On the other hand—for contrasts meet here as well as elsewhere—these phenomena have been frequently ascribed to purely physical causes, and in a number of cases the final explanation has confirmed this suggestion. A hypochondriac artist, for instance, was nightly disturbed by a low but furious knocking in his bed, which was heard by others as well as by himself. He prayed, he caused priests to come to his bedside, he had masses read in his behalf, but all remained in vain. Then came a plain, sensible friend, who, half in jest and half in earnest, covered his big toe with a brass wire which he dipped into an alkaline solution, and behold, the knockings ceased and never returned! (Dupotel, "Animal Magn.") In another case a somnambulistic woman frightened herself as well as others by most violent knockings whenever she was disappointed or thwarted; her physician, suspecting the cause, finally gave her antispasmodic remedies, and it soon appeared that in her nervous spasms the muscles had been vibrating forcibly enough to produce these disturbances. Since these discoveries it has been found that almost anybody may produce such knockings—which stand in a suspicious relationship to spirit-rappings—by exerting certain muscles of the leg; some men, who have practised this trick for scientific purposes, like Professor Schiff, of Florence, are able to imitate almost all the various knockings generally ascribed to ghosts and spirits. The public performances of Mr. Chauncey Burr, in New York, gave very striking illustrations of this power, and a Mr. Shadrach Barnes rapped with his toes to perfection.
In a large number of cases such phenomena appear in connection with persons who suffer of some nervous disease, and then the knockings are, of course, produced unconsciously, and may be accompanied by evidences of exceptional powers. It need not be added, however, that the two symptoms are not necessarily of the same nature; generally the mechanical knockings precede the development of ecstatic visions. A girl of eleven years, the child of humble Alsatian parents, presented, in 1852, this succession of symptoms very strikingly. The child had a habit of falling asleep at all hours; at once mysterious knockings began to perform a dance or a march, and continued daily for more than an hour. After some time the poor girl began, also, to talk in her sleep, and to converse with the knocking agent. She would order him to beat a tattoo, or to play a quickstep, and immediately it was done. The directions of bystanders, even when not uttered but merely formed earnestly in their mind, were obeyed in like manner. Finally the child, getting no doubt worse and unmercifully excited by the crowds of curious people who thronged the house, began to admonish her audience, and to preach and pray; during these exhortations no knockings were heard, but she became clairvoyant and recognized all the persons present, even with her eyes closed. She fancied that a black man with a red shawl produced the knockings and delivered the speeches. Her clairvoyance became at last so striking that her case excited the deepest interest of persons in high social position, and several physicians examined it with great care. Her disease was declared to be neurosis cœliaca ("Magicon," v. 274).
A very peculiar and utterly inexplicable phenomenon belonging to this class of ghostly appearances is the complete removal of persons by an unseen power. The idea of such occurrences must have been current among the Jews, for when "there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire ... and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven" (II. Kings ii. 11), the sons of the prophets did not at once resign themselves, but sent fifty strong men to seek him, "lest peradventure the Spirit of the Lord hath taken him up and cast him upon some mountain or into some valley" (v. 16). In the New Testament the same mysterious removal is mentioned in the case of Philip, after his interview with the Ethiopian, whom he baptized. "The Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more," and "Philip was found at Azotus" (Acts viii. 39, 40). What in these cases was done by divine power, is said to be occasionally the work of an unknown and unseen force. Generally, no doubt, men or children lose themselves by accident, either when they are already from illness or other cause in a state of semi-consciousness, or when they become so bewildered and frightened by the accident itself, that they fancy they must have been carried away by a mysterious power. The best authenticated case is reported in Beaumont (p. 65). An Irish steward, crossing a field, saw in it a large company feasting, and was invited to join their meal. One of them, however, warned him in a whisper not to accept anything that should be offered. Upon his refusal to eat, the table vanished and the men were seen dancing to a merry music. He was again invited to join, and when he refused, all disappeared, and he found himself alone. He hurried home thoroughly terrified, and fainted away in his room. During the night he dreamt—or really saw—that one of the mysterious