Chapter IV: Part 4

The evidence, it must be observed, is not merely that of savages, or of persons as uneducated and as superstitious as savages. The Australian birraark, who flies away up the tree, we may leave out of account. The saints, St. Francis and St. Theresa, are more puzzling, but miracles were expected from saints. {100a} The levitated boy was attested to in a court of justice, and is designed by Faithorne in an illustration of Glanvill's book. He flew over a garden! But witnesses in such trials were fanciful people. Lord Orrery and Mr. Greatrakes may have seen the butler float in the air-- after dinner. The exploits of the Indian fakirs almost, or quite, overcome the scepticism of Mr. Max Muller, in his Gifford Lectures on Psychological Religion. Living and honourable white men aver that they have seen the feat, examined the performers, and found no explanation; no wires, no trace of imposture. (The writer is acquainted with a well vouched for case, the witness an English officer.) Mr. Kellar, an American professional conjurer, and exposer of spiritualistic pretensions, bears witness, in the North American Review, to a Zulu case of 'levitation,' which actually surpasses the tale of the gentleman's butler in strangeness. Cieza de Leon, in his Travels, translated by Mr. Markham for the Hakluyt Society, brings a similar anecdote from early Peru, in 1549. {100b} Miss Nancy Wesley's case is vouched for (she and the bed she sat on both rose from the floor) by a letter from one of her family to her brother Samuel, printed in Southey's Life of Wesley. Finally, Lord Lindsay and Lord Adare published a statement that they saw Home float out of one window and in at another, in Ashley Place, S.W., on December 16, 1868. Captain Wynne, who was also there, 'wrote to the Medium, to say I was present as a witness'. {101} We need not heap up more examples, drawn from classic Greece, as in the instances of Abaris and Iamblichus. We merely stand speechless in the presence of the wildest of all fables, when it meets us, as identical myths and customs do--not among savages alone, but everywhere, practically speaking, and in connection with barbarous sorcery, with English witchcraft, with the saintliest of mediaeval devotees, with African warriors, with Hindoo fakirs, with a little English girl in a quiet old country parsonage, and with an enigmatic American gentleman. Many living witnesses, of good authority, sign statements about Home's levitation. In one case, a large table, on which stood a man of twelve stone weight rose from the floor, and an eye-witness, a doctor, felt under the castors with his hands.

Of all persons subject to 'levitation,' Saint Joseph of Cupertino (1603-1663) was the most notable. The evidence is partly derived from testimonies collected with a view to his canonisation, within two years after his death. There is a full account of his life and adventures in Acta Sanctorum. {102} St. Joseph died, as we saw, in 1663, but the earliest biography of him, in Italian, was not published till fifteen years later, in 1678. Unluckily the compiler of his legend in the Acta Sanctorum was unable to procure this work, by Nutius, which might contain a comparatively slight accretion of myths. The next life is of 1722, and the author made use of the facts collected for Joseph's beatification. There is another life by Pastrovicchi, in 1753. He was canonised in that year, when all the facts were remote by about a century.

Joseph's parents were pauperes sed honesti; his father was a carpenter, his mother a woman of almost virulent virtue, who kept her son in great order. From the age of eight he was subject to cataleptic or epileptic fits and convulsions. After his novitiate he suffered from severe attacks of melancholia. His 'miracles' attracting attention, he was brought before the Inquisition at Naples, as an impostor. He was sent to an obscure and remote monastery, and thence to Assisi, where he was harshly treated, and fell into Bunyan's Slough of Despond, having much conflict with Apollyon.

He was next called to Rome, where cardinals testify that, on hearing sacred names, he would give a yell, and fall into ecstasy. Returning to Assisi he was held in high honour, and converted a Hanoverian Prince. He healed many sick people, and, having fallen into a river, came out quite dry. He could scarcely read, but was inspired with wonderful theological acuteness. He always yelled before falling into an ecstasy, afterwards, he was so much under the dominion of anaesthesia that hot coals, if applied to his body, produced no effect. Then he soared in air, now higher, now lower (a cardinal vouches for six inches), and in aere pendulus haerebat, like the gentleman's butler at Lord Orrery's.

Seventy separate flights, in-doors and out of doors, are recorded. In fact it was well to abstain from good words in conversation with St. Joseph of Cupertino, for he would give a shout, on hearing a pious observation, and fly up, after which social intercourse was out of the question. He was, indeed, prevented by his superiors from appearing at certain sacred functions, because his flights disturbed the proceedings, indeed everything was done by the Church to discourage him, but in vain. He explained his preliminary shout by saying that 'guns also make a noise when they go off,' so the Cardinal de Laurea heard him remark. He was even more fragrant than the Miraculous Conformist, or the late Mr. Stainton Moses, to whose seances scent was marvellously borne by 'spirits'. It must be remembered that contemporary witnesses attest these singular circumstances in the evidence taken two years after his death, for the beatification of Joseph. From Assisi he was sent to various obscure convents, where his miracles were as remarkable as ever. One Christmas Eve, hearing sacred music, he flew up like a bird, from the middle of the church to the high altar, where he floated for a quarter of an hour, yet upset none of the candles. An insane nobleman was brought to him to be healed. Seizing the afflicted prince by the hair of the head, he uttered a shout, and soared up with the patient, who finally came down cured! Once he flew over a pulpit, and once more than eighty yards to a crucifix. This is probably 'a record'. When some men were elevating a cross for a Calvary, and were oppressed by the weight, Joseph uttered a shriek, flew to them, and lightly erected the cross with his own hand. The flight was of about eighty yards. He flew up into a tree once, and perched on a bough, which quivered no more than if he had been a bird. A rather commonplace pious remark uttered in his presence was the cause of this exhibition. Once in church, he flew from his knees, caught a priest, lifted him up, and gyrated, laetissimo raptu, in mid air. In the presence of the Spanish ambassador and many others, he once flew over the heads of the congregation. Once he asked a priest whether the holy elements were kept in a particular place. 'Who knows?' said the priest, whereon Joseph soared over his head, remained kneeling in mid air, and came down only at the request of his ecclesiastical superior. Joseph was clairvoyant, and beheld apparitions, but on the whole (apart from his moral excellence) his flights were his most notable accomplishment. On one occasion he 'casual remarked to a friend,' 'what an infernal smell' (infernails odor), and then nosed out a number of witches and warlocks who were compounding drugs: 'standing at some considerable distance, standing, in fact, in quite another street'.

