The following is a tale still more strange, but is akin to the preceding, since the deceased died unattended, and strove by abnormal means to indicate his will. Michael Conley, a farmer of Chichasow County, Iowa, on February 1, 1891, went to be medically treated at Dubuque, in Iowa, leaving his children Pat and Elizabeth at home. The latter was a girl of twenty-eight. “On Feb. 3rd Michael was found dead in an outhouse near his inn. In his pockets were nine dollars, seventy cents, but his clothes, including his shirt, were thought so dirty and worthless that they were thrown away. The body was then dressed in a white shirt, black clothes and satin slippers of a new pattern. Pat Conley was telegraphed for, and arrived at Dubuque on Feb. 4th.... Pat took the corpse home in a coffin, and on his arrival Elizabeth fell into a swoon, which lasted for several hours. Her account ... may be given in her own words. ‘When they told me that father was dead I felt very sick and bad; I did not know anything. Then father came to me. He had on a white shirt and black clothes and slippers. When I came to, I told Pat I had seen father. I asked Pat if he had brought back father’s old clothes. He said “No,” and asked me why I wanted them. I told him father said he had sewed a roll of bills inside of his grey shirt, in a pocket made of a piece of my old red dress. I went to sleep, and father came to me again. When I awoke I told Pat he must go and get the clothes.’ Pat now telephoned to Mr. Hoffmann, coroner of Dubuque, who found the old clothes in the back yard of the local morgue. They were wrapped up in a bundle. Receiving this news, Pat went to Dubuque on Feb. 9th, where Mr. Hoffmann opened the bundle in Pat’s presence. Inside the old grey shirt was found a packet of red stuff, sewn with a man’s long, uneven stitches, and in the pocket notes for thirty-five dollars.”
There is a similar story which was well investigated, and recounted at great length in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. But in this instance the girl was artificially entranced. She was a Spanish servant of a Dr. Vidigal, who resided in Brazil, and soon after her engagement in his service she was hypnotised and appeared to communicate with her father; later she gave a message seemingly from Dr. Vidigal’s mother, who had died three months before. The deceased lady, it was announced, had left 75 milreis (£3 to £4) in the pocket of a dress which was still hanging in her room. No one knew of this money, which the family could ill dispense with. Dr. Vidigal’s wife with another lady went at once to the room, and found the identical sum of money sewn up in one of the two dresses that still remained there.
The failure of the deceased to make his wishes known after death is the source of some curious cases. For several years a villa at Annecy, occupied by a Count Galateri, was disturbed by manifestations of haunting; doors opened of their own accord, books and furniture moved without visible means. The noises seemed to emanate from a cellar in the house. A clairvoyant medium stated that at the door of the villa she saw a soldier with a wooden leg, who said that during the Napoleonic wars he had robbed the dead and waxed rich therewith, bought this villa, and hid his treasure in the cellar. But remorse had seized him, and these disturbances were made to induce the Countess to find the money and give it to the poor. Eventually the Countess dug on the spot, and found a jar containing many francs in gold; she did as desired, doled them among the poor, and house and spirit had rest.
From the latest psychical research the thesis may be illustrated. Richard Hodgson, who during his life devoted himself to the study of the problems of mind and spirit, and himself investigated the story of Dr. Vidigal’s mother, determined that after death he would if possible prove the survival of the soul. He died suddenly on December 20, 1905, and eight days later the medium with whom he had often sat, the famous Mrs. Piper, declared that his spirit was communicating through her. He held in his hand a ring. A fortnight later under the same circumstances he begged that this ring might be returned to a certain lady, saying that on the day of his death he had put it in his waistcoat pocket, where, indeed, it was afterwards found. A lady had given him the ring, and is sure no living person knew the fact. But what more natural than that he should will it to be returned to her?
Lastly, the delightful tale of Mrs. Veal may illustrate this category: “the apparition of one Mrs. Veal, the next day after her death, to one Mrs. Bargrave, at Canterbury. September 8, 1705.” In this case, however, the disposal of a few trifles, which she managed to wedge into the conversation, was not the main object of her visit. Mrs. Bargrave, “a woman of much honesty and virtue, and her whole life a course as it were of piety,” had no notion that she was speaking to one of the departed. Her surprise was great, therefore, when Mrs. Veal said to her, “She would have to write a letter to her brother and tell him, she would have him give rings to such and such; and that there was a purse of gold in her cabinet, and that she would have two broad pieces given to her cousin Watson. Talking at this rate Mrs. Bargrave thought there was a fit coming on her, and so placed herself in a chair just before her knees, to keep her from falling to the ground, if her fits should occasion it: for the elbow chair she thought would keep her from falling either side. And to divert Mrs. Veal, as she thought, took hold of her gown sleeve several times, and commended it. Mrs. Veal told her it was a scowered silk, and newly made up. But for all this Mrs. Veal persisted in her request, and told Mrs. Bargrave she must not deny her: and she would have her tell her brother all their conversation when she had the opportunity. ‘Dear Mrs. Veal,’ says Mrs. Bargrave, ‘this seems so impertinent that I cannot tell how to comply with it; and what a mortifying story will our conversation be to a young gentleman!’ ‘Why,’ says Mrs. Bargrave ‘’tis much better methinks to do it yourself.’ ‘No,’ says Mrs. Veal, ‘though it seems impertinent to you now you will see more reason for it hereafter.’ Mrs. Bargrave then to satisfy her importunity was going to fetch a pen and ink; but Mrs. Veal said, ‘Let it alone now, and do it when I am gone; but you must be sure to do it. ’ Which was one of the last things she enjoined her at parting, and so she promised her.” Not unnaturally her brother objected to this post-mortem will, and “said he asked his sister on her death-bed ‘whether she had a mind to dispose of anything?’ And she said ‘no.’” Certainly, if he wished to prove such a nuncupative will, he would have had little trouble as against Mrs. Bargrave’s ghostly will and testament.