company appeared at his bedside and announced to him that if he dare leave the house on the following day, he would be carried away. He remained at home till the evening, when, thinking himself safe, he stepped across the threshold. Instantly his companions saw him, with a rope around his body, hurried away so fast that they could not follow. At last they meet a horseman whom they request by signs to arrest the unhappy victim; he seizes the rope and receives a smart blow, but rescues the steward. Lord Orrery desired to see the man, and when the latter presented himself before the earl, he reported that another nightly visitor had threatened him as before. He was, thereupon, placed in a large room under the guard of several stout men; a number of distinguished persons, two bishops among them, went constantly in and out. In the afternoon he was suddenly lifted into the air; a famous boxer, Greatrix, who had been specially engaged to guard him, and another powerful man, seized him by the shoulders, but he was dragged from their grasp and for some time carried about high above their heads, till at last he fell into the arms of some of his keepers. During the night the same apparition stood once more by his bed-side, inviting him to drink of a gray porridge, which would cure him of all ills and protect him against further violence. He suffered himself to be persuaded, when the visitor made himself known as a former friend who had to attend those mysterious meetings in punishment of the dissolute life he had led upon earth, and who now wished to save another unhappy fellow-being from a like sad fate. At the same time he reminded him of his neglect to pray, and then disappeared. The steward speedily recovered from his fright, and was no further molested. There can be little doubt that the man was ill at ease in body and in conscience, and that this double burden was too heavy to bear for his mind; his thoughts became disordered, till he felt an apparently external power stronger than his own will, and thus not only imagined strange visions, but actually obeyed erratic impulses of his diseased mind, as if they were acts of violence from without.
A favorite pastime of these pseudo-ghosts is the throwing of stones at the buildings or even into the rooms of those whom they wish to annoy. Good Cotton Mather loved to tell stories of such perverse proceedings, and states at length the sufferings of George Walton, at Portsmouth, in 1682. Invisible hands threw such a hailstorm of stones against his house, that the door was burst open, although the inhabitants, when hit by the stones, only felt a slight touch. Then the stones began to fly about inside, and to destroy the window-panes from within; when picked up by some of the witnesses, they proved to be burning hot; they were marked and placed upon a table, whereupon they commenced to fly about once more. It is characteristic of the whole proceeding that the only person really injured by the operation was the owner of the house, a quaker! The learned author delights also in recitals of children who were plagued by evil spirits, having forks and knives, pins and sharp scissors stuck into their backs, and whose food, at the moment when it was to be carried from the plate to the mouth, flew away, leaving yarn, ashes, and vile things to reach the palate! At other times the disturbance assumes a somewhat more dignified form, and appears as the ringing of bells. Thus Baxter tells us of a house at Colne Priory, in Essex, where, for a time, every morning at two o'clock a large bell was heard, while in the parish of Wilcot, a smaller bell waked the vicar night after night with its tinkling, and yet could not be heard outside of the dwelling. Physicians know very well how readily the pressure of blood to certain vessels in the head produces the impression of the ringing of bells, and experience tells us how easily men are made to believe that they see or hear what others assure them is seen or heard by everybody. Even the great John Wesley seems not to have been fully convinced of the purely natural character of such disturbances, when they annoyed his venerable father at Epworth Rectory; and Dr. Priestley, a calm and cautious writer, says of these phenomena: "It is perhaps the best-authenticated and the best-told story of the kind that is anywhere extant, on which account, and to exercise the ingenuity of some speculative person, I thought it not undeserved of being published." It seems that in 1716 the rectory became the scene of strange disturbances, which were at first ascribed to one of the minister's enemies, Jeffrey. The inmates heard an incessant walking about, sighing and groaning, cackling and crowing; a hand-mill was set whirling around by invisible hands, and the Amen! with which Wesley's father ended the family prayer was accompanied by a noise like thunder. Even the faithful watchdog was disturbed and his instinct overawed, for he sought refuge with men, and barked furiously, till his excitement rose to a state resembling madness, he even anticipated the coming of the disturbance, and announced it by his intense agitation.