Iamblichus, in the letter to Porphyry, describes such persons as St. Joseph of Cupertino. 'They have been known to be lifted up into the air. . . . The subject of the afflatus has not felt the application of fire. . . . The more ignorant and mentally imbecile a youth may be, the more freely will the divine power be made manifest.' Joseph was ignorant, and 'enfeebled by vigil and fasts,' so Joseph was 'insensible of the application of fire,' and 'was lifted up into the air'. Yet the cardinals, surgeons, and other witnesses were not thinking of the pagan Iamblichus when they attested the accomplishments of the saint. Whence, then, comes the uniformity of evidence?

The sceptical Calef did not believe in these things, because they are 'miracles,' that is, contrary to experience. But here is experience enough to which they are not contrary.

There are dozens of such depositions, and here it is that the student of testimony and of belief finds himself at a deadlock. Believe the evidence we cannot, yet we cannot doubt the good faith, the veracity of the attesting witnesses. Had we only savage, or ancient and uneducated testimony, we might say that the uniformity of myths of levitation is easily explained. The fancy wants a marvel, it readily provides one by positing the infraction of the most universally obvious law, that of gravitation. Men don't fly; let us say that a man flew, like Abaris on his arrow! This is rudimentary, but then witnesses whose combined testimony would prove almost anything else, declare that they saw the feat performed. Till we can find some explanation of these coincidences of testimony, it is plain that a province in psychology, in the relations between facts as presented to and as represented by mankind, remains to be investigated. Of all persons who have been levitated since St. Joseph, a medium named Eglinton was most subject to this infirmity. In a work, named There is no Death, by Florence Marryat, the author assures us that she has frequently observed the phenomenon. But Mr. Eglinton, after being 'investigated' by the Psychical Society, 'retired,' as Mr. Myers says, 'into private life'. The tales told about him by spiritualists are of the kind usually imparted to a gallant, but proverbially confiding, arm of Her Majesty's service. As for Lord Orrery's butler, and the others, there are the hypotheses that a cloud of honourable and sane witnesses lied; that they were uniformly hallucinated, or hypnotised, by a glamour as extraordinary as the actual miracle would be; or again, that conjuring of an unexampled character could be done, not only by Home, or Eglinton, in a room which may have been prepared, but by Home, by a Zulu, by St. Joseph of Cupertino, and by naked fakirs, in the open air. Of all these theories that of glamour, of hypnotic illusion, is the most specious. Thus, when Ibn Batuta, the old Arabian traveller, tells us that he saw the famous rope-trick performed in India--men climbing a rope thrown into the air, and cutting each other up, while the bodies revive and reunite-- he very candidly adds that his companion, standing by, saw nothing out of the way, and declared that nothing occurred. {107a} This clearly implies that Ibn Batuta was hypnotised, and that his companion was not. But Dr. Carpenter's attempt to prove that one witness saw nothing, while Lord Lindsay and Lord Adare saw Home float out of one window, and in by another, turns out to be erroneous. The third witness, Captain Wynne, confirmed the statement of the other gentlemen.

We now approach the second class of marvels which regaled the circle at Ragley, namely, 'Alleged movements of objects without contact, occurring _not_ in the presence of a paid medium,' and with these we shall examine rappings and mysterious noises. The topic began to attract modern attention when table-turning was fashionable. But in common table-turning there _was_ contact, and Faraday easily demonstrated that there was conscious or unconscious pushing and muscular exertion. In 1871 Mr. Crookes made laboratory experiments with Home, using mechanical tests. {107b} He demonstrated, to his own satisfaction, that in the presence of Home, even when he was not in physical contact with the object, the object moved: e pur si muove. He published a reply to Dr. Carpenter's criticism, and the common-sense of ordinary readers, at least, sees no flaw in Mr. Crookes's method and none in his argument. The experiments of the modern Psychical Society, with paid mediums, produced results, in Mr. Myers's opinion, 'not wholly unsatisfactory,' but far from leading to an affirmative conclusion, if by 'satisfactory' Mr. Myers means 'affirmative'. {108a} The investigations of Mrs. Sidgwick were made under the mediumship of Miss Kate Fox (Mrs. Jencken). This lady began the modern 'spiritualism' when scarcely older than Mr. Mompesson's 'two modest little girls,' and was accompanied by phenomena like those of Tedworth. But, in Mrs. Sidgwick's presence the phenomena were of the most meagre; and the reasoning faculties of the mind decline to accept them as other than perfectly normal. The society tried Mr. Eglinton, who once was 'levitated' in the presence of Mr. Kellar, the American conjurer, who has publicly described feats like those of the gentleman's butler. {108b} But, after his dealings with the society, Mr. Eglinton has left the scene. {108c} The late Mr. Davey also produced results like Mr. Eglinton's by confessed conjuring.

