Real Ghost Stories

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"Sixty years ago I was a farm servant at a place in Pembrokeshire (I can
give the name, but don't wish it to be published). I was about fifteen
years old. I, along with three other men-servants, slept in a granary in
the yard. Our bedchamber was reached by means of ten broad stone steps.
It was soon after Allhallows time, when all farm servants change places
in that part of the country. A good and faithful foreman, who had been
years on the farm, had this time desired a change, and had engaged to
service some fifteen miles off, a change which he afterwards much
regretted.

"One night I woke up in my bed some time during the small hours of the
morning, and obedient to the call of nature, I got up, opened the door,
and stood on the upper step of the stairs. It was a beautiful moonlight
night. I surveyed the yard and the fields about. To my surprise, but
without the least apprehension, I noticed a man coming down a field,
jump over a low wall, and walk straight towards me. He stepped the three
first steps one by one, then he took two or three steps at a stride. I
knew the man well and recognised him perfectly. I knew all the clothes
he wore, particularly a light waistcoat which he put on on great
occasions. As he drew near me I receded to the doorway, and as he lifted
up his two hands, as in the act of opening the door, which was open
already, I fled in screaming, and passing my own bed jumped in between
two older men in the next bed. And neither time nor the sympathy of my
comrades could pacify me for hours.

"I told my tale, which, after searching and seeing nobody, they
disbelieved and put down to my timidity.

"Next morning, however, just as we were coming out from breakfast, in
the presence of all of us the discharged foreman was seen coming down
the same field, jumping the wall, walking toward the sleeping chamber,
ascending the steps, lifting up his two hands to open the door in the
self-same manner in every particular as I had described, and went
straight to the same bed as I got into.

"I asked him, 'Were you here last night, John?'

"'No, my boy,' was the answer; 'my body was not here, but my mind was. I
have run away from that horrid place, travelled most of the night, and
every step I took my mind was fixed on this old bed, where my weary
bones might be at rest.'"

I can supply names and all particulars, but do not wish them to be
published.

_Seeing Your Own Thought Body._

In his "Footfalls" Mr. Owen records a still more remarkable case of the
duplication of the body. A gentleman in Ohio, in 1833, had built a new
house, seventy or eighty yards distant from his old residence on the
other side of a small ravine. One afternoon, about five o'clock, his
wife saw his eldest daughter, Rhoda, aged sixteen, holding the youngest,
Lucy, aged four, in her arm, sitting in a rocking-chair, just within the
kitchen door of the new residence. She called the attention of another
sister to what she saw, and was startled to hear that Rhoda and Lucy
were upstairs in the old house. They were at once sent for, and on
coming downstairs they saw, to their amazement, their exact doubles
sitting on the doorstep of the new house. All the family
collected--twelve in all--and they all saw the phantasmal Rhoda and
Lucy, the real Rhoda and Lucy standing beside them. The figures seated
at the hall door, and the two children now actually in their midst, were
absolutely identical in appearance, even to each minute particular of
dress. After watching them for five minutes, the father started to cross
the ravine and solve the mystery. Hardly had he descended the ravine
when the phantasmal Rhoda rose from the rocking chair, with the child in
her arms, and lay down on the threshold. There she remained a moment or
two, and then apparently sank into the earth. When the father reached
the house no trace could be found of any human being. Both died within a
year.

A correspondent of my own, a dressmaker in the North of England, sends
me the following circumstantial account of how she saw her own double
without any mischief following:--

"I have a sewing-machine, with a desk at one side and carved legs
supporting the desk part; on the opposite side the machine part is. The
lid of the machine rests on the desk part when open, so that it forms a
high back. I had this machine across the corner of a room, so that the
desk part formed a triangle with the corner of the room. I sat at the
machine with my face towards the corner. To my left was the window, to
my right the fire; at each side of my chair the doors of the machine
walled me in as I sat working the treadles. Down each side of the
machine are imitations of drawers. The wood is a beautiful walnut. I was
sewing a long piece of material which passed from left to right. It was
dinnertime, so I looked down to see how much more I had to do. It was
almost finished, but there, in the space near the window, between the
wall and the machine, was a full-sized figure of myself from the waist
upwards. The image was lower than myself, but clear enough, with brown
hair and eyes. How earnestly the eyes regarded me; how thoughtfully! I
laughed and nodded at the image, but still it gazed earnestly at me. At
its neck was a bright red bow, coming unpinned. Its white linen collar
was turned up at the right-hand corner.

