The Ghost World

CHAPTER XIII

GHOST LAYING

In his amusing account of the art of ‘laying’ ghosts, published in the last century, Grose tells us ‘a ghost may be laid for any term less than a hundred years, and in any place or body, full or empty; as a solid oak, the pommel of a sword, a barrel of beer, if a yeoman or simple gentleman; or a pipe of wine, if an esquire or a justice.’ But this, as Dr. Tylor writes,173 ‘is one of the many good instances of articles of serious savage belief surviving as jests among civilised men.’ However whimsical the idea of laying a ghost may seem to the prosaic mind, an inquiry into the history of human belief shows how widely this expedient has been resorted to in times past, although St. Chrysostom is said to have insulted some African conjurors of old with this quaint and humiliating observation: ‘Miserable and woful creatures that we are, we cannot so much as expel fleas, much less devils.’

It was not so very long ago that, at the trial of Laurie for the murder of Mr. Rose,174 Sergeant Munro, on being asked by the Dean of Faculty a question as to the disappearance of the murdered man’s boots, replied that he believed they had been buried on the beach at Corne, below high-water mark. This curious ceremony seems to have been adopted by the Highland police, with the intention of laying Mr. Rose’s ghost – an object which, according to tradition, might be attained by burying his boots under water. The expedient resorted to by the Highland police was founded not upon any inadequate estimate of the powers of ghosts, but upon an intimate knowledge of their likes and dislikes. They are known to entertain a strong objection to water, an antipathy which is sufficiently strong to make them shun a spot on which water is to be found; in fact, as Mr. Hunt writes,175 spirits are supposed to be unable to cross water.

A story is told of ‘Dary Pit,’ Shropshire, a dismal pool, which was a much dreaded spot, because it was said spirits were laid under the water, and might, it seems, in spite of being so laid, walk abroad.

This belief may be traced in various parts of the world, and ‘one of the most striking ways,’ writes Mr. James G. Frazer,176 ‘of keeping down the dead man is to divert the course of a river, bury him in its bed, and then allow the river to resume its course. It was thus that Alaric was buried, and Commander Cameron found the same mode of burial in vogue amongst a tribe in Central Africa.’

Among the Tipperahs of Chittagong, if a man dies away from home, his friends stretch a thread over all the intermediate streams, so that the spirit of the dead man may return to his own village; ‘it being supposed that,177 without assistance, spirits are unable to cross running water,’ and hence streams are occasionally bridged over in the manner afore-said.178 A somewhat similar idea prevails among the Fijians, and we are told how those who have reason to suspect others of plotting against them occasionally ‘build themselves a small house, and surround it with a moat, believing that a little water will neutralise the charms which are directed’ to hurt them.179

The idea of water as a barrier against ghosts has given rise to many strange customs, some of which Mr. Frazer quotes in his paper on ‘The Primitive Ghost.’180 Among the Metamba negroes, a woman is bound hand and foot by the priest, who flings her into the water several times over with the intention of drowning her husband’s ghost, who may be supposed to be clinging to his unfeeling spouse. A similar practice exists in Angola, and in New Zealand those who have attended a funeral plunge several times into the nearest stream. In Tahiti, all who assisted at a burial plunged into the sea; and in some parts of West Africa, after the corpse has been deposited in the grave, ‘all the bearers rush to the waterside and undergo a thorough ablution before they are permitted to return to the town.’

According to Mr. Ralston, the Lusatian Wends place water between themselves and the dead as they return from a burial, even, if necessary, breaking ice for the purpose. And ‘in many parts of Germany, in modern Greece, and in Cyprus, water is poured out behind the corpse when it is carried from the house, in the belief that if the ghost returns he will not be able to cross it.’181 A Danish tradition says, ‘If a person dies who, it is feared, will reappear, as a preventive let a basinful of water be thrown after the corpse when it is carried out’182 and there will be no further cause of alarm. In Bohemia, after a death, the water-butt is turned upside down, for if the ghost bathe in it, and anyone should happen to drink of it afterwards, he would be a dead man within the year. In Pomerania, after a funeral, no washing is done for some time, lest the dead man should be wet in his grave.

