Real Ghost Stories

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"The negative was broken in two, right across the forehead of
figure. I put the pieces carefully away, and taking out a memo.
form, wrote to Mr. Thompson, asking him to kindly give another
sitting, and offering to recoup him for his trouble and loss of
time. This letter was posted five minutes after the negative was
broken, and the affair was forgotten by me for the time.

"However, on Friday, January 9th, I was in the printing-room
upstairs, when I was signalled by the whistle which communicates
with the office, and Miss Simon asked if I could go down, as the
gentleman had called about the negative. I asked 'What negative?'
'Well,' she replied, 'the one we broke.'

"'Mr. Thompson's,' I answered. 'I am very busy and cannot come down,
but you know the terms I offered him; send him up to be taken at
once.'

"'But he is _dead_!' said Miss Simon.

"'Dead!' I exclaimed, and without another word I hastened down the
stairs to my office. Here I saw an elderly gentleman, who seemed in
great trouble.

"'Surely,' said I to him, 'you don't mean to say that this man is
dead?'

"'It is only too true,' he replied.

"'Well, it must have been dreadfully sudden,' I said,
sympathetically, 'because I saw him only last Saturday.'

"The old gentleman shook his head sadly, and said, 'You are
mistaken, for he died last Saturday.'

"'Nay,' I returned, 'I am not mistaken, for I recognised him by the
negative.'

"However, the father (for such was his relationship to my sitter)
persisted in saying I was mistaken, and that it was he who called on
the Friday and not his son, and, he said, 'I saw that young lady
(pointing to Miss Simon), and she told me the photographs would not
be ready that week.'

"'That is quite right,' said Miss Simon, 'but Mr. Dickinson also saw
a gentleman on the Saturday morning, and, when I showed Mr.
Dickinson the negative, he said, "Yes, that's the man who called." I
told Mr. Dickinson _then_ of your having called on the Friday.'

"Still Mr. Thompson, sen., seemed to think that we were wrong, and
many questions and cross-questions I put to him only served to
confirm him in his opinion that I had got mixed; but this he
said--no one was authorised to call, nor had they any friend or
relative who would know of the portraits being ordered, neither was
there any one likely to impersonate the man who had sat for his
portrait.

"I had no further interview with the old gentleman until a week
later, when he was much calmer in his appearance and conversation,
and at this interview he told me that his son died on Saturday,
January 3rd, at about 2.30 p.m.; he also stated that at the time I
saw him (the sitter) he was unconscious, and remained so up to the
time of his death. I have not had any explanation of this mysterious
visit up to present date, February 26th, 1891.

"It is curious to me that I have no recollection of hearing the man
come upstairs, or of him going down. In appearance he was pale and
careworn, and looked as though he had been very ill. This thought
occurred to me when he said he had been travelling all night.

"James Dickinson.

"43, Grainger Street, Newcastle."

Miss Simon, in further conversation with me, stated that when the father
called on Friday night and asked for the photographs, he came late, at
least after the electric light was lit. He seemed disappointed, but made
no further remark when he was told they were not ready. Mr. Dickinson
stated that in conversation with the father afterwards, he told him that
his son, on the Friday, had been delirious and had cried out for his
photographs so frequently that they had tried to get them, and that was
why he had called on Friday night. Hebburn is on the south side of the
Tyne, about four miles from Newcastle. The father was absolutely certain
that it was physically impossible for his son to have left the house. He
did not leave it. They knew the end was approaching, and he and his wife
were in constant attendance at the death-bed. He also stated that it was
impossible, from the position of the bedroom, for him to have left the
house, even if he had been able to get out of bed without their hearing
him. As a matter of fact, he did not get out of bed, and at the moment
when his Double was talking to Mr. Dickinson in Grainger Street he was
lying unconscious at Hebburn.

