A witty Frenchwoman was once asked if
she believed in ghosts.
“No, not at all,” was her reply. “But I am
terribly afraid of them.”
Most people feel precisely this way about
ghosts, though few are candid enough to acknowledge
it. In broad daylight, or when seated
before a cheery fire among a group of congenial
friends, it is easy to be skeptical, and to regard
ghosts as mere products of imagination, superstition,
credulity, hysteria, or indigestion. But
it is notorious that even the most skeptical are
liable to creepy sensations and sometimes outright
panic if they experience “uncanny” sights or
sounds in the darkness of the night, or in lonely,
uninhabited places. Churchyards have never
been popular resorts of those who go for a stroll
in the cool of the evening. And let a house once
get the reputation of being “haunted,” it is next
to impossible to find tenants for it.
Yet this almost universal attitude is entirely
and fundamentally wrong. There is no reason
for being afraid of ghosts, and there are many
reasons for believing in them.
I do not, of course, mean to say that all ghosts
are real ghosts. There are plenty of bogus ghosts,
and there always will be, as long as men eat and
drink too much, play practical jokes on one another,
and allow their houses to become run down
and infested by rats and mice.
A single rat, scampering at midnight over the
loose planks of an old attic, has often been quite
sufficient to produce a counterfeit “poltergeist,”
or troublesome ghost, of a highly impressive character.
So, too, a pillow-slip swaying from a
clothesline is apt to seem most ghostly to a gentleman
returning home from a late supper. Ghosts,
like much else in this amazing world of ours, have
to be pretty sharply scrutinized.
And the point is that, after centuries of contemptuous
neglect, they have at last been made
the subject of investigation by men and women
competent for the task—persons trained in the
cautious methods of scientific inquiry, and insisting
upon the strictest evidential standards,
but devoid of prejudice or prepossession. Their
researches are still in progress, but they have
already demonstrated that amid a multitude of
sham ghosts there are perfectly authentic apparitions,
displaying credentials too convincing to be
denied.
What is still more important, the labors of these
scientific ghostologists—especially of those enrolled
in the famous English Society for Psychical
Research—have also resulted in throwing much
light on the nature, origin, and habits of real ghosts.
Usually, it seems, a genuine ghost is seen or
heard but once or twice, and then, having accomplished
its purpose, it departs to return no
more. But there are plenty of well-attested cases
in which a ghost attaches itself to a house or
family, and keeps up its haunting for years, sometimes
for centuries.
Take, for example, an experience that befell
Miss Goodrich-Freer, at the time a most active
member of the Society for Psychical Research, in
Hampton Court Palace. This old building is
unquestionably one of the most famous of all
haunted houses. It dates back to the time of
the first Tudors, and according to tradition is
haunted by several ghosts, notably the ghosts of
Jane Seymour, Henry VIII’s third queen; Catharine
Howard, whose spirit is said to go shrieking
along the gallery where she vainly begged brutal
King Henry to spare her life; and Sybil Penn,
King Edward VI’s foster-mother. Twice of late
years the Howard ghost—or something that
passed for it—has been heard, once by Lady
Eastlake, and once by Mrs. Cavendish Boyle.
The latter was sleeping in an apartment next to
the haunted gallery—which has long been unoccupied
and used only as a storeroom for old
pictures—when she was suddenly awakened by
a loud and most unearthly shriek proceeding
from that quarter, followed immediately by perfect
silence. Lady Eastlake’s experience was
exactly similar.
Both ladies, of course, may have heard a real
shriek, possibly coming from some nightmare-tormented
occupant of the palace. But no explanation
of this sort is adequate in the case of
Miss Goodrich-Freer, who passed a night at
Hampton Court for the sole purpose of ascertaining
whether or not there was any foundation for
its ghostly legends.
The room she selected for her vigil was one
especially reputed to be haunted, and opened into
a second room, the door between the two, however,
being blocked by a heavy piece of furniture.
Thus the only means of entrance into her room
was by a door from the corridor, and this she
locked and bolted. After which, feeling confident
that nothing but a real ghost could get in to
trouble her, she settled down to read an essay on
“Shall We Degrade Our Standard of Value?”
a subject manifestly free from matters likely to
occasion nervousness.
