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.