Mr. Myers concludes that 'it does not seem worth while, as a rule, to examine the testimony to physical marvels occurring in the presence of professional mediums'. He therefore collects evidence in the article quoted, for physical marvels occurring where there is no paid medium. Here, as in the business of levitation, the interest of the anthropologist and mythologist lies in the uniformity and identity of narratives from all countries, climates, and ages. Among the earliest rappings with which we chance to be familiar are those reported by Froissart in the case of the spirit Orthon, in the fourteenth century. The tale had become almost a fabliau, but any one who reads the amusing chapter will see that it is based on a belief in disturbances like those familiar to Glanvill and the Misses Fox. Cieza de Leon (1549) in the passage already quoted, where he describes the levitated Cacique of Pirza in Popyan, adds that 'the Christians saw stones falling from the air' (as in the Greatrakes tale of the Youghal witch), and declares that, 'when the chief was sitting with a glass of liquor before him, the Christians saw the glass raised up in the air and put down empty, and a short time afterwards the wine was again poured into the cup from the air'. Mr. Home once equalled this marvel, {109a} and Ibn Batuta reports similar occurrences, earlier, at the court of the King of Delhi. There is another case in Histoire Prodigieuse d'une jeune Fille agitee d'un Esprit fantastique et invisible. {109b} A bourgeois of Bonneval was beset by a rapping rattle of a sprite. 'At dinner, when he would lay his hand on a trencher, it was carried off elsewhere, and the wineglass, when he was about drinking, was snatched from his hand.' So Mr. Wesley's trencher was set spinning on the table, when nobody touched it! In such affairs we may have the origin of the story of the Harpies at the court of Phineus.

In China, Mr. Dennys tells how 'food placed on the table vanished mysteriously, and many of the curious phenomena attributed to ghostly interference took place,' so that the householder was driven from house to house, and finally into a temple, in 1874, and all this after the death of a favourite but aggrieved monkey! {110a} 'Throwing down crockery, trampling on the floor, etc.--such pranks as have attracted attention at home, are not unknown. . . . I must confess that in China, as elsewhere, these occurrences leave a bona fide impression of the marvellous which can neither be explained nor rejected'. {110b}

We have now noted these alleged phenomena, literally 'from China to Peru'. Let us next take an old French case of a noisy sprite in the nunnery of St. Pierre de Lyon. The account is by Adrien de Montalembert, almoner to Francis I. {110c} The Bibliography of this very rare tract is curious and deserves attention. When Lenglet Dufresnoy was compiling, in 1751, his Dissertations sur les Apparitions he reprinted the tract from the Paris quarto of 1528, in black letter. This example had been in the Tellier collection, and Dufresnoy seems to have borrowed it from the Royal Convent of St. Genevieve. Knowing that Cardinal Tencin had some acquaintance with the subject, Dufresnoy wrote to him, and publishes (vol. i. cxli.) his answer, dated October 18, 1751, Lyons. The cardinal replied that, besides the Paris edition of 1528, there was a Rouen reprint, of 1529, by Rolin Gautier, with engravings. Brunet says, that there are engravings in the Paris edition of 1528, perhaps these were absent from the Tellier example. That of Rouen, which Cardinal Tencin collated, was in the Abbey of St. Peter, in Lyons. Some leaves had been thumbed out of existence, and their place was supplied in manuscript. The only difference was in chapter xxviii. where the printed Rouen text may have varied. In the MS. at all events, it is stated that on March 21, the spirit of Sister Alix de Telieux struck thirty-three great strokes on the refectory of her convent, 'mighty and marvellous,' implying that her thirty-three years of purgatory were commuted into thirty-three days. A bright light, scarcely endurable, then appeared, and remained for some eight minutes. The nuns then went into chapel and sang a Te Deum.

At the end of the volume, a later hand added, in manuscript, that the truth of the contemporary record was confirmed by the tradition of the oldest sisters who had received it from eye-witnesses of the earlier generation. The writer says that she had great difficulty in finding the printed copy, but that when young, in 1630, she received the tale from a nun, then aged ninety-four. This nun would be born in 1536, ten years after these events. She got the story from her aunt, a nun, Gabrielle de Beaudeduit, qui etoit de ce tems- la. There is no doubt that the sisters firmly and piously believed in the story, which has the contemporary evidence of Adrien de Montalembert. Dufresnoy learned that a manuscript copy of the tract was in the library of the Jesuits of Lyons. He was unaware of an edition in 12mo of 1580, cited by Brunet.

To come to the story, one of our earliest examples of a 'medium,' and of communications by raps. The nunnery was reformed in 1516. A pretty sister, Alix de Telieux, fled with some of the jewels, lived a 'gay' life, and died wretchedly in 1524. She it was, as is believed, who haunted a sister named Anthoinette de Grolee, a girl of eighteen. The disturbance began with a confused half-dream. The girl fancied that the sign of the cross was made on her brow, and a kiss impressed on her lips, as she wakened one night. She thought this was mere illusion, but presently, when she got up, she heard, 'comme soubs ses pieds frapper aucuns petis coups,' 'rappings,' as if at the depth of four inches underground. This was exactly what occurred to Miss Hetty Wesley, at Epworth, in 1716, and at Rio de Janeiro to a child named 'C.' in Professor Alexander's narrative. {112} Montalembert says, in 1528, 'I have heard these rappings many a time, and, in reply to my questions, so many strokes as I asked for were given'. Montalembert received information (by way of raps) from the 'spirit,' about matters of importance, qui ne pourroient estre cogneus de mortelle creature. 'Certainly,' as he adds, 'people have the best right to believe these things who have seen and heard them.'

