Real Ghost Stories

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Lucie, it will be remembered, was a hysterical patient very seriously
amiss. One conspicuous symptom was an almost absolute defect of
sensibility, whether to pain, to heat, or to contact, which persisted
both when she was awake and entranced. There was, as already mentioned,
an entire defect of the muscular sense also, so that when her eyes were
shut she did not know the position of her limbs. Nevertheless it was
remarked as an anomaly that when she was thrown into a cataleptic state,
not only did the movements impressed upon her continue to be made, but
the corresponding or complimentary movements, the corresponding facial
expression, followed just as they usually follow in such experiments.
Thus, if M. Janet clenched her fist in the cataleptic state, her arm
began to deal blows, and her face assumed a look of anger. The
suggestion which was given through the so-called muscular sense had
operated in a subject to whom the muscular sense, as tested in other
ways, seemed to be wholly lacking. As soon as Adrienne could be
communicated with, it was possible to get somewhat nearer to a solution
of this puzzle. Lucie was thrown into catalepsy; then M. Janet clenched
her left hand (she began at once to strike out), put a pencil in her
right, and said, "Adrienne, what are you doing?" The left hand continued
to strike, and the face to bear the look of rage, while the right hand
wrote, "I am furious." "With whom?" "With F." "Why?" "I don't know, but
I am very angry." M. Janet then unclenched the subject's left hand, and
put it gently to her lips. It began to "blow kisses," and the face
smiled. "Adrienne, are you still angry?" "No, that's over." "And now?"
"Oh, I am happy!" "And Lucie?" "She knows nothing; she is asleep."

In Lucie's case, indeed, these odd manifestations were--as the pure
experimentalist might say--only too sanative, only too rapidly tending
to normality. M. Janet accompanied his psychological inquiries with
therapeutic suggestion, telling Adrienne not only to go to sleep when he
clapped his hands, or to answer his questions in writing, but to cease
having headaches, to cease having convulsive attacks, to recover normal
sensibility, and so on. Adrienne obeyed, and even as she obeyed the
rational command, her own Undine-like identity vanished away. The day
came when M. Janet called on Adrienne, and Lucie laughed and asked him
who he was talking to. Lucie was now a healthy young woman, but
Adrienne, who had risen out of the unconscious, had sunk into the
unconscious again--must I say?--for ever more.

Few lives so brief have taught so many lessons. For us who are busied
with automatic writing the lesson is clear. We have here demonstrably
what we can find in other cases only inferentially, an intelligence
manifesting itself continuously by written answers, of purport quite
outside the normal subject's conscious mind, while yet that intelligence
was but a part, a fraction, an aspect, of the normal subject's own
identity.

And we must remember that Adrienne--while she was, if I may say so, the
Unconscious Self reduced to its simplest expression--did, nevertheless,
manifest certain differences from Lucie, which, if slightly exaggerated,
might have been very perplexing. Her handwriting was slightly different,
though only in the loose and scrawling character so frequent in
automatic script. Again, Adrienne remembered certain incidents in
Lucie's childhood which Lucie had wholly forgotten. Once more--and this
last suggestion points to positive rather than to negative
conclusions--Adrienne possessed a faculty, the muscular sense, of which
Lucie was devoid. I am anxious that this point especially should be
firmly grasped, for I wish the reader's mind to be perfectly open as
regards the relative faculties of the Conscious and the Unconscious
Self. It is plain that we must be on the watch for completion, for
evolution, as well as for partition, for dissolution, of the corporate
being.

_Felida X. and her Submerged Soul._

Side by side with this case we have another in which the Conscious
Personality, instead of being cured, has been superseded by the
Sub-conscious. It was as if instead of "Adrienne" being submerged by
Lucie, "Adrienne" became Lucie and dethroned her former master. The
woman in question, Felida X., has been transformed.

