The Night-Side of Nature; Or, Ghosts and Ghost-Seers

by Catherine Crowe

Four years later, a postmaster, named J⁠——, was on the same road, driving a carriage, in which were a clergyman and his wife, when he saw a large flock of sheep near the same spot. Seeing they were very fine wethers, and supposing them to have been bought at a sheep-fair that was then taking place a few miles off, J⁠—— drew up his reins and stopped his horse, turning at the same time to the clergyman to say, that he wanted to inquire the price of the sheep, as he intended going next day to the fair himself. While the minister was asking him what sheep he meant, J⁠—— got down and found himself in the midst of the animals, the size and beauty of which astonished him. They passed him at an unusual rate, while he made his way through them to find the shepherd, when, on getting to the end of the flock, they suddenly disappeared. He then first learned that his fellow-travellers had not seen them at all.

Now, if such cases as these are not pure illusions, which I confess I find it difficult to believe, we must suppose that the animals and all the extraneous circumstances are produced by the magical will of the spirit, either acting on the constructive imagination of the seers, or else actually constructing the ethereal forms out of the elements at its command, just as we have supposed an apparition able to present himself with whatever dress or appliances he conceives; or else we must conclude these forms to have some relation to the mystery called PALINGNESIA, which I have previously alluded to, although the motion and change of place render it difficult to bring them under this category. As for the animals, although the drover was slain, they were not; and therefore, even granting them to have souls, we can not look upon them as the apparitions of the flock. Neither can we consider the numerous instances of armies seen in the air to be apparitions; and yet these phenomena are so well established that they have been accounted for by supposing them to be atmospherical reflections of armies elsewhere, in actual motion. But how are we to account for the visionary troops which are not seen in the air, but on the very ground on which the seers themselves stand, which was the case especially with those seen in Havarah park, near Ripley, in the year 1812? These soldiers wore a white uniform, and in the centre was a personage in a scarlet one.

After performing several evolutions, the body began to march in perfect order to the summit of a hill, passing the spectators at the distance of about one hundred yards. They amounted to several hundreds, and marched in a column, four deep, across about thirty acres; and no sooner were they passed, than another body, far more numerous, but dressed in dark clothes, arose and marched after them, without any apparent hostility. Both parties having reached the top of the hill, and there formed what the spectators called an L, they disappeared down the other side, and were seen no more; but at that moment a volume of smoke arose like the discharge of a park of artillery, which was so thick that the men could not, for two or three minutes, discover their own cattle. They then hurried home to relate what they had seen, and the impression made on them is described as so great, that they could never allude to the subject without emotion.

One of them was a farmer of the name of Jackson, aged forty-five; the other was a lad of fifteen, called Turner: and they were at the time herding cattle in the park. The scene seems to have lasted nearly a quarter of an hour, during which time they were quite in possession of themselves, and able to make remarks to each other on what they saw. They were both men of excellent character and unimpeachable veracity, insomuch that nobody who knew them doubted that they actually saw what they described, or, at all events, believed that they did. It is to be observed, also, that the ground is not swampy, nor subject to any exhalations.

About the year 1750, a visionary army of the same description was seen in the neighborhood of Inverness, by a respectable farmer, of Glenary, and his son. The number of troops was very great, and they had not the slightest doubt that they were otherwise than substantial forms of flesh and blood. They counted at least sixteen pairs of columns, and had abundance of time to observe every particular. The front ranks marched seven abreast, and were accompanied by a good many women and children, who were carrying tin cans and other implements of cookery. The men were clothed in red, and their arms shone brightly in the sun. In the midst of them was an animal—a deer or a horse, they could not distinguish which—that they were driving furiously forward with their bayonets. The younger of the two men observed to the other that every now and then the rear ranks were obliged to run to overtake the van; and the elder one, who had been a soldier, remarked that that was always the case, and recommended him, if he ever served, to try and march in the front. There was only one mounted officer: he rode a gray dragoon horse, and wore a gold-laced hat and blue hussar cloak, with wide, open sleeves, lined with red. The two spectators observed him so particularly, that they said afterward they should recognise him anywhere. They were, however, afraid of being ill-treated, or forced to go along with the troops, whom they concluded had come from Ireland, and landed at Kyntyre; and while they were climbing over a dike to get out of their way, the whole thing vanished.

Some years since, a phenomenon of the same sort was observed at Paderborn, in Westphalia, and seen by at least thirty persons, as well as by horses and dogs, as was discovered by the demeanor of these animals. In October, 1836, on the very same spot, there was a review of twenty thousand men; and the people then concluded that the former vision was a second-sight.

A similar circumstance occurred in Stockton forest, some years ago; and there are many recorded elsewhere—one especially, in the year 1686, near Lanark, where, for several afternoons, in the months of June and July, there were seen, by numerous spectators, companies of men in arms, marching in order by the banks of the Clyde, and other companies meeting them, &c., &c.; added to which there were showers of bonnets, hats, guns, swords, &c., which the seers described with the greatest exactness. All who were present could not see these things, and Walker relates that one gentleman, particularly, was turning the thing into ridicule, calling the seers “damned witches and warlocks, with the second-sight!”—boasting that “the devil a thing he could see!”—when he suddenly exclaimed, with fear and trembling, that he now saw it all; and entreated those who did not see, to say nothing—a change that may be easily accounted for, be the phenomenon of what nature it may, by supposing him to have touched one of the seers, when the faculty would be communicated like a shock of electricity.

With regard to the palinganesia, it would be necessary to establish that these objects had previously existed, and that, as Oetinger says, the earthly husk having fallen off, “the volatile essence had ascended perfect in form, but void of substance.”

The notion supported by Baron Reichenbach, that the lights seen in churchyards and over graves are the result of a process going on below, is by no means new, for Gaffarillus suggested the same opinion in 1650; only he speaks of the appearances over graves and in churchyards as shadows, ombres, as they appeared to Billing; and he mentions, casually, as a thing frequently observed, that the same visionary forms are remarked on ground where battles have been fought, which he thinks arise out of a process between the earth and the sun. When a limb has been cut off, some somnambules still discern the form of the member as if actually attached.

But this magical process is said to be not only the work of the elements, but also possible to man; and that as the forms of plants can be preserved after the substance is destroyed, so can that of man be either preserved or reproduced from the elements of his body. In the reign of Louis XIV., three alchemists, having distilled some earth taken from the cemetery of the Innocents, in Paris, were forced to desist, by seeing the forms of men appearing in their vials, instead of the philosopher’s stone, which they were seeking; and a physician, who, after dissecting a body, and pulverizing the cranium (which was then an article admitted into the materia medica), had left the powder on the table of his laboratory, in charge of his assistant, the latter, who slept in an adjoining room, was awakened in the night by hearing a noise, which, after some search, he ultimately traced to the powder—in the midst of which he beheld, gradually constructing itself, a human form! First appeared the head, with two open eyes, then the arms and hands, and, by degrees, the rest of the person, which subsequently assumed the clothes it had worn when alive! The man was, of course, frightened out of his wits—the rather, as the apparition planted itself before the door, and would not let him go away till it had made its own exit, which it speedily did. Similar results have been said to arise from experiments performed on blood. I confess I should be disposed to consider these apparitions, if ever they appeared, cases of genuine ghosts, brought into rapport by the operation, rather than forms residing in the bones or blood. At all events, these things are very hard to believe; but seeing we were not there, I do not think we have any right to say they did not happen; or at least that some phenomena did not occur, that were open to this interpretation.