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A witty Frenchwoman was once asked if she believed in ghosts.

“No, not at all,” was her reply. “But I am terribly afraid of them.”

Most people feel precisely this way about ghosts, though few are candid enough to acknowledge it. In broad daylight, or when seated before a cheery fire among a group of congenial friends, it is easy to be skeptical, and to regard ghosts as mere products of imagination, superstition, credulity, hysteria, or indigestion. But it is notorious that even the most skeptical are liable to creepy sensations and sometimes outright panic if they experience “uncanny” sights or sounds in the darkness of the night, or in lonely, uninhabited places. Churchyards have never been popular resorts of those who go for a stroll in the cool of the evening. And let a house once get the reputation of being “haunted,” it is next to impossible to find tenants for it.

Yet this almost universal attitude is entirely and fundamentally wrong. There is no reason for being afraid of ghosts, and there are many reasons for believing in them.

I do not, of course, mean to say that all ghosts are real ghosts. There are plenty of bogus ghosts, and there always will be, as long as men eat and drink too much, play practical jokes on one another, and allow their houses to become run down and infested by rats and mice.

A single rat, scampering at midnight over the loose planks of an old attic, has often been quite sufficient to produce a counterfeit “poltergeist,” or troublesome ghost, of a highly impressive character. So, too, a pillow-slip swaying from a clothesline is apt to seem most ghostly to a gentleman returning home from a late supper. Ghosts, like much else in this amazing world of ours, have to be pretty sharply scrutinized.

And the point is that, after centuries of contemptuous neglect, they have at last been made the subject of investigation by men and women competent for the task—persons trained in the cautious methods of scientific inquiry, and insisting upon the strictest evidential standards, but devoid of prejudice or prepossession. Their researches are still in progress, but they have already demonstrated that amid a multitude of sham ghosts there are perfectly authentic apparitions, displaying credentials too convincing to be denied.

What is still more important, the labors of these scientific ghostologists—especially of those enrolled in the famous English Society for Psychical Research—have also resulted in throwing much light on the nature, origin, and habits of real ghosts.

Usually, it seems, a genuine ghost is seen or heard but once or twice, and then, having accomplished its purpose, it departs to return no more. But there are plenty of well-attested cases in which a ghost attaches itself to a house or family, and keeps up its haunting for years, sometimes for centuries.

Take, for example, an experience that befell Miss Goodrich-Freer, at the time a most active member of the Society for Psychical Research, in Hampton Court Palace. This old building is unquestionably one of the most famous of all haunted houses. It dates back to the time of the first Tudors, and according to tradition is haunted by several ghosts, notably the ghosts of Jane Seymour, Henry VIII’s third queen; Catharine Howard, whose spirit is said to go shrieking along the gallery where she vainly begged brutal King Henry to spare her life; and Sybil Penn, King Edward VI’s foster-mother. Twice of late years the Howard ghost—or something that passed for it—has been heard, once by Lady Eastlake, and once by Mrs. Cavendish Boyle. The latter was sleeping in an apartment next to the haunted gallery—which has long been unoccupied and used only as a storeroom for old pictures—when she was suddenly awakened by a loud and most unearthly shriek proceeding from that quarter, followed immediately by perfect silence. Lady Eastlake’s experience was exactly similar.

Both ladies, of course, may have heard a real shriek, possibly coming from some nightmare-tormented occupant of the palace. But no explanation of this sort is adequate in the case of Miss Goodrich-Freer, who passed a night at Hampton Court for the sole purpose of ascertaining whether or not there was any foundation for its ghostly legends.

The room she selected for her vigil was one especially reputed to be haunted, and opened into a second room, the door between the two, however, being blocked by a heavy piece of furniture. Thus the only means of entrance into her room was by a door from the corridor, and this she locked and bolted. After which, feeling confident that nothing but a real ghost could get in to trouble her, she settled down to read an essay on “Shall We Degrade Our Standard of Value?” a subject manifestly free from matters likely to occasion nervousness.

In fact, the essay was so dull that by half past one Miss Goodrich-Freer, not able to keep awake longer, undressed, dropped into bed, and was almost instantly asleep. Several hours later she was aroused by a noise as of some one opening the furniture-barricaded door. At this she put out her hand to reach a match-box which she knew was lying on a table at the head of the bed.

“I did not reach the matches,” she reports. “It seemed to me that a detaining hand was laid on mine. I withdrew it quickly and gazed around into the darkness. Some minutes passed in blackness and silence. I had the sensation of a presence in the room, and finally, mindful of the tradition that a ghost should be spoken to, I said gently: ‘Is any one there? Can I do anything for you?’ I remembered that the last person who entertained the ghost had said: ‘Go away, I don’t want you,’ and I hoped that my visitor would admire my better manners and be responsive. However, there was no answer, no sound of any kind.”

Now Miss Goodrich-Freer left the bed and felt all around the room in the dark, until satisfied that she was alone. The corridor door was still locked and bolted; the piece of furniture against the inner door was in place. So she returned to bed. Almost at once a soft light began to glow with increasing brightness. It seemed to radiate from a central point, which gradually took form and became a tall, slender woman, moving slowly across the room. At the foot of the bed she stopped, so that the amazed observer had time to examine her profile and general appearance.

“Her face,” Miss Goodrich-Freer says, “was insipidly pretty, that of a woman from thirty to thirty-five years of age, her figure slight, her dress of a soft, dark material, having a full skirt and broad sash or soft waistband tied high up almost under her arms, a crossed or draped handkerchief over the shoulders and sleeves which I noticed fitted very tight below the elbow. In spite of all this definiteness I was conscious that the figure was unsubstantial, and felt quite guilty of absurdity in asking once more: ‘Will you let me help you? Can I be of any use to you?’

