Night-Side of Nature; Or, Ghosts and Ghost-Seers — Chapter 14 - Spectral Lights, and Apparitions Attached to Certain Families (Part 2)

I confess I find much less difficulty in conceiving the existence of such facts as those above described, than those of another class, of which we meet with occasional instances.

For example, a gentleman of fortune and station, in Ireland, was one day walking along the road, when he met a very old man, apparently a peasant, though well-dressed, and looking as if he had on his Sunday habiliments.

His great age attracted the gentleman’s attention the more, that he could not help wondering at the alertness of his movements, and the ease with which he was ascending the hill.

He consequently accosted him, inquiring his name and residence; and was answered that his name was Kirkpatrick, and that he lived at a cottage, which he pointed out.

Whereupon the gentleman expressed his surprise that he should be unknown to him, since he fancied he had been acquainted with every man on his estate.

“It is odd you have never seen me before,” returned the old man, “for I walk here every day.

” “How old are you?

” asked the gentleman.

“I am one hundred and five,” answered the other; “and have been here all my life.

” After a few more words, they parted; and the gentleman, proceeding toward some laborers in a neighboring field, inquired if they knew an old man of the name of Kirkpatrick.

They did not; but on addressing the question to some older tenants, they said, “Oh, yes;” they had known him, and had been at his funeral; he had lived at the cottage on the hill, but had been dead twenty years.

“How old was he when he died?

” inquired the gentleman, much amazed.

“He was eighty-five,” said they: so that the old man gave the age that he would have reached had he survived to the period of this rencontre.

This curious incident is furnished by the gentleman himself and all he can say is, that it certainly occurred, and that he is quite unable to explain it.

He was in perfect health at the time, and had never heard of this man in his life, who had been dead several years before the estate came into his possession.

The following is another curious story.

The original will be found in the register of the church named, from which it has been copied for my use:— EXTRACT FROM THE REGISTER IN BRISLEY CHURCH, NORFOLK.

“DECEMBER 12, 1706. —I, Robert Withers, M. A.

, vicar of Gately, do insert here a story which I had from undoubted hands; for I have all the moral certainty of the truth of it possible:— “Mr. Grose went to see Mr. Shaw on the 2d of August last.

As they sat talking in the evening, says Mr. Shaw: ‘On the 21st of the last month, as I was smoking a pipe, and reading in my study, between eleven and twelve at night, in comes Mr. Naylor (formerly fellow of St. John’s college, but had been dead full four years).

When I saw him, I was not much affrighted, and I asked him to sit down, which accordingly he did for about two hours, and we talked together.

I asked him how it fared with him.

He said, “Very well.

”—“Were any of our old acquaintances with him?

”—“No!

” (at which I was much alarmed), “but Mr. Orchard will be with me soon, and yourself not long after.

” As he was going away, I asked him if he would not stay a little longer, but he refused.

I asked him if he would call again.

“No;” he had but three days’ leave of absence, and he had other business.

’ “N. B.

—Mr. Orchard died soon after.

Mr. Shaw is now dead: he was formerly fellow of St. John’s college—an ingenious, good man.

I knew him there; but at his death he had a college-living in Oxfordshire, and here he saw the apparition.

” An extraordinary circumstance occurred some years ago, in which a very pious and very eminent Scotch minister, Ebenezer Brown of Inverkeithing, was concerned.

A person of ill character in the neighborhood having died, the family very shortly afterward came to him to complain of some exceedingly unpleasant circumstances connected with the room in which the dissolution had taken place, which rendered it uninhabitable, and requesting his assistance.

All that is known by his family of what followed, is that he went and entered the room alone; came out again, in a state of considerable excitement and in a great perspiration; took off his coat and re-entered the room; a great noise and I believe voices were then heard by the family, who remained the whole time at the door;

when he came out finally, it was evident that something very extraordinary had taken place; what it was, he said, he could never disclose; but that perhaps after his death some paper might be found upon the subject.

None, however, as far as I can learn, has been discovered.

