Ghost stories and phantom fancies

Preface

. SCENE I. — A Railway Carriage. Two young Ladies in compartments on the same side ; Author in one ditto opposite them. Caroline. Have you read Mr. Jogglebury's new book ? Edith. Yes, dear; very stupid, is it not ?" Caroline. Quite so ; but oh, there's such a dear, delightful, dreadful ghost legend ! I sat up late one night reading it ; and oh-o-o-o ! \_She here describes the usual sensations when the candle went out at the proper moment!] Edith. I dearly love ghost stories. Caroline. So do I. Author {mentally). So do I, when you get them good. I wdl call to aid a friend or two, and give the public the benefit. Public. And here, we suppose, is the book. [Which surmise is quite correct!]

PREFACE.

. VI SCENE II. — Author appears as a popular Lecturer. Spirits are at a discount. I do not mean those spirits the total annihilation of which my friend George Cruik shank would rejoice at, but I refer to those gentle, tricksy, pathetic spirits ; those gaunt, grim, and dreadful spirits ; those awfully ghastly and ghostly spirits, who awoke our sympathies and made us cry, or who rattled chains and half frightened us to death, some years ago. No one believes in them now. Mrs. Radclyfle, to be sure, made an attempt to revive some faint resemblance to the original old ghost, but any one could see that the lady's creations were half sham, and generally resolved them selves into dim shadows, waxen images, dreams, or pic tures, in a manner so as to make you doubt, when awakened from your enchantment, whether the reader, the writer, or the heroine of the story — who was involved in such a turmoil of nothing, such a storm in a teacup — was the greater fool.

Horace Walpole, of Strawberry-hill, Esquire, had put his foot into the business long before, and with about the same result as that which would accompany the same action performed by a donkey on a basket of eggs. In his story of " The Castle of Otranto," he makes a ghost's nose bleed, and I really think that that small mistake of the author finished, so to speak, the romantic existence of ghosts for ever. Henceforward future Coleridges may conclude " Christabel " with the very genius of the first

PREFACE.

. VII author ; future La Motte Fouques write other " Undines ;" and later Tassos again create " Rinaldos " in the enchanted wood; but the reign of the veritable ghost is over. If, which is highly improbable, we have another Shakspeare, we may perhaps hope for a second Hamlet; but most assuredly the ghost will be left out. The modern age, which bedeves in impossible per-centages, honest directors, political economy, financial reform, spirit - rapping, a virtuous aristocracy, and other such miracles, hath ex ploded ghosts ; and yet, of all the figments of the brain that you and I wot of, I really do not know anything more thoroughly respectable and unquestionable than your ghost. He always appeared for a purpose; that purpose was always good; and he always accomplished that purpose. He was a Deus ex machind, appealed to upon particular occasions to set these odds all even.

Was there a rich tyrant, the author of I don't know how many murders, seated easily on his throne, utterly careless of the curses of priests, the sighs of virgins, the prayers of parents, and the tears of orphans, your ghost appeared, shook the wretch to his centre — his inmost core they call it at the transpontine theatres — and sent him howling to a monastery. Was there a poor man whose grand father, being possessed of wealth, had sunk his capital in a bank (of a hedge, not the British), straight the ghost appears, will not let the poor man rest until he, wandering forth in the moonlight, sees the figure pointing with

PREFACE.

. downward finger to the spot where the immense treasure is invested. Ghosts are always doing kind offices, and yet they have been invariably shunned. They are ever found to be the right persons in the right place, and yet we first dread them, and then doubt them. There is not, I believe, on record, an authentic instance of the appearance of one of these spirits — from the ghost in " Hamlet" to the wooden apparition in the drama of " Punch " — of which it can be said that it has not fulfilled its mission. There are other missionaries of whom we cannot, with due respect, say the same. The following book is, therefore, an attempt, not to revive an exploded superstition, but to rescue a creature of the human brain from most undeserved neglect. The writer, like the prince of Denmark, exclaims, " Alas ! poor Ghost !

" and at this present Christmas time, and at other times too, when, drawing round the fire, we delight in stories of the superhuman and the marvedous, seeks, by a simple and a kindly fiction, to beguile the time, to exercise the imagination, and, it is hoped, to leave the heart not unimproved. London, December, 1857. ALL ALONE ON CHRISTMAS DAY. # a %ll %hm un Christmas gag. So it happened. I am not called upon to explain how it was, but I state the fact. I was alone, quite alone,, on Christmas Day. I am a married man and a father. I had not quarrelled with my wife, nor had I beaten my children. I, on the contrary, kissed and petted them before I went, bid my wife be of good cheer, told the girl to be especially good and the boy to surpass every boy living, and set forward on my journey to my appointed task.

