So eccentric impressions on the mechanism of the internal ear may be equally illusive. We have ghosts of the ear as well as of the eye.
As ignorance has often warped the optical phenomena which certain atmospheric changes may produce, so peculiar and unusual sounds may be accounted for on equally erroneous principles, especially if they chance to resemble sounds which are the effects of daily or common causes.
As the Hebrew bards hung their harps by the waters of Babylon, the Irish were wont, during their mourning for the death of a chief, to loosen their harp-strings, and hang them on the trees; and while the wind swept the strings, they ever believed that the harp itself sympathized in their sorrow.
Thus, when the lament, or “ullaloo,” of these wild Milesians boomed along the mountain glens, mingled with the coione, or funeral song, and the poetical cadence blended with the winds, how easy to impart to it a more than human source; and thus the dismal coronach among the Scottish Highlands may be mystified into the “boding scream of the Banshee.”
It is a classical question whether the rebel giant, Typhœus, was crushed by Jupiter beneath the island of Inarime, or Mount Ætna; but it might readily be believed by the Sicilian, who had read this mythological tale, that the volcanic convulsions arose from the vain struggles for freedom of this monster, who sent forth flames from his mouth and eyes.
Within a mountain of Stony Arabia, to the north of Tor, very strange noises are often heard as of the striking of an harmonic hammer, or the sound of a humming-top, which completely infuriate the camels on the mountain when they hear it. The Arabs believe these sounds to proceed from a subterranean convent of monks, the priest of which, to assemble them to prayer, strikes with a hammer on the nakous, a metallic rod suspended in the air. M. Teetzen, who visited the spot, assures us that the cause of all this is the mere rolling of volumes of sand from the summit and sides of the mountain.
In the last century, I remember there was a legend current in the west of England, of the “Bucca,” a demon whose howling was heard amid the blast which swept along the shore. It was a sure foreboding of shipwreck. The prophecy was often but too fully verified, but the voice of the demon was merely the premonitory gale from one certain quarter, which is always the avant-courier of a tempest.
I remember, when I was a child, the prevalent belief in Horsham, that, at a certain hour of the night, the ghost of Mrs. Hamel was heard groaning in her vault, beneath the great eastern window, and it required some self-possession to walk, at midnight, around this haunted tomb; for few would believe that the noises were nothing more than the wind sweeping along the vaulted aisles of the church.
Those very extraordinary impositions on the sense of hearing at Woodstock, in the truth of which, Astrophel, your faith was so firm, were resorted to to create terror, and effect a political purpose. In “the genuine History of the good Devil of Woodstock,” written in 1649, we are told of the pealing of cannon, the barking of dogs, and neighing of horses, and other mysterious sounds, which certainly created the greatest wonder and anxiety, until “funny Joe Collins” explained and demonstrated all the mechanical process of this imposture. You will find also the account of these gems of marvellous history in Sinclair and Plott, and the chronicles of those days, which eclipse the haunted house of Athenodorus in Pliny.
In the 16th century, Master Samuel Stryck discussed the whole question regarding these haunted houses, and warnings of ghosts, and belief in the reality of apparitions, in his work published at Francofurt, “De Jure Spectrorum,” and thus he runs up the question of damages: “If the house be haunted, the tenant might bring in a set-off against his rent, thus—‘Deduct for spectres in bed and bed-room, and elsewhere, 5l. 10s.’ ”