The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865

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THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

_A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics._

VOL. XVI.--NOVEMBER, 1865.--NO. XCVII.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by TICKNOR AND
FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.

Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
to the end of the article. Headings in large tables converted to letters
with a legend.

WHY THE PUTKAMMER CASTLE WAS DESTROYED.

There is a test of truth in popular creeds and in human opinions
generally which is prominently put forward by Herbert Spencer, and has
been more or less distinctly stated by other writers, long before our
time,--a very searching and trustworthy test.

It is, in substance, this:--Whatever doctrine or opinion has received,
throughout a long succession of centuries, the common assent of mankind,
may be properly set down as being, if not absolutely true in its usually
received form, yet founded on truth, and having, at least, a great,
undeniable verity that underlies it.

If, however, there be conflicting details as to any doctrine, varying in
form according to the sect or the nation that entertains it, then the
test is to be received as affirming the grand underlying truth, but not
as proving any of the conflicting varieties of investment in which
particular sects or nations may have chosen to clothe it.

Thus of the world's belief in the reality of another life, and in the
doctrine of future reward and punishment.

In some form or other, such a faith has existed in every age and among
almost every people. Charon and his boat might be the means of
conveyance. Or the believer, dying in battle for the creed of the
Faithful, might expect to wake up in a celestial harem peopled with
Houris. Or the belief might embody the matchless horrors painted by
Dante; his dolorous city with the terrible inscription over its
entrance-gate: "_Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate_."

Again, the conception might be of a long unconscious interval after
death, succeeded at last by a resuscitation; or it might be of another
world, the supplement and immediate continuation of this, into which
Death, herald, not destroyer, ushers us even while human friends are yet
closing our eyes and composing our limbs. It might be of the Paradise in
which, on the very day of the crucifixion, the penitent thief was to
meet the Saviour of mankind; or it might be of that Heaven, yet increate
or unpeopled, seen by some in long, distant perspective, shadowed forth
in such lines as these:--

"That man, when laid in lonesome grave,
Shall sleep in Death's dark gloom,
Until the eternal morning wake
The slumbers of the tomb."

Yet again, the idea may be of a Future of which the denizens shall be,
on some Great Day, tried as before an earthly court, doomed as by an
earthly tribunal, and sentence pronounced against them by a presiding
God, who, of his own omnipotent will, decides to inflict upon sinners
condign punishment, in measure far beyond all earthly severity,--torment
in quenchless flames, with no drop of water to cool the parched tongue,
for ever and ever.

In other words, we may conceive, as to human destiny in another world,
either of punishments optional and arbitrary, growing out of the
indignation of an offended Judge who hates and requites sin, or of
punishments natural and inherent, growing out of the very nature of sin
itself, as _delirium tremens_ requites a long career of intemperance. We
may conceive of punishments which are the awards of judicial vengeance;
or we may believe in those only which are the inevitable results of
eternal and immutable law, a necessary sequence in the next life to the
bad passions and evil deeds of this.

Those who incline to this latter aspect of the Great Future, as the
scene of reward or punishment supervening in the natural order of
things, may chance to find interest, beyond mere curiosity, in the
following strange narrative.

* * * * *

There is not, perhaps, a country more rife in legends of haunted houses
than Germany. No province but has its store of them. Many, drawn by
tradition from the obscurity of the past, have lost, if they ever
possessed, any claim to be regarded except as apocryphal. But others, of
a recent date and better attested, cannot be disposed of in so summary a
manner.

In furnishing a specimen of this latter class, I depart from a rule
which I think it well to observe in regard to original narratives of
character so marvellous: to record such, namely, only when they can be
procured direct from the lips of the witnesses themselves. This comes to
me at second hand. I had no opportunity of cross-questioning the actors
in the scenes narrated. Yet I had the story from a gentleman of high
respectability: the principal Secretary of the ---- Legation at Naples:
and his sources of information were direct and authentic.

* * * * *

In the southeastern portion of Pomerania, at no great distance from the
frontier of the province of West Prussia, and in the vicinity of the
small town of Buetow, there stood, not many years since, an ancient
chateau. It was the ancestral residence of an old Pomeranian family of
baronial rank; and the narrative of its destruction, with the causes
which led thereto, is curious and remarkable.