“My voice sounded preternaturally loud, but I felt no surprise at noticing that it produced no effect upon my visitor. She stood still for perhaps two minutes, though it is very difficult to estimate time on such occasions. Then she raised her hands, which were long and white, and held them before her as she sank upon her knees and slowly buried her face in the palms in an attitude of prayer—when quite suddenly the light went out, and I was alone in the darkness.

“I felt that the scene was ended, the curtain drawn, and had no hesitation in lighting the candle at my side. … The clock struck four.”

Again investigation showed that the corridor door was locked and bolted as she had left it, and the inner door still firmly barricaded. Consequently, skeptical though she had been when she arrived at Hampton Court Palace, Miss Goodrich-Freer in leaving it entertained no doubt that she had witnessed a genuine psychical manifestation.

The same conclusion was forced upon two ladies, Miss Elizabeth Morison and Miss Frances Lamont, in connection with a visit paid by them to another famous haunted house, the Petit Trianon at Versailles, the favorite summer home of that unfortunate queen Marie Antoinette, whose ghost, as well as the ghosts of her attendants, has long been alleged to be visible at times in and around it. Miss Morison and Miss Lamont had been sightseeing in the royal palace, but tiring of this had set off, in the early afternoon, to walk to the Trianon. Neither of them knew just where it was located, but taking the general direction indicated on Baedeker’s map, they finally came to a broad drive, which, had they only known it, would have led them directly to their destination. As it was, they crossed the drive and went up a narrow lane through a thick wood to a point where three paths diverged. Here they began to have a series of experiences which, comparatively insignificant in themselves, had a sequel so amazing that it would be incredible were it not that the veracity of both ladies has been established beyond question.[1]

Ahead of them, on the middle path, they saw two men clad in curious, old-fashioned costumes of long, greenish coats, knee breeches, and small, three-cornered hats. Taking them for gardeners, they asked to be shown the way, and were told to go straight ahead. This brought them to a little clearing that had in it a light garden kiosk, circular and like a bandstand, near which a man was seated. As they approached, he turned his head and stared at them, and his expression was so repellent that they felt greatly frightened. The next instant, coming from they knew not where, and breathless as if from running, a second man appeared, and speaking in French of a peculiar accent, ordered them brusquely to turn to the right, saying that the Trianon lay in that direction. Just as they reached it, they were again intercepted, this time by a young man who stepped out of a rear door, banged it behind him, and with a somewhat insolent air guided them to the main entrance of the palace.

While they were hurrying thither, Miss Morison noticed a lady, seated below a terrace, holding out a paper as though reading at arm’s length. She glanced up as they passed, and Miss Morison, observing with surprise the peculiar cut of her gown, saw that she had a pretty “though not young” face.

“I looked straight at her,” she adds in the published statement she has made regarding their adventure, “but some indescribable feeling made me turn away, disturbed at her being there.”

Afterwards this “indescribable feeling” was accounted for when Miss Morison identified in a rare portrait of Marie Antoinette the lady she had seen seated below the terrace!

Still more remarkable, subsequent visits to the Trianon brought to both ladies the startling knowledge that the actual surroundings of the place and the place itself differ vastly from what they saw that summer afternoon. The woods they entered are not there, and have not been there in the memory of man; the paths they trod have long been effaced; there is no kiosk, nor does anybody living, except Miss Morison and Miss Lamont, remember having seen one in the Trianon grounds; on the very spot where Miss Morison saw the lady in the peculiar dress a large bush is growing; and the rear door, out of which stepped the young man who guided them around to the front, opens from an old chapel that has been in a ruinous condition for many years, the door itself being “bolted, barred, and cobwebbed,” and unused since the time of Marie Antoinette.

On the other hand, their personal researches in the archives of France have brought to light so many confirmatory facts that both Miss Morison and Miss Lamont are firmly persuaded that the Trianon, its environment, and its people were once exactly as they appeared to them; and that in very truth they saw the place as it looked, not at the time they first visited it, but in the closing years of the French Monarchy, more than a century before.

That historic German ghost, the White Lady of the Hohenzollerns, would likewise seem to have more than a legendary basis. Her mission, apparently, is to announce the death of some member of the Hohenzollern family, and her most frequent haunting-place is the royal palace at Berlin. She was seen as early as 1628, and since the time of Frederick the Great her appearance has been regularly chronicled on the eve of the death of the King of Prussia.

For the matter of that, there are not a few families whose ancestral homes, according to tradition, are haunted by death-announcing ghosts. This is particularly the case with certain distinguished British families. Two white owls perching on the roof of the family mansion are taken as a sure omen of death in the Arundel of Wardour family. The Yorkshire Middletons, a Catholic family, are said to be warned of approaching death by the apparition of a Benedictine nun. Equally noteworthy as a spectral messenger of tragedy is the so-called Drummer of Cortachy Castle, a Scottish ghost that haunts the ancient stronghold of the Ogilvys, Earls of Airlie, but is in evidence only when an Ogilvy is about to die.

The story goes that, hundreds of years ago, when the Scots were little better than barbarians, a Highland chieftain sent a drummer to Cortachy Castle with a message that was not at all to the liking of the Ogilvy of that time. As an appropriate token of his displeasure, he seized the luckless drummer, stuffed him into his drum—he must have been a very small drummer, and have carried a very big drum—and hurled him from the topmost battlements of the castle, breaking his neck.

Just before he was tossed off, the drummer threatened to make a ghost of himself, and haunt the Ogilvys forevermore. He has been, it would seem, as good as his word. Every once in a while ghostly drumming is heard at Cortachy Castle, and always the death of an Ogilvy follows. An especially impressive account of one instance of this peculiar and most unpleasant haunting has been left by a Miss Dalrymple, who happened to be a guest at Cortachy during Christmas week of 1844.

It was her first visit to the Castle, and she was entirely unaware of the existence of the family ghost. On the evening of her arrival, while dressing for dinner, she was startled by hearing under her window music like the muffled beating of a drum. She looked out, but could see nothing, and presently the drumming died away. For the time she thought no more of it, but at dinner she turned to her host, the Earl of Airlie, and asked:

“My lord, who is your drummer?”

