by Thomas Hood (uncredited).
Originally published in Hood's Magazine and Comic Miscellany (Andrew Spottiswoode) vol.1 (1845).
No. III.
"They say that shadowes of deceased ghosts
Doe haunt the houses and the graves about,
Of such whose lives-lamp went untimely out,
Delighting still in their forsaken hostes."—Sylve
Ghost-seers are more abundant than ghosts. At this moment there are, we will venture to assert, hundreds of persons conscious of spectral appearances, even in the broad light of day, as vivid as the reality could be. If we might file a bill of discovery, and compel every party to make a clean breast, we should have volumes of reports recording cases in which the forms presented arc not merely shadowy but apparently substantial,—men, women, quadrupeds, and other animals obscuring the objects behind them—figures of persons unknown, or of those who have gone to their place, visiting the seer singly, or in multitudes, and seeming intent on their own business or pleasure,—the men, women, and children sometimes conversing, ay, even audibly,—for all the senses are liable to these impressions—coming and going, stopping and meeting; or, like the fearful crowd in the halls of Eblis, hurrying on in anguish, seeking rest and finding none.[1]
Occasionally, however, the phantasms are transparent like the ghost that appeared to Scrooge. Such was the apparition mentioned by Dr. Abercrombie, whose patient, a gentleman of irritable habit oppressed by a variety of uneasy sensations in his head, was sitting alone in the twilight after dinner, with the door of the room ajar. He saw a female figure with the face hidden by a large black bonnet and wrapped in a mantle, enter. She seemed to advance towards him, and then stop, he was convinced that it was a visual illusion, and even amused himself by watching it, observing that he could see through the shape the lock of the door and other objects behind it.
The cases of Nicolai, Gleditsch, and others noticed in the works of Dr. Ferriar, Dr. Hibbert, and Sir Walter Scott, will immediately occur to those who have at all directed their reading to this subject; and those who have not will find therein a rich mine of amusement and instruction. Happy is the seer to whom the spectre appears in no appalling shape, and whose levée and couchéo is attended by an assembly of ordinary human beings, or by the Fauns or Fays of his early imagination.
In my youth I knew a man of strong mind subject to these visitations. He was a ripe scholar, died at an advanced age, early in the present century, and never exhibited any other mental disorder. The actors in his phantasmagoria were frequently classical. Pan and his train were often present, but, unlike the shepherd in Theocritus, he feared them not: on the contrary, he would laugh heartily at their antics; and when, sometimes, they carried the grotesque to the borders of the terrific, he would address them with—"Ha, ha! I don't care a farthing for ye: your grimaces entertain me mightily"—and then go on with his regular business or conversation unmoved, till some new uncouth gambol attracted his attention to visitors unseen by any eye but his own. One of his spectres was a strange heteroclite,—something between a satyr and Bottom after he was translated. This tickled him hugely, and he would repeat at such times some doggrel, most irreverently setting forth the merits of a college tutor, who, from some peculiarities in the conformation of his lower extremities, rejoiced in the sobriquet of "Sheep-Shanks," with considerable unction:—
"Ha, ha! Ha, ha!—There you are!"
"The satyrs of old were satyrs of note,
With the head of a man and the legs of a goat;
But our satyr so famous all satyrs surpasses,
For his legs arc a sheep's and his head is an ass's."
