The Book of Dreams and Ghosts
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“What on earth are you talking about? I can understand a man attended by black dogs that nobody sees but himself. The Catholics tell it of John Knox, and of another Reformer, a fellow called Smeaton. Moreover, it is common in delirium tremens. But you say Bolter didn’t see the dogs?”
“No, not so far as he told me, but I did, and other fellows, when with Bolter. Bolter was asleep; he didn’t see anything. Also the Hand, which was a good deal worse. I don’t know if he ever saw it. But he was jolly nervous, and he had heard of it.”
The habits of the Beach-comber are absolutely temperate, otherwise my astonishment would have been less, and I should have regarded all these phenomena as subjective.
“Tell me about it all, old cock,” I said.
“I’m sure I told you last time I was at home.”
“Never; my memory for yarns is only too good. I hate a chestnut.”
“Well, here goes! Mind you I don’t profess to explain the thing; only I don’t think I did wrong in telling the young woman, for, however you account for it, it was not nice.”
“A good many years ago there came to the island, as a clerk, un nommé Bolter, English or Jew.”
“His name is not Jewish.”
“No, and I really don’t know about his breed. The most curious thing about his appearance was his eyes: they were large, black, and had a peculiar dull dead lustre.”
“Did they shine in the dark? I knew a fellow at Oxford whose eyes did. Chairs ran after him.”
“I never noticed; I don’t remember. ‘Psychically,’ as you superstitious muffs call it, Bolter was still more queer. At that time we were all gone on spirit-rapping. Bolter turned out a great acquisition, ‘medium,’ or what not. Mind you, I’m not saying Bolter was straight. In the dark he’d tell you what you had in your hand, exact time of your watch, and so on. I didn’t take stock in this, and one night brought some photographs with me, and asked for a description of them. This he gave correctly, winding up by saying, ‘The one nearest your body is that of – ’”
Here my friend named a person well known to both of us, whose name I prefer not to introduce here. This person, I may add, had never been in or near the island, and was totally unknown to Bolter.
“Of course,” my friend went on, “the photographs were all the time inside my pocket. Now, really, Bolter had some mystic power of seeing in the dark.”
“Hyperæsthesia!” said I.
“Hypercriticism!” said the Beach-comber.
“What happened next might be hyperæsthesia – I suppose you mean abnormal intensity of the senses – but how could hyperæsthesia see through a tweed coat and lining?”
“Well, what happened next?”
“Bolter’s firm used to get sheep by every mail from – , and send them regularly to their station, six miles off. One time they landed late in the afternoon, and yet were foolishly sent off, Bolter in charge. I said at the time he would lose half the lot, as it would be dark long before he could reach the station. He didn’t lose them!
“Next day I met one of the niggers who was sent to lend him a hand, and asked results.
“‘Master,’ said the nigger, ‘Bolter is a devil! He sees at night. When the sheep ran away to right or left in the dark, he told us where to follow.’”
“He heard them, I suppose,” said I.
“Maybe, but you must be sharp to have sharper senses than these niggers. Anyhow, that was not Bolter’s account of it. When I saw him and spoke to him he said simply, ‘Yes, that when excited or interested to seek or find anything in obscurity the object became covered with a dim glow of light, which rendered it visible’. ‘But things in a pocket.’ ‘That also,’ said he. ‘Curious isn’t it? Probably the Röntgen rays are implicated therein, eh?’”
“Did you ever read Dr. Gregory’s Letters on Animal Magnetism?”
“The cove that invented Gregory’s Mixture?”
“Yes.”
“Beast he must have been. No, I never read him.”
“He says that Major Buckley’s hypnotised subjects saw hidden objects in a blue light – mottoes inside a nut, for example.”
