The Book of Dreams and Ghosts, Andrew Lang [free children's online books txt] 📗

“not very convincing”.  Glanvil, in consequence of his book, was so vexed by correspondents “that I have been haunted almost as bad as Mr. Mompesson’s house”.  A report that imposture had been discovered, and confessed by Mr. Mompesson, was set afloat, by John Webster, in a well-known work, and may still be found in modern books.  Glanvil denied it till he was “quite tired,” and Mompesson gave a formal denial in a letter dated Tedworth, 8th November, 1672.  He also, with many others, swore to the facts on oath, in court, at the drummer’s trial. {221}

In the Tedworth case, as at Epworth, and in the curious Cideville case of 1851, a quarrel with “cunning men” preceded the disturbances.  In Lord St. Vincent’s case, which follows, nothing of the kind is reported.  As an almost universal rule children, especially girls of about twelve, are centres of the trouble; in the St. Vincent story, the children alone were exempt from annoyance.

LORD ST. VINCENT’S GHOST STORY

Sir Walter Scott, writing about the disturbances in the house occupied by Mrs. Ricketts, sister of the great admiral, Lord St. Vincent, asks: “Who has seen Lord St. Vincent’s letters?”  He adds that the gallant admiral, after all, was a sailor, and implies that “what the sailor said” (if he said anything) “is not evidence”.

The fact of unaccountable disturbances which finally drove Mrs. Ricketts out of Hinton Ampner, is absolutely indisputable, though the cause of the annoyances may remain as mysterious as ever.  The contemporary correspondence (including that of Lord St. Vincent, then Captain Jervis) exists, and has been edited by Mrs. Henley Jervis, grand-daughter of Mrs. Ricketts. {222}

There is only the very vaguest evidence for hauntings at Lady Hillsborough’s old house of Hinton Ampner, near Alresford, before Mr. Ricketts took it in January, 1765.  He and his wife were then disturbed by footsteps, and sounds of doors opening and shutting.  They put new locks on the doors lest the villagers had procured keys, but this proved of no avail.  The servants talked of seeing appearances of a gentleman in drab and of a lady in silk, which Mrs. Ricketts disregarded.  Her husband went to Jamaica in the autumn of 1769, and in 1771 she was so disturbed that her brother, Captain Jervis, a witness of the phenomena, insisted on her leaving the house in August.  He and Mrs. Ricketts then wrote to Mr. Ricketts about the affair.  In July, 1772, Mrs. Ricketts wrote a long and solemn description of her sufferings, to be given to her children.

We shall slightly abridge her statement, in which she mentions that when she left Hinton she had not one of the servants who came thither in her family, which “evinces the impossibility of a confederacy”.  Her new, like her former servants, were satisfactory; Camis, her new coachman, was of a yeoman house of 400 years’ standing.  It will be observed that Mrs. Ricketts was a good deal annoyed even before 2nd April, 1771, the day when she dates the beginning of the worst disturbances.  She believed that the agency was human—a robber or a practical joker—and but slowly and reluctantly became convinced that the “exploded” notion of an abnormal force might be correct.  We learn that while Captain Jervis was not informed of the sounds he never heard them, and whereas Mrs. Ricketts heard violent noises after he went to bed on the night of his vigil, he heard nothing.  “Several instances occurred where very loud noises were heard by one or two persons, when those equally near and in the same direction were not sensible of the least impression.” {223}

With this preface, Mrs. Ricketts may be allowed to tell her own tale.

“Sometime after Mr. Ricketts left me (autumn, 1769) I—then lying in the bedroom over the kitchen—heard frequently the noise of some one walking in the room within, and the rustling as of silk clothes against the door that opened into my room, sometimes so loud, and of such continuance as to break my rest.  Instant search being often made, we never could discover any appearance of human or brute being.  Repeatedly disturbed in the same manner, I made it my constant practice to search the room and closets within, and to secure the only door on the inside. . . .  Yet this precaution did not preclude the disturbance, which continued with little interruption.”

Nobody, in short, could enter this room, except by passing through that of Mrs. Ricketts, the door of which “was always made fast by a drawn bolt”.  Yet somebody kept rustling and walking in the inner room, which somebody could never be found when sought for.

In summer, 1770, Mrs. Ricketts heard someone walk to the foot of her bed in her own room, “the footsteps as distinct as ever I heard, myself perfectly awake and collected”.  Nobody could be discovered in the chamber.  Mrs. Ricketts boldly clung to her room, and was only now and then disturbed by “sounds of harmony,” and heavy thumps, down stairs.  After this, and early in 1771, she was “frequently sensible of a hollow murmuring that seemed to possess the whole house: it was independent of wind, being equally heard on the calmest nights, and it was a sound I had never been accustomed to hear”.

On 27th February, 1771, a maid was alarmed by “groans and fluttering round her bed”: she was “the sister of an eminent grocer in Alresford”.  On 2nd April, Mrs. Ricketts heard people walking in the lobby, hunted for burglars, traced the sounds to a room whence their was no outlet, and found nobody.  This kind of thing went on till Mrs. Ricketts despaired of any natural explanation.  After mid-summer, 1771, the trouble increased, in broad daylight, and a shrill female voice, answered by two male voices was added to the afflictions.  Captain Jervis came on a visit, but was told of nothing, and never heard anything.  After he went to Portsmouth, “the most deep, loud tremendous noise seemed to rush and fall with infinite velocity and force on the lobby floor adjoining my room,” accompanied by a shrill and dreadful shriek, seeming to proceed from under the spot where the rushing noise fell, and repeated three or four times.

