Fiends, Ghosts, and Sprites / Including an Account of the Origin and Nature of Belief in the Supernatural

by John Netten Radcliffe

Weir again told his wife of the apparition, to be again ridiculed by her, and he remarked, "Smith is a bad un! Do you think Fisher would ever have left this country without coming to bid you and me good-bye?"

The next morning Ben waited on a Mr. Grafton, a justice of the peace, who lived near to him, and told his tale. The magistrate was at first disposed to treat the account lightly, but after consideration, he summoned one of the aboriginal natives, and at sunrise met Weir at the place where the apparition had occurred, and which was sufficiently marked by the dead and broken branches of the sapling.

The rail was found to be stained in several places, and the native, without any previous intimation of the object of the search, was directed to examine them, and he shortly pronounced them to be "white man's blood," and searching about, he pointed out a spot whereon a body had been laid. "Not a single shower of rain had fallen for several months previously,—not sufficient to lay even the dust upon the roads. Notwithstanding this, however, the native succeeded in tracking the footsteps of one man to the unfrequented side of a pond at some distance. He gave it as his opinion that another man had been dragged thither. The savage walked round and round the pond, eagerly examining its borders, and the sedges and weeds springing up around it. At first he seemed baffled,—no clue had been washed ashore to show that anything unusual had been sunk in the pond; but having finished this examination, he laid himself down on his face, and looked keenly along the surface of the smooth and stagnant water. Presently he jumped up, uttered a cry peculiar to the natives when gratified by finding some long-sought object, clapped his hands, and pointing to the middle of the pond, to where the decomposition of some sunken substance had produced a slimy coating streaked with prismatic colours, he exclaimed, 'White man's fat!' The pond was immediately searched; and, below the spot indicated, the remains of a body were discovered. A large stone and a rotted silk handkerchief were found near the body; these had been used to sink it."

By the teeth, and buttons upon the waistcoat, the body was identified as that of Fisher. Smith was arrested, and, upon this evidence, tried before the late Sir Francis Forbes, found guilty, sentenced to death, and hung; but previous to the execution, "he confessed that he, and he alone, committed the murder, and that it was upon the very rail where Weir swore that he had seen Fisher's ghost sitting, and that he had knocked out Fisher's brains with a tomahawk."

We quote this story as an interesting example of one of the best and most consistent of the tales of this kind, although it is probable that a more thorough investigation of the circumstances connected with it, would show an origin of a nature similar to that of the "Last Hours of Lord Lyttleton."

Several statements in the story require confirmation, and throw doubt upon the whole.

The assertion that Weir, on a "very dark" night, saw seated upon a rail, at a distance of twelve yards, a resemblance of Fisher which he took to be real, and was not aware of the actual nature of the appearance until he advanced towards it, is a statement too improbable to be worthy of credence unless supported by other and less objectionable evidence; and notwithstanding the extraordinary degree to which the visual and other senses of the aboriginal natives are, as we are aware, often developed, yet that they will enable them to state that an old blood-stain is produced by the blood of a white man, or that an iridescent scum floating at a distance on water is produced by the fat of the white man, are statements which cannot be admitted without strong confirmatory evidence.

It not unfrequently happens that dreams appear to foreshadow events, the occurrence of which could not be anticipated by the reasoning faculties. Many of the instances recorded of this kind are after-conclusions founded upon imperfectly remembered dreams, and are consequently worthless. Such, for example, is the story stated by Mrs. Crowe of a gentleman "who has several times been conscious on awaking that he had been conversing with some one, whom he has been subsequently startled to hear had died at that period."[71]

Other dreams have received a verification from the natural results of the dreamer's superstitious folly.