His lordship made no reply, Lady Airlie became exceedingly pale, and several of the company, all of whom had heard the question, looked embarrassed. Realizing that she had made a slip of some sort, Miss Dalrymple quickly changed the subject, but after dinner, naturally feeling somewhat curious, she brought it up with one of the younger members of the family, and was answered:

“What! Have you never heard of the Drummer of Cortachy?”

“No,” said she. “Who in the world is he?”

“Why, he is a person who goes about playing his drum whenever there is a death impending in our family. The last time he was heard was shortly before the death of the late countess, the earl’s first wife, and that is why Lady Airlie turned so pale when you mentioned it.”

The next night Miss Dalrymple heard the drumming again, and, falling into a panic when she learned that nobody else had heard it, hurriedly left Cortachy Castle. But the drumming was not for her. True to tradition, the drummer was concerned only with announcing the death of an Ogilvy, one of whom, the Lady Airlie who had been so disturbed by Miss Dalrymple’s question, died soon afterward while on a visit to Brighton.

Five years later the drumming was once more heard, this time by an Englishman who had been invited to spend a few days with the Earl of Airlie’s oldest son, Lord Ogilvy, at a shooting box near Cortachy. Crossing a gloomy moor, in company with an old Highlander, the Englishman suddenly stopped, and, with a look of amazement, exclaimed:

“What can a band be doing in this lonely place? Has Lord Ogilvy brought a band with him?”

The Highlander glanced at him strangely.

“I hear naething,” he said.

“Why, yes, can’t you hear it? A band playing in the distance—or at any rate, somebody playing a drum.”

“An’ is it a drum ye hear?” cried the Highlander. “Then ’tis something no canny.”

In another moment the lighted windows of the shooting box came into view, and the Englishman hastened forward, fully expecting to have the mystery solved. But he found no musicians—only a scene of considerable confusion. Lord Ogilvy, it appeared, had just started for London, summoned by news that his father was dangerously ill.

And the very next day, as the Englishman’s Highlander guide was not at all surprised to learn, the Earl of Airlie died.

Of all family ghosts, however, none is so strongly substantiated by documentary[2] evidence as the Knocking Ghost of the Basil Woodds, an old English family. This ghost began operations about the time of the Stuart Restoration, and it is alleged has ever since continued to announce, by three or more loud knocks, the approaching death of a Basil Woodd. First-hand and thoroughly trustworthy accounts are extant of its activity in quite recent times.

December 15, 1893, Mr. Charles H. L. Woodd died at Hampstead, England, after a brief illness. The night before he died the Knocking Ghost was heard by two persons, at Hampstead by his daughter, and in London by his son, the Reverend Trevor Basil Woodd. Both have made statements describing their singular experiences.

“On Thursday evening, December 14, 1893, after church,” says the Reverend Mr. Woodd, “I was sitting before my fire. I knew my father was ill, and had a presentiment that he was dangerously ill, though if I had known this I should have remained at Hampstead, where I had been that day. As I sat, I distinctly heard three knocks, perhaps more, like the sound of some one emptying a tobacco pipe upon the bars of my fire grate.

“Thinking it might be a warning, I did not go to bed for an hour, fearing I would be sent for. At one A. M. I was awakened by a ringing of the front door-bell and knocking. It was my father’s butler, who told me the doctor had sent for me, as my father was very ill. I said to my housekeeper:

“ ‘I must go. I feel sure that my father is dying, because I heard the Woodd knocks, as I sat in my chair before going to bed.’

“On my arrival my first question was: ‘Is he still alive?’ for I believed he must have passed away at the time of the knocking. He died at eight-forty-five next morning.”

Mr. Woodd’s housekeeper corroborates this statement. As to the knocking heard at Hampstead, the daughter, Mrs. Winifred Dumbell, testifies:

“On December 14, 1893, Thursday morning, hearing my father, Mr. Charles Woodd, was not well, I left Epsom, where I had been staying, for Hampstead, and found my father in bed and very weak, but I was in no way anxious about him, as I did not suppose him to be seriously ill. At eleven o’clock at night, being tired and finding I could not assist my mother or the nurse, I lay down in an adjoining room, leaving the door wide open, and fell asleep.

“In a short time I was suddenly awakened by a loud rapping as if at the door. I jumped up and ran into the passage, thinking my mother had called me. I listened at the door of my father’s room, but no one was moving. I lay down again and instantly fell asleep, when exactly the same thing occurred. I did not actually sleep again, and cannot say whether any sound made me get up the third time, but I went in search of the doctor and gathered that he was anxious about my father, who was getting much weaker. We were all aroused, and about eight o’clock A. M. my father died.

“I did not connect this rapping with the Woodd warning, as all was so sudden and unexpected, but on mentioning it at breakfast the next morning to my brother, the Reverend Trevor Basil Woodd, he told me he also heard a similar warning in his rooms at Vauxhall Bridge Road about the same time.”

To mention only one other of the many instances that might be cited, the Knocking Ghost was again heard on June 3, 1895, just twenty-four hours before the death of Mr. Thomas Basil Woodd at Hampstead. Again, too, it was heard by more than one person and in more than one place, by Mr. Woodd’s daughters, Fanny and Kate, and by his niece, Miss Ethel G. Woodd, who was at the time visiting friends in Yorkshire, and at first mistook the Knocking Ghost for somebody hammering nails into the wall of the next room. Oddly enough, this was also the way it sounded to Fanny Woodd, in London, as appears from the following statement signed by her:

“On June 3, 1895, at ten-thirty P. M., Fanny Woodd, staying with Mrs. Stoney, 83 Wharton Road, West Kensington, heard knocks, apparently from next door, as of nails being hammered in and pictures hung, which seemed so unlikely at that hour of night that the next morning she mentioned it to Mrs. Stoney, whose bedroom was just below hers, asking if she had heard it or could account for it.”

