A brief précis of ‘cases’ may show how these elements of noise, on one side, and apparitions, on the other, are commonly blended. In a detached villa, just outside ‘the town of C.,’ Mrs. W. remarks a figure of a tall dark-haired man peeping round the corner of a folding door. She does not mention the circumstance. Two months later she sees the same sorrowful face in the drawing-room. This time she tells her husband. Later in the same month, when playing cricket with her children, she sees the face ‘peeping round from the kitchen door’. Rather later she heard a deep voice say in a sorrowful tone, ‘I can’t find it’; something slaps her on the back. Her step-daughter who had not heard of the phantasm, sees the same pale dark-moustached face, ‘peeping round the folding doors’. She is then told Mrs W.’s story. Her little brother, later, sees the figure simultaneously with herself. She also hears the voice say, ‘I can’t find it,’ at the same moment as Mrs. W. hears it. A year later, she sees the figure at the porch, in a tall hat! Neither lady had enjoyed any other hallucination. Nothing is known of the melancholy spectre, probably the ghost of a literary person, searching, always searching, for a manuscript poem by some total stranger who had worried him into his grave, and not left him at peace even there. This is a very solemn and touching story, and appeals tenderly and sadly to all persons of letters who suffer from the unasked for manuscripts of the general public.
2. Some ladies and servants in a house in Hyde Park Place, see at intervals a phantom housemaid: she is also seen by a Mr. Bird. There is no story about a housemaid, and there are no noises. This is not an interesting tale.
3. A Hindoo native woman is seen to enter a locked bath-room, where she is not found on inquiry. A woman had been murdered there some years before. The percipient, General Sir Arthur Becher, had seen other uncanny visions. A little boy, wakened out of sleep, said he saw an ayah. Perhaps he did.
4. A Mr. Harry, in the South of Europe, saw a white female figure glide through his library into his bedroom. Later, his daughters beheld a similar phenomenon. Mr. Harry, a gentleman of sturdy common-sense, ‘dared his daughters to talk of any such nonsense as ghosts, as they might be sure apparitions were only in the imagination of nervous people’. He himself saw the phantasm seven or eight times in his bedroom, and twice in the library. On one occasion it lifted up the mosquito curtains and stared at Mr. Harry. As in the case of meeting an avalanche, ‘a weak-minded man would pray, sir, would pray; a strong-minded man would swear, sir, would swear’. Mr. Harry was a strong-minded man, and behaved ‘in a concatenation accordingly,’ although Petrus Thyræus says that there is no use in swearing at ghosts. The phantasm seemed to be about thirty-five, her features were described as ‘rather handsome,’ and (unromantically) as ‘oblong’. A hallucination, we need hardly say, would not raise the mosquito curtains, this ghost had more heart in it than most.
5. Various people see ‘a column of light vaguely shaped like a woman,’ moving about in a room of a house in Sussex. One servant, who slept in the room in hopes of a private view, saw ‘a ball of light with a sort of halo round it’. Again, in a very pretty story, the man who looked after an orphan asylum saw a column of light above the bed of one of the children. Next morning the little boy declared that his mother had come to visit him, probably in a dream.
On this matter of lights [{146}] Mr. Podmore enters into argument with Mr. Frederick Myers. Mr. Myers, on the whole, believes that the phenomena of haunted houses are caused by influences of some sort from the minds of the dead. Mr. Podmore, if we understand him holds that some living person has had some empty hallucination, in a house, and that this is ‘telepathically’ handed on, perhaps to the next tenant, who may know nothing about either the person or the vision. Thus, a Miss Morris, much vexed by ghostly experiences, left a certain house in December, 1886. Nearly a year later, in November, 1887, a Mrs. G. came in. Mrs. G. did not know Miss Morris, nor had she heard of the disturbances. However sobs, and moans, and heavy thumps, and noises of weighty objects thrown about, and white faces, presently drove Mrs. G. to seek police protection. This only roused the ghost’s ambition, and he ‘came’ as a man with freckles, also he walked about, shook beds, and exhibited lights. A figure in black, with a white face, now displayed itself: barristers and clergymen investigated, but to no purpose. They saw figures, heard crashes, and the divine did a little Anglican exorcism. The only story about the house showed that a woman had hanged herself with a skipping rope in the ‘top back bedroom,’ in 1879. Here are plenty of phenomena, apparitions male and female. But Miss Morris, in addition to hearing noises, only saw a pale woman in black.
Mr. Podmore’s theory comes in thus: ‘the later experiences may have been started by thought transference from Miss Morris, whose thoughts, no doubt, occasionally turned to the house in which she had suffered so much agitation and alarm’. Moreover ‘real noises’ may have ‘suggested’ the visual hallucinations to Miss Morris. [{147}] Mr. Podmore certainly cannot be accused of ordinary superstition. There is a house, and there is a tenant. She hears footsteps pounding up- and down-stairs, and all through her room, she says nothing and gets used to it. Let it be granted that these noises are caused by rats. After conquering her dislike to the sounds, three weeks after her entry to the house, Miss Morris meets a total stranger, deadly pale, in deep black, who vanishes. This phantasm has gathered round the nucleus which the rats provided by stamping up- and down-stairs, and through Miss Morris’s room. It is natural that a person who hears rats, or wind, or waterpipes, and makes up her mind not to mind it, should then see a phantasm of a pale woman in black; also should hear loud knocks at the door of her chamber. Miss Morris goes away, a year later comes Mrs. G., and Mrs. G., her children, her servants, a barrister and an exorcist, are all disturbed by
Noises.
Knocks.
Sobs.