In her case the somnambulic life has become the normal life; the "second
state," which appeared at first only in short, dream-like accesses, has
gradually replaced the "first state," which now recurs but for a few
hours at long intervals. Felida's second state is altogether superior to
the first--physically superior, since the nervous pains which had
troubled her from childhood had disappeared; and morally superior,
inasmuch as her morose, self-centred disposition is exchanged for a
cheerful activity which enables her to attend to her children and to her
shop much more effectively than when she was in the _etat bete_, as
she now calls what was once the only personality that she knew. In this
case, then, which is now of nearly thirty years' standing, the
spontaneous readjustment of nervous activities--the second state, no
memory of which remains in the first state--has resulted in an
improvement profounder than could have been anticipated from any moral
or medical treatment that we know. The case shows us how often the word
"normal" means nothing more than "what happens to exist." For Felida's
normal state was in fact her morbid state; and the new condition which
seemed at first a mere hysterical abnormality, has brought her to a life
of bodily and mental sanity, which makes her fully the equal of average
women of her class. (Vol. IV. p. 503.)

Chapter III.

Madame B. and Her Three Souls.

Marvellous as the cases cited in the last chapter appear, they are
thrown entirely into the shade by the case of Madame B., in which the
two personalities not only exist side by side, but in the case of the
Sub-conscious self knowingly co-exist, while over or beneath both there
is a third personality which is aware of both the other two, and
apparently superior to both. The possibilities which this case opens up
are bewildering indeed. But it is better to state the case first and
discuss it afterwards. Madame B., who is still under Prof. Richet's
observations,[3] is one of the favourite subjects of the French
hypnotiser. She can be put to sleep at almost any distance, and when
hypnotised completely changes her character. There are two well-defined
personalities in her, and a third of a more mysterious nature than
either of the two first. The normal waking state of the woman is called
Leonie I., the hypnotic state Leonie II. The third occult Unconscious
Personality of the lowest depth is called Leonie III.

[3] 1891.

"This poor peasant," says Professor Janet, "is in her normal state a
serious and somewhat melancholy woman, calm and slow, very gentle and
extremely timid. No one would suspect the existence of the person whom
she includes within her. Hardly is she entranced when she is
metamorphosed; her face is no longer the same; her eyes, indeed, remain
closed, but the acuteness of the other senses compensates for the loss
of sight. She becomes gay, noisy, and restless to an insupportable
degree; she continues good-natured, but she has acquired a singular
tendency to irony and bitter jests.... In this state she does not
recognise her identity with her waking self. 'That good woman is not I,'
she says; 'she is too stupid!'"

Madame B. has been so often hypnotised, and during so many years (for
she was hypnotised by other physicians as long ago as 1860), that Leonie
II. has by this time acquired a considerable stock of memories which
Madame B. does not share. Leonie II., therefore, counts as properly
belonging to her own history and not to Madame B.'s all the events which
have taken place while Madame B.'s normal self was hypnotised into
unconsciousness. It was not always easy at first to understand this
partition of past experiences.

"Madame B. in the normal state," says Professor Janet, "has a husband
and children. Leonie II., speaking in the somnambulistic trance,
attributes the husband to the 'other' (Madame B.), but attributes the
children to herself.... At last I learnt that her former mesmerisers, as
bold in their practice as certain hypnotisers of to-day, had induced
somnambulism at the time of her accouchements. Leonie II., therefore,
was quite right in attributing the children to herself; the rule of
partition was unbroken, and the somnambulism was characterised by a
duplication of the subject's existence" (p. 391).

Still more extraordinary are Leonie II.'s attempts to make use of Leonie
I.'s limbs without her knowledge or against her will. She will write
postscripts to Leonie I.'s letters, of the nature of which poor Leonie
I. is unconscious.

It seems, however, that when once set up this new personality can
occasionally assume the initiative, and can say what it wants to say
without any prompting. This is curiously illustrated by what may be
termed a conjoint epistle addressed to Professor Janet by Madame B. and
her secondary self, Leonie II. "She had," he says, "left Havre more than
two months when I received from her a very curious letter. On the first
page was a short note written in a serious and respectful style. She was
unwell, she said--worse on some days than on others--and she signed her
true name, Madame B. But over the page began another letter in quite a
different style, and which I may quote as a curiosity:--'My dear good
sir,--I must tell you that B. really makes me suffer very much; she
cannot sleep, she spits blood, she hurts me. I am going to demolish her,
she bores me. I am ill also. This is from your devoted Leontine' (the
name first given to Leonie II).