In fact, the essay was so dull that by half past
one Miss Goodrich-Freer, not able to keep awake
longer, undressed, dropped into bed, and was
almost instantly asleep. Several hours later she
was aroused by a noise as of some one opening
the furniture-barricaded door. At this she put
out her hand to reach a match-box which she
knew was lying on a table at the head of the bed.
“I did not reach the matches,” she reports.
“It seemed to me that a detaining hand was laid
on mine. I withdrew it quickly and gazed around
into the darkness. Some minutes passed in blackness
and silence. I had the sensation of a presence
in the room, and finally, mindful of the tradition
that a ghost should be spoken to, I said gently:
‘Is any one there? Can I do anything for you?’
I remembered that the last person who entertained
the ghost had said: ‘Go away, I don’t
want you,’ and I hoped that my visitor would
admire my better manners and be responsive.
However, there was no answer, no sound of any
kind.”
Now Miss Goodrich-Freer left the bed and felt
all around the room in the dark, until satisfied
that she was alone. The corridor door was still
locked and bolted; the piece of furniture against
the inner door was in place. So she returned to
bed. Almost at once a soft light began to glow
with increasing brightness. It seemed to radiate
from a central point, which gradually took form
and became a tall, slender woman, moving slowly
across the room. At the foot of the bed she
stopped, so that the amazed observer had time to
examine her profile and general appearance.
“Her face,” Miss Goodrich-Freer says, “was
insipidly pretty, that of a woman from thirty to
thirty-five years of age, her figure slight, her dress
of a soft, dark material, having a full skirt and
broad sash or soft waistband tied high up almost
under her arms, a crossed or draped handkerchief
over the shoulders and sleeves which I noticed
fitted very tight below the elbow. In spite of all
this definiteness I was conscious that the figure
was unsubstantial, and felt quite guilty of absurdity
in asking once more: ‘Will you let me
help you? Can I be of any use to you?’
“My voice sounded preternaturally loud, but
I felt no surprise at noticing that it produced no
effect upon my visitor. She stood still for perhaps
two minutes, though it is very difficult to estimate
time on such occasions. Then she raised her
hands, which were long and white, and held them
before her as she sank upon her knees and slowly
buried her face in the palms in an attitude of
prayer—when quite suddenly the light went
out, and I was alone in the darkness.
“I felt that the scene was ended, the curtain
drawn, and had no hesitation in lighting the candle
at my side.... The clock struck four.”
Again investigation showed that the corridor
door was locked and bolted as she had left it, and
the inner door still firmly barricaded. Consequently,
skeptical though she had been when
she arrived at Hampton Court Palace, Miss Goodrich-Freer
in leaving it entertained no doubt that
she had witnessed a genuine psychical manifestation.
The same conclusion was forced upon two
ladies, Miss Elizabeth Morison and Miss Frances
Lamont, in connection with a visit paid by them
to another famous haunted house, the Petit
Trianon at Versailles, the favorite summer home
of that unfortunate queen Marie Antoinette,
whose ghost, as well as the ghosts of her attendants,
has long been alleged to be visible at times
in and around it. Miss Morison and Miss Lamont
had been sightseeing in the royal palace, but
tiring of this had set off, in the early afternoon,
to walk to the Trianon. Neither of them knew
just where it was located, but taking the general
direction indicated on Baedeker’s map, they
finally came to a broad drive, which, had they
only known it, would have led them directly to
their destination. As it was, they crossed the
drive and went up a narrow lane through a thick
wood to a point where three paths diverged. Here
they began to have a series of experiences which,
comparatively insignificant in themselves, had a
sequel so amazing that it would be incredible
were it not that the veracity of both ladies has
been established beyond question.[1]
Ahead of them, on the middle path, they saw
two men clad in curious, old-fashioned costumes
of long, greenish coats, knee breeches, and small,
three-cornered hats. Taking them for gardeners,
they asked to be shown the way, and were told
to go straight ahead. This brought them to a
little clearing that had in it a light garden kiosk,
circular and like a bandstand, near which a man
was seated. As they approached, he turned his
head and stared at them, and his expression was
so repellent that they felt greatly frightened.
The next instant, coming from they knew not
where, and breathless as if from running, a second
man appeared, and speaking in French of a peculiar
accent, ordered them brusquely to turn to
the right, saying that the Trianon lay in that
direction. Just as they reached it, they were
again intercepted, this time by a young man who
stepped out of a rear door, banged it behind him,
and with a somewhat insolent air guided them to
the main entrance of the palace.