The rites of the Church were conferred in the most handsome manner on the body of Sister Alix, which was disinterred and buried in her convent. Exorcisms and interrogations of the spirit were practised. It merely answered questions by rapping 'Yes,' or 'No'. On one occasion Sister Anthoinette was 'levitated'. Finally, the spirit appeared bodily to her, said farewell, and disappeared after making an extraordinary fracas at matins. Montalembert conducted the religious ceremonies. One case of hysteria was developed; the sufferer was a novice. Of course it was attributed to diabolical possession The whole story in its pleasant old French, has an agreeable air of good faith But what interests us is the remarkable analogy between the Lyons rappings and those at Epworth, Tedworth, and countless other cases, old or of yesterday. We can now establish a catena of rappings and pour prendre date, can say that communications were established, through raps, with a so-called 'spirit,' more than three hundred years before the 'Rochester knockings' in America. Very probably wider research would discover instances prior to that of Lyons; indeed, Wierus, in De Praestigiis Daemonum, writes as if the custom was common.

It is usual to explain the raps by a theory that the 'medium' produces them through cracking his, or her, knee-joints. It may thus be argued that Sister Anthoinette discovered this trick, or was taught the trick, and that the tradition of her performance, being widely circulated in Montalembert's quarto, and by oral report, inspired later rappers, such as Miss Kate Fox, Miss 'C.' Davis, Miss Hetty Wesley, the gentlewoman at Mr. Paschal's, Mr. Mompesson's 'modest little girls,' Daniel Home, and Miss Margaret Wilson of Galashiels. Miss Wilson's uncle came one day to Mr. Wilkie, the minister, and told him the devil was at his house, for, said he, 'there is an odd knocking about the bed where my niece lies'. Whereupon the minister went with him, and found it so. 'She, rising from her bed, sat down to supper, and from below there was such a knocking up as bred fear to all that were present. This knocking was just under her chair, where it was not possible for any mortal to knock up.' When Miss Wilson went to bed, and was in a deep sleep, 'her body was so lifted up that many strong men were not able to keep it down'. {114a} The explanation about cracking the knee- joints hardly covers the levitations, or accounts for the tremendous noise which surrounded Sister Anthoinette at matins, or for the bright light, a common spiritualistic phenomenon. Margaret Wilson was about twelve years of age. If it be alleged that little girls have a traditional method of imposture, even that is a curious and interesting fact in human nature.

As regards imposture, there exists a singular record of a legal process in Paris, 1534. {114b}

It may have been observed that the Lyons affair was useful to the Church, as against 'the damnable sect of Lutherans,' because Sister Alix attested the existence of purgatory. No imposture was detected, and no reader of Montalembert can doubt his good faith, nor the sincerity of his kindness and piety. But such a set of circumstances might provoke imitation. Of fraudulent imitation the Franciscans of Orleans were accused, and for this crime they were severely punished. We have the Arrest des Commissaires du Conseil d'Etat du Roi, from MS. 7170, A. of the Bibliotheque du Roi. {115} We have also allusions in the Franciscanus, a satire in Latin hexameter by George Buchanan. Finally, we have versions in Lavaterus, and in Wierus, De Curat. Laes. Maleficio (Amsterdam, 1660, p. 422). Wierus, born 1515, heard the story when with Sleidan at Orleans, some years after the events. He gives the version of Sleidan, a notably Protestant version. Wierus is famous for his spirited and valuable defence of the poor women then so frequently burned as witches. He either does, or pretends to believe in devils, diabolical possession, and exorcism, but the exorcist, to be respectable, must be Protestant. Probably Wierus was not so credulous as he assumes to be, and a point of irony frequently peeps out. The story as told by Sleidan differs from that in the official record. In this document Adam Fumee counsellor of the king, announces that the Franciscans of Orleans have informed the king that they are vexed by a spirit, which gives itself out by signs (rappings), as the wife of Francois de St. Mesmin, Provost of Orleans. They ask the king to take cognisance of the matter. On the other side, St. Mesmin declares that the Franciscans have counterfeited the affair in hope of 'black-mailing' him. The king, therefore, appoints Fumee to inquire into the case. Thirteen friars are lying in prison in Paris, where they have long been 'in great wretchedness and poverty, and perishing of hunger,' a pretty example of the law's delay. A commission is to try the case (November, 1534). The trouble had begun on February 22, 1533 (old style), when Father Pierre d'Arras at five a.m. was called into the dormitory of 'les enfans,'--novices,--with holy water and everything proper. Knocking was going on, and by a system of knocks, the spirit said it wanted its body to be taken out of holy ground, said it was Madame St Mesmin, and was damned for Lutheranism and extravagance! The experiment was repeated before churchmen and laymen, but the lay observers rushed up to the place whence the knocks came where they found nothing. They hid some one there, after which there was no knocking. On a later day, the noises as in Cock Lane and elsewhere, began by scratching. "M. l'Official," the bishop's vicar, 'ouit gratter, qui etoit le commencement de ladite accoutummee tumulte dudit Esprit'. But no replies were given to questions, which the Franciscans attributed to the disturbance of the day before, and the breaking into various places by the people. One Alicourt seems to have been regarded as the 'medium,' and the sounds were heard as in Cock Lane and at Tedworth when he was in bed. Later experiments gave no results, and the friars were severely punished, and obliged to recant their charges against Madame de Mesmin. The case, scratches, raps, false accusations and all, is parallel to that of the mendacious 'Scratching Fanny,' examined by Dr. Johnson and Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury. In that affair the child was driven by threats to make counterfeit noises, but, as to the method of imposture at Orleans, nothing is said in the contemporary legal document.