Drake, in his legends of New England, alludes to a story of a wreck at Ipswich, and says that, when the storms come, the howling of the wind is ‘Harry Main’ – a legend which has thus been versified by A. Morgan:

Similarly the Chibchas in their mythology had a great river that souls had to pass over on floats made of cobwebs. On this account they never killed spiders. The Araucanian soul is borne across the Stygian flood by a whale, and the Potawatomis think ‘the souls of the dead cross a large stream over a log, which rolls so that many slip off into the water. One of their ancestors went to the edge of the stream, but, not liking to venture on the log, he came back two days after his death. He reported that he heard the sounds of the drum on the other side of the river, to the beat of which the souls of the dead were dancing.’183 The Ojibways speak of a similar stream, across which lies a serpent, over whose body the soul must cross.

A favourite mode of capturing a ghost in days gone by was to entice it into something small, such as a bottle, and as a decoy, to doubt its power to do so – a mode of exorcism which would seem to have suggested our ‘bottle-imps.’ An amusing story of laying a ghost by this means, and which illustrates the popular belief, is recorded in the ‘Folk-lore Record’ (ii. 176), on the authority of the late Thomas Wright. ‘There lived in the town of – , in that part of England which lies towards the borders of Wales, a very curious simple kind of a man, though all said he knew a good deal more than other people did not know. There was in the same town a very old house, one of the rooms of which was haunted by a ghost, which prevented people making use of it. The man above mentioned was reported to be very clever at dealing with ghosts, and so the owner of the haunted house sent for him, and asked him if he could undertake to make the ghost quit the house. Tommy, for that was the name he generally went by, agreed to do this, on condition that three things were provided him – an empty bottle, a bottle of brandy with a tumbler, and a pitcher of water. So Tommy locked the door safely inside, and sat down to pass the night drinking brandy and water.

‘Just as the clock struck twelve, he was roused by a slight noise, and lo! there was the ghost standing before him. Says the ghost, “Well, Tommy, how are ye?” “Pretty well, thank ye,” says he, “but pray, how do you know my name?” “Oh, very well indeed,” said the ghost. “And how did you get in?” “Oh, very easily.” “Not through the door, I’m sure.” “No, not at all, but through the keyhole.” “D’ye say so? None of your tricks upon me; I won’t believe you came through the keyhole.” “Won’t ye? but I did.” “Well, then,” says Tommy, pointing to the empty bottle, which he pretended to have emptied, “if you can come through the keyhole you can get into this bottle, but I won’t believe you can do either.” Now the ghost began to be very angry that Tommy should doubt his power of getting into the bottle, so he asserted most confidently that the thing was easy to be done. “No,” said Tommy, “I won’t believe it till I have seen you get in.” “Here goes then,” said the ghost, and sure enough into the bottle he went, and Tommy corked him up quite tight, so that he could not get out, and he took the bottle to the bridge where the river was wide and deep, and he threw the bottle exactly over the keystone of the middle arch into the river, and the ghost was never heard after.’

This cunning mode of laying a ghost is very old, and reminds us of the amusing story of the fisherman and the genie in the Arabian Nights. The tale tells how, one day, a fisherman drew a brazen bottle out of the sea, sealed with the magic seal of Suleyman Ben Daood, out of which there issued an enormous genie, who threatened the fisherman with death. The latter, feeling his life was at stake, bethought him of doubting the genie’s ability to enter so small a vessel, whereupon the affronted genie returned thither to vindicate his character, and so placed himself in the fisherman’s power. In the same way a Bulgarian sorcerer armed with a saint’s picture will hunt a vampire into a bottle containing some of the food that the demon loves; as soon as he is fairly inside, he is corked down, the bottle is thrown into the fire, and the vampire disappears for ever.