The subject is one of extreme difficulty because of the large number of cases in which all such disturbances have been clearly traced to the agency of dissatisfied servants, hidden enemies, or envious neighbors, whose sole purpose was a desire to drive the occupant from his house, or to diminish its value. It is characteristic of human nature that the cunning and the skill displayed on such occasions even by ignorant servants and awkward rustics are perfectly amazing, a fact which proves anew the assertion of old divines, that the Devil is vastly better served than the Lord of Heaven. Even the best authenticated case of such mysterious disturbances, Kerner's so-called Seeress of Prevorst, is not entirely free from all suspicion. Mrs. Hauffe, a lady of delicate health, great nervous irritability, and a mind which was, to say the least, not too well balanced, became the patient of Dr. Justinus Kerner, in southern Germany. Besides her mysterious power to reveal unknown things, to read the future, and to prescribe for herself and others, of which mention has been made before; she was also pursued by every variety of strange noises. Plates and glasses, tables and chairs were violently thrown about in the house in which she lived; a medicine phial rose slowly into the air and had to be brought back by one of the bystanders, and an easy-chair was lifted up to the ceiling, but came down again quite gently. The suffering woman was the only one who knew the cause of these phenomena; she ascribed them all to a dark spirit, Belon's companion, who appeared to her as a black column of smoke, with a hideous head, and whose approach oppressed even some of the bystanders—especially the patient's sister. He was not content with disturbing Mrs. Hauffe only, but carried his wantonness even into the homes of distant friends and kinsmen. A pious minister, who frequently visited the poor sufferer, was contagiously affected by the ill-fated atmosphere of her house; night after night he was waked up, by a "bright spirit," who coughed and sighed and sobbed in his presence, till a fervent prayer drove him away; if the poor divine, however, prayed only faintly or entertained doubts in his heart, the spirit mocked him with increased energy. Later even the minister's wife succumbed, saw the same luminous appearances and heard the same mysterious noises, till the whole matter was suddenly brought to an end by an amulet! To this class of occurrences belongs also the experience of the Rev. Dr. Phelps of Stratford, Connecticut. One fine day he found, upon returning from church, that all the doors of his house, which he had carefully locked, were open and everything in the lower rooms in a state of boundless confusion. Nothing, however, had been stolen. In the upper story a room was found to be occupied by eight or ten persons diligently reading in an open Bible, which each one held close to his face. Upon examination these readers were discovered to be bundles of clothes carefully and most cunningly arranged so as to represent living beings. Everything was cleared away and the room was locked; but in three minutes, the clothing, which had been put aside, disappeared, and when the door was opened the same scene was presented. For seven long months the house was haunted by most extraordinary phenomena; noises of every kind were heard by day as well as by night; utensils and window-panes were broken before the eyes of numerous witnesses by invisible hands, and the son of the house, eleven years old, was bodily lifted up and carried away to some distance. The most searching inquiry led to no result, until at last Dr. Phelps, almost in despair, applied to some spiritualists, and in consequence of the hints he received was enabled to bring the disturbances to a speedy end (Rechenberg, p. 58).