I was not going to prison; I was not in a lock-up house; I was not in hiding — nor in attendance upon a sick friend; I was simply alone. A good dinner was pro vided for me ; and I sat down, and, with a mental grace, eat it thankfully. Christmas Day had not lately been a cheerful day to me. I had had old family jars, troubles, which acting perhaps upon a mind envious of others' happiness and comfort and joys, had made me morbid upon that day, when all — I think so now — should rejoice. I had relations, too, who used to be with me in my boy hood, who used to pet and welcome me upon that day, who were now far enough away. One, with as stout a heart as ever beat, was working, with a little colonial b GHOST STORIES AND PHANTOM FANCIES. brood around him, in auother hemisphere, and upon a hot Christmas Day would be recalling the snow and icicles, the merry slides, the junketings and feastings, of an English Christmas.

Two others, brave girls grown into English women, had formed other ties, were almost aliens, and lived where Christmas was not Christmas at all, being under the old regime, and having been kept oif for twelve days yet. They would recollect ; would they ever forget it ? Do English hearts ever forget the old home ties, the childhood's games, the least remembrance of the rough old land which gave them birth ? They forget ! Pish ! tut ! they thought of me and I of them, although I was all alone. I turned round my chair and pushed away my decanter of wine, and sat gazing at the fire. The ghosts of many a past Christmas rose up before me. Now of that when I was a little boy, playing at a child's game of " Bow to the wittiest, kneel to the prettiest, and kiss the one you love best," — and when I had knelt to my own little sister and kissed my mother; how the people all laughed, and my mother blushed, half with shame and half with pleasure, and told me that I should be more polite.

More polite ! why more polite ? Society had not falsified me then. Did I not think my little sister the prettiest lady in the world, and love my mother better than any one else ? The first was, I thought then — and I think so now — prettier than the grand beauty of the room, about whom all the men crowded, and for whose sake half of them wished to be children, and to play in the midst of that circle, amongst which she, with a charming coquetry, danced and played. I did not like that grand beauty, with her beaux yeux, her curls so artfully arranged, her fine white shoulders, and her scented hair. Nor did I like, half so well as my little five-year sister, the other beauty, who was a little passee, to be sure, but who had plenty of jewels about her, having made a very good match, and who was so anxious that the diamond butterfly in her black hair should tremble in the light, and the brilliant collier should rise and fall and give forth its thousand sparkles from her neck.

I was but a little child, but I knew why she breathed so hard, that beautiful woman ! A wit of the party said that the diamonds shone with an inspired lustre. I did not understand the words, but I divined the meaning. That Christmas Day is long past. Others came, less merry — days of penance and weariness — days spent with a severe grandmother, who, being an invalid, would make her son and grandson live with her. She had a spite against me, I know : she used to give me the drumstick of a tough turkey for dinner. She was not of a religious turn, or she might have "improved" the occasion. No! sheVas a do^en times worse than that. She was a severe, worldly woman, wise as a serpent; and used systematically to set to work pulling and rooting up the flowers of romance or merriness or jollity which grew about a young heart, as a gardener would root up weeds.

I should have respected an old dame who fancied it was wicked to go to a play ; but I could only despise an old creature whose chief objection to the theatre lay in the money which was required before the check-taker permitted you to pass. Those Christmas Days are gone — gone with the good feasts, the laughter, the sighs, the dances, the old sirloins of beef, and aristocratic puddings which graced them, — gone with the crackled and dried holly and the withered mistletoe OHOST STORIES AND PHANTOM FANCIES. i — withered as if laid in the sarcophagus of a mummy, — gone for ever, and my penance had gone with them ! So be it! Then came other Christmas Days. I was a boy — a man. I had man's cares, and was much thought of. I had come into my man's estate — I was one of the great world. Let no one — no, not if he hath not inherited so much as one penny -piece — despise that heritage.

It may not promise much ; but it is golden — golden and full of promise, if but used rightly. How was it that upon my first Christmas of my manhood, we children gathered — the party had broken up, the guests had gone, and the candles were low in the socket — we children gathered round my mother, and danced, and, joining hands as our hearts joined, danced round her in a ring, and wished her the joy of the night. There were two elder brothers there ; the one a big fellow from the country — the other a sharp lawyer, with a family; both of them joined in the dance, and kicked and capered madly. How was it that, with a prophetic kindness, half laughing, half in tears, our mother covered her face, and told us that another Christmas would come when the circle would be broken. It came, indeed — the circle was unbroken, thank God.