Miss Jackson184 quotes a story from Montgomeryshire, of how the spirit of Lady Jeffreys, who for some reason could not rest in peace, and ‘troubled people dreadfully,’ was ‘persuaded to contract her dimensions and enter a bottle. She did so, after appearing in a good many hideous forms; but when once in the bottle it was corked down securely, and the bottle was thrown into the pool underneath the Short Bridge, over the Severn, in Llanidloes; and in the bottle she was to remain until the ivy that crept along the buttresses overgrew the sides of the bridge and reached the top of the parapet; then when this took place she should be released from her bottle prison.’ In the ‘Collectanea Archæologica’ (vol. i. part 1) we are told on the authority of one Sarah Mason, of Baschurch, that ‘there was a woman hanged on a tree at Cutberry, and she came again so badly that nine clergymen had to be fetched to lay her. So they read and read until they got her into a bottle, and they buried it under a flat sandstone in the road. We used to go past the stone every time we went to church, and I’ve often wondered if she was still there, and what would happen if anyone was to pull the stone up.’ And as a further safeguard a correspondent of ‘Notes and Queries,’ writing from Ecclesfield, says it is best in laying ghosts to cheat them to consent to being laid while hollies are green, for hollies being evergreen, the ghost can reappear no more.

In Wales, the objectionable spectre must be conjured in the name of Heaven to depart, and return no more, the strength of the exorcism being doubled by employing the Latin language to deliver it, which, to be perfectly effectual, must be done by three clergymen. The exorcism is usually for a stated time, seven years is the favourite period, and one hundred years the limit. Instances are recorded where a ghost which had been laid a hundred years returned at the end of the time to its old haunts. According to Mr. Wirt Sikes,185 ‘in all cases it is necessary the ghost should agree to be exorcised; no power can lay it if it be possessed of an evil demon. In such cases the terrors of Heaven must be rigorously invoked, but the result is only temporary. Properly constituted family ghosts, however, will lend a reasonable ear to entreaty backed by prayer.’

Candles have generally played an important part in the ceremony of ghost laying, one popular idea being that ghosts have no power by candlelight. Thus, in many tales, the ghost is cheated into a promise not to return till the candle is burnt out, whereupon the crafty parson immediately blows it out, throwing it into a pond, or burying it in the earth. The belief is an old one, for, in one of the Sagas quoted by Mr. Baring-Gould,186 the tomb-breaking hero finds an old Viking sitting in his dragon-ship, with his five hundred comrades motionless about him. He is about to depart, after possessing himself of the dead man’s treasures, when the taper goes out, whereupon they all rise and attack the intruder, who barely escapes by invoking St. Olaf’s aid. In all Shropshire stories, we are told that the great point is to keep the candles lighted in spite of the ghost’s utmost efforts to blow them out; an amusing instance being that of the Bagbury ghost, which appeared in the shape of a bull, and was so troublesome that twelve parsons were required to lay it. The story goes that they got him into Hyssington Church; ‘they all had candles, and one blind old parson, who knowed him, and knowed what a rush he would make, he carried his candle in his top-boot. And he made a great rush, and all the candles went out, all but the blind parson’s, and he said, “You light your candles by mine.”’

Miss Jackson also tells187 how ‘Squire Blount’s ghost’ long haunted Kinlet Hall, because his daughter had married a page-boy. At last it was found necessary to pull down Kinlet Old Hall, and to build it again on a fresh site, ‘for he would even come into the room where they were at dinner, and drive his coach and four white horses across the dinner table.’ But ‘at last they got a number of parsons together and lighted candles, and read and read till all the candles were burnt out but one, and so they quieted him, and laid him in the sea. There was, it is reported, a little bottle under his monument in Kinlet Church, and if that were broken he would come again. It is a little flat bottle seven or eight inches long, with a glass stopper in it, which nobody could get out; and if anyone got hold of it, the remark was made, “Take care as you dunna let that fall, for if it breaks, old Blount will come again.”’

According to Mr. Henderson188 there was a house in a village of Arkingarthdale which had long been haunted by a bogle. At last the owner adopted the following plan for expelling it. Opening the Bible, he placed it on a table with a lighted candle, and said aloud to the bogle, ‘Noo thoo can read or dance, or dea as ta likes.’ He then turned round and walked upstairs, when the bogle, in the form of a grey cat, flew past and vanished in the air. Years passed without its being seen again, but one day he met it on the stairs, and he was that day killed in the mines.