Its former owner, the Baron von Putkammer, after leading a wild and
dissolute life, had expired within its walls. For years previously, many
a mysterious story, fraught with dark hints of seduction and
infanticide, had been whispered over the surrounding country; and when
at last death arrested the Baron's profligate career, some reported that
he had been strangled in requital of outrage committed,--others, that
the Devil had taken home his own, as they had long expected.

His estate went to a relative of the same name, who granted the
enjoyment of it to his eldest son, heir to the title. This young man,
after a time, arrived to take possession. He found in the chateau the
administrator of the deceased Baron's estate.

It was late, the first night, before he went to bed. Yet he was scarcely
undressed, when he heard, through the stillness of the night, the
approach of a carriage, at first rolling over the sharp gravel of the
avenue, then entering the paved court-yard. This was succeeded by the
noise of the front door opening, and the distinct sound of steps on the
principal staircase.

Young Putkammer, surprised at this unseasonable visit, yet supposing it
some friend who had been benighted, hastily donned his dressing-gown,
and, with light in hand, stepped to the landing. Nothing to be seen
there! But he heard behind him the opening of a door leading into the
principal gallery of the chateau,--a long hall which for some time had
been out of use. It had been employed by the former owner of the castle
as a banqueting-room, was hung with old family portraits, and, as the
young man had noticed during the day, was so completely incumbered with
furniture, which had been temporarily stored there, that no one could
pass through it.

He returned in great surprise, which was much increased when he found
the door of the gallery in question closed and locked. He listened, and
heard quite distinctly, within the room, the noise of plates and dishes
and the clatter of knives and forks. To this, after a time, succeeded
the sound of shuffling cards and the rattle of money, as if thrown on
the table in the course of the game.

More and more astonished, he awoke his servant, and bade him listen at
the door and tell him what he heard. The terrified valet reported the
same sounds that had reached his master's ears, Thereupon the latter
told him to arouse the administrator and request his presence.

When this gentleman appeared, the young nobleman eagerly asked if he
could furnish any explanation of this strange disturbance.

"I was unwilling," said he, in reply, "to anticipate what you now
witness, lest you might imagine I had some interested motive to prevent
your coming hither. We are all familiar with these sounds. They occur
every night at about the same hour. And we have sought in vain any
natural explanation of their constant recurrence."

"Have you the key of the gallery?"

"Here it is."

The door was unlocked and thrown open. Silence and darkness! And when
the lights were introduced, not an object to be seen through the gloom,
but the old furniture confusedly piled up over the floor.

They closed and locked the door. Again the same sounds commenced: the
clatter of dishes, the noise of revelling, the clink of the gamblers'
gold. A second time they opened the door, this time quickly and
suddenly; and a second time the sounds instantly ceased, and the hall,
untenanted except by the silent portraits on its walls, appeared before
them, the same still and gloomy lumber-room as before.

Baffled for the time, young Putkammer dismissed his attendants and
retired to his chamber. Erelong he heard the door of the gallery open,
the heavy footsteps sound on the stairway, the front door creak on its
hinges,--and then the roll of the carriage, first over the stone
pavement, then along the gravelled avenue, till the sounds gradually
died away in the distance.

The next night he was ready dressed and prepared with lights. When,
about the same hour, the noise of the approaching carriage was heard, he
had the lights immediately carried to the top of the stairway, and he
himself half descended the stairs. Up the stairs and past his very side
came the footsteps; but neither living being nor spectral form could his
eyes perceive.

The same noises in the old banqueting-hall. The same fruitless attempts
to witness the revel, or to get at the secret, if any, of the
imposition.

The young man was brave and devoid of superstition. Yet, in spite of
himself, these mysterious sounds, renewed night after night, irritated
his nerves, and preyed upon his quiet. He thought to break through the
spell by inviting a party of living guests. They came, to the number of
thirty or forty; but not for their presence did the invisible revellers
intermit their nocturnal visit. All heard the approach of the carriage,
the steps ascending the staircase, the sounds of revelry in the hall.
And all, when the opened door disclosed, as wont, but darkness and
silence, turned away with a shudder,--and to the subsequent invitation
of their host to favor him again with their company replied by some
shallow apology, which he perfectly understood.