While they were hurrying thither, Miss Morison
noticed a lady, seated below a terrace, holding
out a paper as though reading at arm’s length.
She glanced up as they passed, and Miss Morison,
observing with surprise the peculiar cut of her
gown, saw that she had a pretty “though not
young” face.
“I looked straight at her,” she adds in the
published statement she has made regarding their
adventure, “but some indescribable feeling made
me turn away, disturbed at her being there.”
Afterwards this “indescribable feeling” was
accounted for when Miss Morison identified in a
rare portrait of Marie Antoinette the lady she
had seen seated below the terrace!
Still more remarkable, subsequent visits to the
Trianon brought to both ladies the startling
knowledge that the actual surroundings of the
place and the place itself differ vastly from what
they saw that summer afternoon. The woods
they entered are not there, and have not been
there in the memory of man; the paths they trod
have long been effaced; there is no kiosk, nor does
anybody living, except Miss Morison and Miss
Lamont, remember having seen one in the Trianon
grounds; on the very spot where Miss Morison
saw the lady in the peculiar dress a large bush
is growing; and the rear door, out of which
stepped the young man who guided them around
to the front, opens from an old chapel that has
been in a ruinous condition for many years, the
door itself being “bolted, barred, and cobwebbed,”
and unused since the time of Marie
Antoinette.
On the other hand, their personal researches in
the archives of France have brought to light so
many confirmatory facts that both Miss Morison
and Miss Lamont are firmly persuaded that the
Trianon, its environment, and its people were
once exactly as they appeared to them; and that
in very truth they saw the place as it looked, not
at the time they first visited it, but in the closing
years of the French Monarchy, more than a century
before.
That historic German ghost, the White Lady of
the Hohenzollerns, would likewise seem to have
more than a legendary basis. Her mission, apparently,
is to announce the death of some member
of the Hohenzollern family, and her most
frequent haunting-place is the royal palace at
Berlin. She was seen as early as 1628, and since
the time of Frederick the Great her appearance
has been regularly chronicled on the eve of the
death of the King of Prussia.
For the matter of that, there are not a few
families whose ancestral homes, according to tradition,
are haunted by death-announcing ghosts.
This is particularly the case with certain distinguished
British families. Two white owls perching
on the roof of the family mansion are taken as a
sure omen of death in the Arundel of Wardour
family. The Yorkshire Middletons, a Catholic
family, are said to be warned of approaching death
by the apparition of a Benedictine nun. Equally
noteworthy as a spectral messenger of tragedy
is the so-called Drummer of Cortachy Castle, a
Scottish ghost that haunts the ancient stronghold
of the Ogilvys, Earls of Airlie, but is in evidence
only when an Ogilvy is about to die.
The story goes that, hundreds of years ago,
when the Scots were little better than barbarians,
a Highland chieftain sent a drummer to Cortachy
Castle with a message that was not at all to the
liking of the Ogilvy of that time. As an appropriate
token of his displeasure, he seized the
luckless drummer, stuffed him into his drum—he
must have been a very small drummer, and
have carried a very big drum—and hurled him
from the topmost battlements of the castle, breaking
his neck.
Just before he was tossed off, the drummer
threatened to make a ghost of himself, and haunt
the Ogilvys forevermore. He has been, it would
seem, as good as his word. Every once in a while
ghostly drumming is heard at Cortachy Castle,
and always the death of an Ogilvy follows. An
especially impressive account of one instance of
this peculiar and most unpleasant haunting has
been left by a Miss Dalrymple, who happened to
be a guest at Cortachy during Christmas week of
1844.
It was her first visit to the Castle, and she was
entirely unaware of the existence of the family
ghost. On the evening of her arrival, while dressing
for dinner, she was startled by hearing under
her window music like the muffled beating of a
drum. She looked out, but could see nothing, and
presently the drumming died away. For the time
she thought no more of it, but at dinner she
turned to her host, the Earl of Airlie, and asked:
“My lord, who is your drummer?”
His lordship made no reply, Lady Airlie became
exceedingly pale, and several of the company,
all of whom had heard the question, looked embarrassed.
