The Book of Dreams and Ghosts - Andrew Lang (best ebook reader ubuntu .TXT) 📗

who is dead or dying or quite well at a distance.  The number of these stories is legion.  To these we advance, under their Highland title, spirits of the living. CHAPTER V

“Spirits of the Living.”  Mistakes of Identity.  Followed by Arrival of Real Person.  “Arrivals.”  Mark Twain’s Phantom Lady.  Phantom Dogcart.  Influence of Expectant Attention.  Goethe.  Shelley.  The Wraith of the Czarina.  Queen Elizabeth’s Wraith.  Second Sight.  Case at Ballachulish.  Experiments in sending Wraiths.  An “Astral Body”.  Evidence discussed.  Miss Russell’s Case.  “Spirits of the Dying.”  Maori Examples.  Theory of Chance Coincidence.  In Tavistock Place.  The Wynyard Wraith.  Lord Brougham’s Wraith Story.  Lord Brougham’s Logic.  The Dying Mother.  Comparison with the Astral Body.  The Vision of the Bride.  Animals as affected by the supposed Presence of Apparitions.  Examples.  Transition to Appearances of the Dead.

“Spirits of the living” is the Highland term for the appearances of people who are alive and well—but elsewhere.  The common Highland belief is that they show themselves to second-sighted persons, very frequently before the arrival of a stranger or a visitor, expected or unexpected.  Probably many readers have had the experience of meeting an acquaintance in the street.  He passes us, and within a hundred yards we again meet and talk with our friend.  When he is of very marked appearance, or has any strong peculiarity, the experience is rather perplexing.  Perhaps a few bits of hallucination are sprinkled over a real object.  This ordinary event leads on to what are called “Arrivals,” that is when a person is seen, heard and perhaps spoken to in a place to which he is travelling, but whither he has not yet arrived.  Mark Twain gives an instance in his own experience.  At a large crowded reception he saw approaching him in the throng a lady whom he had known and liked many years before.  When she was near him, he lost sight of her, but met her at supper, dressed as he had seen her in the “levee”.  At that moment she was travelling by railway to the town in which he was. {85a}

A large number of these cases have been printed. {85b}  In one case a gentleman and lady from their window saw his brother and sister-in-law drive past, with a horse which they knew had not been out for some weeks.  The seers were presently joined by the visitors’ daughter, who had met the party on the road, she having just left them at their house.  Ten minutes later the real pair arrived, horse and all. {85c}

This last affair is one of several tales of “Phantom Coaches,” not only heard but seen, the coach being a coach of the living.  In 1893 the author was staying at a Highland castle, when one of the ladies observed to her nephew, “So you and Susan did drive in the dogcart; I saw you pass my window”.  “No, we didn’t; but we spoke of doing it.”  The lady then mentioned minute details of the dress and attitudes of her relations as they passed her window, where the drive turned from the hall door through the park; but, in fact, no such journey had been made.  Dr. Hack Tuke published the story of the “Arrival” of Dr. Boase at his house a quarter of an hour before he came, the people who saw him supposing him to be in Paris. {86}

When a person is seen in “Arrival” cases before he arrives, the affair is not so odd if he is expected.  Undoubtedly, expectation does sometimes conjure up phantasms, and the author once saw (as he supposed) a serious accident occur which in fact did not take place, though it seemed unavoidable.

Curiously enough, this creation of phantasms by expectant attention seems to be rare where “ghosts” are expected.  The author has slept in several haunted houses, but has never seen what he was led to expect.  In many instances, as in “The Lady in Black” (infra), a ghost who is a frequent visitor is never seen when people watch for her.  Among the many persons who have had delusions as to the presence of the dead, very few have been hoping, praying for and expecting them.

“I look for ghosts, but none will force
   Their way to me: ’Tis falsely said
That there was ever intercourse
   Between the living and the dead,
For surely then I should have sight
Of him I wait for day and night
With love and longings infinite.”

The Affliction of Margaret has been the affliction of most of us.  There are curious historical examples of these appearances of the living.  Goethe declares that he once met himself at a certain place in a certain dress, and several years later found himself there in that costume.  Shelley was seen by his friends at Lerici to pass along a balcony whence there was no exit.  However, he could not be found there.  The story of the wraith of Catherine the Great is variously narrated.  We give it as told by an eye-witness, the Comte de Ribaupierre, about 1862 to Lady Napier and Ettrick.  The Count, in 1862, was a very old man, and more than thirty years have passed since he gave the tale to Lady Napier, whose memory retains it in the following form:—

THE WRAITH OF THE CZARINA

“In the exercise of his duties as one of the pages-in-waiting, Ribaupierre followed one day his august mistress into the throne-room of the palace.  When the Empress, accompanied by the high officers of her court and the ladies of her household, came in sight of the chair of state which she was about to occupy, she suddenly stopped, and to the horror and astonished awe of her courtiers, she pointed to a visionary being seated on the imperial throne.  The occupant of the chair was an exact counterpart of herself.  All saw it and trembled, but none dared to move towards the mysterious presentment of their sovereign.