We now turn to the account by Sleidan, in Wierus. The provost's wife had left directions for a cheap funeral in the Franciscan Church. This economy irritated the Fathers, who only got six pieces of gold, 'having expected much greater plunder'. 'Colimannus' (Colimant), an exorcist named in the process, was the ringleader. They stationed a lad in the roof of the church, who rapped with a piece of wood, and made a great noise 'when they mumbled their prayers at night'. St. Mesmin appealed to the king, the Fathers were imprisoned, and the youth was kept in Fumee's house, and plied with questions. He confessed the trick, and the friars were punished. Of all this confession, and of the mode of imposture, nothing is said in the legal process. From the whole affair came a popular saying, c'est l'esprit d'Orleans, when any fable was told. Buchanan talks of cauta parum pietas in fraude paranda.

The evidence, it may be seen, is not very coherent, and the Franciscans may have been the deceived, not the deceivers. {117} Wierus himself admits that he often heard a brownie in his father's house, which frightened him not a little, and Georgius Pictorius avers that a noisy spirit haunted his uncle's house for thirty years, a very protracted practical joke, if it was a practical joke. {118} This was a stone-throwing demon.

A large book might easily be filled with old stories of mysterious flights of stones, and volatile chairs and tables. The ancient mystics of the Levant were acquainted with the phenomena, as Iamblichus shows. The Eskimo knew them well. Glanvill is rich in examples, the objects flying about in presence of a solitary spectator, who has called at a 'haunted house,' and sometimes the events accompany the presence of a single individual, who may, or may not be a convulsionary or epileptic. Sometimes they befall where no individual is suspected of constitutional electricity or of imposture.

We may select a laughable example from a rare tract. 'An authentic, candid, and circumstantial narrative of the astonishing transactions at Stockwell, in the county of Surrey, on Monday and Tuesday, the 6th and 7th of January, 1772. Published with the consent and approbation of the family and other parties concerned, to authenticate which, the original copy is signed by them. London, 1772, printed for J. Marks, bookseller, in St. Martin's Lane.'

The dramatis personae are old Mrs. Golding, of Stockwell parish, 'a gentlewoman of unblemished honour and character'; Mrs. Pain, her niece, a farmer's wife, 'respected in the parish'; Mary Martin, her servant, previously with Mrs. Golding; Richard Fowler, a labourer, living opposite Mrs. Pain; Sarah Fowler his wife--all these sign the document,--and Ann Robinson, Mrs. Golding's maid, just entered on her service. Ann does _not_ sign.

The trouble began at ten a.m. on January 6, when Mrs. Golding heard a great smash of crockery, an event 'most incident to maids'. The lady went into the kitchen, when plates began to fall from the dresser 'while she was there and nobody near them'. Then a clock tumbled down, so did a lantern, a pan of salt beef cracked, and a carpenter, Rowlidge, suggested that a recent addition of a room above had shaken the foundation of the house. Mrs. Golding rushed into the house of Mr. Gresham, her next neighbour, and fainted. Meanwhile Ann Robinson was 'mistress of herself, though china fall,' and seemed in no hurry to leave the threatened dwelling. The niece of Mrs. Golding, Mrs. Pain, was sent for to Mr. Gresham's, Mrs. Golding was bled, when, lo, 'the blood sprang out of the basin upon the floor, and the basin broke to pieces!' A bottle of rum, of sympathetic character, also burst. Many of Mrs. Golding's more fragile effects had been carried into Mr. Gresham's: the glasses and china first danced, and then fell off the side-board and broke. Mrs. Golding, 'her mind one confused chaos,' next sought refuge at Mr. Mayling's for three-quarters of an hour. Here nothing unusual occurred, but, at Mr. Gresham's (where Ann Robinson was packing the remains of her mistress's portable property) a 'mahogany waiter,' a quadrille box, a jar of pickles and a pot of raspberry jam shared the common doom. 'Their end was pieces.' Mrs. Pain now hospitably conveyed her aunt to her house at Rush Common, 'hoping all was over'. This was about two in the afternoon.

At eight in the evening, the whole row of pewter dishes, bar one, fell from a shelf, rolled about a little, and 'as soon as they were quiet, turned upside down; they were then put upon the dresser, and went through the same a second time'. Then of two eggs, one 'flew off, crossed the kitchen, struck a cat on the head, and then burst in pieces'. A pestle and a mortar presently 'jumped six feet from the floor'. The glass and crockery were now put on the floor, 'he that is down need fear no fall,' but the objects began to dance, and tumble about, and then broke to pieces. A china bowl jumped eight feet but was not broken. However it tried again, and succeeded. Candlesticks, tea-kettles, a tumbler of rum and water, two hams, and a flitch of bacon joined in the corroboree. 'Most of the genteel families around were continually sending to inquire after them, and whether all was over or not.' All this while, Ann was 'walking backwards and forwards', nor could they get her to sit down, except for half an hour, at prayers, 'then all was quiet'. She remarked, with stoicism, 'these things could not be helped'. Fowler came in at ten, but fled in a fright at one in the morning. By five, Mrs. Golding summoned Mrs. Pain, who had gone to bed, 'all the tables, chairs, drawers, etc., were tumbling about'.

They rushed across to Fowler's where, as soon as Ann arrived, the old game went on. Fowler, therefore, like the landlord in the poem, 'did plainly say as how he wished they'd go away,' at the same time asking Mrs. Golding 'whether or not, she had been guilty of some atrocious crime, for which providence was determined to pursue her on this side the grave,' and to break crockery till death put an end to the stupendous Nemesis. 'Having hitherto been esteemed a most deserving person,' Mrs. Golding replied, with some natural warmth, that 'her conscience was quite clear, and she could as well wait the will of providence in her own house as in any other place,' she and the maid went to her abode, and there everything that had previously escaped was broken. 'A nine-gallon cask of beer that was in the cellar, the door being open and nobody near it, turned upside down'; 'a pail of water boiled like a pot'. So Mrs. Golding discharged Miss Ann Robinson and that is all.

