Real Ghost Stories

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"The judge of the neighbourhood, who had promised to be present, was
unfortunately prevented from coming. The clairvoyant was hypnotised in
my wife's presence, and was then ordered 'to look for the place where
the murder had been committed and see the whole scene, follow the
murderer in his flight, and describe him and his home and the motive for
the murder.' Miss Olsen then spoke as follows, in great agitation,
sometimes using violent gestures. I took notes of her exact words and
reproduce them here fully.

"'It is between two villages--I see a road--in a wood--now it is
coming--the gun--now he is coming along, driving--the horse is afraid of
the stones--hold the horse! hold the horse! now! now he is killing
him--he was kneeling when he fired--blood! blood!--now he is running in
the wood--seize him!--he is running in an opposite direction to the
horse in many circuits--not on any footpaths. He wears a cap and grey
clothes--light--has long coarse brown hair, which has not been cut for a
long time--grey-blue eyes--treacherous looks--great dark brown beard--he
is accustomed to work on the land. I believe he has cut his right hand.
He has a scar or a streak between his thumb and forefinger. He is
suspicious and a coward.

"'The murderer's home is a red wooden house, standing a little way back
from the road. On the ground-floor is a room which leads into the
kitchen, and from that again into the passage. There is also a larger
room which does not communicate with the kitchen. The church of
Wissefjerda is situated obliquely to your right when you are standing in
the passage.

"'His motive was enmity; it seems as if he had bought something--taken
something--a paper. He went away from home at daybreak, and the murder
was committed in the evening.'

"Miss Olsen was then awakened, and like all my subjects, she remembered
perfectly what she had been seeing, which had made a very profound
impression on her; she added several things which I did not write down.

"On November 6th (Monday) I met Miss Olsen, and she told me in great
agitation that she had met the murderer from Wissefjerda in the street.
He was accompanied by a younger person and followed by two policemen,
and was walking from the police office to the gaol. I at once expressed
my doubts of her being right, partly because country people are
generally arrested by the country police, partly because they are always
taken directly to gaol. But when she insisted on it, and maintained that
it was the person she had seen when asleep, I went to the police office.

"I inquired if any one had been arrested on suspicion of the crime in
question, and a police-constable answered that such was the case, and
that, as they had been taken to the town on Sunday, they had been kept
in the police-station over night, and after that had been obliged to go
on foot to gaol, accompanied by two constables." (The police-constable,
T. A. Ljung, states that Dr. Backman described quite accurately the
appearance of the house, its furniture, how the rooms were situated,
where the suspected man lived, and gave a very correct account of Niklas
Jonnasson's personal appearance. The doctor also asked him if he had
observed that Jonnasson had a scar on his right hand. He said he had not
then observed it, but ascertained later that it really was so, and
Jonnasson said that he got it from an abscess).

"The trial was a long one, and showed that Gustafsson had agreed to buy
for Jonnasson, but in his own name, the latter's farm, which was sold by
auction on account of Jonnasson's debts. This is what is called a
thief's bargain. Gustafsson bought the farm, but kept it for himself.
The statements of the accused men were very vague; the father had
prepared an _alibi_ with much care, but it failed to account for
just the length of time that was probably enough to commit the murder
in. The son tried to prove an _alibi_ by means of two witnesses,
but these confessed that they had given false evidence, which he had
bribed them to do when they were in prison with him on account of
another matter.

"But though the evidence against the defendants was very strong, it was
not considered that there was sufficient legal evidence, and, there
being no jury in Sweden, they were left to the verdict of posterity."
(pp. 213-216.)

_A Terrible Vision of Torture at Sea._

The following marvellous story of a vision reaches me from Scotland. The
Rev. D. McQueen writes me from 165, Dalkeith-road, Edinburgh, December
14th, as follows:--

"I have been much interested in your Ghost Stories. I wish to inform you
of one I have heard, and which I think eclipses in interest, minuteness
of detail, and tragical pathos anything I have ever known, and which, if
published and edited by your graphic pen, would cause a sensation in
every scientific society in Great Britain.