“Röntgen rays, for a fiver! But Bolter said nothing about seeing blue light. Well, after three or four séances Bolter used to be very nervous and unwilling to sleep alone, so I once went with him to his one-roomed hut. We turned into the same bed. I was awakened later by a noise and movement in the room. Found the door open; the full moon streaming in, making light like day, and the place full of great big black dogs – well, anyhow there were four or five! They were romping about, seemingly playing. One jumped on the bed, another rubbed his muzzle on mine! (the bed was low, and I slept outside). Now I never had anything but love for dogs of any kind, and as —n’est-ce pas? – love casts out fear, I simply got up, turned them all out, shut the door, and turned in again myself. Of course my idea was that they were flesh and blood, and I allude to physical fear.
“I slept, but was anew awakened by a ghastly feeling that the blanket was being dragged and creeping off the bed. I pulled it up again, but anew began the slow movement of descent.
“Rather surprised, I pulled it up afresh and held it, and must have dozed off, as I suppose. Awoke, to feel it being pulled again; it was slipping, slipping, and then with a sudden, violent jerk it was thrown on the floor. Il faut dire that during all this I had glanced several times at Bolter, who seemed profoundly asleep. But now alarmed I tried to wake him. In vain, he slept like the dead; his face, always a pasty white, now like marble in the moonlight. After some hesitation I put the blanket back on the bed and held it fast. The pulling at once began and increased in strength, and I, by this time thoroughly alarmed, put all my strength against it, and hung on like grim death.
“To get a better hold I had taken a turn over my head (or perhaps simply to hide), when suddenly I felt a pressure outside on my body, and a movement like fingers – they gradually approached my head. Mad with fear I chucked off the blanket, grasped a Hand, gazed on it for one moment in silent horror, and threw it away! No wonder, it was attached to no arm or body, it was hairy and dark coloured, the fingers were short, blunt, with long, claw-like nails, and it was minus a thumb! Too frightened to get up I had to stop in bed, and, I suppose, fell to sleep again, after fresh vain attempts to awaken Bolter. Next morning I told him about it. He said several men who had thus passed the night with him had seen this hand. ‘But,’ added he, ‘it’s lucky you didn’t have the big black dogs also.’ Tableau!
“I was to have slept again with him next night to look further into the matter, but a friend of his came from – that day, so I could not renew the experiment, as I had fully determined to do. By-the-bye, I was troubled for months after by the same feeling that the clothes were being pulled off the bed.
“And that’s the yarn of the Black Dogs and the Thumbless Hand.”
“I think,” said I, “that you did no harm in telling Bolter’s young woman.”
“I never thought of it when I told her, or of her interest in the kennel; but, by George, she soon broke off her engagement.”
“Did you know Manning, the Pakeha Maori, the fellow who wrote Old New Zealand?”
“No, what about him?”
“He did not put it in his book, but he told the same yarn, without the dogs, as having happened to himself. He saw the whole arm, and the hand was leprous.”
“Ugh!” said the Beach-comber.
“Next morning he was obliged to view the body of an old Maori, who had been murdered in his garden the night before. That old man’s hand was the hand he saw. I know a room in an old house in England where plucking off the bed-clothes goes on, every now and then, and has gone on as long as the present occupants have been there. But I only heard lately, and they only heard from me, that the same thing used to occur, in the same room and no other, in the last generation, when another family lived there.”
“Anybody see anything?”
“No, only footsteps are heard creeping up, before the twitches come off.”
“And what do the people do?”
“Nothing! We set a camera once to photograph the spook. He did not sit.”
“It’s rum!” said the Beach-comber. “But mind you, as to spooks, I don’t believe a word of it.” 137
THE GHOST THAT BIT
The idiot Scotch laird in the story would not let the dentist put his fingers into his mouth, “for I’m feared ye’ll bite me”. The following anecdote proves that a ghost may entertain a better founded alarm on this score. A correspondent of Notes and Queries (3rd Sept., 1864) is responsible for the narrative, given “almost verbatim from the lips of the lady herself,” a person of tried veracity.
“Emma S-, one of seven children, was sleeping alone, with her face towards the west, at a large house near C-, in the Staffordshire moorlands. As she had given orders to her maid to call her at an early hour, she was not surprised at being awakened between three and four on a fine August morning in 1840 by a sharp tapping at her door, when in spite of a “thank you, I hear,” to the first and second raps, with the third came a rush of wind, which caused the curtains to be drawn up in the centre of the bed. She became annoyed, and sitting up called out, “Marie, what are you about?”