It is impossible to explain this on the theory that Mr. Dickinson
visualised the impression left upon his mind by Mr. Thompson, for Mr.
Dickinson had never seen Mr. Thompson in his life. Neither could he have
given apparent objectivity to a photograph which he might possibly have
seen, although Mr. Dickinson asserts that he had never seen the
photograph until it was brought him on the Saturday morning. If he had
done so by any chance he would not have fitted his man with a top-coat
and hat. It cannot, therefore, be regarded as a subjective
hallucination; besides, the evidence afforded by the looking up of the
book, the making an entry of what occurred, and the conversation which
took place, in which the visitor mentioned facts which were not present
in Mr. Dickinson's own mind, but which he verified there and then by
looking up his books, bring it as near certainty as it is possible to
arrive in a case such as this. Whoever the visitor was, it was not a
subjective hallucination on the part of Mr. Dickinson.

It is equally impossible to believe that it was the actual Mr. Thompson,
because he was at that moment within six hours of death, and the
evidence of his father is that his son at that moment was physically
incapable of getting out of bed, and that he was actually lying
unconscious before their eyes at Hebburn at the moment when his
apparition was talking to Mr. Dickinson at Newcastle. The only other
hypothesis that can be brought forward is that some one personated
Thompson. Against this we have the fact that Mr. Dickinson, who had
never seen Thompson, recognised him immediately as soon as he saw the
negative of his portrait.

Further, if any one had come from Hebburn on behalf of Thompson, he
would not have asserted that he was Thompson himself, knowing, as he
would, that he was speaking to a photographer, who, if the photographs
had been ready, would at once have compared the photographs with the
person standing before him, when the attempted personation would at once
have been detected. Besides, no one was likely to have been so anxious
about the photographs as to come up to Newcastle an hour before the
studio opened in order to get them.

We may turn it which way we please, there is no hypothesis which will
fit the facts except the assumption that there is such a thing as a
Thought Body, capable of locomotion and speech, which can transfer
itself wherever it pleases, clothing itself with whatever clothes it
desires to wear, which are phantasmal like itself. Short of that
hypothesis, I do not see any explanation possible; and yet, if we admit
that hypothesis, what an immense vista of possibilities is opened up to
our view!

PART VI.

GHOSTS KEEPING PROMISE.

"There is something in that ancient superstition
Which erring as it is, our fancy loves."--Scott.

Chapter I.

My Irish Friend.

Many of the apparitions that are reported are of phantasms that appear
in fulfilment of a promise made to survivors during life. Of this class
I came, in the course of my census, upon a very remarkable case.

Among my acquaintances is an Irish lady, the widow of an official who
held a responsible position in the Dublin Post Office. She is Celt to
her back-bone, with all the qualities of her race. After her husband's
death she contracted an unfortunate marriage--which really was no
marriage legally--with an engineer of remarkable character and no small
native talent. He, however, did not add to his other qualities the
saving virtues of principle and honesty. Owing to these defects my
friend woke up one fine morning to find that her new husband had been
married previously, and that his wife was still living.

On making this discovery she left her partner and came to London, where
I met her. She is a woman of very strong character, and of some
considerable although irregular ability. She has many superstitions, and
her dreams were something wonderful to hear. After she had been in
London two years her bigamist lover found out where she was, and leaving
his home in Italy followed her to London. There was no doubt as to the
sincerity of his attachment to the woman whom he had betrayed, and the
scenes which took place between them were painful, and at one time
threatened to have a very tragic ending.

Fortunately, although she never ceased to cherish a very passionate
affection for her lover, she refused to resume her old relations with
him, and after many stormy scenes he departed for Italy, loading her
with reproaches. Some months after his departure she came to me and told
me she was afraid something had happened to him. She had heard him
calling her outside her window, and shortly afterwards saw him quite
distinctly in her room. She was much upset about it.

I pooh-poohed the story, and put it down to a hallucination caused by
the revival of the stormy and painful scenes of the parting. Shortly
afterwards she received news from Italy that her late husband, if we may
so call him, had died about the same time she heard him calling her by
her name under her window in East London.

I only learnt when the above was passing through the press that the
unfortunate man, whose phantasm appeared to my friend, died suddenly
either by his own hand or by accident. On leaving London he drank on
steadily, hardly being sober for a single day. After a prolonged period
of intoxication he went out of the house, and was subsequently found
dead, either having thrown himself or fallen over a considerable height,
at the foot of which he was found dead.