Realizing that she had made a slip
of some sort, Miss Dalrymple quickly changed the
subject, but after dinner, naturally feeling somewhat
curious, she brought it up with one of the
younger members of the family, and was answered:
“What! Have you never heard of the Drummer
of Cortachy?”
“No,” said she. “Who in the world is he?”
“Why, he is a person who goes about playing
his drum whenever there is a death impending
in our family. The last time he was heard was
shortly before the death of the late countess, the
earl’s first wife, and that is why Lady Airlie turned
so pale when you mentioned it.”
The next night Miss Dalrymple heard the
drumming again, and, falling into a panic when
she learned that nobody else had heard it, hurriedly
left Cortachy Castle. But the drumming
was not for her. True to tradition, the drummer
was concerned only with announcing the death of
an Ogilvy, one of whom, the Lady Airlie who had
been so disturbed by Miss Dalrymple’s question,
died soon afterward while on a visit to Brighton.
Five years later the drumming was once more
heard, this time by an Englishman who had been
invited to spend a few days with the Earl of
Airlie’s oldest son, Lord Ogilvy, at a shooting
box near Cortachy. Crossing a gloomy moor,
in company with an old Highlander, the Englishman
suddenly stopped, and, with a look of amazement,
exclaimed:
“What can a band be doing in this lonely
place? Has Lord Ogilvy brought a band with
him?”
The Highlander glanced at him strangely.
“I hear naething,” he said.
“Why, yes, can’t you hear it? A band playing
in the distance—or at any rate, somebody playing
a drum.”
“An’ is it a drum ye hear?” cried the Highlander.
“Then ’tis something no canny.”
In another moment the lighted windows of the
shooting box came into view, and the Englishman
hastened forward, fully expecting to have
the mystery solved. But he found no musicians—only
a scene of considerable confusion. Lord
Ogilvy, it appeared, had just started for London,
summoned by news that his father was dangerously
ill.
And the very next day, as the Englishman’s
Highlander guide was not at all surprised to
learn, the Earl of Airlie died.
Of all family ghosts, however, none is so strongly
substantiated by documentary[2] evidence as the
Knocking Ghost of the Basil Woodds, an old
English family. This ghost began operations
about the time of the Stuart Restoration, and it
is alleged has ever since continued to announce,
by three or more loud knocks, the approaching
death of a Basil Woodd. First-hand and thoroughly
trustworthy accounts are extant of its
activity in quite recent times.
December 15, 1893, Mr. Charles H. L. Woodd
died at Hampstead, England, after a brief illness.
The night before he died the Knocking Ghost
was heard by two persons, at Hampstead by his
daughter, and in London by his son, the Reverend
Trevor Basil Woodd. Both have made statements
describing their singular experiences.
“On Thursday evening, December 14, 1893,
after church,” says the Reverend Mr. Woodd,
“I was sitting before my fire. I knew my father
was ill, and had a presentiment that he was
dangerously ill, though if I had known this I
should have remained at Hampstead, where I
had been that day. As I sat, I distinctly heard
three knocks, perhaps more, like the sound of
some one emptying a tobacco pipe upon the bars
of my fire grate.
“Thinking it might be a warning, I did not go
to bed for an hour, fearing I would be sent for.
At one A. M. I was awakened by a ringing of the
front door-bell and knocking. It was my father’s
butler, who told me the doctor had sent for me,
as my father was very ill. I said to my housekeeper:
“‘I must go. I feel sure that my father is
dying, because I heard the Woodd knocks, as I
sat in my chair before going to bed.’
“On my arrival my first question was: ‘Is he
still alive?’ for I believed he must have passed
away at the time of the knocking. He died at
eight-forty-five next morning.”
Mr. Woodd’s housekeeper corroborates this
statement. As to the knocking heard at Hampstead,
the daughter, Mrs. Winifred Dumbell,
testifies:
“On December 14, 1893, Thursday morning,
hearing my father, Mr. Charles Woodd, was not
well, I left Epsom, where I had been staying, for
Hampstead, and found my father in bed and
very weak, but I was in no way anxious about
him, as I did not suppose him to be seriously ill.
At eleven o’clock at night, being tired and finding
I could not assist my mother or the nurse, I lay
down in an adjoining room, leaving the door
wide open, and fell asleep.