The fatal case of the unhappy patient, who was at first haunted by a spectral cat that came and disappeared he could not exactly tell how, then by a gentleman usher, who glided beside him or before him wherever he went, and lastly by a human skeleton that never left him, is stated at large by Dr. Hibbert and Sir Walter. Though the narrative is in substance the same as told by both, the graphic power of
Scott, who, occasionally, confessed to the equipment of his friend's story with a hat and walking cane, brings the scene before us. After relating the different stages of the disease, the author of the "Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft" proceeds thus:—
"The physician was distressed to perceive, from these details, how strongly this visionary apparition was fixed in the imagination of his patient. He ingeniously urged the sick man, who was then in bed, with questions concerning the circumstances of the phantom's appearance, trusting he might lead him, as a sensible man, into such contradictions and inconsistencies as might bring his common sense, which seemed to be unimpaired, so strongly into the field, as might combat successfully the fantastic disorder which produced such fatal effects. 'This skeleton then,' said the Doctor, 'seems to you to be always present to your imagination?'—'It is my fate, unhappily,' answered the invalid, 'always to see it.'—'Then I understand,' continued the physician, 'it is now present to your imagination?'—'To my imagination it certainly is so,' replied the sick man.—'And in what part of the chamber do you now conceive the apparition to appear?' the physician inquired.—'Immediately at the foot of my bed; when the curtains are left a little open,' answered the invalid, 'the skeleton, to my thinking, is placed between them, and fills the vacant space.'—'You say you are sensible of the delusion,' said his friend; 'have you firmness to convince yourself of the truth of this? Can you take courage enough to rise and place yourself in the spot so seeming to be
occupied, and convince yourself of the illusion?'—The poor man sighed and shook his head negatively. 'Well,' said the Doctor, 'we will try the experiment otherwise.' Accordingly, he rose from his chair by the bedside, and placing himself between the two half-drawn curtains at the foot of the bed, indicated as the place occupied by the apparition, asked if the spectre was still visible?—'Not entirely so,' replied the patient, 'because your person is betwixt him and me; but I observe his skull peering above your shoulder.'
"It is alleged the man of science started on the instant, despite philosophy, on receiving an answer ascertaining, with such minuteness, that the ideal spectre was close to his own person. He resorted to other means of investigation and cure, but with equally indifferent success. The patient sunk into deeper and deeper dejection, and died in the same distress of mind in which he had spent the latter months of his life; and his case remains melancholy instance of the power of imagination to kill the body, even when its fantastic terrors cannot overcome the intellect of the unfortunate persons who suffer under them."
Sir David Brewster in In his "Letters on Natural Magic," relates some curious instances of spectral illusions. On one occasion, the afflicted patient, a lady who had been subject to these attacks, saw the appearance of an approaching carriage and four. As it arrived within a few yards of the windows the party inside presented a ghastly company of skeletons and other hideous figures driven by postilions of the same unearthly class. The lady exclaimed, "What have I seen?" and the whole vanished.
"The earth hath bubbles, as the water has,
And these were of them."
It is undoubtedly true that these painful visitations yield, in most cases, to the power of medicine and regimen as readily as other bodily or mental derangements. Minds thus diseased have been ministered to with as much success as bodies suffering under the other disorders to which flesh is heir; and, as the cure proceeds, the spectral images, generally, become less and less vivid till they are hardly visible, and at last disappear altogether.
Dr. Hibbert remarks that when ideas of vision are rendered unduly intense, three stages of excitement may give rise to spectral impressions. In the first stage nothing more than the outlines of the recollected images of the mind are, he observes, rendered as vivid as external impressions. In the second, ideas are vivified during darkness so as to produce phantasms of a perfect form; but these are easily expelled by a strong exposure to light. In the third, the illusions are not dispelled by light; but may subsist during the influence of sensations of an ordinary degree of intensity.
It was but the other day that an example of such impressions was elicited in a court of justice. During the trial consequent upon the murder of the late Mr. Butler Bryan, Frances Myler deposed that she was in the wood on the day of the murder, heard the shot, and saw the man who discharged the pistol run away. This witness had manifested great excitement: on one occasion the judge termed it a paroxysm of excitement. She was thus cross-examined, according to the newspaper report—
Mr. Lynch. "Did you ever see Mr. Bryan since he was shot?"
Witness. "Yes, after."
Judge Ball (in surprise). "After he was shot?"
Witness. "Yes, my lord."
Mr. Lynch. "Where did you see him?"
Witness. "I saw his ghost." (A laugh.) "Sorrow one need laugh at it."
Mr. Lynch. "Was it the ghost of Mr. Bryan that told you to come and give information?"