"When I got down to dinner I told my brother George I had seen Pepper's
Ghost, and it was a distinct image of myself, clear enough, and yet I
could see the wall and the side of the machine through the image, and
George said, 'Had it a red bow and white collar on?' 'Oh, yes,' I said.
'It was just like me, only nicer, and when I laughed and nodded, it
looked grave.' 'Very likely,' said George. 'It would think you very
silly. And was its bow coming unpinned?' 'Yes,' I replied; 'and the
right point of its collar was turned up.' He reached me a hand-mirror,
and I saw that my bow was coming unpinned and the right point of my
collar was turned up. So it could not have been a reflection, or it
would not have been the right point, but the left of my collar that was
turned up."

_The Wraith as a Portent._

In the North country it is of popular belief that to see the ghost of a
living man portends his approaching decease. The Rev. Henry Kendall, of
Darlington, from whose diary (unpublished) I have the liberty to quote,
notes the following illustration of this belief, under date August 16th,
1870:--

"Mrs. W. mentioned a curious incident that happened in Darlington: how
Mrs. Percy, upholsterer, and known to several of us, was walking along
the street one day when her husband was living, and she saw him walking
a little way before her; then he left the causeway and turned in at a
public-house. When she spoke to him of this, he said he had not been
near the place, and she was so little satisfied with his statement that
she called in at the 'public,' and asked them if her husband had been
there, but they told her 'No.' In a very short period after this
happened he died."

The phenomenon of a dual body haunted the imagination of poor Shelley.
Shortly before his death he believed he had seen his wraith:--

"On the 23rd of June," says one of his biographers, "he was heard
screaming at midnight in the saloon. The Williamses ran in and found him
staring on vacancy. He had had a vision of a cloaked figure which came
to his bedside and beckoned him to follow. He did so, and when they had
reached the sitting-room, the figure lifted the hood of his cloak and
disclosed Shelley's own features, and saying, 'Siete soddisfatto?'
vanished. This vision is accounted for on the ground that Shelley had
been reading a drama attributed to Calderon, named 'El Embozado o El
Encapotado,' in which a mysterious personage who had been haunting and
thwarting the hero all his life, and is at last about to give him
satisfaction in a duel, finally unmasks and proves to be the hero's own
wraith. He also asks, 'Art thou satisfied?' and the haunted man dies of
horror."

On the 29th of June some friends distinctly saw Shelley walk into a
little wood near Lerici, when in fact he was in a wholly different
direction. This was related by Byron to Mr. Cowell.

It is difficult to frame any theory that will account for this double
apparition, except, of course, the hypothesis of downright lying on the
part of the witnesses. But the hypothesis of the duplication of the body
in this extraordinary fashion is one which cannot be accepted until the
immaterial body is photographed under test conditions at the same time
that the material body is under safe custody in another place. Of
course, it is well to bear in mind that to all those who profess to know
anything of occult lore, and also to those who have the gift of
clairvoyance, there is nothing new or strange in the doctrine of the
immaterial body. Many clairvoyants declare that they constantly see the
apparitions of the living mingling with the apparitions of the dead.
They are easily distinguishable. The ghost of a living person is said to
be opaque, whereas the ghost of one from whom life has departed is
diaphanous as gossamer.

All this, of course, only causes the unbeliever to blaspheme. It is to
him every whit as monstrous as the old stories of the witches riding on
broomsticks. But the question is not to be settled by blasphemy on one
side or credulity on the other. There is something behind these
phantasmal apparitions; there is a real substratum of truth, if we could
but get at it. There seems to be some faculty latent in the human mind,
by which it can in some cases impress upon the eye and ear of a person
at almost any distance the image and the voice. We may call it telepathy
or what we please. It is a marvellous power, the mere hint of which
indefinitely expands the horizon of the imagination. The telephone is
but a mere child's toy compared with the gift to transmit not only the
sound of the voice but the actual visible image of the speaker for
hundreds of miles without any conductor known to man.

Chapter IV.

The Hypnotic Key.

