Stranger Than Fiction: Being Tales from the Byways of Ghosts and Folk-lore

I have to thank the Editor of the Occult Review for his kindness in allowing me to reprint here many stories which have appeared at different times in his magazine.
And I am most grateful to the friends who have helped to swell the contents of this little volume, by permitting me to record their interesting experiences of the supernatural, or by furnishing me with details concerning local beliefs and superstitions, which would otherwise have been difficult to obtain.
M. L. LEWES
Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who Before us passed the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the Road, Which to discover we must travel too.
If we may judge by the assertion contained in the above quatrain, Omar Khayyám was no believer in ghosts. In which respect the Persian poet must have differed from the general opinion of his times. For until a very few centuries ago, it was only a small minority of those who considered themselves wise above their fellows, who ventured to deny the possibility of the spirit's return to earth. Even amongst the Romans during the Antonine Age (A.D. 98-180), when scepticism on religious matters had become almost universal among the learned, and the worship of the gods had sunk to mere outward observance of ceremony, Gibbon says, I do not pretend to assert that in this irreligious age, the natural terrors of superstitions, dreams, omens, apparitions, &c., had lost their efficacy. The younger Pliny, in a letter to his friend Sura, writes: I am extremely desirous to know whether you believe in the existence of ghosts, and that they have a real form, and are a sort of divinities, or only the visionary impression of a terrified imagination. He also relates a really exciting tale of a haunted house at Athens, but it is too long to quote here.
The ancients believed that every one possessed three distinct ghosts; the manes , of which the ultimate destination was the lower regions, the spiritus , which returned to Heaven, and the umbra , that, unwilling to sever finally its connection with this life, was wont to haunt the last resting-place of the earthly body. These shades were supposed to walk between the hours of midnight and cock-crow, causing burial-grounds, cemeteries or tombs to be carefully avoided at night. One reason given as to why very old yew-trees are so often found in country churchyards is, that originally these trees were planted to supply the peasants with wood for their bows, for in lawless times it was soon discovered that the only place where the trees would be safe from nightly marauders was the churchyard, where not the most hardened thief dared venture between darkness and dawn. Particularly were the shades of those who, perishing by crimes of violence without absolution—