“In a short time I was suddenly awakened by
a loud rapping as if at the door. I jumped up
and ran into the passage, thinking my mother
had called me. I listened at the door of my father’s
room, but no one was moving. I lay down again
and instantly fell asleep, when exactly the same
thing occurred. I did not actually sleep again,
and cannot say whether any sound made me get
up the third time, but I went in search of the
doctor and gathered that he was anxious about
my father, who was getting much weaker. We
were all aroused, and about eight o’clock A. M. my
father died.
“I did not connect this rapping with the
Woodd warning, as all was so sudden and unexpected,
but on mentioning it at breakfast the
next morning to my brother, the Reverend Trevor
Basil Woodd, he told me he also heard a similar
warning in his rooms at Vauxhall Bridge Road
about the same time.”
To mention only one other of the many instances
that might be cited, the Knocking Ghost
was again heard on June 3, 1895, just twenty-four
hours before the death of Mr. Thomas Basil
Woodd at Hampstead. Again, too, it was heard
by more than one person and in more than one
place, by Mr. Woodd’s daughters, Fanny and
Kate, and by his niece, Miss Ethel G. Woodd,
who was at the time visiting friends in Yorkshire,
and at first mistook the Knocking Ghost for
somebody hammering nails into the wall of the
next room. Oddly enough, this was also the way
it sounded to Fanny Woodd, in London, as appears
from the following statement signed by her:
“On June 3, 1895, at ten-thirty P. M., Fanny
Woodd, staying with Mrs. Stoney, 83 Wharton
Road, West Kensington, heard knocks, apparently
from next door, as of nails being hammered
in and pictures hung, which seemed so unlikely
at that hour of night that the next morning she
mentioned it to Mrs. Stoney, whose bedroom was
just below hers, asking if she had heard it or
could account for it.”
But Mrs. Stoney had heard nothing, and the
next-door neighbor, Mrs. Harriet Taylor, rather
tartly declared that: “There has been no putting
up of pictures or knocking of any sort
in this house for quite two years. We are
also early risers, and are always in bed and
asleep by ten P. M.” That same day Miss
Woodd rejoined her father and sister in Hampstead,
and was astonished to hear that the latter
had been awakened about half past ten the previous
night by loud knockings against the window
shutters.
A few hours more and the mystery was solved
by the startlingly sudden death of Mr. Woodd,
from an attack of apoplexy. The Knocking
Ghost of the Basil Woodds had lived up to its
reputation.
The giving of death warnings is by no means
confined to family ghosts, as may be sufficiently
indicated by relating an incident that happened
in Canada some years ago, and that has always
impressed me as one of the best ghost stories I
have ever heard. It was told me by an actor in
the strange little drama, and knowing as I do
the persons concerned, I have not the slightest
hesitation in vouching for its authenticity, incredible
though the reader may be inclined to
regard it.
In this instance the ghost was seen by a clergyman,
the Reverend John Langtry, who afterward
became a prominent dignitary of the English
Church in Canada. His home was in Toronto,
but on the occasion of the ghostly visitation he
was at the house of a Mr. and Mrs. Ruttan, who
lived with their only child, a young girl, in
a small town some fifty or sixty miles north of
Toronto. Mr. Ruttan was another Church of
England clergyman, and was a warm friend of
Doctor Langtry’s. This time, however, the
latter had journeyed to see him simply on a matter
of diocesan business, and was anxious to
complete it and get back to Toronto.
To his disappointment he found that Mr.
Ruttan had been called out of town, and would
not be home until a late hour, possibly not until
the following day. On the chance that he might
return earlier than expected, Doctor Langtry
accepted Mrs. Ruttan’s invitation to spend the
evening with her.
As they were chatting together—she being so
seated that her back was toward the door leading
from the parlor, whereas Doctor Langtry’s position
gave him a full view of the hall—she noticed
that all at once he stopped in the middle of a
sentence, leaned forward, and stared fixedly into
the hall. She instantly turned her head, and
followed the direction of his gaze, but could see
nothing.
“What is the matter, Doctor Langtry?” she
asked. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing, nothing,” he muttered, recovering
himself with an effort. “I fancied for a moment—”
He paused, then changed the conversation.
But Mrs. Ruttan—from whom I got the story—saw
that from time to time he glanced furtively
into the hall, and finally half rose from his seat,
his face white, his limbs trembling.
“Doctor Langtry!” was her startled exclamation.