Hypnotism is the key which will enable us to unlock most of these
mysteries, and so far as hypnotism has spoken it does not tend to
encourage the belief that the immaterial body has any substance other
than the hallucination of the person who sees it. Various cases are
reported by hypnotist practitioners which suggest that there is an
almost illimitable capacity of the human mind to see visions and to hear
voices. One very remarkable case was that of a girl who was told at
midsummer by the hypnotist, when in the hypnotic state, that he would
come to see her on New Year's Day. When she awoke from the trance she
knew nothing about the conversation. One hundred and seventy-one days
passed without any reference to it. But on the 172nd day, being New
Year's Day, she positively declared that the doctor had entered her
room, greeted her, and then departed. Curiously enough, as showing the
purely subjective character of the vision, the doctor appeared to her in
the depth of winter, wearing the light summer apparel he had on when he
made the appointment in July. In this case there can be no question as
to the apparition being purely subjective. The doctor did not make any
attempt to visit her in his immaterial body, but she saw him and heard
him as if he were there.

The late Mr. Gurney conducted some experiments with a hypnotic subject
which seem to confirm the opinion that the phantasmal body is a merely
subjective hallucination, although, of course, this would not explain
how information had been actually imparted to the phantasmal visitant by
the person who saw, or imagined they saw, his wraith. Mr. Gurney's cases
are, however, very interesting, if only as indicating the absolute
certainty which a hypnotised patient can be made to feel as to the
objectivity of sights and sounds:--

"S. hypnotised Zillah, and told her that she would see him standing in
the room at three o'clock next afternoon, and that she would hear him
call her twice by name. She was told that he would not stop many
seconds. On waking she had no notion of the ideas impressed upon her.

"Next day, however, she came upstairs about five minutes past three,
looking ghastly and startled. She said, 'I have seen a ghost.' I assumed
intense amazement, and she said she was in the kitchen cleaning some
silver, and suddenly she heard her name called sharply twice over,
'Zillah!' in Mr. Smith's voice. She said, 'And I dropped the spoon I was
rubbing, and turned and saw Mr. S., without his hat, standing at the
foot of the kitchen stairs. I saw him as plain as I see you,' she said,
and looked very wild and vacant.

"The next experiment took place on Wednesday evening, July 13th, 1887,
when S., told her, when hypnotised, that the next afternoon, at three
o'clock, she would see me (Mr. Gurney) come into the room to her. She
was further told that I would keep my hat on and say, 'Good-morning,'
and that I would remark, 'It is very warm,' and would then turn round
and walk out.

"Next day this is what Zillah reported. She said, 'I was in the kitchen
washing up, and had just looked at the clock, and was startled to see
how late it was (five minutes to three) when I heard footsteps coming
down the stairs--rather a quick, light step--and I thought it was Mr.
Sleep' (the dentist whose rooms are in the house), 'but as I turned
round, with a dish mop in one hand and a plate in the other, I saw some
one with a hat on who had to stoop as he came down the last step, and
there was Mr. Gurney. He was dressed just as I saw him last night, black
coat and grey trousers, his hat on, and a roll of paper like manuscript
in his hand, and he said, "Oh! good-afternoon;" and then he glanced all
round the kitchen and he glanced at me with an awful look, as if he was
going to murder me, and said, "Warm afternoon, isn't it?" and then
"Good-afternoon," or "Good-day," I am not sure which, and then turned
and went up the stairs again; and after standing thunderstruck a minute,
I ran to the foot of the stairs and saw just like a boot disappearing on
the top step.' She said, 'I think I must be going crazy. Why should I
always see something at three o'clock each day after the seance?'" (Vol.
V. pp. 11-13.)

Whatever hypothesis we select to explain these mysteries, they do not
become less marvellous. Even if we grant that it is mere telepathy, or
mind affecting mind at a distance without the use of the recognised
organs of sense or of any of the ordinary conducting mediums, what an
enormous extension it gives to the ordinary conception of the limits of
the human mind! To be able instantaneously to paint upon the retina of a
friend's eye the life-like image of ourselves, to make our voice sound
in his ears at a distance of many miles, and to communicate to his mind
information which he had never before heard of, all this is, it may be
admitted, as tremendous a draft upon the credulity of mankind as the
favourite Theosophical formula of the astral body. Yet who is there who,
in face of the facts and experiences recorded above, will venture to
deny that one or other of these hypotheses alone can account for the
phenomena under consideration?

