Part 13 (1/2)
”Next morning, about one, the Buckleys were aroused by a tremendous peal of the alarm; Mrs. Claughton they found in a faint. Next morning {179} she consulted me as to the whereabouts of a certain place, let me call it 'Meresby'. I suggested the use of a postal directory; we found Meresby, a place extremely unknown to fame, in an agricultural district about five hours from London in the opposite direction from Rapingham. To this place Mrs. Claughton said she must go, in the interest and by the order of certain ghosts, whom she saw on Monday night, and whose injunctions she had taken down in a note-book. She has left Rapingham for London, and there,” said the doctor, ”my story ends for the present.”
We expected it to end for good and all, but in the course of the week came a communication to the doctor in writing from Mrs. Claughton's governess. This lady, on Mrs. Claughton's arrival at her London house (Friday, 13th October), pa.s.sed a night perturbed by sounds of weeping, ”loud moans,” and ”a very odd noise overhead, like some electric battery gone wrong,” in fact, much like the ”warning” of a jack running down, which Old Jeffrey used to give at the Wesley's house in Epworth. There were also heavy footsteps and thuds, as of moving weighty bodies. So far the governess.
This curious communication I read at Rapingham on Sat.u.r.day, 14th October, or Sunday, 15th October. On Monday I went to town. In the course of the week I received a letter from my kinsman in Rapingham, saying that Mrs. Claughton had written to Dr. Ferrier, telling him that she had gone to Meresby on Sat.u.r.day; had accomplished the bidding of the ghosts, and had lodged with one Joseph Wright, the parish clerk. Her duty had been to examine the Meresby parish registers, and to compare certain entries with information given by the ghosts and written by her in her note-book. If the entries in the parish register tallied with her notes, she was to pa.s.s the time between one o'clock and half-past one, alone, in Meresby Church, and receive a communication from the spectres. All this she said that she had done, and in evidence of her journey enclosed her half ticket to Meresby, which a dream had warned her would not be taken on her arrival. She also sent a white rose from a grave to Dr. Ferrier, a gentleman in no sympathy with the Jacobite cause, which, indeed, has no connection whatever with the matter in hand.
On hearing of this letter from Mrs. Claughton, I confess that, not knowing the lady, I remained purely sceptical. The railway company, however, vouched for the ticket. The rector of Meresby, being appealed to, knew nothing of the matter. He therefore sent for his curate and parish clerk.
”Did a lady pa.s.s part of Sunday night in the church?”
The clerk and the curate admitted that this unusual event _had_ occurred. A lady had arrived from London on Sat.u.r.day evening; had lodged with Wright, the parish clerk; had asked for the parish registers; had compared them with her note-book after morning service on Sunday, and had begged leave to pa.s.s part of the night in the church. The curate in vain tried to dissuade her, and finally, was.h.i.+ng his hands of it, had left her to Wright the clerk. To him she described a Mr. George Howard, deceased (one of the ghosts). He recognised the description, and he accompanied her to the church on a dark night, starting at one o'clock. She stayed alone, without a light, in the locked-up church from 1.20 to 1.45, when he let her out.
There now remained no doubt that Mrs. Claughton had really gone to Meresby, a long and disagreeable journey, and had been locked up in the church alone at a witching hour.
Beyond this point we have only the statements of Mrs. Claughton, made to Lord Bute, Mr. Myers and others, and published by the Society for Psychical Research. She says that after arranging the alarm bell on Monday night (October 9-10) she fell asleep reading in her dressing- gown, lying outside her bed. She wakened, and found the lady of the white shawl bending over her. Mrs. Claughton said: ”Am I dreaming, or is it true?” The figure gave, as testimony to character, a piece of information. Next Mrs. Claughton saw a male ghost, ”tall, dark, healthy, sixty years old,” who named himself as George Howard, buried in Meresby churchyard, Meresby being a place of which Mrs. Claughton, like most people, now heard for the first time. He gave the dates of his marriage and death, which are correct, and have been seen by Mr.
Myers in Mrs. Claughton's note-book. He bade her verify these dates at Meresby, and wait at 1.15 in the morning at the grave of Richard Harte (a person, like all of them, unknown to Mrs. Claughton) at the south-west corner of the south aisle in Meresby Church. This Mr.
Harte died on 15th May, 1745, and missed many events of interest by doing so. Mr. Howard also named and described Joseph Wright, of Meresby, as a man who would help her, and he gave minute local information. Next came a phantom of a man whose name Mrs. Claughton is not free to give; {182} he seemed to be in great trouble, at first covering his face with his hands, but later removing them. These three spectres were to meet Mrs. Claughton in Meresby Church and give her information of importance on a matter concerning, apparently, the third and only unhappy appearance. After these promises and injunctions the phantoms left, and Mrs. Claughton went to the door to look at the clock. Feeling faint, she rang the alarum, when her friends came and found her in a swoon on the floor. The hour was 1.20.
What Mrs. Claughton's children were doing all this time, and whether they were in the room or not, does not appear.
On Thursday Mrs. Claughton went to town, and her governess was perturbed, as we have seen.
