We almost wish that the legislature would—just for the "fun" of the thing—pass some law that might reach these reckless and desperate experimentalists, and punish the humorous players upon people's nerves, with a severity proportioned to the whimsicality of the hoax. The law recognises the criminality of those who carelessly or wilfully sport with the safety of people's legs, arms, or necks; and it is peculiarly severe upon all who heedlessly venture to trifle with the sacredness of our goods and chattels; but it has no eye to the playful freaks of practical jokers, to whose insatiable thirst for fun the credulous child, the timid girl, the weak-nerved woman, fall victims; it has no ear for the short sudden shriek that bursts involuntarily from white and quivering lips, sounding not unfrequently the knell of sanity in those who utter it, or proclaiming the approach of vacant, hopeless, miserable idiocy.
The disciples of this school of fun are sure to find plenty of nerves admirably suited for them to work upon. Children are prepared for the sport almost in their cradles. Nine out of ten are trained up in terror. They are taught the destructive lesson of fear, before they can even spell the word. Before they can speak plainly, they become practised in the instinctive expression of their feelings, by shuddering, screaming, and crying their little hearts out, at the idea of "bogie," and the horror of being left alone in the dark. The very moment this idea is engrafted upon the sensitive mind, the instant this horror takes possession of the child's imagination, it loses something of the health and happiness to which it was born. The dread of being in the dark—of being alone, and in the dark—clouds perhaps all its after life. It sees nothing that really is, in its true light, from the fear of seeing something which is not. The influence of the first horror of "bogie," remains for years and years after the particular species of "bogie" that had excited the agony of alarm has become an absurdity too childish to be even laughed at. Unconsciously, the mind is sensibly affected, in ten thousand different forms, by the very image which it despises and ridicules. The silly bugbear of the nursery has an abundant and most appalling progeny. In this, more perhaps than in any other respect, may it be said that "the child is father of the man."
The idea of darkness as something terrible would in few instances be fixed in the mind, were it not for the cruel and senseless practices, by which servants of all grades—we may add, teachers of some—work upon the imagination of children. They are taught to see in darkness a natural enemy, as they are sometimes taught to regard school as a punishment. "If you are not good, you shall be shut in the dark closet,"—or "If you don't behave better, you shall be sent to school immediately." These are family phrases not yet quite out of fashion. The consequences now and then take an unexpected turn. A little damsel of our acquaintance was shut up in a dark room; she cried bitterly, violently, for the first five minutes; then all was suddenly still—quite still; ten minutes went on, and yet there was a dead silence within. The family at length began to be uneasy—then frightened—too frightened to go and ascertain the cause of the phenomenon. At length they rush forth and burst open the door, when they discover that the little victim had—alone and in the dark—found her way to a plate of cheesecakes left accidentally in the apartment, and was making herself extremely ill for want of other amusement.
How many wits have been set wandering by roadside horrors, raised up from the elements of the ridiculous! The simplest objects become the means of deadly mischief. A donkey in the deep shadow, a cow in the dim moonlight, a stump of an old tree, a white finger-post at the corner of a by-path, have produced in myriads an agony of agitation; but what are these to the good old English country ghost, the elements that compose which we here set in their uncombined, and therefore unterrifying forms, before the spectator. Why, here are agents by which even the most unskilful may succeed in frightening a whole parish—nay, a county. Look upon these the simple means, and then behold the easily manufactured ghost!
But of all fields for frights the church-yard is the most productive of terrors! Yet why? Whosoever wanders over one in the daytime will find, be he in town or country, that he is surrounded by none but the most amiable and affectionate people in the world—by the kindest of relations—the faithfullest of friends. Such people are little likely to start from behind their tombstones, in the dark, for the mere pleasure of frightening benighted wanderers. In a churchyard, if the inhabitants be rightly described, there should be no terror! But what shall we say for a church, the sanctuary of the disturbed passions, a temple dedicated to sacredness and love. Yet where is the pious individual who would feel no tremor, if left to pass the night within the gothic aisles of such an edifice?
In the vulgar superstition all churches are haunted, so also is every house that happens to be "in chancery." There are two classes of haunted tenements—one celebrated for mysterious Sights, and the other for mysterious Sounds. The old Cock-lane Ghost, and the various modern editions of that personage at Cambridge and elsewhere, are specimens of the Visible; the recent mysteries at Windsor and Dublin are examples of the Audible. Opinions differ as to which is the truly Terrible. For ourselves, though shadows without substances are eminently agitating—noises without the slightest possible cause—noises, sudden, strange, and above all self-existent—noises of this kind at midnight—in the wainscot, in the next apartment which is empty, in the room below where the gentleman took the dose of poison by mistake—are not, we make bold to confess, a sort of sound that we should like to go out of our way to listen to.
Of the Audible Ghost, Addison's comedy of the "Haunted House" contains the noisiest representative on record; and perhaps Defoe's account of the apparition of Mrs. Veal appearing to her friend, presents the Visible Ghost in most extraordinary reality to our all but believing eyes.