It is obvious that when once the possibility of the Double is admitted,
many mysteries could be cleared up, although it is also true that a
great many inconveniences would immediately follow; the establishment of
the reality of the double would invalidate every plea of _alibi_.
If a man can really be in two places at one time, there is an end to the
plea which is most frequently resorted to by the accused to prove their
innocence. There are other inconveniences, which are alluded to in the
following letter from a lady correspondent, who believes that she has
the faculty in frequent, although uncertain and unconscious, use:--

"'I saw you yesterday, and you cut me.' Such was the remark I frequently
heard from my friends: in the broad daylight they saw me in street or
tram, etc. Once a personal friend followed me into church on Christmas
Day in a city at least 100 miles from where I really was. Another time I
sat two pews in front of a friend at a cathedral service. When I denied
having been there, she said, 'It's no good talking: I saw you, and you
didn't want to wait for me.' 'But,' I said, 'you have my word that I was
not there.' 'Yes,' she said, 'but I have my sight, and I saw you.' Of
course, I naturally thought it was some one like me, and said, perhaps
rather sarcastically, 'Would it be very strange if any one else bore
some resemblance to me?' 'No,' said my friend, 'it would not; but
someone else doesn't wear your clothes.' On one occasion I remember
three people saw me where I certainly was not physically present the
same day; all knew me personally. I often bought books of a man who kept
a second-hand bookstall. One day he told me that he had a somewhat rare
edition of a book I wanted, but that it was at the shop. I said, 'I'll
come across to-morrow for it if I make up my mind to give the price.'
The next day I was prevented from going, and went the day after, to hear
it was sold. 'Why didn't you keep it?' I asked. 'I thought you did not
want it when you came yesterday and did not buy it.' 'But I didn't come
yesterday.' 'Why, excuse me, you did, and took the book up and laid it
down again while I was serving Mr. M., and you went away before I could
ask you about it; Mr. M. remarked that it was strange you did not answer
him when he spoke.' When I asked the gentleman referred to, he confirmed
the story. Mrs. B. also saw me lower down the same street that morning.

"Still it never struck me that it was anything strange; I was only
rather curious to see the woman who was so like me. I saw her in an
unexpected manner. Going into my room one night, I happened to glance
down at my bed, and saw a form there. I thought it strange, yet was not
startled. I bent over it, and recognised my own features distinctly. I
was in perfect health at the time, and no disaster followed."

_Queen Elizabeth's Double._

In a volume published by Macmillan & Co., entitled "Legendary Fictions
of the Irish Celt," I find the following references to the Double:--

"If this phantom be seen in the morning it betokens good fortune and
long life to its prototype; if in the evening a near death awaits him.
This superstition was known and felt in England even in the reign of
Elizabeth. We quote a passage from Miss Strickland's account of her last
illness:--

"'As her mortal illness drew towards a close, the superstitious fears of
her simple ladies were excited almost to mania, even to conjuring up a
spectral apparition of the Queen while she was yet alive. Lady
Guildford, who was then in waiting on the Queen, leaving her in an
almost breathless sleep in her privy chamber, went out to take a little
air, and met her Majesty, as she thought, three or four chambers off.
Alarmed at the thought of being discovered in the act of leaving the
Royal patient alone, she hurried forward in some trepidation in order to
excuse herself, when the apparition vanished away. She returned
terrified to the chamber, but there lay the Queen still in the same
lethargic slumber in which she left her.'"

PART III.

CLAIRVOYANCE--THE VISION OF THE OUT OF SIGHT.

"Moreover, the spirit lifted me up and brought me unto the East gate,
and, behold, at the door of the gate five-and-twenty men, among whom I
saw," etc.--Ezekiel xi. 1.

Chapter I.

The Astral Camera.

When I was staying at Orchard Lea, in Windsor Forest, I did most of my
writing in a spacious window on the first floor looking out over the
garden. It opened French fashion, and thereby occasioned a curious
optical illusion, which may perhaps help to shed some light upon the
phenomena now under consideration. For when the sun was high in the sky
and the French window was set at a certain angle, the whole of the
flowers, figures, etc., on my right hand appeared reflected upon the
lawn on the left hand as vividly as if they actually existed in
duplicate. So real was the illusion that for some hours I was under the
impression that a broad yellow gravel path actually stretched across the
lawn on my left. It was only when a little dog ran along the spectral
path and suddenly vanished into thin air that I discovered the illusion.
Nothing could be more complete, more life-like. The real persons who
walked up the gravel to the house walked across the spectral gravel,
apparently in duplicate. Both could be seen at one and the same time. I
instantly thought that they could be photographed, so as to show the
duplication produced by the illusion. Unfortunately, although the
spectral path was distinctly visible through the glass to the eye, no
impression whatever was left on the sensitive plate. My friend writes:--

"I have tried the phantom path, and I am sorry to say it is too phantom
to make any impression on the plate. All that you get is the blaze of
light from the glass window, some very faint trees, and no path at all.
Possibly, with a June sun, it might have been different; but I doubt it,
as one is told never to put the camera facing a window. It is having to
take through the glass window which is fatal."

