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Ghost stories have always been popular. We like to be thrilled, and in certain moods detest the sceptical rationalist who would deprive us of our pleasurable terrors. It is, for some reason very difficult to guess, agreeable to go to bed with a feeling that we may possibly be awakened shortly after midnight—as someone told us that a friend of his was in the same bedroom—by clammy hands upon our faces. Unfortunately, the rationalist has had the better of it in his long struggle with the man who wants to believe. The fine, full-flavoured ghost story with its clanking chains and headless lady has almost passed away even from the pages of Christmas Numbers. But the ghost-lover is not altogether beaten out of the field. He has devised new kinds of ghost story, or rather—I must not assume that he devises anything—has taken to narrating experiences of a new kind. Like a wise man he has summoned allies to his side and no longer faces the blatant sceptic all alone. Psychology came to his aid—if psychology is the proper name for the science studied by those interested in the study of psychical research and spiritualism. Religion has come to his aid, countenancing beliefs which it once heartily anathematized. Even art, very properly and naturally, sometimes lends its aid to make the rationalism of the rationalists incredible.

I once heard, and even attempted to write, the story of a Bohemian Count. I mean a Count who lived in Bohemia, not merely a Count of unconventional manners. Perhaps it would be better to say a Czecho-Slovakian Count, though (how difficult explanations are!) there was no such place as Czecho-Slovakia in his day. To prevent any possible misunderstanding it may be best to say that this Count lived in Prague several hundred years ago in a palace which he built in the Italian Rococo style and furnished exactly as such a palace ought to be furnished, that is to say, in accordance with the best taste of his time. He was not, morally, a very good Count; but he was never bad enough to be condemned to drag ghostly chains about at night. Indeed, he lay quiet in his grave for a very long time. He was, however, a Count of highly developed artistic sensibility, a sincere lover of beautiful things, especially beautiful houses and furniture, one of those rather unfortunate people who suffer pain when they meet with ugliness and bad taste. That was what got him into his post-mortuary troubles. Someone in the middle of the nineteenth century furnished the Count’s beautiful Rococo house in the worst possible taste of an era of ugliness. A few years afterwards somebody else installed central heating with radiators of the usual kind and put in electric light with most expensive fittings. This roused the Count and he took to haunting the house in an unpleasant way. He made noises at night which led people to think that large gilt-framed mirrors were being broken with hammers, that heavy articles of furniture were being thrown downstairs, that radiators were bursting and electric light fittings blowing up. Nothing could be got out of him by automatic writing or any other recognized means of communication except the word “abortions,” and that, though suggestive of horrid crime, was not very helpful.

Then a lady came into possession of the house. She was a lady of excellent taste, and the first thing she did was to set to work to refurnish and redecorate the whole house, using abusive language every day about the chairs and sofas she found in it. She was not very rich, so she had to do the work by degrees—first a room, then a staircase, then another room, and so on. It was noticed almost at once that the Count ceased to haunt the rooms which she refurnished. As her work went on his field of operations narrowed, until at last, when the whole house was refurnished with beautiful things out of the shops of dealers in antiquities, and redecorated according to the very best standards of present-day taste, he went back quietly to his grave, gave up making destructive noises at night, and could not be induced to write, automatically or otherwise. What he meant by his repeated “abortions” became clear to every one with understanding. The word was his description of the Victorian furniture and the later radiators and electric light fittings.

That, I think, is a good ghost story, and quite different from the old-fashioned kind, which has become incredible. Here we have an example of the persistence beyond the grave of that love of beauty which is one of the most elevating passions of the human soul, just the sort of thing which is sure to persist if anything does. We have a man, noble in his artistic perception, if in nothing else, who sacrifices the peace of the life beyond in order to save the palace he had built here on earth from the shame of close association with hideous things. That kind of story is quite easily believable by those who are artistic enough to sympathize with the Count’s love of the Rococo and his hatred of radiators and plate glass.

It adds nothing, I know, to the credibility of the story, but it is a fact that I actually heard, though I did not see, that ghost one night myself.