A circumstance of a very singular nature is asserted to have occurred, not very many years back, in regard to a professor in the college of A——, who had seduced a girl and married another woman.

The girl became troublesome to him; and being found murdered, after having been last seen in his company, he was suspected of being some way concerned in the crime.

But the strange thing is, that, from that period, he retired every evening at a particular hour to a certain room, where he stayed a great part of the night, and where it was declared that _her_ voice was distinctly heard in conversation with him: a strange, wild story, which I give as I have it, without pretending to any explanation of the belief that seems to have prevailed, that he was obliged to keep this fearful tryst.

Visitations of this description—which seem to indicate that the deceased person is still, in some way incomprehensible to us, an inhabitant of the earth—are more perplexing than any of the stories I meet with.

In the time of Frederick II.

of Prussia, the cook of a catholic priest residing at a village named Quarrey, died, and he took another in her place; but the poor woman had no peace or rest from the interference of her predecessor, insomuch that she resigned her situation, and the minister might almost have done without any servant at all.

The fires were lighted, and the rooms swept and arranged, and all the needful services performed, by unseen hands.

Numbers of people went to witness the phenomena, till at length the story reached the ears of the king, who sent a captain and a lieutenant of his guard to investigate the affair.

As they approached the house, they found themselves preceded by a march, though they could see no musicians; and when they entered the parlor and witnessed what was going on, the captain exclaimed: “If that doesn’t beat the devil!

” upon which he received a smart slap on the face, from the invisible hand that was arranging the furniture.

In consequence of this affair, the house was pulled down, by the king’s orders, and another residence built for the minister at some distance from the spot.

Now, to impose on Frederick II.

would have been no slight matter, as regarded the probable consequences; and the officers of his guard would certainly not have been disposed to make the experiment; and it is not likely that the king would have ordered the house to be pulled down without being thoroughly satisfied of the truth of the story.

One of the most remarkable stories of this class I know—excepting indeed the famous one of the Grecian bride—is that which is said to have happened at Crossen, in Silesia, in the year 1659, in the reign of the Princess Elizabeth Charlotte.

In the spring of that year, an apothecary’s man, called Christopher Monig—a native of Serbest, in Anhalt—died, and was buried with the usual ceremonies of the Lutheran church.

But, to the amazement of everybody, a few days afterward, he, at least what seemed to be himself, appeared in the shop, where he would sit himself down, and sometimes walk, and take from the shelves boxes, pots, and glasses, and set them again in other places; sometimes try and examine the goodness of the medicines, weigh them with the scales, pound the drugs with a mighty noise—nay, serve the people that came with bills to the shop, take their money and lay it up in the counter: in a word, do all things that a journeyman in such cases used to do.

He looked very ghostly upon his former companions, who were afraid to say anything to him, and his master being sick at that time, he was very troublesome to him.

At last he took a cloak that hung in the shop, put it on and walked abroad, but minding nobody in the streets; he entered into some of the citizen’s houses, especially such as he had formerly known, yet spoke to no one but to a maid-servant, whom he met with hard by the church-yard, whom he desired to go home and dig in a lower chamber of her master’s house, where she would find an inestimable treasure.

But the girl, amazed at the sight of him, swooned away;

whereupon he lifted her up, but left a mark upon her, in so doing, that was long visible.

She fell sick in consequence of the fright, and having told what Monig had said to her, they dug up the place indicated, but found nothing but a decayed pot with a hemarites or bloodstone in it.

The affair making a great noise, the reigning princess caused the man’s body to be taken up, which being done, it was found in a state of putrefaction, and was reinterred.

The apothecary was then recommended to remove everything belonging to Monig—his linen, clothes, books, &c. —after which the apparition left the house and was seen no more.

The fact of the man’s reappearance in this manner was considered to be so perfectly established at the time, that there was actually a public disputation on the subject in the academy of Leipsic.

With regard to the importance the apparition attached to the bloodstone, we do not know but that there may be truth in the persuasion that this gem is possessed of some occult properties of much more value than its beauty.