Though I caunot stretch my hand far enough to reach theirs, and though we may never, never in this world, form in that Christmas ring again, it was and is unbroken now, — but the centre of the radius was gone, and but a segment lives in England. I thought — of course I did, as I sat alone — upon that Christmas. ■ Not wholly on myself were my thoughts wasted. I thought of the hundreds whom I had met in my passage to my solitary dinner ; of those who were hurrying to some friend's house, ofthe greetings, tidings, tears, welcome, and hand-shakings of the day. I thought of the good old people who might not see another such day, and of those who looked forwards to fifty more before they left this earth. I peopled the room with Christmas people. Christmas in the hall, Christmas in the workhouse, Christmas in the far-off midland counties — and again Christmas out at sea.

I thanked God for the day, for its influence and the lesson which it taught ; for the old friends brought together, the enemies made friends, the old ties cemented, the new ones formed. I thought of — and I am happy to say I counted two or three of — the happy homes, which out of my strange prison I could have visited and have made happy by my presence. I drank the health in the last bumper of my pint of wine of all I knew, and closing my eyes to recall the faces, felt some what sad to think I was alone. Alone ! why bless me no ! How is this ? There is a circle round the fire. One, two, three, four, absolutely six or seven people. Strangers too. No, not quite strangers. I fancy I have seen some of these gentlemen before. All men have types of faces ; some of these I should know. There is the but I wdl not describe them.

You, will know them by the stories they relate. My guests — visitors — what shall I call them ? — are talking. Upon what subject do you think they have the impudence to talk ? They positively — ghosts themselves — are speaking about Ghosts. It seems as hardy to me, as if being seated in the Stone Kitchen, or any famous resort of thieves, the conversation should fall upon burglaries and such-like eccentricities indulged in by men of an erratic genius. One of my new friends, evidently a learned young gentleman, quotes plenty of recoguzied instances of the ghost real. Another, a dogmatic man in black, only admits the ghost to exist in the imagination; a third, whose faith is of that easy description, often met with in the world, which will believe in the most extraordinary miracle if you can only give it a scientific turn, weighs and balances the chances for and against, taps the ghost, so to speak, gauges his probability, puts him to spirit proof, and after a little while learnedly pronounces the world to be too matter-of-fact, too material, too reasonable to believe in anything like ghosts.

Ghosts ! ha ! ha ! he ! he ! the gentleman gives a thin, dry, hollow laugh which sounds much as if you were to rattle a quantity of rusks in a bag, and produce a rustling. My state during this conversation may be imagined. Here was I, surrounded by phantoms — so to speak — things removable by a breath, certainly not tangible (by the way, I had an odd sort of dread of putting that to the proof) — hearing them bandy reasons about their own existence ! And one of these figments absolutely talking about the reason, the common sense of the world — a world which he had left, if I could judge from his box-bottom trousers, stiff pudding cravat, and high-collared coat with brass buttons, about the time when Messrs. Tom and Jerry first distinguished themselves in the annals of that im portant but unrecognized empire, " High Life."

I could hold out no longer ; I was positively bursting with indignation. " Ton my word, gentlemen," I cried, filling myself a glass of wine — the decanter, I am bound to confess, rattling against the glass with a tremor of indignation: "'Pon my word, gentlemen — this is funny, this is humorous ! You to doubt of ghosts ! Why, vou will be questioning spirit-rapping next, and asserting that the world is too sensible to believe in that." I had no sooner given vent to my opinion in words, ot which it, is curious to relate, I myself heard no sound, than all the phantom guests before spoken of turned round and looked at me, and then at each other. When I mentioned spirit-rapping they fell a-laughing as heartily as theyr could, making a noise which a great authority has likened to the " crackling of thorns under a pot."

" As for spirit-rapping, good sir — as for spirit-rapping," said the Tom-and- Jerry ghost, " we know something about that — don't we?" He turned round to the others with a dry humour, and borrowing a couple of rib-bones from a stout fellow who sat by his side, began to use them as clappers, and made such a rattling noise, which was taken up by every corner of the room with the most perfect echo, that I could not but doubt that I had discovered the true cause of this extraordinary pheno menon. He then returned the bones, and said, with a solemn face, " Why, sir, I tell you what it is ; the world has believed, does believe, and will believe any nonsense you choose to tell it ; it has a perverse disinclination to truth ; but give it any absurdly romantic error and it will believe it right off the reel, as the Americans say.