How frequently the desires of the dead were frustrated, and to what language testators were moved in striving to prevent such neglect or opposition, has been commented upon. In one of the earliest of extant wills, that of Favonius, made in the war in Lusitania against Viriathus, 142 b.c., the testator invokes his ‘manes’ to avenge him, if his sons do not remove his bones and bury them on the Latin Way. And (to make a swift transition) Dr. Ellerby, who died in London in February, 1827, bequeathed his heart, lungs, and brains to certain persons “in order that they may preserve them from decomposition; and I declare that if these gentlemen shall fail faithfully to execute these my last wishes in this respect I will come—if it shall be by any means possible—and torment them until they shall comply.”
With such threats some have died: the sequel is now to be told. There is a Welsh tale, for instance, of Barbara, wife of Edward, a tailor of Llantivit Major; she was hale and hearty enough, till a secret weighed more and more upon her mind. For a long time after her husband’s mother’s death, she concealed the fact that the old woman had entrusted her with a bag of money, to divide equally among the family. This Barbara secreted for herself. But the old woman’s spirit so harassed and pinched her that she grew wretched and wasted away. Finally, rather than divide it according to the woman’s will, she cast the bag into the Ogmore stream, where in Welsh folklore treasure was wont to be thrown. Then at last she had peace.
Burton Agnes Hall, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, was occupied in the reign of Queen Elizabeth by three sisters. The youngest, Anne Griffith, put her heart and soul into the restoration of the building and in additions to its beauty. But it was not long before she fell a victim to highwaymen, being set upon when alone in the lanes. She was found, and lingered several days; before she died, she besought her sisters to sever her head from her dead body and suffer it to remain within the Hall. If her wish were not fulfilled, she threatened to make the house uninhabitable. The sisters promised, but did not perform it. But soon noises as of slamming doors, and as of the groans of the dying, terrified the household and broke in upon the sisters’ sorrow. They remembered their promise. The coffin was opened and the head brought to the house. It was said that the head had already been mysteriously severed from the body, as if ready to be carried to the resting-place it desired. Surely enough, when the head was safely ensconced in the Hall, the noises were no more heard.
The tale of the Demon of Spraiton, dating from the seventeenth century, is another story to the purpose. A servant was one day surprised by the apparition of his master’s father, saying that several legacies which by his testament he had bequeathed were still unpaid, and promising if his behests were carried out to cease from troubling. “The spectrum left the young man, who according to the direction of the spirit took care to see the small legacies satisfied, and carried the twenty shillings that were appointed to be paid the gentlewoman near Totnes, but she utterly refused to receive it, being sent her (as she said) from the devil. The same night the young man lodging at her house, the aforesaid spectrum appeared to him again; whereupon the young man challenged his promise not to trouble him any more, saying he had performed all according to his appointment, but that the gentlewoman, his sister, would not receive the money. To which the spectrum replied that this was true indeed; but withal directed the young man to ride to Totnes and buy for her a ring of that value, which the spirit said she would accept of, which being provided accordingly she received. Since the performance of which the ghost or apparition of the old gentleman hath seemed to be at rest, having never given the young man any further trouble.”
This English ghost appeared in 1682. In 1683 an Italian apparition troubled the living. The Marchesa Astalli was a young married woman of pure religious life. After her sudden death, however, as though she was not at rest, she several times revealed herself to a secular priest who was devoted to souls in Purgatory. At the last appearance it seemed as though an internal voice bade him speak, and ask the spirit her desire. “But she was silent,” says the priest, “for the space of half an Ave Maria, and then said: ‘Go to the Marchese Camillo, and tell him to have two hundred masses said for me.’ ... I replied in great perplexity, and almost with my heart in my mouth: ‘They will not believe me, they will take me for a mad-man.’ Then the spirit, opening its white mantle, exclaimed: ‘My son, pity me.’ And, as she said this, streaks of fire came towards me from her breast, as though two bundles of tow had been lighted. Then she closed her mantle with her hands; folding one side over the other as it was at first, she moved a few steps, looking me in the face; and I, lying almost in mortal agony, all bathed in a cold sweat, which passed through the mattress to the boards, plucked up spirit and said to her: ‘Why do you not go to the Marquis.’ Then the spirit, with a trembling voice and with many tears, which issued from her reddened eyes, as though she had wept long and bitterly, replied: ‘God does not will it.’ I again summoned up courage and said: ‘They will not believe me.’ Then the spirit replied: ‘Look where I touch,’ and departed.... After she had gone I remained languid and speechless for half an hour, then, as it pleased the Lord, having come somewhat to myself, I knocked on the door at the head of the bed, which led into my brother’s room, and he immediately answered.... Then I asked him to look whether there was anything on the bed. He replied that there was nothing: then, looking more attentively, he said with a surprised air that the coverlet was burnt, and in the middle of it was the imprint of a right hand.... I, Domenico Denza, in the interests of truth, attest and confirm what is above written with my own hand.”