Instead, however, of her servant, she was astonished to see the face of an aunt by marriage peering above and between the curtains, and at the same moment – whether unconsciously she threw forward her arms, or whether they were drawn forward, as it were, in a vortex of air, she cannot be sure – one of her thumbs was sensibly pressed between the teeth of the apparition, though no mark afterwards remained on it. All this notwithstanding, she remained collected and unalarmed; but instantly arose, dressed, and went downstairs, where she found not a creature stirring. Her father, on coming down shortly afterwards, naturally asked what had made her rise so early; rallied her on the cause, and soon afterwards went on to his sister-in-law’s house, where he found that she had just unexpectedly died. Coming back again, and not noticing his daughter’s presence in the room, in consequence of her being behind a screen near the fire, he suddenly announced the event to his wife, as being of so remarkable a character that he could in no way account for it. As may be anticipated, Emma, overhearing this unlooked-for denouement of her dream, at once fell to the ground in a fainting condition.
On one of the thumbs of the corpse was found a mark as if it had been bitten in the death agony. 138
We have now followed the “ghostly” from its germs in dreams, and momentary hallucinations of eye or ear, up to the most prodigious narratives which popular invention has built on bases probably very slight. Where facts and experience, whether real or hallucinatory experience, end, where the mythopœic fancy comes in, readers may decide for themselves.
1
Principles of Psychology, vol. ii., p. 115. By Professor William James, Harvard College, Macmillan’s, London, 1890. The physical processes believed to be involved, are described on pp. 123, 124 of the same work.
2
Op. cit., ii., 130.
3
Story received from Miss – ; confirmed on inquiry by Drumquaigh.
4
Phantasms of the Living, ii., 382.
5
To “send” a dream the old Egyptians wrote it out and made a cat swallow it!
6
See “Queen Mary’s Jewels” in chapter ii.
7
Narrated by Mrs. Herbert.
8
Story confirmed by Mr. A.
9
This child had a more curious experience. Her nurse was very ill, and of course did not sleep in the nursery. One morning the little girl said, “Macpherson is better, I saw her come in last night with a candle in her hand. She just stooped over me and then went to Tom” (a younger brother) “and kissed him in his sleep.” Macpherson had died in the night, and her attendants, of course, protested ignorance of her having left her deathbed.
10
Story received from Lady X. See another good case in Proceedings of the Psychical Society, vol. xi., 1895, p. 397. In this case, however, the finder was not nearer than forty rods to the person who lost a watch in long grass. He assisted in the search, however, and may have seen the watch unconsciously, in a moment of absence of mind. Many other cases in Proceedings of S.P.R.
11
Story received in a letter from the dreamer.
12
Augustine. In Library of the Fathers, XVII. Short Treatises, pp. 530-531.
13
St. Augustine, De Cura pro Mortuis.
14
The professor is not sure whether he spoke English or German.
15
From Some Account of the Conversion of the late William Hone, supplied by some friend of W. H. to compiler. Name not given.
16
What is now called “mental telegraphy” or “telepathy” is quite an old idea. Bacon calls it “sympathy” between two distant minds, sympathy so strong that one communicates with the other without using the recognised channels of the senses. Izaak Walton explains in the same way Dr. Donne’s vision, in Paris, of his wife and dead child. “If two lutes are strung to an exact harmony, and one is struck, the other sounds,” argues Walton. Two minds may be as harmoniously attuned and communicate each with each. Of course, in the case of the lutes there are actual vibrations, physical facts. But we know nothing of vibrations in the brain which can traverse space to another brain.