“Are you ill? Whatever is the matter?”
“Oh,” he said shortly, “it is only a momentary
faintness. I shall be all right presently. The
fatigue of the journey must have unstrung me. I
will trouble you to get me a glass of water, and
then I think I will return to the hotel.”
He drank the water, and rose to go. But when
near the front door, he turned to Mrs. Ruttan,
and said:
“I don’t believe I have asked after your
daughter. I trust she is well?”
“She is quite well, thank you. I put her to
bed just before you came in.”
With his hand on the knob of the door, Doctor
Langtry again paused irresolutely.
“If it’s not too much trouble,” he asked, “I
wish you would go up-stairs and make sure she
is all right now.”
Wondering at his request and at his manner,
Mrs. Ruttan complied, and presently returned to
report that the child was sleeping peacefully.
Doctor Langtry bowed with an air of obvious
relief, bade her good night, and left the house.
But next day, after he had transacted his business,
and was about to start for Toronto, he said to
Mr. Ruttan, who had accompanied him to the
train:
“Ruttan, if your little girl should happen to
fall ill while away from home, go to her at once,
and take Mrs. Ruttan with you, even if you have
no reason to feel that the illness is serious.”
Mr. Ruttan laughed.
“Of course we would go to her. You may be
sure of that. But why—”
“Ask me no questions,” said Doctor Langtry,
“but bear my request in mind if the occasion
should arise.”
Within a very short time the child, visiting an
aunt in a near-by town, was taken ill, failed
rapidly, and died almost before her parents, who
had been hastily telegraphed for, could reach her
bedside. Doctor Langtry’s warning immediately
recurred to them, and they wrote him, beseeching
an explanation.
“The reason I was anxious about your little
girl,” he then told them, “was because the night
I was sitting with Mrs. Ruttan I saw an angel
enter the hall, pass up the stairs, and return,
carrying the child in its arms.”
But the kind of ghost most frequently seen is
that which appears not before but immediately
after, or coincidental with, a death. Its purpose
is not to give warning of impending tragedy, but
to convey the news of a tragedy already consummated.
There are thousands of instances of this
sort, so well authenticated as to compel credence.
Not long ago an interesting case was reported to
me by a gentleman living in Burlington, Vermont,
the nephew of the lady—a Mrs. Hazard of Newport,
Rhode Island—who saw the ghost.
She was ill at the time, and under the care of
a trained nurse. One afternoon, her physician
having allowed her to sit up for a couple of hours,
she was seated in a chair by the side of her bed,
when the nurse noticed her open wide her eyes
and turn her head as if following the movements
of some one. Then she heard her say, in a tone of
surprise:
“Hello! Hello! There he goes! There he
goes!”
As far as the nurse could see, nobody was in
the room with them. But, not wishing to alarm
her patient, she merely asked:
“Who is it, Mrs. Hazard?”
“Chet Keech. But he doesn’t see me. And
now he’s gone.”
Later in the day the nurse mentioned the incident
to Mrs. Hazard’s daughter, asking her if
she knew anybody by the name of Chet Keech.
“Why, certainly I do,” was the reply. “He
is my cousin, and lives in Danielson, Connecticut.”
That day Chet Keech had died at Danielson,
as a letter informed the Hazards next morning.
Consider also this statement[3] by the Reverend
C. C. McKechnie, a Scotch clergyman:
“I was about ten years of age at the time, and
had for several years been living with my grandfather,
who was an elder in the Kirk of Scotland
and in good circumstances. He was very much
attached to me and often expressed his intention
of having me educated for a minister in the Kirk.
Suddenly, however, he was seized with an illness
which in a couple of days proved mortal.
“At the time of his death, and without my
having any apprehension of his end, I happened
to be at my father’s house, about a mile off. I
was leaning in a listless sort of way against the
kitchen table, looking upward at the ceiling and
thinking of nothing in particular, when my grandfather’s
face appeared to grow out of the ceiling,
at first dim and indistinct, but becoming more
and more complete until it seemed in every respect
as full and perfect as I had ever seen it.
“It looked down upon me, as I thought, with
a wonderful expression of tenderness and affection.
