There is one instinct which we are bound to accord to ghosts; i. e. a wonderful aptitude for the discovery of cowards! In the ghost-stories of all countries, it is observable that the first impulse of the person addressed by a spectre is to take to his heels. With the exception of the lady of the Beresford family, who is said to have sat and talked theology with her brother, there is no record of a rational conversation between a disembodied spirit and those of the flesh; for the pretended apparition of Mrs. Veale, is now known to have been an ingenious bookseller’s puff of the work of Drelincourt on Death.
In most instances, ghost-stories have their origin in some incident which no one has been at the pains to investigate. In 1746, the public Theatre of Anatomy, in Paris, was disturbed by the sudden frenzy of the porter in care of the dissecting-room; who protested that the spirit of a young man, whose body had been deposited there the preceding day, after having committed suicide by throwing himself into the Seine, had appeared to him in the course of the night, bewailing and lamenting the dreadful consequences of his crime.
Bruhier, the learned Professor of Anatomy, aware of the injurious consequences likely to arise from a report that the theatre was haunted, examined carefully into the details of the case; when it appeared that this unfortunate young man, having recovered in the course of the night from the state of insensibility in which he was deposited in the dissecting-room, and terrified by the horrible aspect of the spot in which he found himself, among dead bodies, skeletons and anatomical preparations faintly illuminated by the light of a lamp, had dragged himself to the door of the small adjoining room inhabited by the porter, and in faint accents implored his assistance, and described the agonies of his situation.
The porter, roused from his sleep by the appeal of a dead man wrapped in his winding-sheet, instantly lost his senses; and the doors being locked upon them, the exhausted young man, whom Providence had thus fruitlessly restored, sank a victim to cold and exhaustion. His body was discovered stretched on the floor of the dissecting-room near the porter’s door. But for the judicious investigations of Monsieur Bruhier, this would have been established as an authentic instance of spectral visitation!
A similar circumstance occurred in Lancashire some years ago.
A lady, the wife of a wealthy squire, died after a protracted illness; and on the evening of her decease, her husband, desirous to pass a solitary hour by the body, sent the nurse who was watching beside it, out of the room. Before the expiration of an hour, the bell by which the deceased had been in the habit of summoning the nurse, rang violently; and the woman, fancying the unfortunate widower was taken suddenly ill, hurried into the room. He dismissed her angrily, however, protesting that he had not rung. Shortly afterwards, the bell was rung a second time; when the woman observed to one of the servants that she should not attend to the summons, as the gentleman might again repent having summoned her, and dismiss her ungraciously.
“It cannot be my master who is ringing now,” replied the footman, “for I have this moment left him in the drawing-room.”
And while he was still speaking, the bell of the chamber of death rang a third time—and still more violently than before.
The nurse was now literally afraid to obey the summons: nor was it till several of the servants agreed to accompany her, that she could command sufficient courage. At length, they ventured to open the door, expecting to discover, within, some terrible spectacle.
All, however, was perfectly tranquil; the corpse extended upon the bed under a holland sheet, which was evidently undisturbed. Such, however, was the agitation of the poor nurse, that nothing would induce her to remain alone with the body; and one of the housemaids accordingly agreed to become her companion in the adjoining dressing-room.