This set me thinking. It was a simple optical illusion, no doubt,
similar to that which enabled Pepper to produce his ghosts at the
Polytechnic. But what was the agency which enabled me to see the figures
and flowers, and trees and gravel, all transferred, as by the cunning
act of some magician, from the right to the left? Simply a swinging pane
of perfectly transparent glass. To those who have neither studied the
laws of optics nor seen the phenomenon in question, it must seem
impossible that a pellucid window-pane could transfer so faithfully that
which happened at one end of the garden to the other as to cause it to
be mistaken for reality. Yet there was the phenomenon before my eyes.
The dog ran double--the real dog to the right, the spectral dog to the
left--and no one could tell at first sight "t'other from which." Now,
may it not be that this supplies a suggestion as to the cause of the
phenomenon of clairvoyance? Is it not possible that there may exist in
Nature some as yet undiscovered analogue to the swinging windowpane
which may enable us to see before our eyes here and now events which are
transpiring at the other end of the world? In the mysterious,
subconscious world in which the clairvoyant lives, may there not be some
subtle, sympathetic lens, fashioned out of strong affection or some
other relation, which may enable some of us to see that which is quite
invisible to the ordinary eye?

_A Surrey Laundry Seen in Cornwall._

Such thoughts came to my mind when I asked the Housekeeper whether she
had ever seen any of the phantasmal apparitions of her mistress, my
hostess, Mrs. M. The housekeeper, a comfortable, buxom Cornish woman,
smiled incredulously. No, she had seen nothing, heard nothing, believed
nothing. "As to phantasmal bodies, she would prefer to see them first."
"Had she ever seen a ghost?" "No, never." "Had ever had any
hallucinations?" "No." But one thing had happened, "rather curious" now
that she came to think of it. Last year, when living on the coast far
down in the west country, she had suddenly seen as in a dream the house
in Hindhead where we were now standing. She had never been in Surrey in
her life. She had no idea that she would ever go there, nor did she know
that it was in Surrey. What she saw was the laundry. She was standing
inside it, and remarked to her husband how strange and large it looked.
She looked out at the windows and saw the house and the surroundings
with strange distinctness. Then the vision faded away, leaving no other
impress on the mind than that she had seen an exceptionally large
laundry close to a small country-house in a place where she had never
been in before.

Six months passed; she and her husband had decided to leave the west
country and take a housekeeper and gardener's post elsewhere. They
replied to an advertisement, were appointed by my hostess; they
transferred themselves to Hindhead, where they arrived in the dead of
winter. When they reached their new quarters she saw, to her infinite
astonishment, the precise place she had seen six months before. The
laundry was unmistakable. There is not such another laundry in the
county of Surrey. There it was, sure enough, and there was the house,
and there were all the surroundings exactly as she had seen them down on
the south-west coast. She did not believe in ghosts or phantasmal bodies
or such like things, but one thing she knew beyond all possibility of
doubt. She had seen her new home and laundry on the top of Hindhead,
when living in the west country six months before she ever set foot in
Surrey, or even knew of the existence of Mrs. M. "The moment I saw it I
recognised it and told my husband that it was the identical place I had
seen when in our old home."

_William Howitt's Vision._

The Housekeeper's story is very simple, and almost too commonplace. But
its significance lies in those very characteristics. Here was no
consuming passion, no bond of sympathy, nothing whatever material or
sentimental to act as the refracting medium by which the Hindhead
laundry could have been made visible in South Devon. Yet similar
phenomena are of constant occurrence. A very remarkable case in point is
that of William Howitt who, when on a voyage out to Australia, saw his
brother's house at Melbourne so plainly that he described it on board
ship, and recognised it the moment he landed. Here is his own version of
this remarkable instance of clairvoyance:--

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