Stone-throwing seems to be a favorite amusement with Eastern ghosts also; at least we are told that it is quite frequent in the western part of the Island of Java, where the Sunda people live amid gigantic mountains and still active volcanoes. They believe in good and evil spirits, and are firmly convinced that constant intercourse is kept up between earth-born men and heavenly beings. The whole Indian Archipelago is filled with the latter, and hence, the throwing of stones, sand and gravel, by invisible hands, has a name of its own, it is called Gundarua. Some thirty years ago, a German happened to be Assistant-Resident at Sumadang, in the service of the Dutch government. His wife had taken a fancy to a native child ten years old, who was allowed to go in and out the house at will. One morning during the German's absence, the child's white dress was found to be soiled all over with red betel-juice, and at the moment when her patroness made this discovery, a stone fell apparently from the ceiling, at her feet. The same phenomenon was repeated over and over again, till the lady, in her distress, appealed to a neighboring native sovereign, who promised his assistance. He sent immediately a large force of armed men, who surrounded the house and watched the room; nevertheless, the red spots reappeared and stones fell as before. Towards evening, a Mohammedan mufti, of high rank, was sent for; but he had scarcely opened his Koran, to read certain sentences for the purpose of exorcising the demons, when the sacred book was hurled to one side and the lamp to another. The lady took the child to the prince's residence to spend the night there, and no disturbance occurred. But when her husband, for whom swift messengers had been sent out, returned on the following day, the same trouble occurred; the child was spit at with betel-juice and stones kept falling from on high. Soon the report reached the Governor-General at Breitenzorg, who thereupon sent a man of great military renown, a Major Michiels, to investigate the matter. Once more the house was surrounded by an armed force, even the neighboring trees were carefully guarded, and the major took the little girl upon his knees. In spite of all these precautions, her dress was soon covered with red spots, and stones flew about as before. No one, however, was injured. They were gathered up, proved to be wet or hot, as if just picked up in the road, and at night filled a huge box. The same process continued, when a huge sheet of linen had been stretched from wall to wall, so as to form an inner ceiling under the real ceiling; and now not only stones, but also fruit from the surrounding trees, freshly gathered, and mortar from the kitchen fell into the newly formed tent. At the same time the furniture was repeatedly disturbed, tumblers and wineglasses tossed about, and marks left on the large mirror as if a moist hand had been passed over the surface. The marvelous occurrences were duly reported to the home government, and the king, William II., ordered that no pains should be spared to clear up the matter. But no explanation was ever obtained; only the fact was ascertained that similar phenomena had been repeatedly observed in other parts of the island also, and were considered quite ordinary occurrences by the natives. Certain families, it may be added, claim to have inherited from their ancestors the power to make themselves invisible, a gift which is almost invariably accompanied by the Gundarua; as these native families gradually die out, the symptoms of the latter also disappear more and more. There is no doubt that here, as in the Russian poganne (cursed places which are haunted by ghosts), the belief in such appearances, bequeathed through long ages from father to son, has finally obtained a force which renders it equal to reality itself. Reason is not only biased, but actually held bound; the mind is wrought up to a state of excitement in which it ceases to see clearly, and finally visions assume an overwhelming force, which ends in symptoms of what is called magic. The same law applies, for instance, to the ancient home of charmers and magicians, the land of the Nile, where also the studies of the ancient Magi have been assumed by a succession of learned men, till they were taken up by fanatic Mohammedans, whose creed arranges invisible beings, angels, demons, and others, in regular order, and assigns them a home in distinct parts of the universe. It is not without interest to observe that even Europeans, after a long residence in the Orient, become deeply imbued with such notions, and men like Bayle St. John, in his account of magic performances which he witnessed, do not seem able to remain altogether impartial.
One of the most remarkable phenomena belonging to this branch of magic is the appearance of living or recently deceased persons to friends or supplicants. The peculiarity in this case consists in the constantly changing character of the appearance: the double—as it is called—is the vision of the dying man, which appears to others or to his own senses. The former class of cases was well known in antiquity, for Pythagoras already had, according to popular report, appeared to numerous friends before he died. Herodotus and Maximus Tyrius state both, that Aristæus sent his spirit into different lands to acquire knowledge, and Epimenides and Hernestinus, from Claromenæ, were popularly believed to be able to visit, when in a state of ecstasy, all distant countries, and to return at pleasure. St. Augustine, also, states ("Sermon," 123) that he, himself, had appeared to two persons who had known him only by reputation, and advised them to go to Hippons in order to obtain their health there by the intercession of St. Stephen. They really went to the place and recovered from their disease. At another time his form appeared to a famous teacher of eloquence in Carthage and explained to him several most difficult passages in Cicero's writings (De cura pro mortuis, ch. ii). The saints of the Catholic church having possessed the gift of being in several places at once, apparently so very generally, that the miracle has lost its interest, except where peculiar circumstances seem to suggest the true explanation. Such was, for instance, the last-mentioned case, recited by St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei. l. 8. ch. 18). Præstantius requested a philosopher to solve to him some doubts, but received no answer. The following night, however, when Præstantius lay awake, troubled by his difficulties, he suddenly saw his learned friend standing by his bedside and heard from his lips all he desired to know. Upon meeting him next day, he inquired why he had been unwilling to explain the matter in the daytime, and thus caused himself the trouble of coming at midnight to his house. "I never came to your house," was the reply, "but I dreamt that I did." Here was very evidently a case of magic activity on the part of the philosopher, whose mind was, in his sleep, busily engaged in solving the propounded mystery and thus affected not himself only, but his absent friend likewise.
