‘A certain chemical operator, named La Pierre, received blood from the hands of a certain bishop to operate upon, which he, setting to work upon the Saturday, did continue it for a week, with divers degrees of fire. But about midnight the Friday following, this artificer, lying in a chamber next to his laboratory, betwixt sleeping and waking, heard a horrible noise like unto the lowing of kine or the roaring of a lion; and continuing quiet, after the ceasing of the sound in the laboratory, the moon being at the full, and by shining enlightening the chamber, suddenly, betwixt himself and the window he saw a thick little cloud condensed into an oval form, which after, by little and little, did seem completely to put on the shape of a man, and making another and sharp clamour did suddenly vanish. And not only some noble persons in the next chambers, but also the host and his wife, lying in a lower room of the house, and also the neighbours dwelling on the opposite side of the street, did distinctly hear the bellowing as well as the voice, and some of them were awakened with the vehemence thereof. But the artificer said that in this he found solace, because the bishop from whom he had it did admonish him that if any of them from whom the blood was extracted should die in the time of its putrefaction, his spirit was wont often to appear to the sight of the artificer with perturbation. Also forthwith, upon the Saturday following, he took the retort from the furnace and broke it with the slight stroke of a little key, and there, in the remaining blood, found the perfect representation of a human head, agreeable in face, eyes, nostrils, mouth, and hairs, that were somewhat thin and of a golden colour.’ Webster adds: ‘There were many ocular witnesses, as the noble person Lord of Bourdalone, the chief secretary to the Duke of Guise, and he (Flud) had this relation from the Lord of Menanton, living in that house at the same time, from a certain doctor of physic, from the owner of the house, and many others.’
In recent years the so-called spiritualism has attracted much attention, and ‘as of old, men live now in habitual intercourse with the spirits of the dead.... The spirits of the living as well as of the dead, the souls of Strauss and Carl Vogt as well as of Augustine and Jerome, are summoned by mediums to distant spirit-circles.’[171] But for further information on this subject reports of the Psychical Research Society should be consulted.[172]
CHAPTER XIII
GHOST LAYING
In his amusing account of the art of ‘laying’ ghosts, published in the last century, Grose tells us ‘a ghost may be laid for any term less than a hundred years, and in any place or body, full or empty; as a solid oak, the pommel of a sword, a barrel of beer, if a yeoman or simple gentleman; or a pipe of wine, if an esquire or a justice.’ But this, as Dr. Tylor writes,[173] ‘is one of the many good instances of articles of serious savage belief surviving as jests among civilised men.’ However whimsical the idea of laying a ghost may seem to the prosaic mind, an inquiry into the history of human belief shows how widely this expedient has been resorted to in times past, although St. Chrysostom is said to have insulted some African conjurors of old with this quaint and humiliating observation: ‘Miserable and woful creatures that we are, we cannot so much as expel fleas, much less devils.’
It was not so very long ago that, at the trial of Laurie for the murder of Mr. Rose,[174] Sergeant Munro, on being asked by the Dean of Faculty a question as to the disappearance of the murdered man’s boots, replied that he believed they had been buried on the beach at Corne, below high-water mark. This curious ceremony seems to have been adopted by the Highland police, with the intention of laying Mr. Rose’s ghost—an object which, according to tradition, might be attained by burying his boots under water. The expedient resorted to by the Highland police was founded not upon any inadequate estimate of the powers of ghosts, but upon an intimate knowledge of their likes and dislikes. They are known to entertain a strong objection to water, an antipathy which is sufficiently strong to make them shun a spot on which water is to be found; in fact, as Mr. Hunt writes,[175] spirits are supposed to be unable to cross water.
A story is told of ‘Dary Pit,’ Shropshire, a dismal pool, which was a much dreaded spot, because it was said spirits were laid under the water, and might, it seems, in spite of being so laid, walk abroad.
This belief may be traced in various parts of the world, and ‘one of the most striking ways,’ writes Mr. James G. Frazer,[176] ‘of keeping down the dead man is to divert the course of a river, bury him in its bed, and then allow the river to resume its course. It was thus that Alaric was buried, and Commander Cameron found the same mode of burial in vogue amongst a tribe in Central Africa.’
Among the Tipperahs of Chittagong, if a man dies away from home, his friends stretch a thread over all the intermediate streams, so that the spirit of the dead man may return to his own village; ‘it being supposed that,[177] without assistance, spirits are unable to cross running water,’ and hence streams are occasionally bridged over in the manner afore-said.[178] A somewhat similar idea prevails among the Fijians, and we are told how those who have reason to suspect others of plotting against them occasionally ‘build themselves a small house, and surround it with a moat, believing that a little water will neutralise the charms which are directed’ to hurt them.[179]
The idea of water as a barrier against ghosts has given rise to many strange customs, some of which Mr. Frazer quotes in his paper on ‘The Primitive Ghost.’[180] Among the Metamba negroes, a woman is bound hand and foot by the priest, who flings her into the water several times over with the intention of drowning her husband’s ghost, who may be supposed to be clinging to his unfeeling spouse. A similar practice exists in Angola, and in New Zealand those who have attended a funeral plunge several times into the nearest stream. In Tahiti, all who assisted at a burial plunged into the sea; and in some parts of West Africa, after the corpse has been deposited in the grave, ‘all the bearers rush to the waterside and undergo a thorough ablution before they are permitted to return to the town.’