Thus deserted by his friends, and subjected, night after night, to the
same ghastly annoyance, the young man found his health beginning to
suffer, and decided to endure it no longer.

Returning to his father, he informed him that he would receive with
gratitude the rents of the property, but only on condition that he was
not required to reside in its haunted chateau.

The father, ridiculing what he termed his son's superstitious weakness,
declared that he would himself take up his residence there for a time,
assured that he could not fail to discover the true cause of the sounds
that had driven off its former occupants.

But the result belied his expectations. Like his son, he never could
_see_ anything. But the selfsame sounds nightly assailed his ears. He
caused the hall to be cleared out and occupied daily. So long as it was
lighted, and there was any one within it, no sounds were heard; and by
thus occupying it all night, the disturbance could be averted. But as
often as it was closed or left in darkness, the invisible revel
recommenced at the wonted hour, preceded by the same preliminaries,
terminating in the same manner.

Nothing was left untried to penetrate the mystery, and to detect the
trick, if to trickery the disturbances were due. But every effort to
obtain an explanation of the phenomena utterly failed. And the father,
like the son, after a few weeks' struggle against the nightly annoyance,
found his nervous system unable to cope with this constant strain upon
it, and left the chateau, determined never again to enter its walls.

The next expedient was to rent it to those whom the fame of its ghostly
reputation had not reached. But this was unavailing, except for a brief
season. No tenant would remain beyond a week or ten days. This plan,
therefore, was abandoned in despair; the principal rooms were closed;
and the building remained for years untenanted, except by one or two
unwilling dependants.

Finally the proprietor, deeming all change hopeless, and finding that
the keeping up of the chateau was a mere useless expense, resolved to
destroy it. The dead had fairly driven out the living. He had it pulled
down; and a few low, ruined walls alone remained to mark the place where
it stood.

Still, even within these deserted ruins, the same sounds of nightly
revelry were declared to have been heard by those who were bold enough
to approach them at the midnight hour. When this was reported to the
proprietor, he determined, if possible, to outroot this last remnant of
disturbance. Accordingly, he caused to be erected, out of the remaining
materials of the chateau and on the spot where it had stood, a small
chapel, now to be found there, a mute witness of the story I have here
told.

The chapel was completed and consecrated in the year 1844. Even while
the rites attending its consecration were in progress, strange and
unwonted noises disturbed the congregation; but from that time on they
ceased; and the chapel has since been entirely free from any such.

A relative of the proprietor, a young officer in the Prussian army, was
present at the consecration, himself witnessed the noises in question,
and had previously heard, from the parties themselves, all the former
occurrences. He it was who related the circumstances to my informant,
the Baron von P----, a gentleman of a grave and earnest character, whose
manner, in repeating them to me, evinced sincerity and conviction. But
it is not merely upon his authority that the details of the narrative
rest. They are, it would seem, of public notoriety in Pomerania; and
hundreds of persons in the neighborhood, as my informant declared, can
yet be found to testify, from personal observation, to the general
accuracy of the above narration.[A]

The most salient point in this story is the practical and business part
of it,--the actual pulling down of the chateau, as a last resort, to get
rid of the disturbance. Mere fancy is not wont to lead to such a result
as that. The owner of a piece of valuable property is not likely to
destroy it for imaginary cause. Interest is a marvellous quickener of
the wits, and may be supposed to have left no stone unturned, before
assenting to such a sacrifice.

I inquired of the gentleman to whom I am indebted for the above
narrative if there were no skeptical surmises in regard to the origin of
the disturbance. He replied, that he had heard but one,--namely, that
the administrator of the deceased Baron's estate might, from motives of
interest and to have the field to himself, have resorted to a trick to
scare the owners from the premises.

It is beyond a doubt that such devices have been successfully employed
ere now for similar purpose. An example may be found in the story of the
monks of St. Bruno, and the shrewd device they employed to obtain from
King Louis the Saint the grant of one of his ancestral palaces. It was
in this wise.