The story of the Grecian bride is still more wonderful, and yet it comes to us so surprisingly well authenticated, inasmuch as the details were forwarded by the prefect of the city in which the thing occurred, to the proconsul of his province, and by the latter were laid before the emperor Hadrian—and as it was not the custom to mystify Roman emperors—we are constrained to believe that what the prefect and proconsul communicated to him, they had good reason for believing themselves.

It appears that a gentleman, called Demostrates, and Charito, his wife, had a daughter called Philinnion, who died; and that about six months afterward, a youth named Machates, who had come to visit them, was surprised on retiring to the apartments destined to strangers, by receiving the visits of a young maiden who eats and drinks and exchanges gifts with him.

Some accident having taken the nurse that way, she, amazed by the sight, summons her master and mistress to behold their daughter, who is there sitting with the guest.

Of course, they do not believe her; but at length, wearied by her importunities, the mother follows her to the guest’s chamber; but the young people are now asleep, and the door closed; but looking through the keyhole, she perceives what she believes to be her daughter.

Still unable to credit her senses, she resolves to wait till morning before disturbing them; but when she comes again the young lady had departed;

while Machates, on being interrogated, confesses that Philinnion had been with him, but that she had admitted to him that it was unknown to her parents.

Upon this, the amazement and agitation of the mother were naturally very great; especially when Machates showed her a ring which the girl had given him, and a bodice which she had left behind her; and his amazement was no less, when he heard the story they had to tell.

He, however, promised that if she returned the next night, he would let them see her; for he found it impossible to believe that his bride was their dead daughter.

He suspected, on the contrary, that some thieves had stripped her body of the clothes and ornaments in which she had been buried, and that the girl who came to his room had bought them.

When, therefore, she arrived, his servant having had orders to summon the father and mother, they came; and perceiving that it was really their daughter, they fell to embracing her, with tears.

But she reproached them for the intrusion, declaring that she had been permitted to spend three days with this stranger, in the house of her birth; but that now she must go to the appointed place; and immediately fell down dead, and the dead body lay there visible to all.

The news of this strange event soon spread abroad, the house was surrounded by crowds of people, and the prefect was obliged to take measures to avoid a tumult.

On the following morning, at an early hour, the inhabitants assembled in the theatre, and thence they proceeded to the vault, in order to ascertain if the body of Philinnion was where it had been deposited six months before.

It was not; but on the bier there lay the ring and cap which Machates had presented to her the first night she visited him; showing that she had returned there in the interim.

They then proceeded to the house of Democrates, where they saw the body, which it was decreed must now be buried without the bounds of the city.

Numerous religious ceremonies and sacrifices followed, and the unfortunate Machates, seized with horror, put an end to his own life.

The following very singular circumstance occurred in this country toward the latter end of the last century, and excited, at the time, considerable attention; the more so, as it was asserted by everybody acquainted with the people and the locality, that the removal of the body was impossible by any recognised means; besides, that no one would have had the hardihood to attempt such a feat:— “Mr. William Craighead, author of a popular system of arithmetic, was parish-schoolmaster of Monifieth, situate upon the estuary of the Tay, about six miles east from Dundee.

It would appear that Mr. Craighead was then a young man, fond of a frolic, without being very scrupulous about the means, or calculating the consequences.

There being a lykewake in the neighborhood, according to the custom of the times, attended by a number of his acquaintance, Craighead procured a confederate, with whom he concerted a plan to draw the watchers from the house, or at least from the room where the corpse lay.

Having succeeded in this, he dexterously removed the dead body to an outer house, while his companion occupied the place of the corpse in the bed where it had lain.

It was agreed upon between the confederates, that when the company were reassembled Craighead was to join them, and, at a concerted signal the impostor was to rise, shrouded like the dead man, while the two were to enjoy the terror and alarm of their companions.

Mr. Craighead came in, and, after being some time seated, the signal was made, but met no attention; he was rather surprised; it was repeated, and still neglected.