At Leigh, Worcestershire, a spectre known as ‘Old Coles’ formerly appeared, and would drive a coach and four over the great barn at Leigh Court, and then cool the fiery nostrils of his steeds in the waters of the Teme. This perturbed spirit was at length laid in a neighbouring pool by twelve parsons at midnight, by the light of an inch of candle; and as he was not to rise again until the candle was quite burnt out, it was thrown into the pool, and to make all sure, the pool was filled up,

But sometimes, when the candles burn out their time, it is an indication that none of the party can lay the ghost, as happened in the case of a certain Dartmoor vicar’s unquiet spirit described by Mr. Henderson.190 ‘A jury of seven parsons was convoked to lay it, and each sat for half an hour with a candle in his hand, but it burned out its time with each. The spirit could afford to defy them; it was not worth his while to blow their candles out. But the seventh parson was a stranger and a scholar fresh from Oxford. In his hand the light went out at once. He was clearly the man to lay the ghost; he laid it at once, and in a beer-barrel.’

According to another way of ejecting or laying ghosts, there must be two or three clergymen, and the ceremony must be performed in the Latin language, which, it is said, will strike the most audacious ghost with terror. Allan Ramsay mentions, as common in Scotland, the vulgar notion that a ghost cannot be laid till some priest speaks to it, and ascertains what prevents it from resting.

And in the ‘Statistical Account of Scotland’ (xiii. 557) the writer, speaking of the parish of Locharron, county of Ross, alludes to the same idea: ‘There is one opinion which many of them entertain, and which, indeed, is not peculiar to this parish alone, that a Popish priest can cast out devils and cure madness, and that the Presbyterian clergy have no such power. A person might as well advise a mob to pay no attention to a merry Andrew, as to desire many ignorant people to stay from the priest.’

On a small island off Scotland, called Ledge’s Holm, writes Mr. Bassett, there is a quarry called ‘The Crier of Claife.’ According to a local tradition, a ferryman was hailed on a dark night from the island, and went over. After a long absence he returned, having witnessed many horrible sights which he refused to relate. Soon afterwards he became a monk. After a time the same cry was heard, and he went over and succeeded in laying the ghost where it now rests. But Bourne, who has preserved a form for exorcising a haunted house, ridicules the fancy that ‘none can lay spirits but Popish priests,’ and says that ‘our own clergy know just as much of the black art as the others do’ – a statement which is amply confirmed. Thus, a ghost known as ‘Benjie Gear’ long troubled the good people of Okehampton to such an extent that, ‘at last,’ writes Mr. James Spry, in ‘The Western Antiquary,’ ‘the aid of the archdeacon was called in, and the clergy were assembled in order that the troubled spirit might be laid and cease to trouble them. There were twenty-three of the clergy who invoked him in various classic languages, but the insubordinate spirit refused to listen to their request. At length, one more learned than the rest addressed him in Arabic, to which he was forced to succumb, saying, “Now thou art come, I must be gone!” He was then compelled to take the form of a colt; a new bridle and bit, which had never been used, were produced, with a rider, to whom the Sacrament was administered. The man was directed to ride the colt to Cranmere Pool, on Dartmoor, the following instructions being given him. He was to prevent the colt from turning its head towards the town until they were out of the park, and then make straight for the pool, and when he got to the slope, to slip from the colt’s back, pull the bridle off, and let him go. All this was dexterously performed, and the impetus thus gained by the animal with the intention of throwing the rider over its head into the Pool, accomplished its own fate.’

Another curious account of laying a ghost is connected with Spedlin’s Tower, which stands on the south-west bank of the Annan. The story goes, that one of its owners, Sir Alexander Jardine, confined, in the dungeon of his tower, a miller named Porteous, on suspicion of having wilfully set fire to his own premises. Being suddenly called away to Edinburgh, he forgot the existence of his captive until he had died of hunger. But no sooner was the man dead, than his ghost began so persistently to disturb Spedlin’s Tower, that Sir Alexander Jardine summoned ‘a whole legion of ministers to his aid, and by their efforts Porteous was at length confined to the scene of his mortal agonies, where, at times, he was heard screaming, “Let me out, let me out, for I’m deein’ o’ hunger!”’ The spell which compelled his spirit to remain in bondage was attached to a large black-lettered Bible used by the exorcists, and afterwards deposited in a stone niche, which still remains in the wall of the staircase. On one occasion the Bible, requiring to be re-bound, was sent to Edinburgh, whereupon the ghost of Porteous recommenced its annoyances, so that the Bible was recalled before reaching Edinburgh, and was replaced in its former situation. But, it would seem, the ghost is at last at rest, for the Bible is now kept at Jardine Hall.