The story of Dr. Donne's vision is well known, and deserves all the more serious attention as his candor was above suspicion, and his judgment held in the highest esteem. He formed part of an embassy sent to Henry IV. of France, and had been two days in Paris, thinking constantly and anxiously of his wife, whom he had left ill in London. Towards noon he suddenly fell into a kind of trance, and when he recovered his senses related to his friends that he had seen his beloved wife pass him twice, as she walked across the room, her hair dishevelled and her child dead in her arms. When she passed him the second time, she looked sadly into his face and then disappeared. His fears were aroused to such a degree by this vision that he immediately dispatched a special messenger to England, and twelve days later he received the afflicting news that on that day and at that hour his wife had, after great and protracted suffering, been delivered of a still-born infant (Beaumont, p. 96). In Macnish's excellent work on "Sleep," we find (p. 180) the following account: "A Mr. H. went one day, apparently in the enjoyment of full health, down the street, when he saw a friend of his, Mr. C., who was walking before him. He called his name aloud, but the latter pretended not to hear him, and steadily walked on. H. hastened his steps to overtake him, but his friend also hurried on, and thus remained at the same distance from him; thus the two walked for some time, till suddenly Mr. C. entered a gateway, and when Mr. H. was about to follow, slammed the door violently in his face. Perfectly amazed at such unusual conduct, Mr. H. opened the door and looked down the long passage, upon which it opened, but saw no one. Determined to solve the mystery, he hurried to his friend's house, and there, to his great astonishment, learnt that Mr. C. had been confined to his bed for some days. It was not until several weeks later that the two friends met at the house of a common acquaintance; Mr. H. told Mr. C. of his adventure, and added laughingly, that having seen his double, he was afraid Mr. C. would not live long. These words were received by all with hearty laughter; but only a few days after this meeting the unfortunate friend was seized with a violent illness, to which he speedily succumbed." What is most remarkable, however, is that Mr. H. also followed him, quite unexpectedly, soon to the grave. Whatever may have been the nature of the event itself, it cannot be doubted that the minds of both friends were far more deeply impressed by its mysteriousness than they would probably have been willing to acknowledge to themselves, and that the nervous excitement thus produced brought out an illness lurking already in their system, and rendered it fatal. A very remarkable case was that of a distinguished diplomat, related by A. Moritz in his "Psychology." He was lying in bed, sleepless, when he noticed his pet dog becoming restless, and apparently disturbed to the utmost by a rustling and whisking about in the room, which he heard but could not explain. Suddenly a kind of white vapor rose by his bed-side, and gradually assumed the outline and even the features of his mother; he especially noticed a purple ribbon in her cap. He jumped out of bed and endeavored to embrace her, but she fled before him and as suddenly vanished, leaving a bright glare at the place where she had disappeared. It was found, afterwards, that at that hour—10 o'clock A. M.—the old lady had been ill unto death, lying still and almost breathless on her couch; she had felt the anguish of death in her heart, and had thought so anxiously of her son and her sister, that her first question when she recovered was, whether she had not perhaps been visited by the two persons who had thus occupied her whole mind. It was also ascertained that, contrary to a life's habit, she had on that day worn a purple ribbon in her night-cap. A German professor once succeeded in establishing the connection which undoubtedly exists between the will of certain persons and their appearance to others. He had only been married a year in 1823, when he was compelled to leave his wife and to undertake a long and perilous journey. Once, sitting in a peculiarly sad and dejected mood alone in a room of his hotel, he longed so ardently for the society of his wife, that he felt in his heart as if, by a great effort of will, he should be able to see her. He made the effort, and, behold! he saw her sitting at her work-table, busily engaged in sewing, and himself, as was his habit, on a low foot-stool by her side. She tried to conceal her work from his eyes. A few days later a messenger reached him, sent by his wife, who was in great consternation and anxiety. On that day she also had suddenly seen her husband seated by her side, attentively watching her at work, and continuing there till her father entered the room, upon which the professor had instantly disappeared. When he returned to his house he made minute inquiries as to the work he had seen in the hands of his wife, and this was of such peculiar character as to exclude all ideas of a mere dream on his part. Here also the supreme will of the professor must have endowed him for the moment with exceptional powers, enabling him to make himself visible to his wife, while the latter, with the ardent love which bound her to her husband, was at the same moment sympathetically excited, and thus enabled to second his will, and to behold him as she was accustomed to see him most frequently.