We have been a good deal in America since that spirit-rapping came up." " But," said I, " a propos of ghosts, do you believe them ? " "Table-moving — do you believe that?" answered my interlocutor. " In fact, do you believe in a thousand queer stories, odd ideas, vain fancies, absurd relations, which somehow or other get abroad and get mixed in the common creed ? Why not in ghosts ? They are very good fellows ; they hurt no one, tread upon nobody's toes, only amuse — sometimes warn and teach ! " " Warn and teach ! " cried the rest of the company, in hollow voices. " For myself, I love a ghost. Ghosts are jolly fellows ! " " All jolly fellows ! " said the rest. The sound which came forth from their united throats was again the faintest echo of a sound, and yet it made the glasses which were on the buffet ring again.

I thought of rising and going away ; but directly I did so, a young clerical ghost, with an M. B. waistcoat, a muslin collar, and a tonsure, who I saw at once had been a Catholic priest, fixed me with a look. Like the ancient mariner did unto the wedding guest, so did he unto me : he held me by his eye. "Perhaps," I faltered, "perhaps, gentlemen, you would not object, now the conversation turns that way, to spend the rest of the evening in telling me your experience in this matter. It will be one way of spending Christmas Day ; unless, indeed," I added, " you have an objection to that being named." I said this because I had a dim idea that ghosts did not like Christmas. " Not in the least," answered the priest, " not in the least ; why should we ? We love Christmas as we love our ties to earth.

Not the gross, the sinful, and the sordid, — they are gone and die away ; and, even with mortals, at this holy season are more weak than at other times. But we love those which were generous, kindly, and good ; we remember the love which bore no ill to its brother ; we love to dwell upon the days when peace and good-wid reigned ; when little ills were forgotten and forgiven ; when the head grew wise enough to overlook an error, and the heart kind enough to forgive one. All my fears vanished in a moment when I heard the kindly tones of the " Nun's priest." (I had given him that name because I fancied some resemblance must he between him and the gentleman who bears that name in Chaucer.) I at once proposed that the stories should begin. I settled myself cosily in my chair, and, being enamoured of the priestly ghost, held out my hand to grasp his.

The result, I am bound to say, leaves me still in doubt as to the per sonality of ghosts. My hand came in contact with nothing more spiritual than the poker, which I took hold of, and, having poked the fire, looked as if I were ready to bsten to any amount of legends. My visitors interpreting my desire — as expressed, I am sure, in my speaking countenance — rightly, whispered among themselves, and, without further preface, commenced that which the reader may become acquainted with if he wid but turn over the next page. I must let him know, however, that they continually ad dressed their narratives to each other ; that they did not narrate, wholly, their personal experience; and that I omit, in this truthful narration, many interruptions which I had to put up with. The Tom and Jerry gentleman, who, I take it, had been a commercial traveller, evidently fancied that he was again in the flesh, and commences his story accordingly.

The Anglo-French ghost, the spirit of a gentleman who, being connected with mercantile affairs, had dwelt for a long time at Lyons, at Paris, and at other French towns, relates merely that which was related to him. Looked into closely, their narrations might just as well have been told by living, rather than spiritual, beings ; but I have noticed through life that ghosts, spirits, and other mysteries which we come across, never do satisfac torily explain themselves. Like children who see fairies let down upon a stage, and who still wish to examine the ropes and machinery, not knowing that the enchantment would then vanish, we, common humanity, desire to look at the springs of unearthly action. "Oh," cries an Ame rican writer, ". Oh, if the spirits of Napoleon, Lord Byron, Shakespeare, and King Henry VIII. would only come upon earth, sit down in our editorial chair, and be talked to — what would we not elucidate?" — to which we answer that, although the process would be doubtlessly very inte resting to the editor, it might not be so to the ghosts ; and that they are of a very kingly nature, and like the appari tion of Hamlet's father, being so majestical, will not suffer the least show of violence.

It results, therefore, in this — that the more ghosts we see, the more spirits we hear rap, the less we know about them ; and we hereby give notice that the present book only deals with them for its own purposes, and is not going to attempt to popularise any scientific information concerning them. THE DEAD MAN'S STORY Cfje grab Pan's Stoqj. On a dreary night in December, three gentlemen were seated in a painter's studio. The night was intensely dark and cold, and a slight hail beat against the window with a monotonous and ceaseless noise. The studio was immense and gloomy, the sole light within it proceeding from a stove, around which the three were seated. Although they were bold, and of the age when men are most jovial, the conversation had taken, in spite of their efforts to the contrary, a reflection from the dull weather without, and their jokes and frivolity were soon exhausted.