"When Madame B. returned to Havre I naturally questioned her concerning
this curious missive. She remembered the first letter very distinctly,
but she had not the slightest recollection of the second. I at first
thought there must have been an attack of spontaneous somnambulism
between the moment when she finished the first letter and the moment
when she closed the envelope. But afterwards these unconscious,
spontaneous letters became common, and I was better able to study the
mode of their production. I was fortunately able to watch Madame B. on
one occasion while she went through this curious performance. She was
seated at a table, and held in the left hand the piece of knitting at
which she had been working. Her face was calm, her eyes looked into
space with a certain fixity, but she was not cataleptic, for she was
humming a rustic tune; her right hand wrote quickly, and, as it were,
surreptitiously. I removed the paper without her noticing me, and then
spoke to her; she turned round wide-awake but was surprised to see me,
for in her state of distraction she had not noticed my approach. Of the
letter which she was writing she knew nothing whatever.

"Leonie II.'s independent action is not entirely confined to writing
letters. She observed (apparently) that when her primary self, Leonie
I., discovered these letters she (Leonie I.) tore them up. So Leonie II.
hit upon a plan of placing them in a photographic album into which
Leonie I. could not look without falling into catalepsy (on account of
an association of ideas with Dr. Gibert, whose portrait had been in the
album). In order to accomplish an act like this Leonie II. has to wait
for a moment when Leonie I. is distracted, or, as we say, absent-minded.
If she can catch her in this state Leonie II. can direct Leonie I.'s
walks, for instance, or start on a long railway journey without baggage,
in order to get to Havre as quickly as possible."

In the whole realm of imaginative literature, is there anything to
compare to this actual fact of three selves in one body, each struggling
to get possession of it? Leonie I., or the Conscious Personality, is in
possession normally, but is constantly being ousted by Leonie II., or
the Subconscious Personality. It is the old, old case of the wife trying
to wear the breeches. But there is a fresh terror beyond. For behind
both Leonie I. and Leonie II. stands the mysterious Leonie III.

"The spontaneous acts of the Unconscious Self," says M. Janet, here
meaning by _l'inconscient_ the entity to which he has given the
name of Leonie III., "may also assume a very reasonable form--a form
which, were it better understood, might perhaps serve to explain certain
cases of insanity. Mme. B., during her somnambulism (_i.e._ Leonie
II.) had had a sort of hysterical crisis; she was restless and noisy and
I could not quiet her. Suddenly she stopped and said to me with terror.
'Oh, who is talking to me like that? It frightens me.' 'No one is
talking to you.' 'Yes! there on the left!' And she got up and tried to
open a wardrobe on her left hand, to see if some one was hidden there.
'What is that you hear?' I asked. 'I hear on the left a voice which
repeats, "Enough, enough, be quiet, you are a nuisance."' Assuredly the
voice which thus spoke was a reasonable one, for Leonie II. was
insupportable; but I had suggested nothing of the kind, and had no idea
of inspiring a hallucination of hearing. Another day Leonie II. was
quite calm, but obstinately refused to answer a question which I asked.
Again she heard with terror the same voice to the left, saying, 'Come,
be sensible, you must answer.' Thus the Unconscious sometimes gave her
excellent advice."

And in effect, as soon as Leonie III. was summoned into communication,
she accepted the responsibility of this counsel. "What was it that
happened?" asked M. Janet, "when Leonie II. was so frightened?" "Oh!
nothing. It was I who told her to keep quiet; I saw she was annoying
you; I don't know why she was so frightened."

Note the significance of this incident. Here we have got at the root of
a hallucination. We have not merely inferential but direct evidence that
the imaginary voice which terrified Leonie II. proceeded from a
profounder stratum of consciousness in the same individual. In what way,
by the aid of what nervous mechanism, was the startling monition
conveyed?

Just as Mme. B. was sent, by means of passes, into a state of lethargy,
from which she emerged as Leonie II., so Leonie II., in her turn, was
reduced by renewed passes to a state of lethargy from which she emerged
no longer as Leonie II. but as Leonie III. This second waking is slow
and gradual, but the personality which emerges is, in one important
point, superior to either Leonie I. or Leonie II. Although one among the
subject's phases, this phase possesses the memory of every phase. Leonie
III., like Leonie II., knows the normal life of Leonie I., but
distinguishes herself from Leonie I., in whom, it must be said, these
subjacent personalities appear to take little interest. But Leonie III.
also remembers the life of Leonie II.--condemns her as noisy and
frivolous, and is anxious not to be confounded with her either. "Vous
voyez bien que je ne suis pas cette bavarde, cette folle; nous ne nous
ressemblons pas du tout."