Many experiments have been made in consciously transferring thoughts or emotions from one mind to another. These are very liable to be vitiated by bad observation, collusion and other causes. Meanwhile, intercommunication between mind and mind without the aid of the recognised senses – a supposed process of “telepathy” – is a current explanation of the dreams in which knowledge is obtained that exists in the mind of another person, and of the delusion by virtue of which one person sees another who is perhaps dying, or in some other crisis, at a distance. The idea is popular. A poor Highland woman wrote to her son in Glasgow: “Don’t be thinking too much of us, or I shall be seeing you some evening in the byre”. This is a simple expression of the hypothesis of “telepathy” or “mental telegraphy”.
17
Perhaps among such papers as the Casket Letters, exhibited to the Commission at Westminster, and “tabled” before the Scotch Privy Council.
18
To Joseph himself she bequeathed the ruby tortoise given to her by his brother. Probably the diamonds were not Rizzio’s gift.
19
Boismont was a distinguished physician and “Mad Doctor,” or “Alienist”. He was also a Christian, and opposed a tendency, not uncommon in his time, as in ours, to regard all “hallucinations” as a proof of mental disease in the “hallucinated”.
20
S.P.R., v., 324.
21
Ibid., 324.
22
Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. v., pp. 324, 325.
23
Proceedings, S.P.R., vol. xi., p. 495.
24
Signed by Mr. Cooper and the Duchess of Hamilton.
25
See Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, p. 91.
26
Proceedings, S.P.R., vol. xi., p. 522.
27
The case was reported in the Herald (Dubuque) for 12th February, 1891. It was confirmed by Mr. Hoffman, by Mr. George Brown and by Miss Conley, examined by the Rev. Mr. Crum, of Dubuque. —Proceedings, S.P.R., viii., 200-205. Pat Conley, too, corroborated, and had no theory of explanation. That the girl knew beforehand of the dollars is conceivable, but she did not know of the change of clothes.
28
Told by the nobleman in question to the author.
29
The author knows some eight cases among his friends of a solitary meaningless hallucination like this.
30
As to the fact of such visions, I have so often seen crystal gazing, and heard the pictures described by persons whose word I could not doubt, men and women of unblemished character, free from superstition, that I am obliged to believe in the fact as a real though hallucinatory experience. Mr. Clodd attributes it to disorder of the liver. If no more were needed I could “scry” famously!
31
Facts attested and signed by Mr. Baillie and Miss Preston.
32
Story told to me by both my friends and the secretary.
33
Mémoires, v., 120. Paris, 1829.
34
Readers curious in crystal-gazing will find an interesting sketch of the history of the practice, with many modern instances, in Proceedings, S.P.R., vol. v., p. 486, by “Miss X.”. There are also experiments by Lord Stanhope and Dr. Gregory in Gregory’s Letters on Animal Magnetism, p. 370 (1851). It is said that, as sights may be seen in a glass ball, so articulate voices, by a similar illusion, can be heard in a sea shell, when
“It remembers its august abodes,
And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there”.
35
A set of scientific men, as Lélut and Lombroso, seem to think that a hallucination stamps a man as mad. Napoleon, Socrates, Pascal, Jeanne d’Arc, Luther were all lunatics. They had lucid intervals of considerable duration, and the belief in their lunacy is peculiar to a small school of writers.
36
A crowd of phantom coaches will be found in Messrs. Myers and Gurney’s Phantasms of the Living.
37
See The Slaying of Sergeant Davies of Guise’s.
38
Principles of Psychology, by Prof. James of Harvard, vol. ii., p. 612. Charcot is one of sixteen witnesses cited for the fact.
39
Story written by General Barter, 28th April, 1888. (S.P.R.) Corroborated by Mrs. Barter and Mr. Stewart, to whom General Barter told his adventure at the time.
40
Statement by Mr. F. G., confirmed by his father and brother, who were present when he told his tale first, in St. Louis. S.P.R. Proceedings, vol. vi., p. 17.
41
S.P.R., viii., p. 178.
42
Mrs. M. sent the memorandum to the S.P.R. “March 13, 1886. Have just seen visions on lawn – a soldier in general’s uniform, a young lady kneeling to him, 11.40 p.m.”
43
S.P.R., viii., p. 178. The real names are intentionally reserved.