Witness. "No ; I never spoke to the ghost. I only think, if I shut my eyes, that it is fornent me."[2]
Sir David Brewster well observes, that although it is not probable that we shall ever be able to understand the actual manner in which a person of sound mind beholds spectral apparitions in the broad light of day, yet we may arrive at such a degree of knowledge on the subject as to satisfy rational curiosity and to strip the phenomena of every attribute of the marvellous. "Even the vision of natural objects," writes Sir David, in continuation, "presents to us insurmountable difficulties, if we seek to understand the precise part which the mind performs in perceiving them; but the philosopher considers that he has given a satisfactory explanation of vision when he demonstrates that distinct pictures of external objects are painted on the retina, and that this membrane communicates with the brain by means of nerves of the same substance as itself, and of which it is merely an expansion. Here we reach the gulf which human intelligence cannot pass; and if the presumptuous mind of man shall dare to extend its speculations farther, it will do it only to evince its incapacity and mortify its pride."
The same accomplished philosopher, in conversing with the lady to whose case we have referred, and who had read Dr. Hibbert's work previous to her attack, told her that if she should ever see such a thing, she might distinguish a genuine ghost existing, externally, and seen as an external object, from one created by the mind, by merely pressing one eye or straining them both so as to see objects double; for in this case the external object would invariably be doubled, while the impression on the retina created by the mind would remain single. She remembered this when subject to the attacks; but the state of agitation which generally accompanies them seems to have prevented her from making the experiment as a matter of curiosity.[3]
The cases of Nicolai and of this lady proceeded, apparently, from derangement of stomach. Her first illusion affected her car only. Colonel Gardiner had sustained a severe shock by a fall from his horse a short time before the vision, accompanied by vocal reproof,
that impressed his mind so strongly and worked so great a moral and religious change in his character up to the time of his death at Prestonpans. The effect produced by the disordered body upon the mind is strongly illustrated by the case recorded by Dr. Patouillet. A family of nine persons had
— eaten of the insane root,
That takes the reason prisoner.[4]
Their madness affected them variously. One jumped into a pond. Another shouted that within a month a neighbour would lose a cow. A third proclaimed that the crown piece of sixty pence would soon rise to five livres. Their senses returned, it is true, on the next day, but no memory of what had passed remained, and all the nine saw objects double. On the third day every object appeared to them as red as scarlet; and Sir David Brewster, in his comments on the case,
observes, that this red light was probably nothing more than the red phosphorescence produced by the pressure of bloodvessels on the retina, and analogous to the masses of blue, green, yellow, and red light produced by a similar pressure in headaches, arising from a disordered state of the digestive organs.
The mind, then, when we labour under excitement, depression, or certain forms of disease, is in a state to receive unreal impressions, and to embody, as it were, well-remembered forms. The conscience-stricken murderer is haunted by his victim, and exclaims—
"If I stand here, I saw him."
These bodiless creations have formed a most effectual part of the machinery of poets from time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. In every age, in every language, these aerial visitations are made to fall upon the melancholy or guilty eye and ear. The Ghost of Cæsar rises before Brutus:—
"How ill this taper burnes. Ha! who comes heere?
I think it is the weakenesse of mine eyes
That shapes this monstrous Apparition.
It comes upon me: art thou any thing?
Art thou some god, some angell, or some divell,
That mak'st my blood cold, and my haire to stare?
Speak to me, what thou art.
Ghost. Thy evill spirit, Brutus.
Bru. Why comst thou?
Ghost. To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi.
Bru. Well then I shall see thee againe?
Ghost. I, at Philippi.
Bru. Why, I will see thee at Philippi then:
Now I have taken heart, thou vanishest.
Ill spirit, I would hold more talke with thee."
Again, towards the end of the Fifth Act:—
"Clitus. What ill request did Brutus make to thee?
Dardanius. To kill him, Clitus: looke, he meditates.
Clitus. Now is that noble vessell full of griefe,
That it runnes over even at his eyes.
Bru. Come hither, good Volumnius, list a word.
Volum. What says my Lord?
Bru. Why this, Volumnius:
The Ghost of Cæsar hath appear'd to me.
Two severall times by night: at Sardis, once;
And this last night, here in Philippi fields:
I know my houre is come."