Having heard his confessor speak in high terms of the goodness and
learning of the monks of St. Bruno, the King expressed a desire to found
a community of them near Paris. Bernard de la Tour, the superior, sent
six of the brethren; and Louis assigned to them, as residence, a
handsome dwelling in the village of Chantilly. It so happened, that from
their windows they had a fine view of the old palace of Vauvert,
originally erected for a royal residence by King Robert, but which had
been deserted for years. The worthy monks, oblivious of the Tenth
Commandment, may have thought the place would suit them; but ashamed,
probably, to make a formal demand of it from the King, they seem to have
set their wits to work to procure it by stratagem.

At all events, the palace of Vauvert, which had never labored under any
imputation against its character until they became its neighbors, began
almost immediately afterwards to acquire a bad name. Frightful shrieks
were heard to proceed thence at night. Blue, red, and green lights were
seen to glimmer from its casements, and then suddenly disappear. The
clanking of chains succeeded, together with the howlings of persons as
in great pain. Then a ghastly spectre, in pea-green, with long, white
beard and serpent's tail, appeared at the principal windows, shaking his
fist at the passers-by. This went on for months.

The King, to whom all these wonders were duly reported, deplored the
scandal, and sent commissioners to look into the affair. To these the
six monks of Chantilly, indignant that the Devil should play such pranks
before their very faces, suggested, that, if they could but have the
palace as a residence, they would undertake speedily to cure it of all
ghostly intrusion. A deed, with the royal sign-manual, conveyed Vauvert
to the monks of St Bruno. It bears the date of 1259. From that time all
disturbances ceased,--the green ghost, according to the creed of the
pious, being laid to rest forever under the waters of the Red Sea.[B]

Some will surmise that the story of the castle of Putkammer is but a
modified version of that of the palace of Vauvert. It may be so. One who
was not on the spot, to witness the phenomena and personally to verify
all the details, cannot rationally deny the possibility of such an
hypothesis. Yet I find little parallel between the cases, and
difficulties, apparently insuperable, in the way of accepting such a
solution of the mystery.

The French palace was deserted, and nothing was easier than to play off
there, unchallenged, such commonplace tricks as the showing of colored
lights, the clanking of chains, shrieks, groans, and a howling spectre
with beard and tail,--all in accordance with the prejudices of that
age; nor do we read that any one was bold enough to penetrate, during
the night, into the scene of the disturbance; nor had the King's
commissioners any personal motive to urge a thorough research; nor had a
pious sovereign, the owner of a dozen palaces, any strong inducement to
refuse the cession of one of these, already untenanted and useless, to
certain holy men, the objects of his veneration.

Very different, in every respect, is the affair of the Pomeranian
castle. It is a narrative of the skeptical nineteenth century, that sets
down all ghost-stories as nursery-tales. The owner, and his son, the
future possessor, each at separate times and for weeks, reside in the
castle, and occupy themselves in repeated attempts to discover whether
they have been imposed on. The selfsame trick, if trick it was, is
repeated night after night, without variation. The roll of the
approaching carriage-wheels, first along the gravelled avenue, then over
the paved court-yard, while no carriage was visible,--how were such
sounds to be imitated? The fall of footsteps, unaccompanied by aught in
bodily form, up the lighted stairway, and past the very side of the bold
youth who stepped down to meet them,--what human device could
successfully simulate these? The sound of the opening gallery-door and
the noises of the midnight orgies, with full opportunity to examine
every nook and corner of the scene whence, to every ear, the same
identical indications came,--how, in producing and reproducing these,
could trickery, time after time, escape detection? Both father and son,
it is evident, had their suspicions aroused; and both, as evidently,
were men of courage, not to be blinded by superstitious panic. Is it a
probable thing that they would destroy an old and valued family mansion,
without having exhausted every conceivable expedient to detect
imposture?

Nor was this imposture, if as such we are to regard it, conducted in
approved form, after the orthodox fashion. It assumed a shape contrary
to all usually received ideas. No spectre clanking its chains; no lights
burning blue; no groans of the tormented; no ordinary getting-up of a
ghostly disturbance. But a mere succession of sounds, indicating, if we
are to receive and interpret them literally, the periodical return from
the world of spirits of some of its tenants, restless and unblest. Was
this the machinery a mystifier was likely to select?