I asked Mrs. G. F.--to write out for me, as carefully as she could
remember it after the lapse of two years, exactly what she saw and
heard. Here is her report:--

_The Promise._

"In the end of the summer of 1886 it happened one morning that Irwin and
myself were awake at 5.30 a.m., and as we could not go to sleep again,
we lay talking of our future possible happiness and present troubles. We
were at the time sleeping in Room No. 16, Hotel Washington, overlooking
the Bay of Naples. We agreed that nothing would force us to separate in
this life--neither poverty nor persecution from his family, nor any
other thing on earth. (I believed myself his wife then.) We each agreed
that we would die together rather than separate. We spoke a great deal
that morning about our views of what was or was not likely to be the
condition of souls after death, and whether it was likely that spirits
could communicate, by any transmitted feeling or apparition, the fact
that they had died to their surviving friends. Finally, we made a solemn
promise to each other that whichever of us died first would appear to
the other after death if such was permitted.

"Well, after the fact of his being already married came to light, we
parted. I left him, and he followed me to London on December '87. During
his stay here I once asked if he had ever thought about our agreement as
to who should die first appealing to the other; and he said, 'Oh,
Georgie, you do not need to remind me; my spirit is a part of yours, and
can never be separated nor dissolved even through all eternity; _no,
not even_ though you treat me as you do; even though you became the
wife of another you cannot divorce our spirits. And whenever my spirit
leaves this earth I will appear to you.'

"Well, in the beginning of August '88 he left England for Naples; his
last words were that I would never again see him; I should _see_
him, but not alive, for he would put an end to his life and heart-break.
After that he never wrote to me; still I did not altogether think he
would kill himself. On the 22nd or 23rd of the following November ('88),
I posted a note to him at Sarno post office. No reply came, and I
thought it might be he was not at Sarno, or was sick, or travelling, and
so did not call at the post office, and so never dreamed of his being
dead."

_Its Fulfilment._

"Time went on and nothing occurred till November 27th (or I should say
28th, for it occurred at 12.30, or between 12 and 1 a.m., I forget the
exact time). It was just at that period when I used to sit up night
after night till 1, 2, and 3 o'clock a.m. at home doing the class books;
on this occasion I was sitting close to the fire, with the table beside
me, sorting cuttings. Looking up from the papers my eyes chanced to fall
on the door, which stood about a foot and a half open, and right inside,
but not so far in but that his clothes touched the edge of the door,
stood Irwin; he was dressed as I last had seen him--overcoat, tall hat,
and his arms were down by his sides in his natural, usual way. He stood
in his exact own perfectly upright attitude, and held his head and face
up in a sort of dignified way, which he used generally to adopt on all
occasions of importance or during a controversy or dispute. He had his
face turned towards me, and looked at me with a terribly meaning
expression, very pale, and as if pained by being deprived of the power
of speech or of local movements.

"I got a shocking fright, for I thought at first sight he was living,
and had got in unknown to me to surprise me. I felt my heart jump with
fright, and I said, 'Oh!' but before I had hardly finished the
exclamation, his figure was fading way, and, horrible to relate, it
faded in such a way that the flesh seemed to fade out of the clothes, or
at all events the hat and coat were longer visible than the whole man. I
turned white and cold, felt an awful dread; I was too much afraid to go
near enough to shut the door when he had vanished. I was so shaken and
confused, and half paralysed, I felt I could not even cry out; it was as
if something had a grip on my spirit, I feared to stir, and sat up all
night, fearing to take my eyes off the door, not daring to go and shut
it. Later on I got an umbrella and walked tremblingly, and pushed the
door close without fastening it. I feared to touch it with my hand. I
felt such a relief when I saw daylight and heard the landlady moving
about.

"Now, though I was frightened, I did not for a moment think he was dead,
nor did it enter my mind then about our agreement. I tried to shake off
the nervousness, and quite thought it must be something in my sight
caused by imagination, and nerves being overdone by sitting up so late
for so many nights together. Still, I thought it dreadfully strange, it
was _so real_."