“After a moment of dead silence the great Catherine raised her voice and ordered her guard to advance and fire on the apparition.  The order was obeyed, a mirror beside the throne was shattered, the vision had disappeared, and the Empress, with no sign of emotion, took the chair from which her semblance had passed away.”  It is a striking barbaric scene!

“Spirits of the living” of this kind are common enough.  In the Highlands “second sight” generally means a view of an event or accident some time before its occurrence.  Thus an old man was sitting with a little boy on a felled tree beside a steep track in a quarry at Ballachulish.  Suddenly he jerked the boy to one side, and threw himself down on the further side of the tree.  While the boy stared, the old man slowly rose, saying, “The spirits of the living are strong to-day!”  He had seen a mass of rock dashing along, killing some quarrymen and tearing down the path.  The accident occurred next day.  It is needless to dwell on second sight, which is not peculiar to Celts, though the Highlanders talk more about it than other people.

These appearances of the living but absent, whether caused by some mental action of the person who appears or not, are, at least, unconscious on his part. {88}  But a few cases occur in which a living person is said, by a voluntary exertion of mind, to have made himself visible to a friend at a distance.  One case is vouched for by Baron von Schrenck-Notzig, a German psychologist, who himself made the experiment with success.  Others are narrated by Dr. Gibotteau.  A curious tale is told by several persons as follows:—

AN “ASTRAL BODY”

Mr. Sparks and Mr. Cleave, young men of twenty and nineteen, were accustomed to “mesmerise” each other in their dormitory at Portsmouth, where they were students of naval engineering.  Mr. Sparks simply stared into Mr. Cleave’s eyes as he lay on his bed till he “went off”.  The experiments seemed so curious that witnesses were called, Mr. Darley and Mr. Thurgood.  On Friday, 15th January, 1886, Mr. Cleave determined to try to see, when asleep, a young lady at Wandsworth to whom he was in the habit of writing every Sunday.  He also intended, if possible, to make her see him.  On awaking, he said that he had seen her in the dining-room of her house, that she had seemed to grow restless, had looked at him, and then had covered her face with her hands.  On Monday he tried again, and he thought he had frightened her, as after looking at him for a few minutes she fell back in her chair in a kind of faint.  Her little brother was in the room with her at the time.  On Tuesday next the young lady wrote, telling Mr. Cleave that she had been startled by seeing him on Friday evening (this is an error), and again on Monday evening, “much clearer,” when she nearly fainted.

All this Mr. Sparks wrote to Mr. Gurney in the same week.  He was inviting instructions on hypnotic experiments, and “launched a letter into space,” having read something vague about Mr. Gurney’s studies in the newspapers.  The letter, after some adventures, arrived, and on 15th March Mr. Cleave wrote his account, Mr. Darley and Mr. Thurgood corroborating as to their presence during the trance and as to Mr. Cleave’s statement when he awoke.  Mr. Cleave added that he made experiments “for five nights running” before seeing the lady.  The young lady’s letter of 19th January, 1886, is also produced (postmark, Portsmouth, 20th January).  But the lady mentions her first vision of Mr. Cleave as on last Tuesday (not Friday), and her second, while she was alone with her little brother, at supper on Monday.  “I was so frightened that I nearly fainted.”

These are all young people.  It may be said that all five were concerned in a complicated hoax on Mr. Gurney.  Nor would such a hoax argue any unusual moral obliquity.  Surtees of Mainsforth, in other respects an honourable man, took in Sir Walter Scott with forged ballads, and never undeceived his friend.  Southey played off a hoax with his book The Doctor.  Hogg, Lockhart, and Wilson, with Allan Cunningham and many others, were constantly engaged in such mystifications, and a “ghost-hunter” might seem a fair butt.

But the very discrepancy in Miss ---’s letter is a proof of fairness.  Her first vision of Mr. Cleave was on “Tuesday last”.  Mr. Cleave’s first impression of success was on the Friday following.

But he had been making the experiment for five nights previous, including the Tuesday of Miss ---’s letter.  Had the affair been a hoax, Miss --- would either have been requested by him to re-write her letter, putting Friday for Tuesday, or what is simpler, Mr. Sparks would have adopted her version and written “Tuesday” in place of “Friday” in his first letter to Mr. Gurney.  The young lady, naturally, requested Mr. Cleave not to try his experiment on her again.

A similar case is that of Mrs. Russell, who tried successfully, when awake and in Scotland, to appear to one of her family in Germany.  The sister corroborates and says, “Pray don’t come appearing to me again”. {91a}

These spirits of the living lead to the subject of spirits of the dying.  No kind of tale is so common as that of dying people appearing at a distance.  Hundreds have been conscientiously published. {91b}  The belief is prevalent among the Maoris of New Zealand, where the apparition is regarded as a proof of death. {91c}  Now there is nothing in savage philosophy to account for this opinion of the Maoris.  A man’s “spirit” leaves his body in dreams, savages think, and as dreaming is infinitely more common than death, the Maoris should argue that the appearance is that of a man’s spirit wandering in