I suppose that stories which appeal to our knowledge of psychology are equally credible to men of scientific minds. They must be, or eminent scientists would not write whole books about spirits, their deeds, their thoughts, and their hauntings.

But I confess that it is the religious, specifically Christian ghost stories which appeal to me most. I have heard two lately which impressed me. I am not prepared to argue against the sceptic that they are actually true. I do not even say that I believe them myself, for there is a part of my mind—I suppose of every one’s mind—which rises in contemptuous protest against narratives of such happenings. All I can say is that the stories were told me by people who believed them to be true, who were certainly not guilty of attempts to pass off picturesque fiction as facts.

The first of the two stories is concerned with an ancient but small and lonely parish church in a wild part of Northumberland. An old clergyman, for many years pastor of the parish and servant of the Church, resigned his office. A new vicar, a young man of sincere piety, was appointed in his place. This man, like many priests of the English Church to-day, thought it good to go every morning very early into his church, in order to bring his soul into communion with God in preparation for his day’s work in the parish. One morning—I do not know whether it was the first morning he went there or some time later—he was surprised to see a priest at the altar. This priest was habited in the ancient vestments of the Church, but since the use of these has recently been very generally revived in England there was nothing startling in seeing a priest so dressed. This priest was saying Mass, or, to use the more usual English phraseology, was celebrating the Eucharist according to the English use. After saying the Collect he passed to the south side of the altar, as is the custom, and there read the Epistle. So far, supposing that there was a priest there at all, his actions were quite ordinary. Having finished the Epistle he crossed in front of the altar towards the north side, in order, as the watcher supposed, to read the Gospel. But instead of stopping when he reached the usual place he walked on, passed through the north wall of the chancel, and disappeared. There was neither door nor window. The priest—vision, phantom, whatever he was—passed through a solid stone wall.

The young vicar was astonished and puzzled. He went to the church again next day, and again after that at the same hour. Every day he saw, or thought he saw, the same thing happen. After a while he consulted his predecessor, approaching the subject cautiously, as men do when they fear ridicule, not relating exactly what had happened, but hinting at some curious experience. The old man gave him a piece of advice, emphatically:

“Don’t go into the church at that hour. I found it better not to do so.”

For a time the old man would say no more. But the matter could hardly be left there. They talked it out together, and it appeared that the old vicar had in his time seen the same priest celebrating in the same way and always with the same odd break in the service, when he passed through the wall instead of stopping at the usual place to read the Gospel.

Is there any explanation of such a story?

There is this, which was offered by the old vicar and confirmed afterwards by an examination of the masonry of the building. That church was once, centuries ago, much larger than it is to-day. Perhaps the population of the parish diminished for some reason so that there was no need of such a large church. Perhaps the old building fell into decay and there was not money enough to restore the whole of it. At all events, the church was made narrower and shorter. The south wall of the chancel stood where it had always stood. The original north wall was pulled down and another built nearer to the south wall. A priest of the 13th or of the 14th century, while reading the Epistle on the south side of the altar, would have stood exactly where a priest stands to-day, but the spot on which the priest stood five or six hundred years ago to read the Gospel is now outside the church altogether. And to reach it the ghost of a priest of that time would have to pass round, over, under or through the existing wall.

That is no explanation of the presence in the church of a priest who had been dead for centuries. It is a sort of explanation of his curious conduct supposing he were there. Of his being there, or of his appearing to be there, I have no explanation to offer. Imagination strays widely through misty possibilities. Who was that man? What was his story? Did he love his church so well that he wanted to return to it even from Paradise? Was he guilty of some sin so strange and dark that a penalty of restlessness had driven him for all these centuries back from Sheol, that covered, gloomy place into which the Lord Himself descended, to make continually some act of penance, perhaps—how fascinating to guess!—in the very place where once he sinned.