_A Ghost's Cough._

"Well, about three days passed, and then I was startled by hearing his
voice outside my window, as plain as a voice could be, calling,
'Georgie! Are you there, Georgie?' I felt certain it was really him come
back to England. I could not mistake his voice. I felt quite flurried,
and ran out to the hall door, but no one in sight. I went back in, and
felt rather upset and disappointed, for I would have been glad if he had
come back again, and began to wish he really would turn up. I then
thought to myself, 'Well, that was so queer. Oh, it _must_ be
Irwin, and perhaps he is just hiding in some hall door to see if I
_will_ go out and let him in, or what I will do. So out I went
again. This time I put my hat on, and ran along and peeped into hall
doors where he might be hiding, but with no result. Later on that night
I could have sworn I heard him cough twice right at the window, as if he
did it to attract attention. Out I went again. No result.

"Well, to make a long story short, from that night till about nine weeks
after that voice called to me, and coughed, and coughed, sometimes every
night for a week, then three nights a week, then miss a night and call
on two nights, miss three or four days, and keep calling me the whole
night long, on and off, up till 12 midnight or later. One time it would
be, 'Georgie! It's _me_! Ah, Georgie!' Or, '_Georgie_, are you
in? Will you _speak_ to Irwin?' Then a long pause, and at the end
of, say, ten minutes, a most strange, unearthly _sigh_, or a
cough--a perfectly intentional, forced cough, other times nothing but,
'Ah, Georgie!' On one night there was a dreadful fog. He called me so
plain, I got up and said, 'Oh, really! that man _must_ be here; he
must be lodging somewhere near, as sure as life; if he is not outside I
must be going mad in my mind or imagination.' I went and stood outside
the hall door steps in the thick black fog. No lights could be seen that
night. I called out, 'Irwin! Irwin! here, come on. I _know_ you're
there, trying to humbug me, I _saw_ you in _town_; come on in,
and don't be making a fool of yourself.'

"Well, I declare to you, a voice that seemed _within three yards_
of me, replied out of the fog, 'It's _only Irwin_,' and a most
awful, and great, and supernatural sort of sigh faded away in the
distance. I went in, feeling quite unhinged and nervous, and could not
sleep. After that night it was chiefly sighs and coughing, and it was
kept up until one day, at the end of about nine weeks, my letter was
returned marked, 'Signor O'Neill e morto,' together with a letter from
the Consul to say he had died on November 28th, 1888, _the day on
which he appeared to me_."

_The Question of Dates._

On inquiring as to dates and verification Mrs. F---- replied:--

"I don't know the _hour_ of his death, but if you write to Mr.
Turner, Vice Consul, Naples, he can get it for you. He appeared to
me at the hour I say; of course there is a difference of time
between here and Naples. The strange part is that once I was
informed of his death by human means (the letter), his spirit seemed
to be satisfied, for no voice ever came again after; it was as if he
wanted to inform and make me know he had died, and as if he
_knew_ I had not been informed by human agency.

"I was so struck with the apparition of November 28th, that I made a
note of the date at the time so as to tell him of it when next I
wrote. My letter reached Sarno a day or two after he died. There is
no possible doubt about the voice being his, for he had a peculiar
and uncommon voice, one such as I never heard any exactly like, or
like at all in any other person. And in life he used to call me
through the window as he passed, so I would know who it was knocked
at the door, and open it. When he said, '_Ah!_' after death, it
was so awfully sad and long drawn out, and as if expressing that now
all was over and our separation and his being dead was all so very,
very pitiful and unutterable; the sigh was so real, so almost
_solid_, and discernible and unmistakable, till at the end it
seemed to have such a supernatural, strange, awful dying-away sound,
a sort of fading, retreating into distance sound, that gave the
impression that it was not _quite all_ spirit, but that the
spirit had some sort of visible and half-material being or
condition. This was especially so the night of the fog, when the
voice seemed nearer to me as I stood there, and as if it was able to
come or stay nearer to me because there _was_ a fog to hide its
materialism. On each of the other occasions it seemed to keep a good
deal further off than on that night, and always sounded as if at an
elevation of about 10ft. or 11ft. from the ground, except the night
of the fog, when it came down on a _level_ with me as well as
nearer.

"Georgina F----."

Chapter II.

Lord Brougham's Testimony.

When we come to the question of the apparition pure and simple, one of
the best-known leading cases is that recorded by Lord Brougham, who was
certainly one of the hardest-headed persons that ever lived, a Lord
Chancellor, trained from his youth up to weigh evidence. The story is
given as follows in the first volume of "Lord Brougham's Memoirs":--

"A most remarkable thing happened to me, so remarkable that I must tell
the story from the beginning. After I left the High School I went with
G----, my most intimate friend, to attend the classes in the University.
There was no divinity class, but we frequently in our walks discussed
many grave subjects--among others, the immortality of the soul and a
future state. This question, and the possibility of the dead appearing
to the living, were subjects of much speculation, and we actually
committed the folly of drawing up an agreement, written with our blood,
to the effect that whichever of us died the first should appear to the
other, and thus solve any doubts we had entertained of the 'life after
death.'

"After we had finished our classes at the college, G---- went to India,
having got an appointment there in the Civil Service. He seldom wrote to
me, and after the lapse of a few years I had nearly forgotten his
existence.... One day I had taken, as I have said, a warm bath; and,
while lying in it and enjoying the comfort of the heat, I turned my head
round, looking towards the chair on which I had deposited my clothes, as
I was about to get out of the bath. On the chair sat G----, looking
calmly at me. How I got out of the bath I know not; but on recovering my
senses I found myself sprawling on the floor. The apparition, or
whatever it was that had taken the likeness of G----, had disappeared.

"This vision had produced such a shock that I had no inclination to talk
about it, or to speak about it even to Stewart, but the impression it
made upon me was too vivid to be easily forgotten, and so strongly was I
affected by it that I have here written down the whole history, with the
date, December 19th, and all the particulars, as they are now fresh
before me. No doubt I had fallen asleep, and that the appearance
presented so distinctly before my eyes was a dream I cannot for a moment
doubt; yet for years I had had no communication with G----, nor had
there been anything to recall him to my recollection. Nothing had taken
place concerning our Swedish travels connected with G----, or with
India, or with anything relating to him, or to any member of his family.
I recollected quickly enough our old discussion, and the bargain we had
made. I could not discharge from my mind the impression that G---- must
have died, and that his appearance to me was to be received by me as a
proof of a future state. This was on December 19th, 1799.

"In October, 1862, Lord Brougham added as a postscript:--'I have just
been copying out from my journal the account of this strange dream,
"Certissima mortis imago!" And now to finish the story begun about sixty
years since. Soon after my return to Edinburgh there arrived a letter
from India announcing G----'s death, and stating that he died on
December 19th.'"

_A Vow Fulfilled._

Very many of the apparitions of this description appear in connection
with a promise made during lifetime to do so. A lady correspondent sends
me the following narrative, which she declares she had from the sister
of a student at the Royal Academy who was personally known to her. He
told the story first to his mother, who is dead, so that all chance of
verifying the story is impossible. It may be quoted, however, as a
pendant to Lord Brougham's vision, and is much more remarkable than his,
inasmuch as the phantom was seen by several persons at the same time:--

"I think it was about the year 1856 as nearly as I can remember, that a
party of young men, students of the Royal Academy, and some of them
members also, used to meet in a certain room in London, so many evenings
in the week, to smoke and chat. One of them--the son of a colonel in the
army, long since dead--this only son kept yet a remnant, if no more, of
the faith of his childhood, cherished in him by his widowed mother with
jealous care, as he detailed to her from time to time fragments of the
nightly discussions against the immortality of the soul.

"On one particular evening the conversation drifted into theological
matters--this young Academician taking up the positive side, and
asserting his belief in a hereafter of weal or woe for all _human_
life.

"Two or three of the others endeavoured to put him down, but he,
maintaining his position quietly, provoked a suggestion, half in earnest
and half in jest, from one of their number, that the first among them
who should die, should appear to the rest of their assembly afterwards
in that room at the usual hour of meeting. The suggestion was received
with jests and laughter by some, and with graver faces by others--but at
last each man solemnly entered into a pledge that if he were the first
to die amongst them, he would, if permitted, return for a few brief
seconds to this earth and appear to the rest to certify to the truth.

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