"It is not in my power to write the whole story, as it is nearly
sufficient for a pamphlet by itself, but its accuracy can be vouched for
by many of the most respectable and intelligent people in the
neighbourhood of Old Cumnock. I heard the story some years ago, and
would have written you sooner, only I wished to make inquiries as to the
whereabouts of the subject of the remarkable vision.

"About twenty years ago a young man belonging to Ayrshire embarked from
an Australian port to re-visit his friends in this country. His mother
and father still live. The former saw all that befell her son from the
moment he set foot on the deck till he was consigned to the sea. She can
describe the port from which he sailed, the crew of the ship, his fellow
passengers. It was a weird story, for her son, by name George, was done
to death by the brutality of the officers. This was partially
corroborated by a passenger named Gilmour, who called on her after his
arrival in London. When he entered the house she said, 'Why did you
allow them to ill-use my son.' He started, and said, 'Who told you?' She
related all that happened during the weeks her son was ill, and when she
finished her guest fainted. According to her, her son was ill-used from
the time he started till his death. For example, she saw her son struck
by a ball of ropes, as she said (a cork fender). He said that was so.
She saw him put into a strait jacket and lowered into the hold of the
ship, which actually took place. She saw them playing cards on deck and
putting the counters into her son's pocket, which were actually found in
his clothes when they came back. She can describe the berth her son
occupied, the various parts of the ship, with an accuracy that is
surprising to one that never has been on board ship. And last of all she
tells the manner of his burial, the dress, the service that was read,
the body moving, the protest of one passenger that he was not dead. She
had a succession of trances by day and night which are unparalleled. She
saw some of the painful scenes in church, and has been known to cry out
in horror and agony. If you could only get some one to take it down from
her own lips--she alone can tell it--you would make a narrative that
would thrill the heart of every reader in the kingdom. The woman is
reliable. She is the wife of a well-to-do farmer. Her name is Mrs.
Arthur, Benston Farm, Old Cumnock.

"I have written an incoherent letter, as I am hurried at present, but I
hope you will see your way to investigate it. I say again, I have never
heard so weird and true a tale. But get the lady to tell her own story.
It is wonderful! wonderful!"

On January 9th, 1892, the Rev. A. Macdonald, of the U.P. Manse, Old
Cumnock, wrote to me as follows:--

"I have much pleasure in replying to the questions you put to me,
whether I am aware of the clairvoyant experiences of Mrs. Arthur
(Benston, New Cumnock), and whether I consider her a reliable witness.

"It is many years since I heard Mrs. Arthur relate her strange visions,
and there are other friends, beside myself, who have heard the same
narrative from her own lips.

"Mrs. Arthur, I hold, is incapable of inventing the story which she
tells, for she is a truthful, conscientious, and Christian woman. She
herself believes in the reality of the vision as firmly as she believes
in her own existence. The death of her son on his way back from
Australia was the cause of a sorrow too deep for the mother to weave
such a romance around it. Further, her statements are not the accretions
of after years, but were told, and told freely, at the time when her son
was known to have died. This is about twenty years ago. During these
twenty years she has not varied in her statements, and repeats them
still with all the faith and with all the circumstantial details of the
first narration.

"I consider her vision--extending as it does from the time the
homeward-bound vessel left the harbour, over many days, until the burial
of her son's body at sea--worthy of a place alongside the best of the
Ghost Stories you have given to the world."

Mr. Arthur, the son of the percipient in this strange story, wrote to me
as follows from Loch-side, New Cumnock, Ayrshire, on the 14th January,
1892:--

"My mother, Mrs. Arthur, of Benston, New Cumnock, Ayrshire, received
your valued favour of 8th inst., together with a copy of the Christmas
Number of the _Review of Reviews_. The circumstances you refer to
happened twenty-one years ago, a short account of which appeared in a
Scotch paper, and a much fuller one appeared in an Australian paper,
but, unfortunately, no copy has been preserved, even the diary in which
the particulars were written has been destroyed.