Mr. Craighead, in his turn, now became alarmed; for he conceived it impossible that his companion could have fallen asleep in that situation; his uneasiness became insupportable; he went to the bed, and found his friend lifeless!

Mr. Craighead’s feelings, as may well be imagined, now entirely overpowered him, and the dreadful fact was disclosed.

Their agitation was extreme, and it was far from being alleviated when every attempt to restore animation to the thoughtless young man proved abortive.

As soon as their confusion would permit, an inquiry was made after the original corpse, and Mr. Craighead and another went to fetch it in, but it was not to be found.

The alarm and consternation of the company were now redoubled; for some time a few suspected that some hardy fellow among them had been attempting a Rowland for an Oliver, but when every knowledge of it was most solemnly denied by all present, their situation can be more easily imagined than described; that of Mr. Craighead was little short of distraction.

Daylight came without relieving their agitation; no trace of the corpse could be discovered, and Mr. Craighead was accused as the _primum mobile_ of all that had happened: he was incapable of sleeping, and wandered several days and nights in search of the body, which was at last discovered in the parish of Tealing, deposited in a field, about six miles distant from the place whence it was removed.

“It is related that this extraordinary affair had a strong and lasting effect upon Mr. Craighead’s mind and conduct; that he immediately became serious and thoughtful, and ever after conducted himself with great prudence and sobriety.

” Among what are called _superstitions_, there are a great many curious ones attached to certain families; and from some members of these families I have been assured that experience has rendered it impossible for them to forbear attaching importance to these persuasions.

A very remarkable circumstance occurred lately in this part of the world, the facts of which I had an opportunity of being well acquainted with.

One evening, somewhere about Christmas, of the year 1844, a letter was sent for my perusal, which had been just received from a member of a distinguished family, in Perthshire.

The friend who sent it me, an eminent literary man, said, “Read the enclosed; and we shall now have an opportunity of observing if any event follows the prognostics.

” The information contained in the letter was to the following effect:— Miss D——, a relative of the present Lady C——, who had been staying some time with the earl and countess, at their seat near Dundee, was invited to spend a few days at C—— castle, with the earl and countess of A——.

She went: and while she was dressing for dinner, the first evening of her arrival, she heard a strain of music under her window, which finally resolved itself into a well-defined sound of a drum.

When her maid came up stairs, she made some inquiries about the drummer that was playing near the house; but the maid knew nothing on the subject.

For the moment, the circumstance passed from Miss D——’s mind; but recurring to her again during the dinner, she said, addressing Lord A——, “My lord, who is your drummer?

”—upon which his lordship turned pale, Lady A—— looked distressed, and several of the company (who all heard the question) embarrassed; while the lady, perceiving that she had made some unpleasant allusion, although she knew not to what their feelings referred, forbore further inquiry till she reached the drawing-room, when, having mentioned the circumstance again to a member of the family, she was answered, “What!

have you never heard of the drummer-boy?

”—“No,” replied Miss D——; “who in the world is he?

”—“Why,” replied the other, “he is a person who goes about the house playing his drum whenever there is a death impending in the family.

The last time he was heard was shortly before the death of the last countess (the earl’s former wife), and that is why Lord A—— became so pale when you mentioned it.

‘The drummer’ is a very unpleasant subject in this family, I assure you!

” Miss D—— was naturally much concerned, and, indeed, not a little frightened at this explanation, and her alarm being augmented by hearing the sounds on the following day, she took her departure from C—— castle and returned to Lord C——’s, stopping on her way to call on some friends, where she related this strange circumstance to the family, through whom the information reached me.

This affair was very generally known in the north, and we awaited the event with interest.

The melancholy death of the countess about five or six months afterward, at Brighton, sadly verified the prognostic.

I have heard that a paper was found in her desk after her death, declaring her conviction that the drum was for her; and it has been suggested that probably the thing preyed upon her mind and caused the catastrophe: but in the first place, from the mode of her death, that does not appear to be the case; in the second, even if it were, the fact of the verification of the prognostic remains unaffected; besides which, those who insist upon taking refuge in this hypothesis must admit that, before people living in the world like Lord and Lady A——, could attach so much importance to the prognostic as to entail such fatal effects, they must have had very good reason for believing in it.

The legend connected with “the drummer” is, that either himself, or some officer whose emissary he was, had become an object of jealousy to a former Lord A——, and that he was put to death by being thrust into his own drum and flung from the window of the tower in which Miss D——’s room was situated.

It is said that he threatened to haunt them if they took his life; and he seems to have been as good as his word, having been heard several times in the memory of persons yet living.

There is a curious legend attached to the family of G——, of R——, to the effect that, when a lady is confined in that house, a little old woman enters the room when the nurse is absent, and strokes down the bed-clothes; after which the patient, according to the technical phrase, “never does any good,” and dies.

Whether the old lady has paid her visits or not I do not know, but it is remarkable that the results attending several late confinements there have been fatal.

There was a legend, in a certain family, that a single swan was seen on a particular lake before a death.

A member of this family told me that on one occasion, the father, being a widower, was about to enter into a second marriage.

On the wedding-day, his son appeared so exceedingly distressed, that the bridegroom was offended, and, expostulating with him, was told by the young man that his low spirits were caused by his having seen the swan.

He (the son) died that night quite unexpectedly.

Besides Lord Littleton’s dove, there are a great many very curious stories recorded in which birds have been seen in a room when a death was impending; but the most extraordinary prognostic I know is that of “the black dog,” which seems to be attached to some families:— A young lady of the name of P——, not long since was sitting at work, well and cheerful, when she saw, to her great surprise, a large black dog close to her.

As both door and window were closed, she could not understand how he had got in; but when she started up to put him out, she could no longer see him.

Quite puzzled, and thinking it must be some strange illusion, she sat down again and went on with her work, when, presently, he was there again.

Much alarmed, she now ran out and told her mother, who said she must have fancied it, or be ill.

She declared neither was the case; and, to oblige her, the mother agreed to wait outside the door, and if she saw it again, she was to call her.

Miss P—— re-entered the room, and presently there was the dog again; but when she called her mother, he disappeared.

Immediately afterward, the mother was taken ill and died.

Before she expired, she said to her daughter, “Remember the black dog!

” I confess I should have been much disposed to think this a spectral illusion, were it not for the number of corroborative instances; and I have only this morning read in the review of a work called “The Unseen World,” just published, that there is a family in Cornwall who are also warned of an approaching death by the apparition of a black dog: and a very curious example is quoted, in which a lady newly married into the family, and knowing nothing of the tradition, came down from the nursery to request her husband would go up and drive away a black dog that was lying on the child’s bed.

He went up, and found the child dead!

I wonder if this phenomenon is the origin of the French phrase “_bête noir_,” to express an annoyance, or an augury of evil?

Most persons will remember the story of Lady Fanshawe, as related by herself—namely, that while paying a visit to Lady Honor O’Brien, she was awakened the first night she slept there by a voice, and, on drawing back the curtain, she saw a female figure standing in the recess of the window, attired in white, with red hair and a pale and ghastly aspect.

“She looked out of the window,” says Lady Fanshawe, “and cried in a loud voice, such as I never before heard, ‘A horse!

—a horse!

—a horse!

’ and then with a sigh, which rather resembled the wind than the voice of a human being, she disappeared.

Her body appeared to me rather like a thick cloud than a real solid substance.

I was so frightened,” she continues, “that my hair stood on end, and my night-cap fell off.

I

pushed and shook my husband, who had slept all the time, and who was very much surprised to find me in such a fright, and still more so when I told him the cause of it, and showed him the open window.

Neither of us slept any more that night, but he talked to me about it, and told me how much more frequent such apparitions were in that country than in England.

” This was, however, what is called a _banshee_: for in the morning Lady Honor came to them, to say that one of the family had died in the night, expressing a hope that they had not been disturbed: “for,” said she, “whenever any of the O’Briens is on his death-bed, it is usual for a woman to appear at one of the windows every night till he expires; but when I put you into this room, I did not think of it.