At Mrs. Golding's they took up three, and at Mrs. Pain's two pails of the fragments that were left. The signatures follow, appended on January 11.

The tale has a sequel. In 1817 an old Mr. Braidley, who loved his joke, told Hone that he knew Ann, and that she confessed to having done the tricks by aid of horse-hairs, wires and other simple appliances. We have not Mr. Braidley's attested statement, but Ann's character as a Medium is under a cloud. Have all other Mediums secret wires? (Every-day Book, i. 62.)

Ann Robinson, we have seen, was a tranquil and philosophical maiden. Not so was another person who was equally active, ninety years earlier.

Bovet, in his Pandaemonium (1684), gives an account of the Demon of Spraiton, in 1682. His authorities were 'J. G., Esquire,' a near neighbour to the place, the Rector of Barnstaple, and other witnesses. The 'medium' was a young servant man, appropriately named Francis Fey, and employed in the household of Sir Philip Furze. Now, this young man was subject to 'a kind of trance, or extatick fit,' and 'part of his body was, occasionally, somewhat benumbed and seemingly deader than the other'. The nature of Fey's case, physically, is clear. He was a convulsionary, and his head would be found wedged into tight places whence it could hardly be extracted. From such a person the long and highly laughable tale of ghosts (a male ghost and a jealous female ghost) which he told does not much win our acceptance. True, Mrs. Thomasin Gidley, Anne Langdon, and a little child also saw the ghost in various forms. But this was probably mere fancy, or the hallucinations of Fey were infectious. But objects flew about in the young man's presence. 'One of his shoe-strings was observed (without the assistance of any hand) to come of its own accord out of his shoe and fling itself to the other side of the room; the other was crawling after it (!) but a maid espying that, with her hand drew it out, and it clasp'd and curl'd about her hand like a living eel or serpent. A barrel of salt of considerable quantity hath been observed to march from room to room without any human assistance,' and so forth. {122}

It is hardly necessary to add more modern instances. The 'electric girl' Angelique Cottin, who was a rival of Ann Robinson, had her powers well enough attested to arouse the curiosity of Arago. But, when brought from the country to Paris, her power, or her artifice, failed.

It is rather curious that tales of volatile furniture are by no means very common in trials for witchcraft. The popular belief was, and probably still is, that a witch or warlock could throw a spell over an enemy so that his pots, and pans, tables and chairs, would skip around. The disturbances of this variety, in the presbytery at Cideville, in Seine Inferieure (1850), came under the eye of the law, because a certain shepherd injudiciously boasted that he had caused them by his magic art. {123a} The cure, who was the victim, took him at his word, and the shepherd swain lost his situation. He then brought an action for defamation of character, but was non- suited, as it was proved that he had been the fanfaron of his own vices. In Froissart's amusing story of Orthon, that noisy sprite was hounded on by a priest. At Tedworth, the owner of the drum was 'wanted' on a charge of sorcery as the cause of the phenomena. The Wesleys suspected that their house was bewitched. But examples in witch trials are not usual. Mr. Graham Dalyell, however, gives one case, 'the firlote rynning about with the stuff popling,' on the floor of a barn, and one where 'the sive and the wecht dancit throw the hous'. {123b}

A clasped knife opened in the pocket of Christina Shaw, and her glove falling, it was lifted by a hand invisible to several persons present. One is reminded of the nursery rhyme,--'the dish it ran after the spoon'. In the presence of Home, even a bookcase is said to have forgotten itself, and committed the most deplorable excesses. In the article of Mr. Myers, already cited, we find a table which jumps by the bedside of a dying man. {124} A handbag of Miss Power's flies from an arm-chair, and hides under a table; raps are heard; all this when Miss Power is alone. Mr. H. W. Gore Graham sees a table move about. A heavy table of Mr. G. A. Armstrong's rises high in the air. A tea-table 'runs after' Professor Alexander, and 'attempts to hem me in,' this was at Rio de Janeiro, in the Davis family, where raps 'ranged from hardly perceptible ticks up to resounding blows, such as might be struck by a wooden mallet'. A Mr. H. falls into convulsions, during which all sorts of things fly about. All these stories closely correspond to the tales in Increase Mather's Remarkable Providences in New England, in which the phenomena sometimes occur in the presence of an epileptic and convulsed boy, about 1680. To take one classic French case, Segrais declares that a M. Patris was lodged in the Chateau d'Egmont. At dinner-time, he went into the room of a friend, whom he found lost in the utmost astonishment. A huge book, Cardan's De Subtilitate, had flown at him across the room, and the leaves had turned, under invisible fingers! There are plenty of bogles in that book. M. Patris laughed at this tale, and went into the gallery, when a large chair, so heavy that two men could scarcely lift it, shook itself and came at him. He remonstrated, and the chair returned to its usual position. 'This made a deep impression on M. Patris, and contributed in no slight degree to make him a converted character'-- a le faire devenir devot. {125a}

