Читать книгу True Ghost Stories - Hereward Carrington - Страница 7

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Ghosts have been believed in by every nation, at every time and at every stage of the world’s evolution. No matter where we may go, we find them stalking through the pages of history;[1] and even in our own cynical and materialistic age, we not only find “ghosts” still; but the evidence for their existence is stronger than ever! It is nonsense to say that “no sensible person believes in ghosts,” because many thousands of them do. Why do they believe? Would they believe if they had no cause to do so?

The “terror of the dark,” which we all have more or less, from which every child suffers (how intensely!) during its early years—a terror which is, to a certain extent, shared by animals and even insects—does all this signify nothing? Those who have looked into this question thoroughly, believe that there is, in every truth, a terrible reality justifying this instinctive fear; that evil and horrible things lurk about us in the still, weird hours of the night; that there are truly “powers and principalities” with which we often toy, without knowing or realizing the frightful dangers which result from this tampering with the unseen world. Yes; there is a true “tyranny of the dark.” Phenomena and ghostly manifestations take place in darkness which would never occur in light; and which cease when a light is struck. All ghostly phenomena are associated with darkness, and the “wee small hours of the night.”

All this is exemplified in the following interesting narrative, which I may entitle: