Night-Side of Nature; Or, Ghosts and Ghost-Seers — Chapter 6 - Double-Dreaming and Trance (Part 1)

DOUBLE-DREAMING AND TRANCE.

AMONG the phenomena of the dream-life which we have to consider, that of double-dreaming forms a very curious department.

A somewhat natural introduction to this subject may be found in the cases above-recorded, of Professor Herder and Mr. S——, of Edinburgh, who appear, in their sleep, to have received so lively an impression of those earnest wishes of their dying friends to see them, that they found themselves irresistibly impelled to obey the spiritual summons.

These two cases occurred to men engaged in active daily life, and in normal physical conditions, on which account I particularly refer to them here, although many similar ones might be adduced.

With respect to this subject of double-dreaming, Dr. Ennemoser thinks that it is not so difficult to explain as might appear on a first view, since he considers that there exists an indisputable sympathy between certain organisms, especially where connected by relationship or by affection, which may be sufficient to account for the supervention of simultaneous thoughts, dreams, or presentiments; and I have met with some cases where the magnetiser and his patient have been the subjects of this phenomenon.

With respect to the power asserted to have been frequently exercised by causing or suggesting dreams by an operator at a distance from the sleeper, Dr. E.

considers the two parties to stand in a positive and negative relation to each other; the antagonistic power of the sleeper being = 0, he becomes a perfectly passive recipient of the influence exerted by his positive _half_, if I may use the expression; for, where such a polarity is established, the two beings seem to be almost blended into one; while Dr. Passavent observes, that we can not pronounce what may be the limits of the nervous force, which certainly is not bounded by the termination of its material conductors.

I have yet, myself, met with no instance of dream compelling by a person at a distance; but Dr. Ennemoser says that Agrippa von Nettesheim asserts that this can assuredly be done, and also that the abbot Trithemius and others possessed the power.

In modern times, Wesermann, in Dusseldorf, pretended to the same faculty, and affirms that he had frequently exercised it.

All such phenomena, Dr. Passavent attributes to the interaction of imponderables—or of one universal imponderable under different manifestations—which acts not only within the organism, but beyond it, independently of all material obstacles; just as a sympathy appears between one organ and another, unobstructed by the intervening ones; and he instances the sympathy which exists between the mother and the fœtus, as an example of this sort of double life, and standing as midway between the sympathy between two organs in the same body and that between two separate bodies, each having its own life, and its life also in and for another, as parts of one whole.

The sympathy between a bird and the eggs it sits upon, is of the same kind; many instances having been observed, wherein eggs, taken from one bird and placed under another, have produced a brood feathered like the foster instead of the real parent.

Thus, this vital force may extend dynamically the circle of its influence, till, under favorable circumstances, it may act on other organisms, making their organs its own.

I need scarcely remind my readers of the extraordinary sympathies manifested by the Siamese twins, Chang and Eng.

I never saw them myself;

and, for the benefit of others in the same situation, I quote the following particulars from Dr. Passavent: “They were united by a membrane which extended from the breast-bone to the navel; but, in other respects, were not different from their countrymen in general.

They were exceedingly alike, only that Eng was rather the more robust of the two.

Their pulsations were not always coincident.

They were active and agile, and fond of bodily exercises; their intellects were well developed, and their tones of voice and accent were precisely the same.

As they never conversed together, they had nearly forgotten their native tongue.

If one was addressed, they both answered.

They played some games of skill, but never with each other; as that, they said, would have been like the right hand playing with the left.

They read the same book at the same time, and sang together in unison.

In America they had a fever, which ran precisely a similar course with each.

Their hunger, thirst, sleeping, and waking, were alway coincident, and their tastes and inclinations were identical.

Their movements were so simultaneous, that it was impossible to distinguish with which the impulse had originated;

they appeared to have but one will.

The idea of being separated by an operation was abhorrent to them; and they consider themselves much happier in their duality than are the individuals who look upon them with pity.

” This admirable sympathy, although necessarily in an inferior degree, is generally manifested, more or less, between all persons twin-born.

Dr. Passavent and other authorities mention several instances of this kind, in which, although at some distance from each other, the same malady appeared simultaneously in both, and ran precisely a similar course.

A

very affecting instance of this sort of sympathy was exhibited, not very long ago, by a young lady, twin-born, who was suddenly seized with an unaccountable horror, followed by a strange convulsion, which the doctor, who was hastily called in, said exactly resembled the struggles and sufferings of a person drowning.

In process of time, the news arrived that her twin-brother, then abroad, had been drowned precisely at that period.

It is probably a link of the same kind that is established between the magnetiser and his patient, of which, besides those recorded in various works on the subject, some curious instances have come to my knowledge, such as uncontrollable impulses to go to sleep, or to perform certain actions, in subservience to the will of the distant operator.

Mr. W——

W——, a gentleman well known in the north of England, related to me that he had been cured, by magnetism, of a very distressing malady.

During part of the process of curé, after the _rapport_ had been well established, the operations were carried on while he was at Malvern, and his magnetiser at Cheltenham, under which circumstances the existence of this extraordinary dependence was frequently exhibited in a manner that left no possibility of doubt.

On one occasion, I remember that Mr. W——

W—— being in the magnetic sleep, he suddenly started from his seat, clasping his hands as if startled, and presently afterward burst into a violent fit of laughter.

As, on waking, he could give no account of these impulses, his family wrote to the magnetiser to inquire if he had sought to excite any particular manifestations in his patient, as the sleep had been somewhat disturbed.

The answer was, that no such intention had been entertained, but that the disturbance might possibly have arisen from one to which he had himself been subjected.

“While my mind was concentrated on you,” said he, “I was suddenly so much startled by a violent knock at the door, that I actually jumped off my seat, clasping my hands with affright.

I had a hearty laugh at my own folly, but am sorry if you were made uncomfortable by it.

” I have met with some accounts of a sympathy of this kind existing between young children and their parents, so that the former have exhibited great distress and terror at the moment that death or danger have supervened to the latter; but it would require a great number of instances to establish this particular fact, and separate it from cases of accidental coincidence.

Dr. Passavent, however, admits the phenomena.

I shall return to these mysterious influences by-and-by; but to revert, in the meanwhile, to the subject of double dreams, I will relate one that occurred to two ladies, a mother and daughter, the latter of whom related it to me.

They were sleeping in the same bed at Cheltenham, when the mother, Mrs. C——, dreamed that her brother-in-law, then in Ireland, had sent for her; that she entered his room, and saw him in bed, apparently dying.

He requested her to kiss him, but, owing to his livid appearance, she shrank from doing so, and awoke with the horror of the scene upon her.

The daughter awoke at the same moment, saying, “Oh, I have had such a frightful dream!

” “Oh, so have I!

” returned the mother; “I have been dreaming of my brother-in-law!

”—“My dream was about him, too,” added Miss C——.

“I thought I was sitting in the drawing-room, and that he came in wearing a shroud, trimmed with black ribands, and, approaching me, he said: ‘My dear niece, your mother has refused to kiss me, but I am sure you will not be so unkind!

’” As these ladies were not in habits of regular correspondence with their relative, they knew that the earliest intelligence likely to reach them, if he were actually dead, would be by means of the Irish papers; and they waited anxiously for the following Wednesday, which was the day these journals were received in Cheltenham.

When that morning arrived, Miss C—— hastened at an early hour to the reading-room, and there she learned what the dreams had led them to expect: their friend was dead;

and they afterward ascertained that his decease had taken place on that night.

They moreover observed, that neither one nor the other of them had been speaking or thinking of this gentleman for some time previous to the occurrence of the dreams; nor had they any reason whatever for uneasiness with regard to him.

It is a remarkable peculiarity in this case, that the dream of the daughter appears to be a continuation of that of the mother.

In the one, he is seen alive; in the other, the shroud and black ribands seem to indicate that he is dead, and he complains of the refusal to give him a farewell kiss.

One is almost inevitably led here to the conclusion that the thoughts and wishes of the dying man were influencing the sleepers, or that the released spirit was hovering near them.

Pomponius Mela relates, that a certain people in the interior of Africa lay themselves down to sleep on the graves of their forefathers, and believe the dreams that ensue to be the unerring counsel of the dead.

The following dream, from St. Austin, is quoted by Dr. Binns: Præstantius desired from a certain philosopher the solution of a doubt, which the latter refused to give him; but, on the following night, the philosopher appeared at his bedside and told him what he desired to know.

On being asked, the next day, why he had chosen that hour for his visit, he answered: ‘I came not to you truly, but in my dream I appeared to you to do so.

’ In this case, however, only one of the parties seems to have been asleep, for Præstantius says that he was awake; and it is perhaps rather an example of another kind of phenomena, similar to the instance recorded of himself by the late Joseph Wilkins, a dissenting minister, who says that, being one night asleep, he dreamed that he was travelling to London, and that, as it would not be much out of his way, he would go by Gloucestershire and call upon his friends.

Accordingly he arrived at his father’s house, but, finding the front door closed, he went round to the back and there entered.

The family, however, being already in bed, he ascended the stairs and entered his father’s bed-chamber.

Him he found asleep; but to his mother, who was awake, he said, as he walked round to her side of the bed, ‘Mother, I am going a long journey, and am come to bid you good-by;’ to which she answered, ‘Oh, dear son, thee art dead!

’ Though struck with the distinctness of the dream, Mr. Wilkins attached no importance to it, till, to his surprise, a letter arrived from his father, addressed to himself, if alive—or, if not, to his surviving friends—begging earnestly for immediate intelligence, since they were under great apprehensions that their son was either dead, or in danger of death; for that, on such a night (naming that on which the above dream had occurred), he, the father, being asleep, and Mrs. Wilkins awake, she had distinctly heard somebody try to open the fore door, which being fast, the person had gone round to the back and there entered.

She had perfectly recognised the footstep to be that of her son, who had ascended the stairs, and entering the bed-chamber, had said to her, ‘Mother, I am going a long journey, and am come to bid you good-by;’ whereupon she had answered, ‘Oh, dear son, thee art dead!

’ Much alarmed, she had awakened her husband and related what had occurred, assuring him that it was not a dream, for that she had not been asleep at all.

Mr. Wilkins mentions that this curious circumstance took place in the year 1754, when he was living at Ottery; and that he had frequently discussed the subject with his mother, on whom the impression made was even stronger than on himself.

Neither death nor anything else remarkable ensued.

A somewhat similar instance to this, which I also quote from Dr. Binns, is that of a gentleman who dreamed that he was pushing violently against the door of a certain room, in a house with which he was well acquainted; while the people in that room were, at the same time, actually alarmed by a violent pushing against the door, which it required their utmost force effectually to resist.

As soon as the attempt to burst open the door had ceased, the house was searched, but nothing discovered to account for the disturbance.

These examples are extremely curious, and they conduct us by a natural transition to another department of this mysterious subject.

There must be few persons who have not heard, among their friends and acquaintance, instances of what is called a _wraith_; that is, that in the moment of death, a person is seen in a place where _bodily_ he is not.

I believe the Scotch use this term also in the same sense as the Irish word _fetch_; which is a person’s double seen at some indefinite period previous to his death, of which such an appearance is generally supposed to be a prognostic.

The Germans express the same thing by the word _doppelgänger_.

With respect to the appearance of wraiths, at the moment of death, the instances to be met with are so numerous and well-authenticated, that I generally find the most skeptical people unable to deny that some such phenomenon exists, although they evade, without I think, diminishing the difficulty, by pronouncing it to be of a subjective, and not of an objective, nature; that is, that the image of the dying person is, by some unknown operation, presented to the imagination of the seer, without the existence of any real outstanding figure, from which it is reflected; which reduces such instances so nearly to the class of mere sensuous illusion, that it seems difficult to draw the distinction.

The distinction these theorists wish to imply, however, is that the latter are purely subjective and self-originating, while the others have an external cause, although not an external visible object—the image seen being protruded by the imagination of the seer, in consequence of an unconscious intuition of the death of the person whose wraith is perceived.

Instances of this kind of phenomenon have been common in all ages of the world, insomuch that Lucretius, who did not believe in the immortality of the soul, and was yet unable to deny the facts, suggested the strange theory that the superficial surfaces of all bodies were continually flying off, like the coats of an onion, which accounted for the appearance of wraiths, ghosts, doubles, &c. ; and a more modern author, Gaffarillus, suggests that corrupting bodies send forth vapors, which being compressed by the cold night air, appear visible to the eye in the forms of men.

It will not be out of place, here, to mention the circumstance recorded in Professor Gregory’s “Abstract of Baron von Reichenbach’s Researches in Magnetism,” regarding a person called Billing, who acted in the capacity of amanuensis to the blind poet Pfeffel, at Colmar.

Having treated of various experiments, by which it was ascertained that certain sensitive persons were not only able to detect electric influences of which others were unconscious, but could also perceive, emanating from the wires and magnets, flames which were invisible to people in general;

“the baron,” according to Dr. Gregory, “proceeded to a useful application of the results, which is, he says, so much the more welcome, as it utterly eradicates one of the chief foundations of superstition, that worst enemy to the development of human enlightenment and liberty.

A singular occurrence, which took place at Colmar, in the garden of the poet Pfeffel, has been made generally known by various writings.

The following are the essential facts.

The poet, being blind, had employed a young clergyman, of the evangelical church, as amanuensis.

Pfeffel, when he walked out, was supported and led by this young man, whose name was Billing.

As they walked in the garden, at some distance from the town, Pfeffel observed, that as often as they passed over a particular spot, the arm of Billing trembled, and he betrayed uneasiness.

On being questioned, the young man reluctantly confessed, that as often as he passed over that spot, certain feelings attacked him, which he could not control, and which he knew well, as he always experienced the same, in passing over any place where human bodies lay buried.

He added, that at night, when he came near such places, he saw supernatural appearances.

Pfeffel, with the view of curing the youth of what he looked on as fancy, went that night with him to the garden.

As they approached the spot in the dark, Billing perceived a feeble light, and when still nearer, he saw a luminous ghostlike figure floating over the spot.

This he described as a female form, with one arm laid across the body, the other hanging down, floating in the upright posture, but tranquil, the feet only a hand-breadth or two above the soil.

Pfeffel went alone, as the young man declined to follow him, up to the place where the figure was said to be, and struck about in all directions with his stick, besides running actually through the shadow; but the figure was not more affected than a flame would have been; the luminous form, according to Billing always returned to its original position after these experiments.

Many things were tried during several months, and numerous companies of people were brought to the spot, but the matter remained the same, and the ghost-seer adhered to his serious assertion, and to the opinion founded on it, that some individual lay buried there.

At last, Pfeffel had the place dug up.

At a considerable depth was found a firm layer of white lime, of the length and breadth of a grave, and of considerable thickness, and when this had been broken into, there were found the bones of a human being.

It was evident that some one had been buried in the place, and covered with a thick layer of lime (quicklime), as is generally done in times of pestilence, of earthquakes, and other similar events.

The bones were removed, the pit filled up, the lime scattered abroad, and the surface again made smooth.

When Billing was now brought back to the place, the phenomena did not return, and the nocturnal spirit had for ever disappeared.

“It is hardly necessary to point out to the reader what view the author takes of this story, which excited much attention in Germany, because it came from the most truthful man alive, and theologians and psychologists gave to it sundry terrific meanings.

It obviously falls into the province of chemical action, and thus meets with a simple and clear explanation from natural and physical causes.

A corpse is a field for abundant chemical changes, decompositions, fermentation, putrefaction, gasification, and general play of affinities.

A stratum of quicklime, in a narrow pit, unites its powerful affinities to those of the organic matters, and gives rise to a long-continued working of the whole.

Rain-water filters through and contributes to the action: the lime on the outside of the mass first falls to a fine powder, and afterward, with more water, forms lumps which are very slowly penetrated by the air.

Slaked lime prepared for building, but not used, on account of some cause connected with a warlike state of society some centuries since, has been found in subterraneous holes or pits, in the ruins of old castles; and the mass, except on the outside, was so unaltered that it has been used for modern buildings.

It is evident, therefore, that in such circumstances there must be a very slow and long-continued chemical action, partly owing to the slow penetration of the mass of lime by the external carbonic acid, partly to the change going on in the remains of animal matter, at all events as long as any is left.

In the above case, this must have gone on in Pfeffel’s garden, and, as we know that chemical action is invariably associated with light, visible to the sensitive, this must have been the origin of the luminous appearance, which again must have continued until the mutual affinities of the organic remains, the lime, the air, and water, had finally come to a state of chemical rest or equilibrium.

As soon, therefore, as a sensitive person, although otherwise quite healthy, came that way, and entered into the sphere of the force in action, he must feel, by day, like Mdlle.

Maix, the sensations so often described, and see by night, like Mdlle.

Reichel, the luminous appearance.

Ignorance, fear, and superstition, would dress up the feebly shining, vaporous light into a human form, and furnish it with human limbs and members; just as we can at pleasure fancy every cloud in the sky to represent a man or a demon.

“The wish to strike a fatal blow at the monster superstition, which, at no distant period, poured out upon European society from a similar source, such inexpressible misery, when, in trials for witchcraft, not hundreds, not thousands, but hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings perished miserably, either on the scaffold, at the stake, or by the effects of torture—this desire induced the author to try the experiment of bringing, if possible, a highly-sensitive patient by night to a churchyard.

It appeared possible that such a person might see, over graves in which mouldering bodies lie, something similar to that which Billing had seen.

Mdlle.

Reichel had the courage, rare in her sex, to gratify this wish of the author.

On two very dark nights she allowed herself to be taken from the castle of Reisenberg, where she was living with the author’s family, to the neighboring churchyard of Grunzing.

The result justified his anticipation in the most beautiful manner.

She very soon saw a light, and observed on one of the graves, along its length, a delicate, breathing flame: she also saw the same thing, only weaker on the second grave.

But she saw neither witches nor ghosts; she described the fiery appearances as a shining vapor, one to two spans high, extending as far as the grave, and floating near its surface.

Some time afterward she was taken to two large cemeteries near Vienna, where several burials occur daily, and graves lie about by thousands.

Here she saw numerous graves provided with similar lights.

Wherever she looked, she saw luminous masses scattered about.

But this appearance was most vivid over the newest graves, while in the oldest it could not be perceived.

She described the appearance less as a clear flame than as a dense, vaporous mass of fire, intermediate between fog and flame.

On many graves the flames were four feet high, so that when she stood on them, it surrounded her up to the neck.

If she thrust her hand into it, it was like putting it into a dense, fiery cloud.

She betrayed no uneasiness, because she had all her life been accustomed to such emanations, and had seen the same, in the author’s experiments, often produced by natural causes.

“Many ghost-stories will now find their natural explanation.

We can also see that it was not altogether erroneous, when old women declared that all had not the gift to see the departed wandering about their graves;

for it must have always been the sensitive alone who were able to perceive the light given out by the chemical action going on in the corpse.

The author has thus, he hopes, succeeded in tearing down one of the most impenetrable barriers erected by dark ignorance and superstitious folly against the progress of natural truth.

” “(The reader will at once apply the above most remarkable experiments to the explanation of corpse-lights in churchyards, which were often visible to the gifted alone—to those who had the second-sight, for example.

Many nervous or hysterical females must often have been alarmed by white, faintly-luminous objects in dark churchyards, to which objects fear has given a defined form.

In this, as well as in numerous other points, which will force themselves on the attention of the careful reader of both works, Baron Reichenbach’s experiments illustrate the experiences of the Seeress of Prevorst.

—W.

G.

)”[1] That the flames here described may have originated in chemical action, is an opinion I have no intention of disputing; the fact may possibly be so; such a phenomenon has frequently been observed hovering over coffins and decomposing flesh: but I confess I can not perceive the slightest grounds for the assertion that it was the ignorance, fear, and superstition, of Billing, who was an evangelical clergyman, that caused him to dress up this vaporous light in a human form and supply it with members, &c. In the first place, I see no proof adduced that Billing was either ignorant or superstitious, or even afraid—the feelings he complained of appearing to be rather physical than moral; and it must be a weak person indeed, who, in company with another, could be excited to such a freak of the imagination.

It is easily comprehensible that that which appeared only a luminous vapor by day, might, when reflected on a darker atmosphere, present a defined form; and the suggestion of this possibility might lead to some curious speculations with regard to a mystery called the PALINGANESIA, said to have been practised by some of the chemists and alchemists of the sixteenth century.