But Mrs. Stoney had heard nothing, and the next-door neighbor, Mrs. Harriet Taylor, rather tartly declared that: “There has been no putting up of pictures or knocking of any sort in this house for quite two years. We are also early risers, and are always in bed and asleep by ten P. M.” That same day Miss Woodd rejoined her father and sister in Hampstead, and was astonished to hear that the latter had been awakened about half past ten the previous night by loud knockings against the window shutters.

A few hours more and the mystery was solved by the startlingly sudden death of Mr. Woodd, from an attack of apoplexy. The Knocking Ghost of the Basil Woodds had lived up to its reputation.

The giving of death warnings is by no means confined to family ghosts, as may be sufficiently indicated by relating an incident that happened in Canada some years ago, and that has always impressed me as one of the best ghost stories I have ever heard. It was told me by an actor in the strange little drama, and knowing as I do the persons concerned, I have not the slightest hesitation in vouching for its authenticity, incredible though the reader may be inclined to regard it.

In this instance the ghost was seen by a clergyman, the Reverend John Langtry, who afterward became a prominent dignitary of the English Church in Canada. His home was in Toronto, but on the occasion of the ghostly visitation he was at the house of a Mr. and Mrs. Ruttan, who lived with their only child, a young girl, in a small town some fifty or sixty miles north of Toronto. Mr. Ruttan was another Church of England clergyman, and was a warm friend of Doctor Langtry’s. This time, however, the latter had journeyed to see him simply on a matter of diocesan business, and was anxious to complete it and get back to Toronto.

To his disappointment he found that Mr. Ruttan had been called out of town, and would not be home until a late hour, possibly not until the following day. On the chance that he might return earlier than expected, Doctor Langtry accepted Mrs. Ruttan’s invitation to spend the evening with her.

As they were chatting together—she being so seated that her back was toward the door leading from the parlor, whereas Doctor Langtry’s position gave him a full view of the hall—she noticed that all at once he stopped in the middle of a sentence, leaned forward, and stared fixedly into the hall. She instantly turned her head, and followed the direction of his gaze, but could see nothing.

“What is the matter, Doctor Langtry?” she asked. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing, nothing,” he muttered, recovering himself with an effort. “I fancied for a moment—”

He paused, then changed the conversation. But Mrs. Ruttan—from whom I got the story—saw that from time to time he glanced furtively into the hall, and finally half rose from his seat, his face white, his limbs trembling.

“Doctor Langtry!” was her startled exclamation. “Are you ill? Whatever is the matter?”

“Oh,” he said shortly, “it is only a momentary faintness. I shall be all right presently. The fatigue of the journey must have unstrung me. I will trouble you to get me a glass of water, and then I think I will return to the hotel.”

He drank the water, and rose to go. But when near the front door, he turned to Mrs. Ruttan, and said:

“I don’t believe I have asked after your daughter. I trust she is well?”

“She is quite well, thank you. I put her to bed just before you came in.”

With his hand on the knob of the door, Doctor Langtry again paused irresolutely.

“If it’s not too much trouble,” he asked, “I wish you would go up-stairs and make sure she is all right now.”

Wondering at his request and at his manner, Mrs. Ruttan complied, and presently returned to report that the child was sleeping peacefully. Doctor Langtry bowed with an air of obvious relief, bade her good night, and left the house. But next day, after he had transacted his business, and was about to start for Toronto, he said to Mr. Ruttan, who had accompanied him to the train:

“Ruttan, if your little girl should happen to fall ill while away from home, go to her at once, and take Mrs. Ruttan with you, even if you have no reason to feel that the illness is serious.”

Mr. Ruttan laughed.

“Of course we would go to her. You may be sure of that. But why—”

“Ask me no questions,” said Doctor Langtry, “but bear my request in mind if the occasion should arise.”

Within a very short time the child, visiting an aunt in a near-by town, was taken ill, failed rapidly, and died almost before her parents, who had been hastily telegraphed for, could reach her bedside. Doctor Langtry’s warning immediately recurred to them, and they wrote him, beseeching an explanation.

“The reason I was anxious about your little girl,” he then told them, “was because the night I was sitting with Mrs. Ruttan I saw an angel enter the hall, pass up the stairs, and return, carrying the child in its arms.”

But the kind of ghost most frequently seen is that which appears not before but immediately after, or coincidental with, a death. Its purpose is not to give warning of impending tragedy, but to convey the news of a tragedy already consummated. There are thousands of instances of this sort, so well authenticated as to compel credence. Not long ago an interesting case was reported to me by a gentleman living in Burlington, Vermont, the nephew of the lady—a Mrs. Hazard of Newport, Rhode Island—who saw the ghost.

She was ill at the time, and under the care of a trained nurse. One afternoon, her physician having allowed her to sit up for a couple of hours, she was seated in a chair by the side of her bed, when the nurse noticed her open wide her eyes and turn her head as if following the movements of some one. Then she heard her say, in a tone of surprise:

“Hello! Hello! There he goes! There he goes!”

As far as the nurse could see, nobody was in the room with them. But, not wishing to alarm her patient, she merely asked:

“Who is it, Mrs. Hazard?”

“Chet Keech. But he doesn’t see me. And now he’s gone.”

Later in the day the nurse mentioned the incident to Mrs. Hazard’s daughter, asking her if she knew anybody by the name of Chet Keech.

“Why, certainly I do,” was the reply. “He is my cousin, and lives in Danielson, Connecticut.”

That day Chet Keech had died at Danielson, as a letter informed the Hazards next morning.