In the same spirit another mighty magician raises the Bodach Glas before the eyes of the dejected Fergus previous to the skirmish at Clifton, and again on the night preceding his execution.
Crabbe has painted the guilty visionary of low life with a master hand:—
"And so I sat and look'd upon the stream,
How it ran on, and felt as in a dream:
But dream it was not: No!—I fix'd my eyes
On the mid stream and saw the spirits rise:
I saw my father on the water stand.
And hold a thin pale boy in either hand;
And there they glided ghastly on the top
Of the salt Hood, and never touch'd a drop;
I would have struck them, but they knew th' intent,
And smil'd upon the oar, and down they went.
"Now, from that day, whenever I began
To dip my net, there stood the hard old man—
He and those boys: I humbled me and pray'd
They would be gone:—they heeded not, but stay'd:
Nor could I turn, nor would the boat go by,
But, gazing on the spirits, there was I.
They bade me leap to death, but I was loth to die:
And every day, as sure as day arose
Would these three spirits meet me ere the close:
To hear and mark them daily was my doom,
And 'come,' they said, with weak, sad voices, 'come.'
To row away, with all my strength I tried,
But there were they, hard by me in the tide,
The three unbodied forms—and 'come,' still 'come,' they cried."[5]
But if, in a great majority of cases, the spectres which arise from mental excitement or bodily derangement die away gradually before medical treatment, waxing faint and shadowy as the cure advances, some of these startling visions suddenly appear without any assignable reason, and, as arbitrarily, vanish. In illustration of this class of cases, Dr. Hibbert quotes from the Edinburgh Literary Gazette an anecdote related by Sir Walter Scott when the Doctor read to the Royal Society the paper which gave rise to his admirable "Sketches."
One of the presidents of the Swiss Cantons had occasion to visit the library of the establishment. "Entering it about two o'clock in the afternoon, what was his amazement to see the former president of the same body, his deceased friend, sitting in solemn conclave in the president's chair, with a numerous list of 'great men dead' assisting him in his deliberations! He hastened from the place in fear, and went to some of his brethren in office to advise upon the most speedy measures to divorce the usurpers of their stations; but on returning with a reinforcement of trembling associates, he found the long table in statu quo, the chairs empty, and every mark of the mysterious deliberations vanished into air."
A still more striking story is recorded by the same author in an additional note to his second edition.
"About a dozen of years ago," writes Dr. Hibbert's correspondent, a respectable individual of Edinburgh, who favoured the Doctor with his name and address, "a gentleman, with whom I had been long and intimately acquainted, died very suddenly. The information of his decease reached me soon after, and produced no slight emotion in my mind, which, although banished by the business in which I was employed, was occasionally renewed by the conversation of those with whom I associated. At dinner the subject was talked of in my family. I again pursued my vocation; and being more than usually busy, if it occurred again, it was only for a moment, and the feeling far less intense. About nine in the evening I went up stairs and joined my
family; the circumstance was not again mentioned by any one, we being engaged in talking over some family-matters in which we were interested. After supper, according to my usual custom, I went down stairs to take a walk in the court behind my house. This court was a parallelogram, and mostly paved, from thirty to forty feet in length its breadth more than half as much: in part it was bounded by extensive open gardens, from which it was divided by a low parapet-wall, surmounted with a light railing; the extremities at both ends were the walls of offices belonging to the house. The sky was clear and the night serene; and there was no light from my window which could either fall or produce any shadow in the court. (You will instantly perceive my reason for relating these minute particulars.)