Owen in his "Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World," reports fully a remarkable case here repeated only in outline. Robert Bruce, thirty years old, served as mate on board a merchant vessel on the line between Liverpool and St. John in New Brunswick. When the ship was near the banks he was one day about noon busy calculating the longitude, and thinking that the captain was in his cabin—the next to his own—he called out to him: How have you found it? Looking back over his shoulder, he saw the captain writing busily at his desk, and as he heard no answer, he went in and repeated his question. To his horror the man at the desk raised his head and revealed to him the face of an entire stranger, who regarded him fixedly. In a state of great excitement he rushed to the upper deck, where he found the captain and told him what had occurred. Thereupon both went down; there was no one in the cabin, but on the captain's slate an unknown hand had written these words: Steer NW.! No effort was spared to solve the mystery; the whole vessel was searched from end to end, but no stranger was discovered; even the handwriting of every member of the crew was examined, but nothing found resembling in the least degree the mysterious warning. After some hesitation the captain decided, as nothing was likely to be lost by so doing, to obey the behest and ordered the helmsman to steer northwest. A few hours later they encountered the wreck of a vessel fastened to an iceberg, with a large crew and a number of passengers, in expectation of certain death. When the unfortunate men were brought back by the ship's boats, Bruce suddenly started in utter amazement, for in one of the saved men he recognized, by dress and features, the person he had seen at the captain's desk in the cabin. The stranger was requested to write down the words: Steer NW.! and when the words were compared with those still standing on the slate, they were identical! Upon inquiry it turned out that the shipwrecked man had at noon fallen into a deep sleep, during which he had seen a ship approaching to their rescue. When he had been waked half an hour later he had confidently assured his fellow-sufferers that they would be rescued, describing even the vessel that was to come to their assistance. Words cannot convey the amazement of the unfortunate men when they saw, a few hours afterwards, a ship bear down upon them, which bore all the marks predicted by their companion, and the latter assured Robert Bruce that everything on board the vessel appeared to him perfectly familiar.
Cases in which men have been seen at the same time at two different places are not less frequent, though here the explanation is much less easy. A French girl, Emilie Sagée, had even to pay a severe penalty for such a peculiarity: she was continually met with at various places at once, and as she could not give a satisfactory excuse for being at one place when her duties required her to be at another, she was suspected of sad misconduct. She lived as governess in a boarding-school in Livonia, and the girls of the institute saw her at the same time sitting among them and walking below in the garden by the side of a friend, and not unfrequently two Miss Sagées would be seen standing before the blackboard, looking exactly alike and performing the same motions, although one of them only wrote with chalk on the board. Once, while she was helping a friend to lace her dress behind, the latter looked into the mirror and to her horror saw two persons standing there, whereupon she fell down fainting. The poor French girl lost her place not less than nineteen times on account of her double existence (Owen, "Footfalls," etc., p. 348).