My other story is not about a little church, lonely and half forsaken, but about one of the great English cathedrals. It is a building which is like a thoroughfare, so many are the visitors who throng to it. Hither come pious men and women seeking to lift up their hearts where thousands of hearts have been lifted up, amid the glory of great pillars and arches, of coloured glass, of long vistas, of deep shadows and splendid shafts of light. Hither come students, seeking to win from column and tracery the secrets of the past. Hither also swarm tourists, sightseers, who climb down the steep sides of the chars-à-banc, in which they travel, crowd into the cool aisles, go chattering, whispering, gaping, to view the tombs of martyrs, saints and bishops of other days. Here, day by day, for Mattins and Evensong, the procession of white-robed choristers and priests passes into the choir while the organ shouts to them, and they sing with moving sweetness anthem, psalm, and prayer.

In that procession there walked every day a young priest, a minor member of the cathedral staff. As he walked his eyes strayed to the figures of the worshippers who stood in their places while the procession passed. For the most part these worshippers stood, but here and there one kneeled. One day the priest noticed among those who kneeled a woman whose face, upturned in supplication, bore a look of deep suffering. She was dressed as a nun is, and the priest supposed that she was a member of one of those sisterhoods which are common in the Church of England to-day. When the service was all sung, and while the choir was returning to the robing room, the priest saw that the woman was still there, still kneeling, still with the expression of suffering on her face. Next day she was there again. Every day, morning and evening, she was there, and always her face was upturned and her clasped hands were stretched out in front of her. The priest fell to wondering who she was and what her great trouble was, for every day he saw the same unspeakable trouble on her face, and it was plain that even prayer brought her no comfort or relief.

At last it came to him that he must try to help her. So one afternoon when Evensong was ended, when the boys had run laughing out into the sunshine and the men had followed them across the green outside, this priest turned back into the church and went very quietly to where the woman kneeled.

“Sister,” he said gently, “can I be of any help to you? Is your trouble one in which human sympathy is any use, or can you open your grief to a priest and find relief in his absolution?”

There was no answer. The face, with its intolerable sorrow, was like the face of some deaf or dead person who does not hear. Embarrassed and troubled, the priest repeated his words and said others, speaking with all kindness and very tenderly. Still there was no answer nor sign of hearing. So the priest, baffled and puzzled, did the only thing he could do. He whispered a brief prayer for the suffering woman before him, and then, raising his hand, gave her the blessing Even as he spoke the words, and while his hands still hovered above her head, the woman vanished. Where she had kneeled a moment before there was no one. It was not that she rose from her knees, moved, and went away. Simply, his eyes no longer saw what one instant before they had seen. She was gone, nor from that day on has she been seen again.

Who was she and what was she doing there? There is no answer, only the possibility of imagining some story. A nun, a great church, a human heart, God, love, sin, sorrow, repentance, Christ upon the Cross, an unbearable memory, a long, slow coming of the peace which follows pardon. Here are the materials of a great spiritual romance. But who is to write it? Who is to hear it from the troubled spirit which kneeled there in prayer, which returned from dim, strange regions to a familiar place, driven by a homing instinct into this church of God?

There are my two religious ghost stories, set down very much as they were told to me. It is religion which makes them credible, if they are credible. It is religion which lifts them out of the region of the commonplace, often vulgarly melodramatic tales of haunting which we have learned to treat with ridicule. But do I, or does any other sane man, actually believe them? That is perhaps scarcely a fair question, for it seems to suggest that we must either believe or disbelieve things at all times and in all moods. But there are very few things which any of us believe or disbelieve in that complete and unaltering manner. For the most part we both believe and disbelieve, moving from the one position to the other rapidly and often. Life, to use Bishop Blougram’s apt comparison, is a chessboard with alternate squares of black and white. We can call it white if we like and regard the black squares as intrusive spaces of evil disbelief; or we can call it black with troublesome spots of superstition here and there on it. It is, at all events, an affair of alternating faith and scepticism. Our position seems very largely to be a matter of choice. Which is the nobler, greater man in us—the one who believes, reaching out groping hands to the Unseen, or the one who mocks? We may be either. Perhaps we must be both. Which is better—plain sense in the sunlight or moving ecstasies in shadowy places? We are capable of either. We could make our choice of the better part if only—how unfortunate that there should be an if—we knew the answer to the question: Which is best?