We ask, in amazement, how many more personalities may there not be
hidden in the human frame? Here is simple Madame B., who is not one
person but three--first her commonplace self; secondly, the clever,
chattering Leonie II., who is bored by B., and who therefore wants to
demolish her; and thirdly, the lordly Leonie III., who issues commands
that strike terror into Leonie II., and disdains to be identified with
either of the partners in Madame B.'s body.

It is evident, if the hypnotists are right, that the human body is more
like a tenement house than a single cell, and that the inmates love each
other no more than the ordinary occupants of tenemented property. But
how many are there of us within each skin who can say?

Chapter IV.

Some Suggested Theories.

Of theories to account for these strange phenomena there are enough and
to spare. I do not for a moment venture to claim for the man and wife
illustration the slightest scientific value. It is only a figure of
speech which brings out very clearly one aspect of the problem of
personality. The theory that there are two independent personalities
within the human skin is condemned by all orthodox psychologists. There
is one personality manifesting itself, usually consciously, but
occasionally unconsciously, and the different method of manifestation
differs so widely as to give the impression that there could not be the
same personality behind both. A man who is ambidextrous will sign his
name differently with his right or left hand, but it is the same
signature. Mr. Myers thinks that the Secondary Personality of Subliminal
Consciousness is merely a phase of the essential Unity of the Ego. Some
time ago he expressed himself on this subject as follows:--

"I hold that hypnotism (itself a word covering a vast variety of
different states) may be regarded as constituting one special case which
falls under a far wider category--the category, namely, of developments
of a Secondary Personality. I hold that we each of us contain the
potentialities of many different arrangements of the elements of our
personality, each arrangement being distinguishable from the rest by
differences in the chain of memories which pertain to it. The
arrangement with which we habitually identify ourselves--what we call
the normal or primary self--consists, in my view, of elements selected
for us in the struggle for existence with special reference to the
maintenance of ordinary physical needs, and is not necessarily superior
in any other respect to the latent personalities which lie alongside of
it--the fresh combinations of our personal elements which may be evoked
by accident or design, in a variety to which we at present can assign no
limit. I consider that dreams, with natural somnambulism, automatic
writing, with so-called mediumistic trance, as well as certain
intoxications, epilepsies, hysterias, and recurrent insanities, afford
examples of the development of what I have called secondary mnemonic
chains; fresh personalities, more or less complete, alongside the normal
state. And I would add that hypnotism is only the name given to a group
of empirical methods of inducing these fresh personalities."

A doctor in philosophy, to whom I submitted these pages, writes me as
follows:--"There can be no doubt that every man lives a sub-conscious as
well as a conscious life. One side of him is closed against examination
by himself (_i.e._ unconscious); the other is conscious of itself.
The former carries on processes of separation, combination, and
distribution, of the thought-stuff handed over to it, corresponding
almost exactly to the processes carried on by the stomach, which, as
compared with those of eating, etc., go on in the dark automatically."

Another doctor, not of philosophy but of medicine, who has devoted
special attention to the phenomenon of sleep, suggests a new
illustration which is graphic and suggestive. He writes:--

"With regard to dual or multiple consciousness, my own feeling has
always been that the _individuals_ stand one behind the other in
the chambers of the mind, or else, as it were, in concentric circles.
You may compare it to the Jewish tabernacle. First, there is the court
of the Gentiles, where Ego No. 1 chaffers about trifles with the outer
world. While he is so doing Ego No. 2 watches him from the court of the
Levites, but does not go forth on small occasions. When we 'open out' to
a friend the Levite comes forth, and is in turn watched by the priest
from the inner court. Let our emotions be stirred in sincere converse
and out strides the priest, and takes precedence of the other two, they
falling obediently and submissively behind him. But the priest is still
watched by the high priest from the tabernacle itself, and only on great
and solemn occasions does he make himself manifest by action. When he
does, the other three yield to his authority, and then we say the man
'speaks with his whole soul' and 'from the bottom of his heart.' But
even now the Shekinah is upon the mercy-seat within the Holy of holies,
and the high priest knows it."

The latest word[4] of the French psychologists is thus stated by M.
Foueillee:--

"Contemporary psychology deprives us of the illusion of a definitely
limited, impenetrable, and absolutely autonomous I. The conception of
individual consciousness must be of an idea rather than of a substance.
Though separate _in_ the universe, we are not separate _from_
the universe. Continuity and reciprocity of action exist everywhere.
This is the great law and the great mystery. There is no such thing as
an isolated and veritably monad being, any more than there is such a
thing as an indivisible point, except in the abstractions of geometry."

[4] 1891.

Whatever may be the true theory, it is evident that there is enough
mystery about personality to make us very diffident about dogmatising,
especially as to what is possible and what is not.

Whether we have one mind or two, let us, at least, keep it (or them)
open.

PART II.

THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE.

"And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a damsel came to hearken,
named Rhoda. And when she knew Peter's voice, she ran in and told how
Peter stood before the gate. And they said unto her, Thou art mad. But
she constantly affirmed that it was even so. Then said they, It is his
angel (or double)."--Acts xil. 13-15.

Chapter I.

Aerial Journeyings.

I began to write this in the autumn of 1891 in a small country-house
among the Surrey hills, whither I had retreated in order to find
undisturbed leisure in which to arrange my ideas and array my facts. It
was a pleasant place enough, perched on the brow of a heath-covered
slope that dipped down to a ravine, at the head of which stands
Professor Tyndall's house with its famous screen. Hardly a mile away
northward lies the Devil's Punch Bowl, with its memorial stone erected
in abhorrence of the detestable murder perpetrated on its rim by
ruffians whose corpses slowly rotted as they swung on the gibbet
overhead; far to the south spreads the glorious amphitheatre of hills
which constitute the Highlands of the South.

The Portsmouth road, along which for hundreds of years rolled to and fro
the tide of martial life between London and the great Sea Gate of the
Realm, lies near by, silent and almost disused. Mr. Balfour's land, on
the brow of Hindhead, is enclosed but not yet built upon, although a
whole archipelago of cottages and villas is springing up amid the
heather as the ground slopes towards Selborne--White's Selborne--that
can dimly be descried to the westward beyond Liphook Common. Memories
there are, enough and to spare, of the famous days of old, and of the
not less famous men of our own time; but the ghosts have fled. "There
used to be a ghost in the mill," said my driver, "and another in a
comparatively new house over in Lord Tennyson's direction, but we hear
nothing about them now." "Not even at the Murder Stone of the Devil's
Punch Bowl?" "Not even at the Murder Stone. I have driven past it at all
hours, and never saw anything--but the stone, of course."

Yet a more suitable spot for a ghost could hardly be conceived than the
rim of the Devil's Punch Bowl, where the sailor was murdered, and where
afterwards his murderers were hanged. I visited it late at night, when
the young moon was beginning to struggle through the cloudy sky, and
looked down into the ravine which Cobbett declared was the most horrid
place God ever made; but no sign of ghostly visitant could be caught
among the bracken, no sound of the dead voices was audible in the air.
It is the way with ghosts--they seldom appear where they might be looked
for. It is the unexpected in the world of shadows, as in the workaday
world, which always happens.

Of this I had soon a very curious illustration. For, although there were
no ghosts in the Devil's Punch Bowl by the Murder Stone, I found that
there had been a ghost in the trim new little villa in which I was
quartered! It didn't appear to me--at least, it has not done so as yet.
But it appeared to some friends of mine whose statement is explicit
enough. Here was a find indeed. I spent most of my boyhood within a mile
of the famous haunted house or mill at Willington, but I had never slept
before in a place which ghosts used as a trysting place. I asked my
hostess about it. She replied, "Yes, it is quite true; but, although you
may not believe it, I am the ghost." "You? How?" "Yes," she replied,
quite seriously; "it is quite true what your friends have told you. They
did see what you would correctly describe as an apparition. That is to
say, they saw a more or less shadowy figure, which they at once
identified, and which then gradually faded away. It was an apparition in
the true sense of the word. It entered the room without using the door
or window, it was visibly manifested before them, and then it vanished.
All that is quite true. But it is also true that the ghost, as you call
it, was my ghost." "Your ghost, but----" "I am not dead, you are going
to say. Precisely. But surely you must be well aware of the fact that
the ghosts of the living are much better authenticated than ghosts of
the dead."

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