"When I went down stairs, I was musing on a subject by no association of ideas connected with my deceased friend, and for several hours did not note him in my mind. My entrance to the court was at an angle; and I had proceeded at a slow pace, nearly half way across, still pursuing my ruminations, when the figure of my departed friend seemed suddenly to start up right before me, at the opposite angle of the court. I do not at this moment see the pen in my hand, nor the paper on which I am writing more visibly and distinctly than he appeared to me; so that I could at a glance discern his whole costume. He was not in his usual dress, but in a coat of a different colour, which he had for many months left off wearing: I could even remark a figured vest, which he had also worn about the same time; also a coloured handkerchief around his neck, in which I had used to see him in a morning; and my powers of vision seemed to become more keen as I gazed on the phantom before me. It seemed to be leaning in the angle, with its back to the wall, and gave me a bow, or rather a familiar nod of recognisance, making a slight motion with the right hand. I acknowledge that I started, and an indescribable feeling, which I shall never forget, shot through my frame; but after a pause of, I suppose, from twenty to thirty seconds, I became convinecd that it was either an optical deception, or some sudden hallucination of the mind. I recovered my fortitude; and, keeping my eye intently fixed on the spectre, walked briskly up to the spot. It vanished, not by sinking into the earth, but by seeming insensibly to melt into viewless air. I brought my hand in contact with the wall on which it seemed to lean, felt nothing, and the illusion was vanished for ever."
The narrator adds that, no doubt, all this happened in consequence of the previous excitement of his feelings, and the deep impression left on his mind; but he had never been able to comprehend how it should have occurred, after the subject had been banished from his memory, and when his thoughts were employed on a very different subject; nor could he conceive how the external organs of sight should so readily be united with imagination, in producing the extraordinary illusion, especially with one who was decidedly sceptical on the subject.
Upon these observations Dr. Hibbert remarks to his intelligent correspondent, who had not at the time seen his work, that these truly pertinent questions are frequently discussed therein,—as indeed they are most philosophically and satisfactorily, in some chapters
of the fourth part of his second edition. These attacks, for such in truth they are, come, like others of a more fatal nature, when they are least expected.
My own experience—it is, perhaps, hardly worth mentioning—has hitherto been confined to three occasions, and these occurred in childhood, youth, and manhood.
When I was about seven years of age, I was taken to sleep with my kind aunt on the second floor, in consequence of some slight epidemic which had invaded our nursery. I had heard, you may be sure, old Martha's solemn communications to Peggy touching the demise of the two babes who had entered this world and left it for a better before my arrival. One night, before my aunt came up to bed, I awoke suddenly with the sensation that a small hand was passing down my face, and saw, by the night-light, two little children with fair hair and radiant faces standing close to the bedside, and looking on me. They said something, and I thought I could distinguish the word "Brother!" At the same moment, as they appeared to recede upwards through the closed window, I heard a strain of music. They looked so lovely and happy that I was not frightened, but lay awake hoping they would come again, and, when my aunt came up, told her what I had seen and heard. She tried to convince me that I had been dreaming, but I could not be so convinced; and when I told her that I loved them, and that if they would not come to me, I should like to go to play with them, her countenance changed—she kissed me, and with a faltering voice said,—"Not yet, dear child; not yet, I trust."
They came no more, and whenever I afterwards reverted to the occurrence, every body looked grave, and I could get no explanation, excepting that, on the night in question, the members of a glee club, all of whom were known to our family, had stopped on their way home
and given us a serenade.
I was now about fourteen, and, as we were sitting after tea on a winter evening, was requested to go into the library, which was in the part of the house formerly occupied by the suicidal Guinea captain, for a volume of Dryden. Leaving the room where the family were assembled, with a chamber candlestick, I shut the door, traversed a short dark passage, and had my hand firmly on the lock handle of the library door, when it seemed to be opened from within so forcibly that, holding on the handle as I did, I felt pulled with the door into the room, and my light was extinguished. Old nurse's description of the captain rushed into my mind. I saw nothing, but fancied I heard gurgling and moaning, and staggered back to the party (none of whom had left their places), looking, they told me very pale. After they had heard some excuse for my not finding the book, and after my mother and aunt had looked very hard at each other, the conversation, which had related to a passage in Palamon and Arcite, took a different turn.
I can just remember some of the old privateer captains with their bronzed faces and laced cocked-hats and waistcoats, men familiar with the haunted West Indian "Keys," who could tell many a wild story, sing songs that breathed of the sea and foreign lands, and make sangaree, so exquisitely fragrant, that, as an enthusiast, who had tasted of their handy-work in this line, once declared, it was like drinking a meadow in May, cowslips and all.