"It would not serve any good purpose for you to send a shorthand writer
to interview my mother, as she is approaching fourscore years, and her
memory is rapidly failing. I believe I can get a very full account
(barring _minutiae_) from a younger brother. But if the young man
who was a fellow-passenger with my brother (when my brother died at sea
off the Cape of Good Hope) is still alive, he is the proper party to
give a full and minute account. He was the party who informed my parents
of my brother's death. My mother lost no time in visiting him for
particulars. I think the young man's name was Gilmour. He was then in
the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. When he began to narrate what had taken
place, my mother stopped him and asked him to listen to her. She then
went on to say that on a certain date, while she was about her usual
household duties, her son came into the room where she was, said so and
so and so and so, and walked out. Mr. Gilmour said that what she had
said was exactly what had occurred during his illness, and the date he
had visited her was the day of his death.

"I was at this time living in Belize, British Honduras. On my mentioning
this circumstance to some of my friends there, Mr. Cockburn, who was
Police Magistrate in Belize, said that his daughter, Miss Cockburn, had
a similar experience. He lived at that time in Grenada, and Miss
Cockburn was at school in England. One day she was out walking with the
other school girls; suddenly she saw her mother walking along the street
in front of her. Miss C. ran off to speak to her, but before she caught
her up, her mother turned down a side street. When the daughter reached
the corner the mother was nowhere to be seen. Miss Cockburn wrote to her
mother, telling her what she had seen, by the outgoing mail. Her letter
crossed one from her father, telling her that her mother had died that
day."

Clairvoyance is closely related to the phenomenon of the Double, for the
clairvoyant seems to have either the faculty of transporting herself to
distant places, or of bringing the places within range of her sight.
Here is a narrative sent me by Mr. Masey, Fellow of the Geological
Society, writing to me from 8, Gloucester Road, Kew, which illustrates
the connection between clairvoyance and the Double:--

"Mrs. Mary Masey, who resided on Redcliffe Hill, Bristol, at the
beginning of this century, was a member of the Society of Friends, and
was held in high esteem for piety.

"A memorable incident in her life was that one night she dreamt that a
Mr. John Henderson, a noted man of the same community, had gone to
Oxford, and that he had died there. In the course of the next day, Mr.
Henderson called to take leave of her, saying he was going to Oxford to
study a subject concerning which he could not obtain the information he
wanted in Bristol. Mrs. Masey said to him, 'John Henderson, thou wilt
die there.'

"Some time afterwards, Mrs. Masey woke her husband one night, saying,
'Remember, John Henderson died at Oxford at two o'clock this morning,
and it is now three.' Her husband, Philip Masey, made light of it; but
she told him that while asleep she had been transported to Oxford, where
she had never been before, and that she had entered a room there, in
which she saw Mr. John Henderson in bed, the landlady supporting his
head, and the landlord with several other persons standing around. While
gazing at him some one gave him medicine, and the patient, turning
round, perceived her, and exclaimed, 'Oh, Mrs. Masey, I am going to die;
I am so glad you are come, for I want to tell you that my father is
going to be very ill, and you must go and see him.' He then proceeded to
describe a room in his father's house, and a bureau in it, 'in which is
a box containing a remedy; give it him, and he will recover.' Her
impression and recollection of all the persons in the room at Oxford was
most vivid, and she even described the appearance of the house on the
opposite side of the street. The only person she appeared not to have
seen in the room was a clergyman who was present. The husband of Mrs.
Masey accompanied Mr. Henderson's father to the funeral, and on their
journey from Bristol to Oxford by coach (the period being before
railways and telegraphs existed), Mr. Philip Masey related to him the
particulars of his son's death, as described by his wife, which, on
arrival, they found to have been exactly as told by Mrs. Masey.

"Mrs. Masey was so much concerned about the death of Mr. Henderson,
jun., that she forgot all about the directions he had given her
respecting the approaching illness of his father, but some time
afterwards she was sent for by the father, who was very ill. She then
remembered the directions given her by the son on his death-bed at
Oxford. She immediately proceeded to the residence of Mr. Henderson, and
on arrival at the house she found the room, the bureau, the box, and the
medicine exactly as had been foretold to her. She administered the
remedy as directed, and had the pleasure of witnessing the beneficial
effect by the complete recovery of Mr. Henderson from a serious
illness."

