In The Accusing Spirit a bogus spook is constructed by means of phosphorus, aided by a strong resemblance between two men, to accuse an innocent man of murder. The apparition dramatically makes his charge, but is unmasked just in time to save the victim’s life. A tall, cadaverous young man makes up for a ghost in an anonymous novel,[15] while a mysterious woman in a black veil attends a midnight funeral in the castle, then unaccountably disappears.
In Melmoth the monks persecute a despised brother by impersonating spirits in his cell. They cover the walls with images of fiends, over which they smear phosphorus, and burn sulphur to assist the deception. They utter mocking cries as of demons, seeking to drive him mad. In Lewis’s Monk there is a false Bleeding Nun as well as the bona fide specter. In other Gothic novels there are various spectral frauds cleverly planned, and then revealed, but their explanation does not altogether dispel the uncanny impression they make.
The ghost that stays at home in a definite place, haunting its own demesne, is a familiar figure in the fiction of the period. Every castle has its haunted tower or dungeon or apartment with its shade that walks by night. Several appear carrying candles or lamps to light them through the blackness of architectural labyrinths. Several evince a fondness for bells and herald their coming by rings. In one romance,[16] the ghost takes the form of a white cow. (Doubtless many ghosts in real life have had a similar origin.) In another,[17] a specter in armor appears to terrify his murderer, and supernatural lightning aids in his revenge.
It would be impossible to designate all the ghosts in Gothic fiction for there is wholesale haunting. They appear in the plot to warn, to comfort or command, and seem to have very human characteristics on the whole. Yet they are not so definitely personated, not so individual and realistic as the spirits in later fiction, though they do achieve some creepy effects. It is not their brute force that impresses us. We are less moved by the armored knight and the titanic adversary in Otranto than by the phantoms in the Hall of Eblis. The vindictive ghosts, mouldy from the vault, are less appalling than the bodiless voices of wronged women and children that haunt the death-bed and bring a corpse back to dreadful life. The specters with flamboyant personality, that oppress us with their egotistic clamor, may be soon forgotten, but the ghostly suggestiveness of other spirits has a haunting power that is inescapable. Some of the Gothic ghosts have a strange vitality,—and, after all, where would be the phantoms of to-day but for their early services?
Witches and Warlocks.
While not at all equal in importance to the ghosts, witches and warlocks add to the excitement in Gothic fiction. There is but little change from the witch of dramatic tradition, for we have both the real and the reputed witch in the terror novel, the genuine antique hag who has powers given her from the devil, and the beautiful young girl who is wrongly suspected of an unholy alliance with the dark spirits.
In Melmoth, there is an old woman doctor who has uncanny ability. She tells fortunes, gives spells against the evil eye and produces weird results “by spells and such dandy as is beyond our element.” She turns the mystic yarn to be dropped into the pit, on the brink of which stands “the shivering inquirer into futurity, doubtful whether the answer to her question ‘Who holds?’ is to be uttered by the voice of a demon or lover.” In The Albigenses three Weird Sisters appear that are not altogether poor imitations of Shakespeare’s own. Matilda in The Monk possesses dæmonic power of enchantment and in the subterranean passages of the monastery she works her unhallowed arts. The hag Carathis, in Vathek, is a witch of rare skill, who concocts her magic potions and by supernatural means forces all things to her will. There are several witches and warlocks in James Hogg’s The Hunt of Eildon, who work much mischief but at last are captured and convicted. They have the choice of being burned alive or being baptized, but with wild cries they struggle against the holy water and face the flames.
In Hogg’s Brownie of Bodbeck, Marion Linton believes her own daughter is a witch and thinks she should be given the trial by fire or water. There is an innocent young reputed witch in The Hunt of Eildon, who is sentenced to death for her art.
The Devil.
The devil incarnate is one of the familiar figures in the terror novel. Here, as in the case of the ghost, we see the influence of the dramatic rather than of the epic tradition. He is akin to Calderon’s wonder-working magician and Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus rather than to the satanic creations of Dante and Milton. He is not a dread, awe-inspiring figure either physically or as a personality, though he does assume terrifying, almost epic proportions in the closing scenes of The Monk and Zofloya. Neither is he as human, as appealing to our sympathies as the lonely, misjudged, misunderstood devils in later fiction. We neither love nor greatly fear the Gothic demon. Yet he does appear in interesting variants and deserves our study.