On this point Southey, in “The Doctor,” with much force thus writes:—“The popular belief that places are haunted where money has been concealed (as if, where the treasure was and the heart had been, there would the miserable soul be also), or where some great and undiscovered crime has been committed, shows how consistent this is with our natural sense of fitness.”
On a collateral detail of this subject (the constant and malignant activity of evil spirits), Mr. John Wesley, a thorough believer in the Supernatural, put forth his faith and convictions with singular force and lucidity, plainly maintaining the reality and importance of all those explicit statements of Holy Scripture which so directly and practically bear on the point under treatment.
“Let us consider,” wrote Wesley, “what may be the employment of unholy spirits from death to the resurrection. We cannot doubt but the moment they leave the body, they find themselves surrounded by spirits of their own kind, probably human as well as diabolical. What power God may permit these to exercise over them we do not distinctly know. But it is not improbable [that] He may suffer Satan to employ them as he does his own angels, in inflicting death or evils of various kinds on the men that know not God. For this end they may raise storms by sea or by land; they may shoot meteors through the air; they may occasion earthquakes; and in numberless ways afflict those whom they are not suffered to destroy. Where they are not permitted to take away life, they may inflict various diseases; and many of these, which we may judge to be natural, are undoubtedly diabolical. I believe this is frequently the case with lunatics. It is observable that many of these, mentioned in the Scripture, who are called ‘lunatics’ by one of the Evangelists, are termed ‘demoniacs’ by another. One of the most eminent physicians I ever knew, particularly in cases of insanity, the late Dr. Deacon, was clearly of opinion that this was the case with many, if not with most lunatics. And it is no valid objection to this, that these diseases are so often cured by natural means; for a wound inflicted by an evil spirit might be cured as any other, unless that spirit were permitted to repeat the blow. May not some of these evil spirits be likewise employed, in conjunction with evil angels, in tempting wicked men to sin, and in procuring occasions for them? Yea, and in tempting good men to sin, even after they have escaped the corruption that is in the World. Herein, doubtless, they put forth all their strength, and greatly glory if they conquer.”[27]
Although some may maintain that this passage is perhaps wanting in theological exactness, there can be little doubt that, with much force, it truly and eloquently embodies the belief of all Christian people, and gives a simple and forcible explanation of Scripture statements regarding the active and untiring energy of the legions of Hell.
Again, the Marquis de Marsay, a pious French Protestant writer of the last century, whose collected works were issued about the year 1735, sets forth from his own point of view a theory regarding the nature and character of spirits, which because it bears directly on the subject of Haunted Localities, and in some respects follows the teaching of the schoolmen, it may be well to quote here:—
“I believe,” he writes, “that there are three kind of spirits, which return to this World, after the death of their bodies. The spirits of such as are in a state of condemnation, and which are in a very miserable condition, hover about, and haunt the places where they have committed their evil deeds and iniquities. They remain at these places by divine permission, and do all the evil they can; whilst, at the same time, they suffer intolerable torments and are malignant. Some of this kind of spirits occasionally make themselves visible.... The second kind of spirits are those which roam about, because they seek to free themselves from their state of purification[28] by other means than by resignation to Divine Justice; hence they seek help from those that fear God, and in so doing, withdraw themselves from the Divine Order.... These are not evil spirits, but such as are still in their self-will, and therefore refuse to yield to the Divine Order, by voluntarily submitting themselves to the punishment imposed upon them.... The third kind of spirits, or rather souls that reappear, are those, whose punishment is to be at some certain place in this world, because they have satisfied their passions in that place, and lived according to their lusts in an idolatrous manner; for that which now causes a man lust and pleasure, must hereafter serve as his pain and punishment. Of this we have several instances; amongst others, that of a pious man, who after his death appeared to his daughter, who was likewise a pious person, and after conversing with her some time on his state, began to turn pale, to tremble, and be much distressed; and said to his daughter that the time was now arrived when he must go and remain for a time in his grave, with his putrefying and corrupting corpse; and that this happened to him every day, because in his life-time he had had too much affection and tenderness for his body.”
The dissertations of the schoolmen, and of certain English writers of the seventeenth century, are not unlike the above.[29] So, too, are several of their most reasonable deductions and conclusions. In fact, Dr. Joseph Hall, sometime Bishop of Exeter (A.D. 1627-1641, and afterwards of Norwich, from 1641 until 1656), maintained that many souls, guilty both of deadly sin (duly repented of during life), and of venial sin, in which not improbably they died, might have to suffer, by lingering, unsatisfied, because away from their Creator, and about the places where they sinned in their lifetime, until their temporal punishment was complete; a theory which though from the pen of one suspected of favouring Puritanism, is very like that embodied in the faith and practice of the Universal Church.
However this may be, at all events there is scarcely a locality in which some old tradition as regards Haunted Houses and Places does not exist; and which is not more or less accepted and believed in even now. A general rejection of the Supernatural may be the case with many, and a shallow desire not to be thought superstitious or over-credulous by more, are obvious reasons why some traditions have become weakened and others obscure. But putting aside all such, half-lost, forgotten, or fading away, and making every allowance for exaggeration and hyperbole, the facts which can still be testified to by credible witnesses, the evidence which is even now on record, coupled with that innate sentiment of awe, so common to many, and often strengthened by a sound religious belief, which gives point to old traditions, are sufficient to induce the calm and the unprejudiced not too hastily to disavow the existence of a principle of almost universal acceptance with mankind, and which neither the lame and limping logic of the sceptic, nor the imperfectly marshalled facts and random conclusions of the materialist can, in the long run, either weaken or destroy.
The following curious record, a fair example of numerous others, may now be suitably set forth:—
“Elizabeth, the third daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke (preceptor to Edward VI.) married Sir Thomas Hobby, of Bisham Abbey in Berkshire, and accompanied him to France, when as ambassador to Queen Elizabeth he went thither. On his death abroad in 1566 Lady Hobby brought his corpse home to Bisham, where he was buried in a mortuary chapel. She afterwards married John, Lord Russell. By her first husband she had a son, who when quite young is said to have entertained the greatest dislike and antipathy to every kind of learning; and such was his resolute repugnance to acquiring the art of writing that in a fit of obstinacy he would wilfully and deliberately blot his writing-books in the most slovenly manner. Such conduct so vexed and angered his mother, who was eminently intellectual, and like her three sisters, Lady Burleigh, Lady Bacon, and Lady Killigrew, an excellent classical scholar, that she beat him again and again on the shoulders and head, and at last so severely and unmercifully that he died.