Such are the difficulties which attend the hypothesis of a concerted
plan of deception. They will be overlooked by those who have made up
their minds that communications between this world and the next are
impossible, and who will content themselves with pronouncing, that,
though they cannot detect the mode of the imposture, yet imposture of
some kind or other it plainly must have been.

And such skeptics will very properly remind us of other difficulties in
the way of accepting as a reality the alleged phenomena. What have the
spirits of the departed to do with conveyances resembling those of
earthly structure? Are there incorporeal carriages and horses? Can grave
men admit such fancies as these?[C] Or is all this, even if genuine,
only symbolical,--sounds without objective counterpart? Then what
becomes of the positive character of this narrative, as a lesson, as a
warning to us? The whole degenerates into an acted parable. It fades
into the idle pageantry of a dream. Thus we lose ourselves in shadowy
conjecture.

But, none the less, the facts, if facts they be, remain to be dealt
with. And if at last we concede the ultramundane origin of these
manifestations, whether as objective reality or only as truth-teaching
allegory, what a field is opened to our speculations regarding the
realms of spirit and the possible punishments there in store for those
who, by degrading their natures in this world, may have rendered
themselves unfit for happiness in the next,--and who, perhaps, still
attracted to earth by the debasing excesses they once mistook for
pleasure, may be doomed, in the phantom repetition of their sins, to
detect their naked reality, to have stamped on their consciousness the
vileness of these without the brutal gratifications that veiled it, the
essence of vice shorn of its sensual halo, the grossness without the
glitter: if so, a terrible expiation!

I beg it may not be imagined, that, because I see grave difficulties in
the way of regarding this case as one of imposture, I therefore set it
up as proof of a novel theory regarding future punishments. A structure
so great cannot be erected on foundation so slender. I but furnish it as
a chance contribution towards the probabilities of ultramundane
intercourse,--as material for thought,--as one of those hints which
future facts may render valueless, but which, on the other hand, other
observed phenomena may possibly serve to work out and corroborate and
explain.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] I find in my journal the following:--"_August 17, 1857._ Read over
to the Baron von P---- the Putkammer narrative; and he assented to its
accuracy in every particular."

[B] This story is given in Garinet's _Histoire de la Magie en France_,
p. 75.

[C] Yet in a recent case, occurring in England, and authenticated in the
strongest manner, the "sound of carriages driving in the park when none
were there" is one of the incidents given on the authority of the lady
who had witnessed the disturbances, and who furnishes a detailed account
of them. See "Facts and Fantasies," a sequel to "Lights and Sounds, the
Mystery of the Day," by Henry Spicer, London, 1853, pp. 76-101.

THE RHYME OF THE MASTER'S MATE.

FORT HENRY.

None who saw it can forget
How they went into the fight,
Four abreast,--
Thereby was the foe perplexed,--
With the Essex on the right,
That is nearest to the Fort,
And the Cincinnati next,
The St. Louis on her left,
All so gallant and so deft,
And the brave Carondelet.

Boom, boom, from every bow!
(They'll have to answer that!)
From the Rebel bastions, now,
There's a flash.
Cool, keep cool, boys, don't be rash!
Mind your eyes, as the old Boss said;
Keep together and go ahead,--
Not too high and not too low,
Fire slow!

Paff!
Now we have it from the Fort,
And the Rebels all a-crowing;
While the devils'-echoes laugh,
With a loonish thunder-lowing,
After every gun's report:
'Tisn't bird-shot they are throwing,--
'Tisn't chaff!
Ping! Ping!
If you've ever seen the thing
That can fly without a wing
Swifter than the Thunder's bird,
Lightning-clenching, lightning-spurred,--
If you've ever heard it sing,
You will understand the word,
And look out;
For, beyond a mortal doubt,
It can sting!

Thump!
'D y' ever hear anything like it?
Sounded very much like a ten-strike,--it
Appears they're after a spare!
Bet it made the old Boss jump,
Or at any rate awfully screw up his brows,--
Hit the pilot-house,
And he's up there,--
Must 'a' been a hundred-pounder,--
Had the twang of a conical ball,--
Would 'a' gone plumb through a ten-foot wall.
Isn't the old _Cinc._ a trump?

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