In addition to the light which issued from the crannies in the stove, there was another emitted from a bowl of spirits, which was ceaselessly stirred by one of the young men, as he poured from an antique silver ladle some of the flaming spirit into the quaint old glasses from which the students drank. The blue flame of the spirit lighted up in a wild and fantastic manner the surrounding objects in the room, so that the heads of old prophets, of satyrs, or Madonnas, clothed in the same ghastly hue, seemed to move and to dance along the wads like a fantastic pro cession of the dead ; and the vast room, which in the daytime sparkled with the creations of genius, seemed now, in its alternate darkness and sulphuric light, to be peopled with its dreams. Each time also that the silver spoon agitated the liquid, strange shadows traced themselves along the walls, hide ous and of fantastic form.

Unearthly tints spread also upon the hangings of the studio, from the old bearded prophet of Michael Angelo to those eccentric caricatures which the artist had scrawled upon his walls, and which resembled an army of demons that one sees in a dream, or such as Goya has painted ; whilst the lull and rise of the tempest without but added to the fantastic and nervous feeling which pervaded those within. Besides this, to add to the terror which was creeping over the three occupants of the room, each time that they looked at each other they appeared with faces of a blue tone, with eyes fixed and glittering like live embers, and with pale lips and sunken cheeks ; but the most fearful object of all was that of a plaster mask taken from the face of an intimate friend but lately dead, which, hanging near the window, let the Hght from the spirit fall upon its face, turned three parts towards them, which gave it a strange, vivid, and mocking expression.

All people have felt the influence of large and dark rooms, such as Hoffman has portrayed and Rembrandt has painted ; and all the world has experienced those wild and unaccountable terrors — panics without a cause— which seize on one like a spontaneous fever, at the sight of objects to which a stray glimpse of the moon or a feeble ray from a lamp give a mysterious form ; nay, all, we should imagine, have at some period of their lives found themselves by the side of a friend, in a dark and dismal chamber, listening to some wild story, which so enchains them, that although the mere lighting of a candle could put an end to their terror, they would not do so; so much need has the human heart of emotions, whether they be true or false. So it was upon the evening mentioned. The conversation of the three companions never took a direct line, but followed all the phases of their thoughts ; sometimes it was light as the smoke which curled from their cigars, then for a moment fantastic as the flame of the burning spirit, aud then again dark, lurid, and sombre as the smile which lit up the mask from their dead friend's face.

At last the conversation ceased altogether, and the re spiration of the smokers was the only sound heard ; and their cigars glowed in the dark, like Willof-thewisps brooding o'er a stagnant pool. It was evident to them all, that the first who should break the silence, even if he spoke in jest, would cause in the hearts of the others a start and tremor, for each felt that he had almost unwittingly plunged into a ghastly reverie. " Henry," at last said one, again dipping the spoon into the flaming spirit, "hast thou read Hoffman?" " I should think so," said Henry. "What think you of him?" " Why, that he writes admirably ; and, moreover, what is more admirable — in such a manner that you see at once he almost believes that which he relates. As for me, I know very well that when I read him of s dark night, I am obliged to creep to bed without shutting my book, and without daring to look behind me."

" Indeed ; then you love the terrible and fantastic ? " c " I do," said Henry. " And what do you think of such romances ? " said the questioner, addressing the third. " I like them much," was the answer. "Good; then I will tell you a strange story whit!: happened to myrself." "I presumed as much," said Henry. " An adventure in which you are the hero ? " said the third. " Yes, I myself. I must again before I commence assure you that I am the hero of this strange adventure." " Go on, then ; we will listen." The silver spoon fed from his fingers into the bowl ; the flame of the spirit, not enlivened by agitation, faded out little by little, and in a few moments they were in almost complete darkness, a warm light only being thrown upon their legs by the fire in the stove. He began his story : — "One mid-winter evening, it might be about a year ago, the weather was just as it is now — the same cold, the same sleet and hail, the same dulness.

You know my profession is that of a surgeon, and on that day I had a great many cases to attend ; so that after having made my last visit, instead of going, as sometimes I did, to the theatre, I made haste home. I then dwelt in one of the most deserted streets of the Faubourg Saint Germain. I was very tired and I quickly got to bed. I extinguished the lamp and amused myself with gazing at my fire, watching the great shadows which each little flame made dance upon my bed-curtains ; then at last my eyes shut, and I fell asleep. " It mie;ht have been an hour after I first closed mv eyes, when I felt some person shaking me roughly. I woke with a start, and in not the very best temper, and stared with some surprise at my nocturnal visitor. It was my man-servant. " ' Sir,' said he, ' rise at once ; you are sent for to a young lady who is dying.' " ' Where does she live ? ' said I. " ' Nearly opposite ; but there is a messenger down stairs who will take you to her.' " 1 rose, and thinking that at such a moment my toilet was of little consequence, dressed myself in haste.