” This apparition was connected with some sad tale of seduction and murder.

I could relate many more instances of this kind, but I wish as much as possible to avoid repeating cases already in print; so I will conclude this chapter with the following account of “Pearlin Jean,” whose persevering annoyances, at Allanbank, were so thoroughly believed and established, as to have formed at various times a considerable impediment to letting the place.

I am indebted to Mr. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe for the account of Jean, and the anecdote that follows.

A housekeeper, called Bettie Norrie, that lived many years at Allanbank, declared she and various other people had frequently seen Jean, adding that they were so used to her, as to be no longer alarmed at her noises.

“In my youth,” says Mr. Sharpe, “Pearlin Jean was the most remarkable ghost in Scotland, and my terror when a child.

Our old nurse, Jenny Blackadder, had been a servant at Allanbank, and often heard her rustling in silks up and down stairs, and along the passage.

She never saw her—but her husband did.

“She was a French woman, whom the first baronet of Allanbank (then Mr. Stuart) met with at Paris, during his tour to finish his education as a gentleman.

Some people said she was a nun, in which case she must have been a sister of charity, as she appears not to have been confined to a cloister.

After some time, young Stuart became either faithless to the lady, or was suddenly recalled to Scotland by his parents, and had got into his carriage, at the door of the hotel, when his Dido unexpectedly made her appearance, and stepping on the fore-wheel of the coach to address her lover, he ordered the postillion to drive on; the consequence of which was, that the lady fell, and one of the wheels going over her forehead, killed her!

“In a dusky autumnal evening, when Mr. Stuart drove under the arched gateway of Allanbank, he perceived Pearlin Jean sitting on the top, her head and shoulders covered with blood.

“After this, for many years, the house was haunted: doors shut and opened with great noise at midnight; and the rustling of silks, and pattering of high-heeled shoes, were heard in bed-rooms and passages.

Nurse Jenny said there were seven ministers called together at one time, to _lay_ the spirit; ‘but they did no mickle good, my dear.

’ “The picture of the ghost was hung between those of her lover and his lady, and kept her comparatively quiet; but when taken away, she became worse-natured than ever.

This portrait was in the present Sir J—— G——’s possession.

I am unwilling to record its fate.

“The ghost was designated ‘Pearlin,’ from always wearing a great quantity of that sort of lace.

[4] “Nurse Jenny told me that when Thomas Blackadder was her lover (I remember Thomas very well), they made an assignation to meet one moonlight night in the orchard at Allanbank.

True Thomas, of course, was the first comer; and, seeing a female figure, in a light-colored dress, at some distance, he ran forward with open arms to embrace his Jenny.

Lo, and behold!

as he neared the spot where the figure stood, it vanished; and presently he saw it again, at the very end of the orchard, a considerable way off.

Thomas went home in a fright; but Jenny, who came last, and saw nothing, forgave him, and they were married.

“Many years after this, about the year 1790, two ladies paid a visit at Allanbank—I think the house was then let—and passed a night there.

They had never heard a word about the ghost; but they were disturbed the whole night with something walking backward and forward in their bed-chamber.

This I had from the best authority.

“Sir Robert Stuart was created a baronet in the year 1687. “Lady Stapleton, grandmother of the late Lord le Despencer, told me that the night Lady Susan Fane (Lord Westmoreland’s daughter) died in London, she appeared to her father, then at Merriworth, in Kent.

He was in bed, but had not fallen asleep.

There was a light in the room; she came in, and sat down on a chair at the foot of the bed.

He said to her, ‘Good God, Susan!

how came you here?

What has brought you from town?

’ She made no answer; but rose directly, and went to the door, and looked back toward him very earnestly: then she retired, shutting the door behind her.

The next morning he had notice of her death.

This, Lord Westmoreland himself told to Lady Stapleton, who was by birth a Fane, and his near relation.

” ----- [4] “A species of lace made of thread.

”—JAMIESON.