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

by John Netten Radcliffe

Cicero,[76] after relating the myth of the apparition of Tages, in Etruria, adds:—

"But I should indeed be more foolish than they who credit these things, if I seriously argue the matter."

Equally foolish it would be for us to attempt to show the absurdity of the foregoing opinions; and we fear it would be a bootless and inutile task to argue with those who regard the statements of the studiously and transcendentally superstitious and ignorant, the incoherence of the drunkard, the depressed feelings experienced after a debauch, or the vague gleams of understanding in an idiot, as evidences of communication with the spirit-world.

We know two ladies gifted with the faculty of ordinary presentiment, and who boast (if we may use that expression) that they are members of a family of which no scion has died for years without some supernatural indication of its occurrence. We well remember after the information had been received by them of the death of the last male representative of one branch of the family, that they told how on the night of the death they happened to be awake in bed, when certain strange noises were heard about the bed-curtains, "as of a mouse" scrambling upon them, and immediately afterwards a blow was struck upon a large chest of drawers which stood opposite the foot of the bed, and the sound was as though the chest had been broken to pieces. We did not draw the inference which the ladies did from this circumstance, namely, that it was an intimation of the death of their relative, for, unfortunately for the romantic view of the question, we knew that such nightly occurrences as these were somewhat common with them, and that a simple and comfortable house in a densely-populated manufacturing district had been peopled by them with nightly noises and sounds, audible alone to them, to such an extent, that the adaptation of a presentiment to any particular occurrence was a matter of little difficulty.

We also well remember, some years ago, when an infant brother lay dying, that our mother and the nurse were startled in the dead of night by a strange fluttering at the window. On the curtain being raised, the light of the candle showed a bird fluttering and beating against one of the panes. Was it an omen of death, and an emblem of the happy transition of the baby-spirit to another world? A few moments' examination soon showed that it was no spectre bird, but apparently a robin, which had been disturbed in the darkness, and was attracted by the light, and no sooner was the window darkened than it flew away.

Three days ago, we saw a woman who had been for some months in a delicate state of health. "Sir," she said, "what I have most to complain of is, that I always feel as if some great evil was about to befall myself or family." This feeling is common, in a greater or less degree, to that depressed state of the system preceding attacks of febrile and many other diseases, and is often marked in hypocondriacism. Who, when suffering from slight indisposition, has not often felt this feeling of foreboding, of which the lowest grade is expressed in the ordinary phrase, low-spirits? This feeling, and thus derived, has been the substratum for those vague, so-called presentiments, which constitute the great bulk of instances in that doctrine; and the fallacy has been, that the mind, more readily affected by affirmative than by negative examples, has held to the former and neglected the latter, and deluded itself by an imperfect and too contracted view of the facts.

Boismont, the most recent writer on the doctrine of presentiments, writes:—

"In the greatest number of cases, they are not realised; in those where the event justifies them, they are only a reminiscence—a simple coincidence;—we admit all this. It is not the less true, that an unforeseen event, a strong prepossession, great restlessness, a sudden change in habits, any fear whatsoever, gives rise, at the moment, to presentiments which it would be difficult to deny by systematic credulity."[77]

Let us examine one or two of the cases which would lead so distinguished a psychologist to give a certain degree of credence to this belief.

The Prince de Radzvil had adopted one of his nieces, an orphan. He inhabited a château in Gallicia, and this château had a large hall which separated the apartments of the Prince from those occupied by the children, and in order to communicate between the two suites of rooms it was necessary either to traverse the hall or the court.