44
Corroborated by Mr. Elliot. Mrs. Elliot nearly fainted. S.P.R., viii., 344-345.
45
Oddly enough, maniacs have many more hallucinations of hearing than of sight. In sane people the reverse is the case.
46
Anecdote by the lady. Boston Budget, 31st August, 1890. S.P.R., viii., 345.
47
Tom Sawyer, Detective.
48
Phantasms of the Living, by Gurney and Myers.
49
The story is given by Mr. Mountford, one of the seers.
50
Journal of Medical Science, April, 1880, p. 151.
51
Catholic theology recognises, under the name of “Bilocation,” the appearance of a person in one place when he is really in another.
52
Phantasms, ii., pp. 671-677.
53
Phantasms of the Living.
54
Mr. E. B. Tylor gives a Maori case in Primitive Culture. Another is in Phantasms, ii., 557. See also Polack’s New Zealand for the prevalence of the belief.
55
Gurney, Phantasms, ii., 6.
56
The late Surgeon-Major Armand Leslie, who was killed at the battle of El Teb, communicated the following story to the Daily Telegraph in the autumn of 1881, attesting it with his signature.
57
This is a remarkably difficult story to believe. “The morning bright and calm” is lit by the rays of the moon. The woman (a Mrs. Gamp) must have rushed past Dr. Leslie. A man who died in Greece or Russia “that morning” would hardly be arrayed in evening dress for burial before 4 a.m. The custom of using goloshes as “hell-shoes” (fastened on the Icelandic dead in the Sagas) needs confirmation. Men are seldom buried in eye-glasses – never in tall white hats. —Phantasms of the Living, ii., 252.
58
From a memorandum, made by General Birch Reynardson, of an oral communication made to him by Sir John Sherbrooke, one of the two seers.
59
This is an old, but good story. The Rev. Thomas Tilson, minister (non-conforming) of Aylesford, in Kent, sent it on 6th July, 1691, to Baxter for his Certainty of the World of Spirits. The woman Mary Goffe died on 4th June, 1691. Mr. Tilson’s informants were her father, speaking on the day after her burial; the nurse, with two corroborative neighbours, on 2nd July; the mother of Mary Goffe; the minister who attended her, and one woman who sat up with her – all “sober intelligent persons”. Not many stories have such good evidence in their favour.
60
Phantasms, ii., 528.
61
“That which was published in May, 1683, concerning the Daemon, or Daemons of Spraiton was the extract of a letter from T. C., Esquire, a near neighbour to the place; and though it needed little confirmation further than the credit that the learning and quality of that gentleman had stampt upon it, yet was much of it likewise known to and related by the Reverend Minister of Barnstaple, of the vicinity to Spraiton. Having likewise since had fresh testimonials of the veracity of that relation, and it being at first designed to fill this place, I have thought it not amiss (for the strangeness of it) to print it here a second time, exactly as I had transcribed it then.” – BOVET.
62
Shchapoff case of “The Dancing Devil” and “The Great Amherst Mystery”.
63
Additional MSS., British Museum, 27,402, f. 132.
64
Really 1628, unless, indeed, the long-continued appearances began in the year before Buckingham’s death; old style.
65
It may fairly be argued, granting the ghost, his advice and his knowledge of a secret known to the countess, that he was a hallucination unconsciously wired on to old Towse by the mind of the anxious countess herself!
66
Hamilton’s Memoirs.
67
Mrs. Thrale’s Diary, 28th November, 1779.
68
Diary of Lady Mary Coke, 30th November, 1779.
69
See Phantasms, ii., 586.
70
The difficulty of knowing whether one is awake or asleep, just about the moment of entering or leaving sleep is notorious. The author, on awaking in a perfectly dark room, has occasionally seen it in a dim light, and has even been aware, or seemed to be aware, of the pattern of the wall paper. In a few moments this effect of light disappears, and all is darkness. This is the confused mental state technically styled “Borderland,” a haunt of ghosts, who are really flitting dreams.