Consider also this statement[3] by the Reverend C. C. McKechnie, a Scotch clergyman:

“I was about ten years of age at the time, and had for several years been living with my grandfather, who was an elder in the Kirk of Scotland and in good circumstances. He was very much attached to me and often expressed his intention of having me educated for a minister in the Kirk. Suddenly, however, he was seized with an illness which in a couple of days proved mortal.

“At the time of his death, and without my having any apprehension of his end, I happened to be at my father’s house, about a mile off. I was leaning in a listless sort of way against the kitchen table, looking upward at the ceiling and thinking of nothing in particular, when my grandfather’s face appeared to grow out of the ceiling, at first dim and indistinct, but becoming more and more complete until it seemed in every respect as full and perfect as I had ever seen it.

“It looked down upon me, as I thought, with a wonderful expression of tenderness and affection. Then it disappeared, not suddenly but gradually, its features fading and becoming dim and indistinct, until I saw nothing but the bare ceiling. I spoke at the time of what I saw to my mother, but she made no account of it, thinking, probably, it was nothing more than a boyish vagary. But in about fifteen or twenty minutes after seeing the vision, a boy came running breathless to my father’s with the news that my grandfather had just died.”

Even more remarkable was the experience of an Illinois physician, Doctor J. S. W. Entwistle, a resident of one of the Chicago suburbs. Hurrying one morning to catch a train Doctor Entwistle saw approaching him an acquaintance, once well-to-do, who had ruined himself by drink. Glancing at him as they met, the physician noticed that his clothing was torn and his face bruised, and that there was a cut under one eye. He noticed, too, that the other kept looking steadily at him with a “woe-begone, God-forsaken expression.” Had he not been in such a hurry, he would have stopped and spoken to him, but as it was he passed him with a nod.

At the station Doctor Entwistle met his brother-in-law, and said, while the train was drawing in:

“Oh, by the way, I just saw Charlie M., and he was a sight. He must have been on a terrible tear.”

“I wonder what he’s doing in town, anyway?” commented the brother-in-law.

“I suppose he was going to see his wife.”

“Not a bit of it. She won’t have him around.”

Then the subject was dropped, and nothing more was said about it until after they had reached Chicago. Both men, as it happened, had business at the Grand Pacific Hotel and went directly there from the train. They were met by a mutual friend, who had a copy of the Chicago Tribune in his hand.

“Hello,” he greeted them. “Did you know that Charlie M. is dead? Here is a notice in the paper, stating that his body is at the morgue. He was killed in a saloon fight. The paper hasn’t got the name quite right, but from the description it’s Charlie, sure enough.”

“But he can’t be dead,” said Doctor Entwistle, aghast, “for it was only a few minutes ago that I met him on the street in Englewood.”

Nevertheless, it turned out that Charlie M. was dead, and that his body had been taken to the morgue several hours before Doctor Entwistle thought he saw him in the Chicago suburb. Moreover, on inquiry it was learned that the clothes worn by him when he was killed and the marks on his face “tallied in every particular with the description given by the doctor.”

Quite a similar experience occurred to Mr. Harry E. Reeves when he was choirmaster at St. Luke’s Church in San Francisco. On a Friday, about three in the afternoon, Mr. Reeves was in an up-stairs room at his home. He had been working on some music. Wishing to rest for a few minutes, he threw himself on a lounge, but almost immediately an unaccountable impulse led him to get up again and open the door of his room.

Standing at the head of the stairs he saw Edwin Russell, a member of his choir and a well-known San Francisco real estate broker. Mr. Russell had promised to call on him the following day to look over the music for Sunday, and Mr. Reeves’s first thought was that he had come a day earlier than intended. He advanced to greet him, when, to his amazement and horror, the figure on the stairs turned as though to descend, and then faded into nothingness.

“My God!” gasped Reeves, and fell forward.

A door below was hastily opened, and two women and a man ran to his aid. The women were his sister and niece, the man was a Mr. Sprague. They found Mr. Reeves seated on the stairs, his face white and covered with perspiration, his body trembling.

“Uncle Harry!” cried the niece. “What in the world is the matter?”

Mr. Reeves was in such a panic that he could hardly speak, but he managed to reply:

“I have seen a ghost!”

“Whose ghost?” inquired Mr. Sprague, with a skeptical smile.

“The ghost of Edwin Russell.”

Instantly the smile left Mr. Sprague’s face.

“That’s strange,” said he, “that’s very strange. For, as these ladies will tell you, I came to consult with you regarding the music for Mr. Russell’s funeral. He had a stroke of apoplexy this morning, and died a few hours ago.”[4]

Sometimes ghosts of this type present themselves in such a way as to leave no doubt as to the fact and manner of the death of the person seen. As striking a case in point as has come to my knowledge is afforded by the singular experience of an old friend of mine, Edward Jackson, son of the late General Jackson, of Bideford, England.

Born in India, Jackson was from his boyhood of a roving and adventurous disposition. He went in for all forms of athletics, more particularly boxing, cricket, and polo, and before he left India was one of the best known and most popular men in the younger sporting set.

He was still in his early twenties when he came to the United States, drifting West to go on a ranch in Wyoming. Tiring of this, though not of his fondness for adventure, he found work in a Lake Superior mine, where his quickly demonstrated ability to take care of himself in a rough-and-tumble encounter won him the position of superintendent over a gang of men whom it had hitherto been most difficult to superintend.

As superintendent he was privileged to live by himself in a small, two-room cabin, somewhat neater and more comfortable than the ordinary sleeping-shacks. It was in this cabin that he saw the ghost.

“I had returned from the mine one evening, thoroughly tired out,” he said, in telling me the story, “and sat down to rest for a few minutes before an open fire. While I was sitting there, half dozing, I felt a cold current of air, and looked up, thinking that somebody had thrown the door open.

