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

Pat if he had brought back father’s old clothes.  He said ‘No,’ and asked me why I wanted them.  I told him father said he had sewed a roll of bills inside of his grey shirt, in a pocket made of a piece of my old red dress.  I went to sleep, and father came to me again.  When I awoke I told Pat he must go and get the clothes”—her father’s old clothes.

Pat now telephoned to Mr. Hoffman, Coroner of Dubuque, who found the old clothes in the back yard of the local morgue.  They were wrapped up in a bundle.  Receiving this news, Pat went to Dubuque on February 9, where Mr. Hoffman opened the bundle in Pat’s presence.  Inside the old grey shirt was found a pocket of red stuff, sewn with a man’s long, uneven stitches, and in the pocket notes for thirty-five dollars.

The girl did not see the body in the coffin, but asked about the old clothes, because the figure of her father in her dream wore clothes which she did not recognise as his.  To dream in a faint is nothing unusual. {50}

THE DEAD SHOPMAN

Swooning, or slight mental mistiness, is not very unusual in ghost seers.  The brother of a friend of my own, a man of letters and wide erudition, was, as a boy, employed in a shop in a town, say Wexington.  The overseer was a dark, rather hectic-looking man, who died.  Some months afterwards the boy was sent on an errand.  He did his business, but, like a boy, returned by a longer and more interesting route.  He stopped as a bookseller’s shop to stare at the books and pictures, and while doing so felt a kind of mental vagueness.  It was just before his dinner hour, and he may have been hungry.  On resuming his way, he looked up and found the dead overseer beside him.  He had no sense of surprise, and walked for some distance, conversing on ordinary topics with the appearance.  He happened to notice such a minute detail as that the spectre’s boots were laced in an unusual way.  At a crossing, something in the street attracted his attention; he looked away from his companion, and, on turning to resume their talk, saw no more of him.  He then walked to the shop, where he mentioned the occurrence to a friend.  He has never during a number of years had any such experience again, or suffered the preceding sensation of vagueness.

This, of course, is not a ghost story, but leads up to the old tale of the wraith of Valogne.  In this case, two boys had made a covenant, the first who died was to appear to the other.  He did appear before news of his death arrived, but after a swoon of his friend’s, whose health (like that of Elizabeth Conley) suffered in consequence.

NOTE

“PERCEVAL MURDER.”  Times, 25th May, 1812.

“A Dumfries paper states that on the night of Sunday, the 10th instant, twenty-four hours before the fatal deed was perpetrated, a report was brought to Bude Kirk, two miles from Annan, that Mr. Perceval was shot on his way to the House of Commons, at the door or in the lobby of that House.  This the whole inhabitants of the village are ready to attest, as the report quickly spread and became the topic of conversation.  A clergyman investigated the rumour, with the view of tracing it to its source, but without success.”

The Times of 2nd June says, “Report without foundation”.

Perth Courier, 28th May, quoting from the Dumfries and Galloway Courier, repeats above almost verbatim.  “ . . .  The clergyman to whom we have alluded, and who allows me to make use of his name, is Mr. Yorstoun, minister of Hoddam.  This gentleman went to the spot and carefully investigated the rumour, but has not hitherto been successful, although he has obtained the most satisfactory proof of its having existed at the time we have mentioned.  We forbear to make any comments on this wonderful circumstance, but should anything further transpire that may tend to throw light upon it, we shall not fail to give the public earliest information.”

The Dumfries and Galloway Courier I cannot find!  It is not in the British Museum.

CHAPTER III

Transition from Dreams to Waking Hallucinations.  Popular Scepticism about the Existence of Hallucinations in the Sane.  Evidence of Mr. Francis Galton, F.R.S.  Scientific Disbelief in ordinary Mental Imagery.  Scientific Men who do not see in “the Mind’s Eye”.  Ordinary People who do.  Frequency of Waking Hallucinations among Mr. Gallon’s friends.  Kept Private till asked for by Science.  Causes of such Hallucinations unknown.  Story of the Diplomatist.  Voluntary or Induced Hallucinations.  Crystal Gazing.  Its Universality.  Experience of George Sand.  Nature of such Visions.  Examples.  Novelists.  Crystal Visions only “Ghostly” when Veracious.  Modern Examples.  Under the Lamp.  The Cow with the Bell Historical Example.  Prophetic Crystal Vision.  St. Simon The Regent d’Orléans.  The Deathbed of Louis XIV.  References for other Cases of Crystal Visions.

From dreams, in sleep or swoon, of a character difficult to believe in we pass by way of “hallucinations” to ghosts.  Everybody is ready to admit that dreams do really occur, because almost everybody has dreamed.  But everybody is not so ready to admit that sane and sensible men and women can have hallucinations, just because everybody has not been hallucinated.

On this point Mr. Francis Galton, in his Inquiries into Human Faculty (1833), is very instructive.  Mr. Galton drew up a short catechism, asking people how clearly or how dimly they saw things “in their mind’s eye”.