Tales like this, with that odd uniformity of tone and detail which makes them curious, might be collected from old literature to any extent. Thus, among the sounds usually called 'rappings,' Mr. Crookes mentions, as matter within his own experience, 'a cracking like that heard when a frictional machine is at work'. Now, as may be read in Southey's Life of Wesley and in Clarke's Memoirs of the Wesleys, this was the very noise which usually heralded the arrival of 'Jeffrey,' as they called the Epworth 'spirit'. {125b} It has been alleged that the charming and ill-fated Hetty Wesley caused the disturbances. If so (and Dr. Salmon, who supports this thesis, does not even hazard a guess as to the modus operandi), Hetty must have been familiar with almost the whole extent of psychical literature, for she scarcely left a single phenomenon unrepresented. It does not appear that she supplied visible 'hands'. We have seen Glanvill lay stress on the apparition of a hand. In the case of the devil of Glenluce, 'there appeared a naked hand, and an arm from the elbow down, beating upon the floor till the house did shake again'. {126a} At Rerrick, in 1695, 'it knocked upon the chests and boards, as people do at a door'. 'And as I was at prayer,' says the Rev. Alexander Telfair, 'leaning on the side of a bed, I felt something thrusting my arm up, and casting my eyes thitherward, perceived a little white hand, and an arm from the elbow down, but it vanished presently.' {126b} The hands viewed, grasped, and examined by Home's clientele, hands which melted away in their clutch, are innumerable, and the phenomenon, with the 'cold breeze,' is among the most common in modern narratives.

Our only conclusion is that the psychological conditions which begat the ancient narratives produce the new legends. These surprise us by the apparent good faith in marvel and myth of many otherwise credible narrators, and by the coincidence, accidental or designed, with old stories not generally familiar to the modern public. Do impostors and credulous persons deliberately 'get up' the subject in rare old books? Is there a method of imposture handed down by one generation of bad little girls to another? Is there such a thing as persistent identity of hallucination among the sane? This was Coleridge's theory, but it is not without difficulties. These questions are the present results of Comparative Psychological Research.

HAUNTED HOUSES

Reginald Scot on Protestant expulsion of Ghosts. His boast premature. Savage hauntings. Red Indian example. Classical cases. Petrus Thyraeus on Haunted Houses. His examples from patristic literature. Three species of haunting spirits. Demons in disguises. Hallucinations, visual, auditory, and tactile. Are the sounds in Haunted Houses real or hallucinatory? All present do not always hear them. Interments in houses to stop hauntings. Modern example. The Restoration and Scepticism. Exceptional position of Dr. Johnson. Frequency of Haunted Houses in modern Folklore. Researches of the S. P. R. Failure of the Society to see Ghosts. Uncertain behaviour of Ghosts. The Society need a 'seer' or 'sensitive' comrade. The 'type' or normal kind of Haunted Houses. Some natural explanations. Historical continuity of type. Case of Sir Walter Scott. A haunted curacy. Modern instances. Miss Morton's case: a dumb ghost. Ghost, as is believed, of a man of letters. Mr. Harry's ghost raises his mosquito curtains. Columns of light. Mr. Podmore's theory. Hallucinations begotten by natural causes are 'telepathically' transferred, with variations, to strangers at a distance. Example of this process. Incredulity of Mr. Myers. The spontaneous phenomena reproduced at 'seances'. A ghost who followed a young lady. Singular experience of the writer in Haunted Houses. Experience negative. Theory of 'dreams of the dead'. Difficulties of this theory; physical force exerted in dreams. Theory of Mr. James Sully. His unscientific method and carelessness as to evidence. Reflections.

Reginald Scot, the humane author who tried, in his Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584 (xv. 39), to laugh witch trials away, has a triumphant passage on the decline of superstition. 'Where are the soules that swarmed in time past? where are the spirits? who heareth their noises? who seeth their visions?' He decides that the spirits who haunt places and houses, may have gone to Italy, because masses are dear in England. Scot, as an ardent Protestant, conceived that haunted houses were 'a lewd invention,' encouraged, if not originated, by the priests, in support of the doctrine of purgatory. As a matter of fact the belief in 'haunting,' dates from times of savagery, when we may say that every bush has its bogle. The Church had nothing to do with the rise of the belief, though, early in the Reformation, some 'psychical phenomena' were claimed as experimental proofs of the existence of purgatory. Reginald Scot decidedly made his Protestant boast too soon. After 300 years of 'the Trewth,' as Knox called it, the haunted houses are as much part of the popular creed as ever. Houses stand empty, and are said to be 'haunted'. Here not the fact of haunting, but only the existence of the superstition is attested. Thus a house in Berkeley Square was long unoccupied, for reasons perfectly commonplace and intelligible. But the fact that it had no tenants needed to be explained, and was explained by a myth,--there were ghosts in the house! On the other hand, if Reginald Scot asked today, 'Who heareth the noises, who seeth the visions?' we could answer, 'Protestant clergymen, officers in the army, ladies, land-agents, solicitors, representatives of all classes, except the Haunted House Committee of the Psychical Society'.

Before examining the researches and the results of this learned body, we may glance at some earlier industry of investigators. The common savage beliefs are too well known to need recapitulation, and have been treated by Mr. Tylor in his chapter on 'Animism,' {129} and by Mr. Herbert Spencer in Principles of Psychology. The points of difference between these authors need not detain us here. As a rule the spirits which haunt the bush, or the forest, are but vaguely conceived of by the Australian blacks, or Red Men: they may be ghosts of the dead, or they may be casual spirits unattached. An example analogous to European superstition is given by John Tanner in his Narrative of a Captivity among the Red Indians, 1830. In this case one man had slain his brother, or, at least, a man of his own Totem, and was himself put to death by the kindred. The spectres of both haunted a place which the Indians shunned, but Tanner (whose Totem was the same as that of the dead) passed a night on the scene. His dreams, if not his waking moments, for his account is indistinct, were disturbed by the ghosts. It is impossible to ascertain how far this particular superstition was coloured by European influences. {130}

Over classical tales we need not linger. Pliny, Plutarch, Suetonius, St. Augustine, Lucian, Plautus (in the Mostellaria), describe, with more or less of seriousness, the apparitions and noises which haunted houses, public baths, and other places. Occasionally a slain man's phantom was anxious that his body should be buried, and the reported phenomena were akin to those in modern popular legends. Sometimes, in the middle ages, and later, the law took cognisance of haunted houses, when the tenant wished to break his lease. A collection of authorities is given elsewhere, in Ghosts before the Law. It is to be noticed that Bouchel, in his Bibliotheque du Droit Francais, chiefly cites classical, not modern, instances.