“The door was not open, but standing between me and it was the figure of a young man whom I instantly recognized as a boyhood chum in India. He was dressed in polo costume—we had often played the game together—but for a moment I forgot all about the incongruity between his dress and the rough, outlandish place in which I then saw him. I jumped up, exclaiming:

“ ‘By Jove, Jack, I’m glad to see you. When did you get here? And how—’

“I stopped. He had been standing with his profile toward me. Now he turned, facing me, and I saw that he was ghastly white, with a deep cut over one eye. Without a word he walked past me, gazing at me solemnly, and disappeared in the inner room.

“I don’t think I am a coward, but I confess that for a moment I felt faint. Recovering, and believing that somebody must be playing me a trick, I made a dash after him.

“There was no one there—and no way in which anybody could have got out unknown to me.

“That night I wrote to my father, telling him what had happened. In his reply he informed me that my friend had been killed the same day that I saw him in my cabin on the shore of Lake Superior. He had been playing polo in far-away India, had been thrown from his horse, and had struck on his head, sustaining a wound similar to that I had seen in my vision.”

Of a somewhat different order, and at once recalling to mind the adventure of Miss Morison and Miss Lamont at the Petit Trianon, is an instance reported by an Englishwoman whose name must be withheld, for reasons that will become obvious. With her husband she had recently moved into a fine old mansion surrounded by a splendid park, with a broad stretch of lawn between the trees and the house. The place had for many years been the home of a family of ancient lineage.

One night, shortly after eleven o’clock, when Mrs. M., as I shall call her, had gone to her bedroom, she thought she heard a moaning sound, and some one sobbing as though in great distress. Mr. M. was away from home, the servants slept in another part of the house, and she was quite alone except for a friend who had come to keep her company during her husband’s absence, and to whom she had said good night a few minutes before. But being a courageous woman, she resolved to make an investigation and soon located the sound as coming from outdoors. Tiptoeing over to a window on the staircase landing, she raised the blind and cautiously peered out.

Below, on the lawn, in the pale glow of the moon, she saw an amazing scene. A middle-aged man, stern of face and wearing a general’s uniform, was standing menacingly over a young girl, who, with hands clasped in anguish, was on her knees before him. At the sight of his hard, unrelenting expression, Mrs. M.’s one thought was not of fear for herself but pity for the unfortunate girl.

“So much did I feel for her,” she said, in narrating the affair, “that without a moment’s hesitation I ran down the staircase to the door opening upon the lawn to beg her to come in and tell me her sorrow.”

When she reached the door, the figures of the soldier and the girl were still plainly visible on the lawn, and in precisely the same attitude. But at the sound of her voice they disappeared.

“They did not vanish instantly,” Mrs. M. explained, “but more like a dissolving view—that is, gradually. And I did not leave the door until they had gone.”

Months afterwards, when calling with her husband at a neighboring house, she noticed on the wall the portrait of a distinguished-looking man in a military uniform. At once she recognized it.

“That,” she told her husband, in an undertone, “is a picture of the officer I saw on the lawn.”

Aloud she asked: “Whose portrait is that?”

“Why,” replied her host, “it is a portrait of my uncle, General Sir X. Y. He was born and died in the house you now occupy. But why do you ask?”

When she had told the story, her host commented:

“What you say is most singular. For it is an unhappy fact that Sir X. Y.’s youngest daughter, a beautiful girl, brought disgrace upon the family, was disowned and driven from home by her father, and died broken-hearted.”[5]

Not all ghosts, it is pleasant to know, bring notification of impending or already consummated tragedy. Many seem to exist solely for the purpose of giving a warning of trouble which may be averted by taking proper precautions, and sometimes they are a direct means of preventing disaster. Thus, a guest at a Back Bay hotel in Boston was hurrying along a dimly lighted corridor to catch an elevator she thought she saw waiting for her, when unexpectedly the form of a man appeared at the entrance to the elevator. She was almost upon him, and stopped short in order to avoid a collision. At once he disappeared, and she then saw that although the door in the elevator shaft was wide open, the car was at the bottom of the shaft, into which she certainly would have fallen had not the phantasmal figure checked her onward rush.

Or take this instance, reported by Lady Eardley:

“One day I went to my bathroom, locked the door, undressed, and was just about to get into the bath, when I heard a voice say:

“ ‘Unlock the door!’

“I was startled and looked around, but of course no one was there. I had stepped into the bath when I heard the voice twice more, saying:

“ ‘Unlock the door!’

“On this I jumped out and did unlock the door, and then stepped into the bath again. As I got in I fainted away and fell down flat in the water. Fortunately, as I fell, I was just able to catch at a bell handle, which was attached to the wall above the tub. My pull brought the maid, who found me, she said, lying with my head under water. She picked me up and carried me out. If the door had been locked I would certainly have been drowned.”

Still more impressive is an experience in the life of an Englishwoman named Mrs. Jean Gwynne Bettany. Her statement is corroborated by her father and mother.[6]

“On one occasion,” she says, “I was walking in a country lane. I was reading geometry as I walked along, a subject little likely to produce fancies or morbid phenomena of any kind, when, in a moment, I saw a bedroom in my house known as the ‘White Room,’ and upon the floor lay my mother, to all appearance dead. The vision must have remained some minutes, during which time my real surroundings appeared to pale and die out; but as the vision faded, actual surroundings came back, at first dimly, and then clearly.

“I could not doubt that what I had seen was real, so, instead of going home, I went at once to the house of our medical man, and he immediately set out with me, on the way putting questions I could not answer, as my mother was to all appearance well when I left home.

“I led the doctor straight to the ‘White Room,’ where we found my mother actually lying as in my vision. This was true even to minute details. She had been seized suddenly by an attack at the heart, and would soon have breathed her last but for the doctor’s timely advent.”

Mrs. Bettany’s father, Mr. S. G. Gwynne, adds:

“I distinctly remember being surprised by seeing my daughter, in company with the family doctor, outside the door of my residence; and I asked: ‘Who is ill?’ She replied: ‘Mamma.’ She led the way at once to the ‘White Room,’ where we found my wife lying in a swoon on the floor. It was when I asked when she had been taken ill that I found it must have been after my daughter had left the house. None of the servants in the house knew anything of the sudden illness, which our doctor assured me would have been fatal had he not arrived when he did.”

