heard by one Miss B., and seen by the other, some time after its decease. On mature reflection, as both ladies were well-known persons of letters, we suppress their names, which would carry the weight of excellent character and distinguished sense. But Lieutenant B. was also accompanied by two grooms. Now, it is too much to ask us to believe that he had killed two grooms, as he killed the pony. 136 Consequently, they, at least, were hallucinations; so what was Lieutenant B.? When Mr. K., on board the Racoon, saw his dead father lying in his coffin (p. 461), there was no real coffin there, at all events; and hence, probably, no real dead father’s ghost, – only a ‘telepathic hallucination’. Miss Rose Morton could never touch the female ghost which she often chased about the house, nor did this ghost break or displace the threads stretched by Miss Morton across the stairs down which the apparition walked. Yet its footsteps did make a noise, and the family often heard the ghost walking downstairs, followed by Miss Morton. Thus this ghost was both material and immaterial, for surely, only matter can make a noise when in contact with matter. On the whole, if the evidence is worth anything, there are real objective ghosts, and there are also telepathic hallucinations: so that the scientific attitude is to believe in both, if in either. And this was the view of Petrus Thyræus, S.J., in his Loca Infesta (1598). The alternative is to believe in neither.

We have thus, according to the advice of Socrates, permitted the argument to lead us whither it would. And whither has it led us? The old, savage, natural theory of ghosts and wraiths is that they are spirits, yet not so immaterial but that they can fill space, be seen, heard, touched, and affect material objects. Mediæval and other theologians preferred to regard them as angelic or diabolic manifestations, made out of compressed air, or by aid of bodies of the dead, or begotten by the action of angel or devil on the substance of the brain. Modern science looks on them as hallucinations, sometimes morbid, as in madness or delirium, or in a vicious condition of the organ of sense; sometimes abnormal, but not necessarily a proof of chronic disease of any description. The psychical theory then explains a sifted remnant of apparitions; the coincidental, ‘veridical’ hallucinations of the sane, by telepathy. There is a wide chasm, however, to be bridged over between that hypothesis, and its general acceptance, either by science, or by reflective yet unscientific inquirers. The existence of thought-transference, especially among people wide awake, has to be demonstrated more unimpeachably, and then either the telepathic explanation must be shown to fit all the cases collected, or many interesting cases must be thrown overboard, or these must be referred to some other cause. That cause will be something very like the old-fashioned ghosts. Perhaps, the most remarkable collective hallucination in history is that vouched for by Patrick Walker, the Covenanter; in his Biographia Presbyteriana. 137 In 1686, says Walker, about two miles below Lanark, on the water of Clyde ‘many people gathered together for several afternoons, where there were showers of bonnets, hats, guns, and swords, which covered the trees and ground, companies of men in arms marching in order, upon the waterside, companies meeting companies… and then all falling to the ground and disappearing, and other companies immediately appearing in the same way’. This occurred in June and July, in the afternoons. Now the Westland Whigs were then, as usual, in a very excitable frame of mind, and filled with fears, inspired both by events, and by the prophecies of Peden and other saints. Patrick Walker himself was a high-flying Covenanter, he was present: ‘I went there three afternoons together’ – and he saw nothing unusual occur. About two-thirds of the crowd did see the phenomena he reckons, the others, like himself, saw nothing strange. ‘There was a fright and trembling upon them that did see,’ and, at least in one case, the hallucination was contagious. A gentleman standing next Walker exclaimed: ‘A pack of damned witches and warlocks, that have the second sight, the deil ha’t do I see’. ‘And immediately there was a discernable change in his countenance, with as much fear and trembling as any woman I saw there, who cried out: “O all ye that do not see, say nothing; for I perswade you it is matter of fact, and discernable to all that is not stone-blind”.’ Those who did see minutely described ‘what handles the swords had, whether small or three-barred, or Highland guards, and the closing knots of the bonnets, black or blue… I have been at a loss ever since what to make of this last,’ says Patrick Walker, and who is not at a loss? The contagion of the hallucination, so to speak, did not affect him, fanatic as he was, and did affect a cursing and swearing cavalier, whose prejudices, whose ‘dominant idea,’ were all on the other side. The Psychical Society has published an account of a similar collective hallucination of crowds of people, ‘appearing and disappearing,’ shared by two young ladies and their maid, on a walk home from church. But this occurred in a fog, and no one was present who was not hallucinated. Patrick Walker’s account is triumphantly honest, and is, perhaps, as odd a piece of psychology as any on record, thanks to his escape from the prevalent illusion, which, no doubt, he would gladly have shared. Wodrow, it should be said, in his History of the Sufferings of the Kirk, mentions visions of bonnets, which, he thinks, indicated a future muster of militia! But he gives the date as 1684.