Among the most careful and exhaustive post-mediaeval writers on haunted houses we must cite Petrus Thyraeus of the Society of Jesus, Doctor in Theology. His work, published at Cologne in 1598, is a quarto of 352 pages, entitled, 'Loca Infesta; That is, Concerning Places Haunted by Mischievous Spirits of Demons and of the Dead. Thereto is added a Tract on Nocturnal Disturbances, which are wont to bode the deaths of Men.' Thyraeus begins, 'That certain places are haunted by spectres and spirits, is no matter of doubt,' wherein a modern reader cannot confidently follow him.

When it comes to establishing his position Thyraeus most provokingly says, 'we omit cases which are recent and of daily occurrence,' such as he heard narrated, during his travels, in 'a certain haunted castle'. A modern inquirer naturally prefers recent examples, which may be inquired into, but the old scholars reposed more confidence in what was written by respected authors, the more ancient the more authoritative. However Thyraeus relies on the anthropological test of evidence, and thinks that his belief is confirmed by the coincident reports of hauntings, 'variis distinctissimisque locis et temporibus,' in the most various times and places. There is something to be said for this view, and the identity of the alleged phenomena, in all lands and ages, does raise a presumption in favour of some kind of abnormal occurrences, or of a common species of hallucinations. Like most of the old authors Thyraeus quotes Augustine's tale of a haunted house, and an exorcism in De Civitate Dei (lib. xxii. ch. viii.). St. Gregory has also a story of one Paschasius, a deacon, who haunted some baths, and was seen by a bishop. {131a} There is a ghost who rode horses, and frightened the religious in the Life of Gregory by Joannes Diaconus (iv. 89). In the Life of Theodorus one Georgius, a disciple of his, mentions a house haunted by stone-throwing sprites, a very common phenomenon in the books of Glanvill, and Increase Mather, in witch trials, and in rural disturbances. Omitting other examples Cardan {131b} is cited for a house at Parma, in which during a hundred years the phantom of an old woman was seen before the death of members of the family. This is a rare case of an Italian Banshie. William of Paris, in Bodin (iii. ch. vi.) tells of a stone-throwing fiend, very active in 1447. The bogey of Bingen, a rapping ghost of 856, is duly chronicled; he also threw stones. The dormitory of some nuns was haunted by a spectre who moaned, tramped noisily around, dragged the sisters out of bed by the feet, and even tickled them nearly to death! This annoyance lasted for three years, so Wierus says. {132} Wodrow chronicles a similar affair at Mellantrae, in Annandale. Thyraeus distinguishes three kinds of haunting sprites, devils, damned souls, and souls in purgatory. Some are mites, mild and sportive; some are truculenti ferocious. Brownies, or fauni, may act in either character, as Secutores et joculatores. They rather aim at teasing than at inflicting harm. They throw stones, lift beds, and make a hubbub and crash with the furniture. Suicides, murderers, and spirits of murdered people, are all apt to haunt houses. The sprites occasionally appear in their proper form, but just as often in disguise: a demon, too, can appear in human shape if so disposed: demons being of their nature deceitful and fond of travesty, as Porphyry teaches us and as Law (1680) illustrates. Whether the spirits of the dead quite know what they are about when they take to haunting, is, in the opinion of Thyraeus, a difficult question. Thomas Aquinas, following St. Augustine, inclines to hold that when there is an apparition of a dead man, the dead man is unconscious of the circumstance. A spirit of one kind or another may be acting in his semblance. Thyraeus rather fancies that the dead man is aware of what is going on.

Hauntings may be visual, auditory, or confined to the sense of touch. Auditory effects are produced by flutterings of air, noises are caused, steps are heard, laughter, and moaning. Lares domestici (brownies) mostly make a noise. Apparitions may be in tactile form of men or animals, or monsters. As for effects, some ghosts push the living and drive them along, as the Bride of Lammermoor, in Law's Memorialls, was 'harled through the house,' by spirits. The spirits of an amorous complexion seem no longer to be numerous, but are objects of interest to Thyraeus as to Increase Mather. Thyraeus now raises the difficult question: 'Are the sounds heard in haunted houses real, or hallucinatory?' Omnis qui a spiritibus fit, simulatus est, specie sui fallit. The spirits having no vocal organs, can only produce _noise_. In a spiritual hurly-burly, some of the mortals present _hear nothing_ (as we shall note in some modern examples), but may they not be prevented from hearing by the spirits? Or again, the sounds may be hallucinatory and only some mortals may have the power of hearing them. If there are visual, there may also be auditory hallucinations. {133} On the whole Thyraeus thinks that the sounds may be real on some occasions, when all present hear them, hallucinatory on others. But the sounds need not be produced on the furniture, for example, when they seem to be so produced. 'Often we think that the furniture has been all tossed about, when it really has not been stirred.' The classical instance of the disturbances which aroused Scott at Abbotsford, on the death of his agent Bullock, is in point here. 'Often a hammer is heard rapping, when there is no hammer in the house' (p. 82). These are curious references to phenomena, however we explain them, which are still frequently reported.

Thyraeus thinks that the air is agitated when sounds are heard, but that is just the question to be solved.