The elegant dictators of theory speak of the belief in the existence of ghosts as the “vulgar belief in ghosts and goblins,” and get rid of it in that summary manner. But the very fact that it is vulgar, as they term it, is a strong point against them. If we could get the Scriptures pure and exempt from mixed and muddled interpretations, free from the garbage of a host of foreign lingual transformations, and in its original “Vulgate,” we should not have the world troubled with more creeds than they can invent gods to preside over, or devils to operate in. The word vulgar is not to be used always as inclusive of the “low-born and the uneducated.” The vulgar in this country believe in the imperialism of the ballot-box; in Russia and Prussia and England, and elsewhere, of monarchies, in the divine right of kings; and demagogues in all realms, like dogmatists of all creeds, have no faith at all, but use the belief of the masses for their own purposes. With the majority of mankind exists the supreme attribute of common sense, and yet they all, more or less, believe in the existence of ghosts. The hair-splitters of theology and other ethics, for sake of discipline, would drive the old stage-coach where the people would rush the locomotive; and as in the beginning, fishermen and carpenters were the recipients of divine truths, or the media of revelations, so now, while abstract and abstruse sciences occupy the minds of the enlighteners, the plain truths of Christian doctrine are held with other beliefs, relatively necessary to our nature, in the legendary, gossiping, and enduring belief of the masses.
It will be asked, For what purpose do your ghosts appear? To accomplish what end that human intelligence cannot effect? I say, again turn back to your Bible, and you will have your questions answered.
There are other needs now that did not then exist. Society is not the same; the ordinary laws of justice, of health, of life itself, are not the same. There are a thousand more appliances now, than there were, by which human life can be destroyed or preserved,—gunpowder, steam, machinery, with their countless adjuncts of power, on one side, and chemistry, with ether, and other discoveries, on the other. And as science becomes the assistant to the conveniences of mankind, in the same ratio it becomes his slayer. Events transpire now that were not dreamed of in former days, because of the increased forces that act upon latent ideas. Sixty, fifty, forty years ago, though Death had his ample harvest, he had not the immense scythes of steamboats and railroads with which to do his work of destruction; and now and then we have isolated facts published, with all the details of authenticity, of dreams that warned a voyager from the water or a traveller from the cars, when afterwards it has proved that disaster befell both modes of travel. The remedy is to the need, and who can say that there have not been innumerable warnings, by visitations and dreams, of which the public never has any account, owing to the seclusion of the parties, or their natural reticence and unwillingness to have their stories made the subject of a paragraph and a sneer?
There are purposes in the Almighty wisdom which we cannot fathom, and religion herself, speaking from the misty summits of theological controversy, cries to her votaries to have faith where they cannot have comprehension; or, in other words, to believe without understanding. Do I, a ghost-seer, ask for more?
You ask, for what purpose did this ghost—if ghost it was—cross your path? I could retort, and ask why that man—if it was a man—crossed my path? But I affirm that there was a purpose, and though I did not see it then, I may see it soon. Who can tell but what this revival of that mysterious horror may not lead to renewed activity in the police department? Who knows but it may be read by the murderer, and, awakening in his breast the smouldering embers of remorse, make him do those eccentric things which lead vigilance to observe and assist in the detection of the guilty? I never would have written this narrative if that misty figure had not confronted me on that night, and perhaps it may have been his intention to excite in me the idea of writing out these transactions, and thus awakening the slumbering or pausing authorities to a more active investigation.
Why did he select me, if I was not appropriate to his purpose? And I will say now, and with all truth, that, from that time to this moment, I have been haunted with a vague urging to write this work, and give it to the public; and now that I have done so, it may so happen that I will see that thing once more coming to assure me, in some way consistent with his condition, that his intention, so far as I was concerned as an agent, is accomplished. I shall not be surprised if it should occur.
XIII.
THE DOCTOR’S STORY.
Let me relate, as briefly as I can, a very singular incident that happened some years ago in Baltimore. The narrator was a man with whom I had been brought up from youth to manhood. His father was my father’s family physician, a doctor of high standing; and the son who told and acted a part in the story was then a practising physician in Washington, where he still practises. A party of us were together at the house of his father, and the ghost subject was introduced. My friend argued against their existence, as most doctors do; but in the midst of our conversation he said that, notwithstanding his theory, he must tell us of a remarkable occurrence that happened within his own personal experience.
Two years previously he had occupied the professor’s chair of Practical Anatomy (I believe that is the phrase) in the Medical College of Baltimore, though then not more than twenty-three or four years of age. His remarkable skill, systematized by study in the famous medical schools of Paris, had justified his selection for the important post. During this period, or some time before my friend accepted the professorship, the mob had broken into the medical college, actuated by a sentiment of horror at the idea of the bodies of their dead friends being stolen from the grave and placed under the knife, and subjected the faculty and students to great personal peril. The riot being quelled, it was determined to make such arrangements as would entirely elude the suspicions of the people.
For this purpose the upper portion of the building was converted into a large dissecting-room, with the windows hermetically sealed, so that no light could be perceived from the outside, and consequently lead to a renewal of an attack. Thus at night the faculty was secure from observation, and whatever of light was needed during the day came through glass inserted in the roof. To add to the security, a private stairway was arranged, so that if the mob did break in by the only publicly known entrance, the students and professors would be enabled to escape. The egress to this private stairway from the lecture-room was by a door, the bolt of which, shooting into a socket, was within the room, and could not be moved from without. This private escape-door was at the other end of the dissecting-room. And this is my friend’s story:—