“Think of your breakfast-table,” he said; “is your mental picture of it as clearly illuminated and as complete as your actual view of the scene?”  Mr. Galton began by questioning friends in the scientific world, F.R.S.’s and other savants.  “The earliest results of my inquiry amazed me. . . .  The great majority of the men of science to whom I first applied, protested that mental imagery was unknown to them, and they looked on me as fanciful and fantastic in supposing that the words ‘mental imagery’ really expressed what I believed everybody supposed them to mean.”  One gentleman wrote: “It is only by a figure of speech that I can describe my recollection of a scene as a ‘mental image’ which I can ‘see’ with ‘my mind’s eye’.  I do not see it,” so he seems to have supposed that nobody else did.

When he made inquiries in general society, Mr. Galton found plenty of people who “saw” mental imagery with every degree of brilliance or dimness, from “quite comparable to the real object” to “I recollect the table, but do not see it”—my own position.

Mr. Galton was next “greatly struck by the frequency of the replies in which my correspondents” (sane and healthy) “described themselves as subject to ‘visions’”.  These varied in degree, “some were so vivid as actually to deceive the judgment”.  Finally, “a notable proportion of sane persons have had not only visions, but actual hallucinations of sight at one or more periods of their life.  I have a considerable packet of instances contributed by my personal friends.”  Thus one “distinguished authoress” saw “the principal character of one of her novels glide through the door straight up to her.  It was about the size of a large doll.”  Another heard unreal music, and opened the door to hear it better.  Another was plagued by voices, which said “Pray,” and so forth.

Thus, on scientific evidence, sane and healthy people may, and “in a notable proportion do, experience hallucinations”.  That is to say, they see persons, or hear them, or believe they are touched by them, or all their senses are equally affected at once, when no such persons are really present.  This kind of thing is always going on, but “when popular opinion is of a matter-of-fact kind, the seers of visions keep quiet; they do not like to be thought fanciful or mad, and they hide their experiences, which only come to light through inquiries such as those that I have been making”.

We may now proceed to the waking hallucinations of sane and healthy people, which Mr. Galton declares to be so far from uncommon.  Into the causes of these hallucinations which may actually deceive the judgment, Mr. Galton does not enter.

STORY OF THE DIPLOMATIST {56a}

For example, there is a living diplomatist who knows men and cities, and has, moreover, a fine sense of humour.  “My Lord,” said a famous Russian statesman to him, “you have all the qualities of a diplomatist, but you cannot control your smile.”  This gentleman, walking alone in a certain cloister at Cambridge, met a casual acquaintance, a well-known London clergyman, and was just about shaking hands with him, when the clergyman vanished.  Nothing in particular happened to either of them; the clergyman was not in the seer’s mind at the moment.

This is a good example of a solitary hallucination in the experience of a very cool-headed observer.  The causes of such experiences are still a mystery to science.  Even people who believe in “mental telegraphy,” say when a distant person, at death or in any other crisis, impresses himself as present on the senses of a friend, cannot account for an experience like that of the diplomatist, an experience not very uncommon, and little noticed except when it happens to coincide with some remarkable event. {56b}  Nor are such hallucinations of an origin easily detected, like those of delirium, insanity, intoxication, grief, anxiety, or remorse.  We can only suppose that a past impression of the aspect of a friend is recalled by some association of ideas so vividly that (though we are not consciously thinking of him) we conceive the friend to be actually present in the body when he is absent.

These hallucinations are casual and unsought.  But between these and the dreams of sleep there is a kind of waking hallucinations which some people can purposely evoke.  Such are the visions of crystal gazing.

Among the superstitions of almost all ages and countries is the belief that “spirits” will show themselves, usually after magical ceremonies, to certain persons, commonly children, who stare into a crystal ball, a cup, a mirror, a blob of ink (in Egypt and India), a drop of blood (among the Maoris of New Zealand), a bowl of water (Red Indian), a pond (Roman and African), water in a glass bowl (in Fez), or almost any polished surface.  The magical ceremonies, which have probably nothing to do with the matter, have succeeded in making this old and nearly universal belief seem a mere fantastic superstition.  But occasionally a person not superstitious has recorded this experience.  Thus George Sand in her Histoire de ma Vie mentions that, as a little girl, she used to see wonderful moving landscapes in the polished back of a screen.  These were so vivid that she thought they must be visible to others.

Recent experiments have proved that an unexpected number of people have this faculty.  Gazing into a ball of crystal or glass, a crystal or other smooth ring stone, such as a sapphire or ruby, or even into a common ink-pot, they will see visions very brilliant.  These are often mere reminiscences of faces or places, occasionally of faces or places sunk deep below the ordinary memory.  Still more frequently they represent fantastic landscapes and romantic scenes, as in an historical novel, with people in odd costumes coming, going and acting.  Thus I have been present when a lady saw in a glass ball a man in white Oriental costume kneeling beside a leaping fountain of fire.  Presently a hand appeared pointing downwards through the flame.  The first vision seen pretty often represents an invalid in bed.  Printed words are occasionally read in the glass, as also happens in the visions beheld with shut eyes before sleeping.

All these kinds of things, in fact, are common in our visions between sleeping and