The Book of Dreams and Ghosts

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Lang Andrew. The Book of Dreams and Ghosts

PREFACE TO THE NEW IMPRESSION

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

CHAPTER I

THE DOG FANTI

MARK TWAIN’S STORY

THE PIG IN THE DINING-ROOM

THE MIGNONETTE

THE LOST CHEQUE

THE DUCKS’ EGGS

THE LOST KEY

THE LOST SECURITIES

THE ARREARS OF TEIND

THE TWO CURMAS

THE ASSYRIAN PRIEST

THE KNOT IN THE SHUTTER

CHAPTER II

QUEEN MARY’S JEWELS

THE DEATHBED

DREAM OF MR. PERCEVAL’S MURDER

THE RATTLESNAKE

THE RED LAMP

THE SCAR IN THE MOUSTACHE

THE CORAL SPRIGS

THE SATIN SLIPPERS

THE DEAD SHOPMAN

NOTE

CHAPTER III

STORY OF THE DIPLOMATIST 28

UNDER THE LAMP

THE COW WITH THE BELL

THE DEATHBED OF LOUIS XIV

CHAPTER IV

THE OLD FAMILY COACH

RIDING HOME FROM MESS

THE BRIGHT SCAR

THE VISION AND THE PORTRAIT

THE RESTRAINING HAND

THE BENEDICTINE’S VOICES

THE MAN AT THE LIFT

CHAPTER V

THE WRAITH OF THE CZARINA

AN “ASTRAL BODY”

IN TAVISTOCK PLACE 56

THE WYNYARD WRAITH 58

LORD BROUGHAM’S STORY

THE DYING MOTHER 59

THE VISION OF THE BRIDE

CHAPTER VI

APPEARANCES OF THE DEAD

THE DAEMON OF SPRAITON IN DEVON 61 ANNO 1682

SIR GEORGE VILLIERS’ GHOST

CAVALIER VERSION 63

WYNDHAM’S LETTER

LORD LYTTELTON’S GHOST

CHAPTER VII. More Ghosts With A Purpose

THE SLAYING OF SERGEANT DAVIES

CONCERNING THE MURDER OF SERGEANT DAVIES

THE GARDENER’S GHOST

THE DOG O’ MAUSE

PETER’S GHOST

CHAPTER VIII

TICONDEROGA

THE BERESFORD GHOST

HALF-PAST ONE O’CLOCK

“PUT OUT THE LIGHT!”

CHAPTER IX

THE CREAKING STAIR

THE GROCER’S COUGH

MY GILLIE’S FATHER’S STORY

THE DREAM THAT KNOCKED AT THE DOOR

THE GIRL IN PINK

THE DOG IN THE HAUNTED ROOM

THE LADY IN BLACK

THE DANCING DEVIL

CHAPTER X. Modern Hauntings

THE WESLEY GHOST

LORD ST. VINCENT’S GHOST STORY

CHAPTER XI

MORE HAUNTED HOUSES

HAUNTED MRS. CHANG

THE GREAT AMHERST MYSTERY

DONALD BAN AND THE BOCAN 130

THE HYMN OF DONALD BAN

THE DEVIL OF HJALTA-STAD 131

THE GHOST AT GARPSDAL

CHAPTER XII. The Story of Glam. The Foul Fords

THE STORY OF GLAM

‘THE FOUL FORDS’ OR THE LONGFORMACUS FARRIER

CHAPTER XIII. The Marvels at Fródá

THE MARVELS AT FRÓDÁ 135

CHAPTER XIV

HANDS ALL ROUND

THE COLD HAND

THE BLACK DOG AND THE THUMBLESS HAND

THE GHOST THAT BIT

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The chief purpose of this book is, if fortune helps, to entertain people interested in the kind of narratives here collected. For the sake of orderly arrangement, the stories are classed in different grades, as they advance from the normal and familiar to the undeniably startling. At the same time an account of the current theories of Apparitions is offered, in language as free from technicalities as possible. According to modern opinion every “ghost” is a “hallucination,” a false perception, the perception of something which is not present.

It has not been thought necessary to discuss the psychological and physiological processes involved in perception, real or false. Every “hallucination” is a perception, “as good and true a sensation as if there were a real object there. The object happens not to be there, that is all.” 1 We are not here concerned with the visions of insanity, delirium, drugs, drink, remorse, or anxiety, but with “sporadic cases of hallucination, visiting people only once in a lifetime, which seems to be by far the most frequent type”. “These,” says Mr. James, “are on any theory hard to understand in detail. They are often extraordinarily complete; and the fact that many of them are reported as veridical, that is, as coinciding with real events, such as accidents, deaths, etc., of the persons seen, is an additional complication of the phenomenon.” 2 A ghost, if seen, is undeniably so far a “hallucination” that it gives the impression of the presence of a real person, in flesh, blood, and usually clothes. No such person in flesh, blood, and clothes, is actually there. So far, at least, every ghost is a hallucination, “that” in the language of Captain Cuttle, “you may lay to,” without offending science, religion, or common-sense. And that, in brief, is the modern doctrine of ghosts.

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“Of a surety, when we were at Milan, we heard tell of a certain person of whom was demanded payment of a debt, with production of his deceased father’s acknowledgment, which debt, unknown to the son, the father had paid, whereupon the man began to be very sorrowful, and to marvel that his father while dying did not tell him what he owed when he also made his will. Then in this exceeding anxiousness of his, his said father appeared to him in a dream, and made known to him where was the counter acknowledgment by which that acknowledgment was cancelled. Which when the young man had found and showed, he not only rebutted the wrongful claim of a false debt, but also got back his father’s note of hand, which the father had not got back when the money was paid.

“Here then the soul of a man is supposed to have had care for his son, and to have come to him in his sleep, that, teaching him what he did not know, he might relieve him of a great trouble. But about the very same time as we heard this, it chanced at Carthage that the rhetorician Eulogius, who had been my disciple in that art, being (as he himself, after our return to Africa, told us the story) in course of lecturing to his disciples on Cicero’s rhetorical books, as he looked over the portion of reading which he was to deliver on the following day, fell upon a certain passage, and not being able to understand it, was scarce able to sleep for the trouble of his mind: in which night, as he dreamed, I expounded to him that which he did not understand; nay, not I, but my likeness, while I was unconscious of the thing and far away beyond sea, it might be doing, or it might be dreaming, some other thing, and not in the least caring for his cares. In what way these things come about I know not; but in what way soever they come, why do we not believe it comes in the same way for a person in a dream to see a dead man, as it comes that he sees a living man? both, no doubt, neither knowing nor caring who dreams of their images, or where or when.

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