A prize had been brought into port by one of these privateers, and great were the expectations of the captors. Hints had been dropped of the invaluable nature of a part of the cargo by the defeated captain, and as the well-secured packages of which it almost entirely consisted were numerous, the owners thought that their fortune was made. Well, they unpacked and unpacked, but nothing appeared excepting some very fine specimens of corals and shells, which my father purchased. Upon mentioning their disappointment to their prisoners, not without hints that it would be better for the latter to point out at once where the treasure was, the captive master and his mates directed them, evidently with some chagrin, to remove a plank in the cabin, the situation of which they described. Search was accordingly made, and, sure enough, a case,
"With iron clasp'd and with iron bound,"
was discovered. Expectation was on tiptoe. The secret was out; and now the owners and their friends crowded round to feast their eyes on the latent diamonds and pearls. The iron clasps were filed through, the lid was carefully raised with chisels; a second box was contained within, then a third, and a fourth. When this last was opened, fine raw cotton appeared. Layer after layer was removed, and at last a satin wrapper, tied with silken strings and sealed, was visible. The seals and string were hastily broken, the wrapper unfolded, and at last appeared a small silver crucifix, which bad belonged to some Roman Catholic hierarch who had died in the odour of sanctity, intrinsically worth about sixty shillings. The faces of the expectants may be imagined.
Whilst under the care of the Rev. Basil Burch, it was my habit to leave school on Saturday night and return on Monday morning. On my way home I had to pass some of the old chequer-windowed taverns redolent of the shrub, pine-apple rum, lime-punch, and turtle of a century and more, and sending out the radiance that shone within through the red hangings with a warmth that thawed the wintry street and lighted up the old gables of the houses opposite, till the grim features and figures carved thereon were all in a ruddy glow, and looked inclined to come down and join in the revelry. If tales were true, roaring blades such as Low, Lowther, and Roberts had, in former years, there predominated over mighty bowls—rovers who sailed under the black flag, declared war against all the world, gave their prisoners, if they did not like their looks, a grill of their own ears for breakfast, poured out blood like water, and by dint of alcohol kept themselves and their crews up to the piratical point.[6]
"Every man to his gun!
But the work must be done
With cutlash,[7] pike and pistol:
And when we no longer can strike a blow,
Fire the magazine-train—then up we go!
'Tis a snugger birth in the blue below,
Than to swing in the wind and feed the crow"--
Said Jolly Ned Teach of Bristol.
One November night, not long after my adventure in the library, as I passed one of these reeking sanctuaries and some such rough chorus burst forth upon the night, a cold shiver came over me, and looking up, I beheld the Guinea captain by the lurid light that streamed through the tavern window. There he stood, girt with his hanger, right in my path, as if lingering near the scene of his former orgies, with his gashed throat, whip, shackles, and bowl of horse beans. His very dress was clearly defined, from the silver-laced cocked-hat, low-pocketed, wide-sleeved, collarless coat, and embroidered blood-stained waistcoat, with huge flaps descending upon his knee-buckled breeches, down to his speckled silk stockings and shoes surmounted with great silver buckles. Then I felt the force of those awful words—"the hair of my flesh stood up"—I turned and fled, not daring to look behind me,—tottered home, I knew not how, related my adventure, and was immediately ordered to bed, and dosed for a smart attack of fever, according to the prescriptions in such case made and provided.
1. Vathek.
2. Times, 7th March, 1844.
3. Letters on Natural Magic.
4. Black Henbane—Hyoscyamus niger.
5. Peter Grimes.
6. "In Black-heard^s Journal, which was taken, there were several memorandums of the following nature found writ with his own hand:—Such a day, Rum all out.—Our Company somewhat sober.—A damn'd confusion amongst us!— Rogues a plotting.—Great talk of separation.—So I look'd sharp for a prize.--Such a day took one, with a great deal of liquor on board, so kept the company hot—damned hot —then all things went well again."—"A General History of the Pyrates, by Captain Charles Johnson," 1724. "Chap, iii. Of Captain Teach, alias Blackbeard."
7. The true buccanneer orthography.