In this last case, it should be noted the ghost seen was an apparition not of a dead person, but of a living one. This is most important, from the point of view of gaining insight into the nature and characteristics of ghosts.

The investigators who, a matter of twenty-five or thirty years ago, began for the first time to inquire into the subject in a scientific way, early made the interesting discovery that phantasms of the living are seen quite as frequently as phantasms of the dead. Besides which, it was found that ghosts could be produced experimentally—that by a mere act of willing, one person could make another, sometimes miles distant, see a ghost. Many successful experiments of the kind, supported by ample corroborative evidence, are now on record. For example:

Mr. B. F. Sinclair, at the time a resident of Lakewood, New Jersey, had occasion to go to New York to be absent several days. His wife was not feeling well when he left home, and he was greatly worried about her.

“That night,” to continue the narrative[7] in his own words, “before I went to bed, I thought I would try to find out, if possible, her condition. I had undressed, and was sitting on the edge of the bed, when I covered my face with my hands and willed myself in Lakewood at home, to see if I could see her. After a little, I seemed to be standing in her room before the bed, and saw her lying there, looking much better. I felt satisfied she was better, and so spent the week more comfortably regarding her condition.

“On Saturday I went home. When she saw me, she remarked:

“ ‘I thought something had surely happened to you. I saw you standing in front of the bed the night you left, as plain as could be, and I have been worrying about you ever since.’

“After explaining my effort to find out her condition, everything became clear to her. She had seen me when I was trying to see her. I thought at the time I was going to see her and make her see me.”

In at least one instance another experimenter, a German savant named Wesermann, performed the seemingly impossible feat of creating, by a simple act of volition, a ghost not of himself but of a person who was dead.

Herr Wesermann had been greatly troubled by the conduct of a friend, a young officer in the German army, and in the hope of reforming him, “willed” one evening that at eleven o’clock that night he should see in a dream an apparition of a lady in whom he had once been greatly interested, but who had been dead five years.

It chanced that at eleven o’clock, instead of being in bed and asleep, Herr Wesermann’s friend was chatting with a brother officer. Nevertheless, the apparition came to him at the hour appointed, and was seen, not only by him, but by his companion also.

The door of his chamber seemed to open, and the ghost of his dead sweetheart walked in, “dressed in white, with black kerchief and bared head.” Both officers started to their feet, and watched with bulging eyes while the ghost bowed gravely to them, turned, and without a word disappeared.

They followed instantly, rushing into the corridor, but saw only the sentry, who solemnly assured them that nobody but themselves had entered or left the room.[8]

Facts like these naturally raised in the minds of many of the investigators a belief that quite possibly ghosts could be explained without resorting to the alternative of dogmatically denying their reality or regarding them as supernatural beings. This belief was strengthened by other facts brought to light in the course of experiments to determine the actuality of telepathy, or thought transference as it used to be called.

It was discovered that, under certain favoring conditions, thoughts could indeed be transmitted from mind to mind without passing through the ordinary known channels of communication; and furthermore that thoughts thus transmitted were often apprehended, not as mere ideas, but in the form of auditory or visual hallucinations.

Thus, if it were a question of “telepathing” the idea of a certain playing card, say the three of diamonds, the recipient, instead of simply getting the thought, “three of diamonds,” might hear an hallucinatory voice saying to him, “three of diamonds,” or might see three diamond-shaped objects floating before his eyes, the “ghosts” of three diamonds, so to speak.

Of even greater significance was the discovery that it frequently happened also that instead of getting the message which the experimenter had consciously attempted to send, the recipient would get other ideas merely latent in the experimenter’s mind—ideas connected with his environment, something he had been doing, etc. Or the recipient might get the right message several hours after the experiment had been made—receiving it, for example, in a dream.

The obvious conclusion was that telepathy must be a function not of a person’s ordinary consciousness, but of what psychologists call the subconsciousness, thus accounting for the difficulty of invariably obtaining satisfactory results in telepathic experiments.

In the light of these discoveries, then, the belief has been gaining ground that ghosts—real ghosts—are at most nothing but mental images impressed upon one mind by another through the subtle power of telepathy, and apprehended in the form of hallucinations of the various senses, just as any ordinary telepathic message may be apprehended.

A person is stricken with a mortal illness, is fatally injured, or is passing through some other great crisis likely to terminate in death. Consciously or subconsciously, he thinks of loved ones far away, and is seized with a longing to get into touch with them once more, if only to notify them of the catastrophe threatening him.

Across the intervening space, by what mechanism we as yet do not know, his thought wings its way to them, finds lodgment in their subconsciousness, and thence, when favoring conditions arise—as in some moment of mental relaxation—is projected into their consciousness before, at the time of, or after the sender’s death, and is seen, or heard, it may be, as a Phantom Drummer, a Knocking Ghost, or the phantasmal image of the sender himself.

If, however, conditions are such as to prevent the message from emerging from the recipient’s subconsciousness into his field of conscious vision, it may, on occasion, as telepathic experiments have proved, be retransmitted to a third party, and by him be apprehended; as, for example, the Drummer of Cortachy, in the two instances cited above, was heard not by members of the Ogilvy family, but by comparative strangers.

More than this, evidence has been accumulating to make it certain that in most cases not even telepathy is involved in the creation of ghosts, but that they are merely products of the seer’s own subconsciousness. This was first clearly indicated by the results of an interesting “census of hallucinations,” originated some years ago at the International Congress of Psychology, and simultaneously carried on—principally by members of the Society for Psychical Research—in the United States, England, France, Germany, and other countries. To thousands of persons the question was put:

“Have you ever, when believing yourself to be completely awake, had a vivid impression of seeing or being touched by a living being or inanimate object, or of hearing a voice, which impression, so far as you could discover, was not due to any external physical cause?”