Here we have almost every variety of psychic experience. First of all
there is second sight pure and simple; second, there is the aerial
journey of the Double, with the memory of everything that had been seen
and heard at the scene which it had witnessed; third, there is
communication of information which at that moment was not known to the
percipient; fourth, we have another prediction; and finally, we have a
complete verification and fulfilment of everything that was witnessed.
It is idle to attempt to prove the accuracy of statements made
concerning one who has been dead nearly a hundred years, but the story,
although possessing no evidential value, is interesting as an almost
unique specimen of the comprehensive and complicated prophetic ghost and
clairvoyant story.

These facts, which are well accredited, would seem to show that in the
book of Job Elihu was not far wrong when he said, "In slumberings upon
the bed God openeth the ears of men and sealeth their destruction." Or,
to quote from an author who uses more modern dialect, it justifies
Abercromby's remark that "the subject of dreaming appears to be worthy
of careful investigation, and there is much reason to believe that an
extensive collection of authentic facts, carefully analysed, would
unfold principles of very great interest in reference to the philosophy
of the mental powers."

Clairvoyance is a gift, and a comparatively rare gift. It is a gift
which requires to be much more carefully studied and scientifically
examined than it has been hitherto. It is a by-path to many secrets. It
may hold in it the clue to the acquisition of great faculties, hitherto
regarded as forbidden to mere mortals.

Chapter III.

My Own Experience.

It is difficult for those who are not clairvoyant to understand what
those who are clairvoyant describe, often with the most extraordinary
precision and detail. Unfortunately for myself I am not a clairvoyant,
but on one occasion I had an experience which enabled me to understand
something of clairvoyant vision. I had been working late at night, and
had gone to bed at about two o'clock in the morning somewhat tired,
having spent several hours in preparing "Real Ghost Stories" for the
press. I got into bed, but was not able to go to sleep, as usual, as
soon as my head touched the pillow. I suppose my mind had been too much
excited by hard work right up to the moment of going to bed for me
readily to go to sleep. I shut my eyes and waited for sleep to come;
instead of sleep, however, there came to me a succession of curiously
vivid clairvoyant pictures. There was no light in the room, and it was
perfectly dark; I had my eyes shut also. But, notwithstanding the
darkness, I suddenly was conscious of looking at a scene of singular
beauty. It was as if I saw a living miniature about the size of a
magic-lantern slide. At this moment I can recall the scene as if I saw
it again. It was a seaside piece. The moon was shining upon the water,
which rippled slowly on to the beach. Right before me a long mole ran
out into the water. On either side of the mole irregular rocks stood up
above the sea-level. On the shore stood several houses, square and rude,
which resembled nothing that I had ever seen in house architecture. No
one was stirring, but the moon was there, and the sea and the gleam of
the moonlight on the rippling waters was just as if I had been looking
out upon the actual scene. It was so beautiful that I remember thinking
that if it continued I should be so interested in looking at it that I
should never go to sleep. I was wide awake, and at the same time that I
saw the scene I distinctly heard the dripping of the rain outside the
window. Then suddenly, without any apparent object or reason, the scene
changed. The moonlit sea vanished, and in its place I was looking right
into the interior of a reading-room. It seemed as if it had been used as
a schoolroom in the daytime and was employed as a reading-room in the
evening. I remember seeing one reader, who had a curious resemblance to
Tim Harrington, although it was not he, hold up a magazine or book in
his hand and laugh. It was not a picture--it was there. The scene was
just as if you were looking through an opera-glass; you saw the play of
the muscles, the gleaming of the eye, every movement of the unknown
persons in the unnamed place into which you were gazing. I saw all that
without opening my eyes, nor did my eyes have anything to do with it.
You see such things as these, as it were, with another sense, which is
more inside your head than in your eyes. This was a very poor and paltry
experience, but it enabled me to understand better than any amount of
disquisition how it is that clairvoyants see. The pictures were
_apropos_ of nothing; they had been suggested by nothing I had been
reading or talking of, they simply came as if I had been able to look
through a glass at what was occurring somewhere else in the world. I had
my peep and then it passed, nor have I had a recurrence of a similar
experience.