On Friday night Mrs. Claughton _dreamed_ a number of things connected with her journey; a page of the notes made from this dream was shown to Mr. Myers. Thus her half ticket was not to be taken, she was to find a Mr. Francis, concerned in the private affairs of the ghosts, which needed rectifying, and so forth. These premonitions, with others, were all fulfilled. Mrs. Claughton, in the church at night, continued her conversation with the ghosts whose acquaintance she had made at Rapingham. She obtained, it seems, all the information needful to settling the mysterious matters which disturbed the male ghost who hid his face, and on Monday morning she visited the daughter of Mr. Howard in her country house in a park, ”recognised the strong likeness to her father, and carried out all things desired by the dead to the full, as had been requested... . The wishes expressed to her were perfectly rational, reasonable and of natural importance.”
The clerk, Wright, attests the accuracy of Mrs. Claughton's description of Mr. Howard, whom he knew, and the correspondence of her dates with those in the parish register and on the graves, which he found for her at her request. Mr. Myers, ”from a very partial knowledge” of what the Meresby ghosts' business was, thinks the reasons for not revealing this matter ”entirely sufficient”. The ghosts' messages to survivors ”effected the intended results,” says Mrs. Claughton.
Of this story the only conceivable natural explanation is that Mrs.
Claughton, to serve her private ends, paid secret preliminary visits to Meresby, ”got up” there a number of minute facts, chose a haunted house at the other end of England as a first scene in her little drama, and made the rest of the troublesome journeys, not to mention the uncomfortable visit to a dark church at midnight, and did all this from a hysterical love of notoriety. This desirable boon she would probably never have obtained, even as far as it is consistent with a pseudonym, if I had not chanced to dine with Dr. Ferrier while the adventure was only beginning. As there seemed to be a chance of taking a ghost ”on the half volley,” I at once communicated the first part of the tale to the Psychical Society (using pseudonyms, as here, throughout), and two years later Mrs. Claughton consented to tell the Society as much as she thinks it fair to reveal.
This, it will be confessed, is a round-about way of obtaining fame, and an ordinary person in Mrs. Claughton's position would have gone to the Psychical Society at once, as Mark Twain meant to do when he saw the ghost which turned out to be a very ordinary person.
There I leave these ghosts, my mind being in a just balance of agnosticism. If ghosts at all, they were ghosts with a purpose. The species is now very rare.
The purpose of the ghost in the following instance was trivial, but was successfully accomplished. In place of asking people to do what it wanted, the ghost did the thing itself. Now the modern theory of ghosts, namely, that they are delusions of the senses of the seers, caused somehow by the mental action of dead or distant people, does not seem to apply in this case. The ghost produced an effect on a material object.
”PUT OUT THE LIGHT!”
The Rev. D. W. G. Gwynne, M.D., was a physician in holy orders. In 1853 he lived at P--- House, near Taunton, where both he and his wife ”were made uncomfortable by auditory experiences to which they could find no clue,” or, in common English, they heard mysterious noises.
”During the night,” writes Dr. Gwynne, ”I became aware of a draped figure pa.s.sing across the foot of the bed towards the fireplace. I had the impression that the arm was raised, pointing with the hand towards the mantel-piece on which a night-light was burning. Mrs.
Gwynne at the same moment seized my arm, _and the light was extinguished_! Notwithstanding, I distinctly saw the figure returning towards the door, and being under the impression that one of the servants had found her way into our room, I leaped out of bed to intercept the intruder, but found and saw nothing. I rushed to the door and endeavoured to follow the supposed intruder, and it was not until I found the door locked, as usual, that I was painfully impressed. I need hardly say that Mrs. Gwynne was in a very nervous state. She asked me what I had seen, and I told her. She had seen the same figure,” ”but,” writes Mrs. Gwynne, ”I distinctly _saw the hand of the figure placed over the night-light, which was at once extinguished_”. ”Mrs. Gwynne also heard the rustle of the 'tall man- like figure's' garments. In addition to the night-light there was moonlight in the room.”
”Other people had suffered many things in the same house, unknown to Dr. and Mrs. Gwynne, who gave up the place soon afterwards.”
In plenty of stories we hear of ghosts who draw curtains or open doors, and these apparent material effects are usually called part of the seer's delusion. But the night-light certainly went out under the figure's hand, and was relit by Dr. Gwynne. Either the ghost was an actual ent.i.ty, not a mere hallucination of two people, or the extinction of the light was a curious coincidence. {186}
CHAPTER IX
Haunted Houses. Antiquity of Haunted Houses. Savage Cases. Ancient Egyptian Cases. Persistence in Modern Times. Impostures. Imaginary Noises. Nature of Noises. The Creaking Stair. Ghostly Effects produced by the Living but Absent. The Grocer's Cough. Difficulty of Belief. My Gillie's Father's Story. ”Silverton Abbey.” The Dream that Opened the Door. Abbotsford Noises. Legitimate Haunting by the Dead. The Girl in Pink. The Dog in the Haunted Room. The Lady in Black. Dogs Alarmed. The Dead Seldom Recognised. Glamis. A Border Castle. Another Cla.s.s of Hauntings. A Russian Case. The Dancing Devil. The Little Hands.
Haunted houses have been familiar to man ever since he has owned a roof to cover his head. The Australian blacks possessed only shelters or ”leans-to,” so in Australia the spirits do their rapping on the tree trunks; a native ill.u.s.trated this by whacking a table with a book. The perched-up houses of the Dyaks are haunted by noisy routing agencies. We find them in monasteries, palaces, and crofters'