Of the 27,339 replies received to this question[9] no fewer than 3,266 were in the affirmative. Many of those replying narrated true “ghost stories” similar to the ones given above; many testified to apparitions not of dead persons but of living friends; and in addition to this, the replies of many others brought out the interesting fact that there often were “ghosts” of inanimate objects—of hats and chairs and tables as well as of human beings.

One respondent, Mrs. Savile Lumley, testified that, in broad daylight and while taking a calisthenic lesson, she and another young woman “distinctly saw a chair over which we felt we must fall, and called out to each other to avoid it. But no chair was there.”

The Reverend G. Lyon Turner, professor of philosophy at the Lancashire Independent College, Manchester, England, woke up one morning to find the ceiling of his room adorned with a huge chandelier of some ten arms, and the jets shining brightly through the ground-glass globes at the end of each arm. He knew that when he went to bed no chandelier had been there, and naturally feared that something was the matter with his eyesight.

“I moved my head,” he said, “to see whether the phantom moved, too. But no, it remained fixed; and the objects behind and beyond it became more or less completely visible as I moved, exactly as would have been the case had it been a real chandelier. So I woke my wife, but she saw nothing.”

Even more bizarre was the phantasm that appeared to another Englishman. Here is his own account of it:

“I had just gone to bed, and was—at least, this was my impression at the time—quite awake. The door of my room was ajar, and there was a light in the passage which half-illumined my room. Suddenly I became aware of a series of slight taps on the passage outside. These taps were not sufficiently loud for a human footstep; on the other hand, the volume of their sound was greater than that made by a walking-stick. I fully remember sitting up in bed and beholding two top-boots trot rapidly across the room and vanish into the opposite wall. The illusion was astonishingly vivid, and I can recall the details to this day. I have never had a waking dream since, and have never experienced ambulant top-boots except on this occasion.”

Whence the origin of these odd apparitions? The reply of modern science is that they were nothing more than the weird externalization of ideas latent in the minds of those perceiving them. Indeed, in the case of Mr. Turner there is absolute proof that this was the case, for that gentleman afterwards identified the phantom chandelier with one familiar to him as hanging from the ceiling of the college chapel in which he daily said prayers. Furthermore, there is proof—of which an abundance will be given in subsequent chapters—that often the ideas thus externalized relate to things once seen or heard but long since forgotten; it may be to things seen or heard in a wholly unconscious, or, rather, subconscious, way. And as with ideas of things, so with ideas of persons.

In this connection, as illuminating vividly the problem of ghosts, may well be given an experience narrated to me by Doctor Morton Prince, the eminent Boston psychopathologist, or medical psychologist.

A patient of his came to him one morning in a condition of extreme nervousness, declaring that the previous night she had seen a ghost. “I woke up,” said she, “and saw at the foot of my bed a young woman, who gradually faded away.” She maintained that at no time had she seen anybody resembling the apparition, but in the minute description she gave, Doctor Prince at once recognized a relative of his, with whom he remembered he had been talking in the hall when the patient last visited him. Saying nothing to her he quietly assembled a few photographs, and, before she departed, asked her to look them over.

“Why,” she said, picking one up, “here is my ghost!”

“Yes,” was Doctor Prince’s reply, “and you saw your ghost in this house when you were here only a few days ago. I was talking to her as you came in.”

“But,” objected the patient, “I certainly did not see her, for I noticed somebody was with you, and I purposely turned away as I passed, lest I should seem rude.”

“All the same,” said Doctor Prince, “you saw her without being conscious of it—saw her, as it were, out of the corner of your eye. One fleeting glance would be enough to give you the memory image that you mistook for a ghost.”

Undoubtedly Doctor Prince was right, and undoubtedly this dual law of subconscious perception and memory is enough to account for some of the most impressive ghosts cited in this chapter. Even the strange haunting of the Petit Trianon, as experienced by Miss Morison and Miss Lamont, may be said to find its explanation here.

It is true that both Miss Morison and Miss Lamont profess to have known little about the history of the Petit Trianon previous to their visit to Versailles. But their detailed report of the haunting contains statements showing that, subconsciously at any rate, they must have possessed considerable knowledge of the place. Miss Morison admits that she had, as a girl, great enthusiasm for Marie Antoinette, and had read not a little about her, including an article descriptive of her summer home; while Miss Lamont is a teacher of French history, and accordingly must have had rather more knowledge than the average person regarding the life story of Queen Marie. Besides which, and most significant, there was published, just before they went to Versailles, an illustrated magazine article picturing a historical fête in the gardens of the Petit Trianon, with some account of its history.

It is worth noting, too, that the two ladies were not haunted in exactly the same way, each of them seeing certain people and scenes that were not visible to the other. On the theory of a supernatural manifestation this would be hard to explain, but the difficulty vanishes if we recognize that the subconscious knowledge of the Trianon possessed by each must necessarily have differed.

The problem remains to account for the fact, as distinct from the facts, of the haunting. Why should Miss Morison and Miss Lamont, among all the thousands of visitors to the Petit Trianon, alone have had such an experience? To this, assuredly, there is no answer if one is going to stick to the old-fashioned notion of ghosts and attribute to them objective reality. But the answer is very simple on the modern scientific hypothesis.

Miss Morison and Miss Lamont, the psychologist would say, were haunted for the reason that, being of exceptionally romantic, impressionable temperaments, the ideas associated in their minds with the Petit Trianon, appealed to them with such “suggestive” force as to plunge them for the time being into a state of “psychical dissociation,” during which their subconsciousness obtained complete control over the upper consciousness, and flooded them with its latent memories of all that they had ever read or heard about the place and its historic residents. In other words, they were as two persons “dreaming awake.”