_Crystal-Gazing._

Crystal-gazing is somewhat akin to clairvoyance. There are some people
who cannot look into an ordinary globular bottle without seeing pictures
form themselves, without any effort or will on their part, in the
crystal globe. This is an experience which I have never been able to
enjoy. But I have seen crystal-gazing going on at a table at which I
have been sitting on one or two occasions with rather remarkable
results. The experiences of Miss X. in crystal-gazing have been told at
length and in detail in the "Proceedings of the Psychical Research
Society." On looking into the crystal on two occasions as a test, to see
if she could see me when she was several miles off, she saw, not me, but
a different friend of mine on each occasion, whom she had never seen,
but whom she immediately identified on seeing them afterwards at my
office.

Crystal-gazing seems to be the least dangerous and most simple of all
methods of experimenting. You simply look into a crystal globe the size
of a five-shilling piece, or a water-bottle which is full of clear
water, and is placed so that too much light does not fall upon it, and
then simply look at it. You make no incantations and engage in no
mumbo-jumbo business; you simply look at it for two or three minutes,
taking care not to tire yourself, winking as much as you please, but
fixing your thought upon whoever it is you wish to see. Then, if you
have the faculty, the glass will cloud over with a milky mist, and in
the centre the image is gradually precipitated in just the same way as a
photograph forms on the sensitive plate. At least, the description given
by crystal-gazers as to the way in which the picture appears reminded me
of nothing so much as what I saw when I stood inside the largest camera
in the world, in which the Ordnance Survey photographs its maps at
Southampton.

PART IV.

PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT.

"But there are many such things in Nature, though we have not the right
key to them. We all walk in mysteries. We are surrounded by an
atmosphere of which we do not know what is stirring in it, or how it is
connected with our own spirit. So much is certain--that in particular
cases we can put out the feelers of our soul beyond its bodily limits,
and that a presentiment, nay, an actual insight into, the immediate
future is accorded to it."--Goethe's "Conversations with Eckermann."

Chapter I.

My Own Extraordinary Premonitions.

If clairvoyance partakes of the nature of the camera obscura, by which
persons can see at a distance that which is going on beyond the direct
range of their vision, it is less easy to suggest an analogy to explain
the phenomena of premonition or second sight. Although I have never seen
a ghost--for none of my hallucinations are scenic--I may fairly claim to
have a place in this census on the ground of the extraordinary
premonitions I have had at various times of coming events. The second
sight of the Highlander is always scenic; he does not hear so much as he
sees. If death is foreshadowed, the circumstances preceding and
following the event pass as in dramatic scene before the eyes of the
seer. It is much as if the seers had access to a camera obscura which
enabled them not only to see that which was occurring at the same moment
in various parts of the world, but in its magic mirror could reflect
events which have not yet been as if they were already existent.

The phenomena of premonition, combined with the faculties of
clairvoyance by which the percipient is able to reproduce the past, make
a great breach in our conceptions of both time and space. To the Deity,
in the familiar line of the hymn, "future things unfolded lie"; but from
time to time future things, sometimes most trivial, sometimes most
important, are unfolded to the eye of mortal man. Why or how one does
not know. All that he can say is that the vision came and went in
obedience to some power over which he had no conscious control. The
faculty of foreseeing, which in its higher forms constitutes no small
part of a prophet's power, is said to exist among certain families, and
to vary according to the locality in which they are living. Men who have
second sight in Skye are said to lose it on the mainland. But residence
in Skye itself is not sufficient to give the Englishman the faculty once
said to be possessed by its natives. In England it is rare, and when it
exists it is often mixed up with curious and somewhat bewildering
superstitions, signs and omens portending death and disaster, which can
hardly be regarded as being more than seventh cousins of the true
faculty.

I can make no claim to the proud prerogative of the seer, but upon
several occasions I have had some extraordinary premonitions of what was
about to happen. I can give no explanation as to how they came, all that
I know is they arrived, and when they arrived I recognised them beyond
all possibility of mistake. I have had three or four very striking and
vivid premonitions in my life which have been fulfilled to the letter. I
have others which await fulfilment. Of the latter I will not speak
here--although I have them duly recorded--for were I to do so I should
be accused of being party to bringing about the fulfilment of my own
predictions. Those which have already been fulfilled, although of no
general importance to any one else, were of considerable importance to
me, as will be seen by the brief outline concerning three of them.

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