Mrs. Ricketts’ “resolution remained firm,” but her health was impaired; she tried changing her room, without results.  The disturbances pursued her.  Her brother now returned.  She told him nothing, and he heard nothing, but next day she unbosomed herself.  Captain Jervis therefore sat up with Captain Luttrell and his own man.  He was rewarded by noises which he in vain tried to pursue.  “I should do great injustice to my sister” (he writes to Mr. Ricketts on 9th August, 1771), “if I did not acknowledge to have heard what I could not, after the most diligent search and serious reflection, any way account for.”  Captain Jervis during a whole week slept by day, and watched, armed, by night.  Even by day he was disturbed by a sound as of immense weights falling from the ceiling to the floor of his room.  He finally obliged his sister to leave the house.

What occurred after Mrs. Ricketts abandoned Hinton is not very distinct.  Apparently Captain Jervis’s second stay of a week, when he did hear the noises, was from 1st August to 8th August.  From a statement by Mrs. Ricketts it appears that, when her brother joined his ship, the Alarm (9th August), she retired to Dame Camis’s house, that of her coachman’s mother.  Thence she went, and made another attempt to live at Hinton, but was “soon after assailed by a noise I never before heard, very near me, and the terror I felt not to be described”.  She therefore went to the Newbolts, and thence to the old Palace at Winton; later, on Mr. Ricketts’ return, to the Parsonage, and then to Longwood (to the old house there) near Alresford.

Meanwhile, on 18th September, Lady Hillsborough’s agent lay with armed men at Hinton, and, making no discovery, offered £50 (increased by Mr. Ricketts to £100) for the apprehension of the persons who caused the noises.  The reward was never claimed.  On 8th March, 1772, Camis wrote: “I am very sorry that we cannot find out the reason of the noise”; at other dates he mentions sporadic noises heard by his mother and another woman, including “the murmur”.  A year after Mrs. Ricketts left a family named Lawrence took the house, and, according to old Lucy Camis, in 1818, Mr. Lawrence very properly threatened to dismiss any servant who spoke of the disturbances.  The result of this sensible course was that the Lawrences left suddenly, at the end of the year—and the house was pulled down.  Some old political papers of the Great Rebellion, and a monkey’s skull, not exhibited to any anatomist, are said to have been discovered under the floor of the lobby, or of one of the rooms.  Mrs. Ricketts adds sadly, “The unbelief of Chancellor Hoadley went nearest my heart,” as he had previously a high opinion of her veracity.  The Bishop of St. Asaph was incredulous, “on the ground that such means were unworthy of the Deity to employ”.

Probably a modern bishop would say that there were no noises at all, that every one who heard the sounds was under the influence of “suggestion,” caused first in Mrs. Ricketts’ own mind by vague tales of a gentleman in drab seen by the servants.

The contagion, to be sure, also reached two distinguished captains in the navy, but not till one of them was told about disturbances which had not previously disturbed him.  If this explanation be true, it casts an unusual light on the human imagination.  Physical science has lately invented a new theory.  Disturbances of this kind are perhaps “seismic,”—caused by earthquakes!  (See Professor Milne, in The Times, 21st June, 1897.)

CHAPTER XI

A Question for Physicians.  Professor William James’s Opinion.  Hysterical Disease?  Little Hands.  Domestic Arson.  The Wem Case.  “The Saucepan began it.”  The Nurse-maid.  Boots Fly Off.  Investigation.  Emma’s Partial Confession.  Corroborative Evidence.  Question of Disease Repeated.  Chinese Cases.  Haunted Mrs. Chang.  Mr. Niu’s Female Slave.  The Great Amherst Mystery.  Run as a Show.  Failure.  Later Miracles.  The Fire-raiser Arrested.  Parallels.  A Highland Case.  A Hero of the Forty-Five.  Donald na Bocan.  Donald’s Hymn.  Icelandic Cases.  The Devil of Hjalta-stad.  The Ghost at Garpsdal.

MORE HAUNTED HOUSES

A physician, as we have seen, got the better of the demon in Mrs. Shchapoff’s case, at least while the lady was under his care.  Really these disturbances appear to demand the attention of medical men.  If the whole phenomena are caused by imposture, the actors, or actresses, display a wonderful similarity of symptoms and an alarming taste for fire-raising.  Professor William James, the well-known psychologist, mentions ten cases whose resemblances “suggest a natural type,” and we ask, is it a type of hysterical disease? {229}  He chooses, among others, an instance in Dr. Nevius’s book on Demon Possession in China, and there is another in Peru.  He also mentions The Great Amherst Mystery, which we give, and the Rerrick case in Scotland (1696), related by Telfer, who prints, on his margins, the names of the attesting witnesses of each event, lairds, clergymen, and farmers.  At Rerrick, as in Russia, the little hand was seen by Telfer himself, and the fire-raising was endless.  At Amherst too, as in a pair of recent Russian cases and others, there was plenty of fire-raising.  By a lucky chance an English case occurred at Wem, in Shropshire, in November, 1883.  It began at a farm called the Woods, some ten miles from Shrewsbury.  First a saucepan full of eggs “jumped” off the fire in the kitchen, and the tea-things, leaping from the table, were broken.  Cinders “were thrown out of the fire,” and set some clothes in a blaze.  A globe leaped off a lamp.  A farmer, Mr. Lea, saw all the windows of the