Then it disappeared, not suddenly but
gradually, its features fading and becoming dim
and indistinct, until I saw nothing but the bare
ceiling. I spoke at the time of what I saw to my
mother, but she made no account of it, thinking,
probably, it was nothing more than a boyish
vagary. But in about fifteen or twenty minutes
after seeing the vision, a boy came running breathless
to my father’s with the news that my grandfather
had just died.”
Even more remarkable was the experience of
an Illinois physician, Doctor J. S. W. Entwistle,
a resident of one of the Chicago suburbs. Hurrying
one morning to catch a train Doctor Entwistle
saw approaching him an acquaintance, once well-to-do,
who had ruined himself by drink. Glancing
at him as they met, the physician noticed
that his clothing was torn and his face bruised,
and that there was a cut under one eye. He
noticed, too, that the other kept looking steadily
at him with a “woe-begone, God-forsaken expression.”
Had he not been in such a hurry, he
would have stopped and spoken to him, but as it
was he passed him with a nod.
At the station Doctor Entwistle met his
brother-in-law, and said, while the train was
drawing in:
“Oh, by the way, I just saw Charlie M., and
he was a sight. He must have been on a terrible
tear.”
“I wonder what he’s doing in town, anyway?”
commented the brother-in-law.
“I suppose he was going to see his wife.”
“Not a bit of it. She won’t have him around.”
Then the subject was dropped, and nothing
more was said about it until after they had reached
Chicago. Both men, as it happened, had business
at the Grand Pacific Hotel and went directly
there from the train. They were met by a mutual
friend, who had a copy of the Chicago Tribune in
his hand.
“Hello,” he greeted them. “Did you know
that Charlie M. is dead? Here is a notice in the
paper, stating that his body is at the morgue. He
was killed in a saloon fight. The paper hasn’t
got the name quite right, but from the description
it’s Charlie, sure enough.”
“But he can’t be dead,” said Doctor Entwistle,
aghast, “for it was only a few minutes ago that
I met him on the street in Englewood.”
Nevertheless, it turned out that Charlie M. was
dead, and that his body had been taken to the
morgue several hours before Doctor Entwistle
thought he saw him in the Chicago suburb.
Moreover, on inquiry it was learned that the
clothes worn by him when he was killed and the
marks on his face “tallied in every particular
with the description given by the doctor.”
Quite a similar experience occurred to Mr.
Harry E. Reeves when he was choirmaster at
St. Luke’s Church in San Francisco. On a Friday,
about three in the afternoon, Mr. Reeves was in
an up-stairs room at his home. He had been
working on some music. Wishing to rest for a
few minutes, he threw himself on a lounge, but
almost immediately an unaccountable impulse
led him to get up again and open the door of his
room.
Standing at the head of the stairs he saw Edwin
Russell, a member of his choir and a well-known
San Francisco real estate broker. Mr. Russell
had promised to call on him the following day to
look over the music for Sunday, and Mr. Reeves’s
first thought was that he had come a day earlier
than intended. He advanced to greet him, when,
to his amazement and horror, the figure on the
stairs turned as though to descend, and then
faded into nothingness.
“My God!” gasped Reeves, and fell forward.
A door below was hastily opened, and two
women and a man ran to his aid. The women
were his sister and niece, the man was a Mr.
Sprague. They found Mr. Reeves seated on the
stairs, his face white and covered with perspiration,
his body trembling.
“Uncle Harry!” cried the niece. “What in
the world is the matter?”
Mr. Reeves was in such a panic that he could
hardly speak, but he managed to reply:
“I have seen a ghost!”
“Whose ghost?” inquired Mr. Sprague, with
a skeptical smile.
“The ghost of Edwin Russell.”
Instantly the smile left Mr. Sprague’s face.
“That’s strange,” said he, “that’s very strange.
For, as these ladies will tell you, I came to consult
with you regarding the music for Mr. Russell’s
funeral. He had a stroke of apoplexy this morning,
and died a few hours ago.”[4]
Sometimes ghosts of this type present themselves
in such a way as to leave no doubt as to the
fact and manner of the death of the person seen.
As striking a case in point as has come to my
knowledge is afforded by the singular experience
of an old friend of mine, Edward Jackson, son
of the late General Jackson, of Bideford, England.
Born in India, Jackson was from his boyhood
of a roving and adventurous disposition. He
went in for all forms of athletics, more particularly
boxing, cricket, and polo, and before he left
India was one of the best known and most popular
men in the younger sporting set.
He was still in his early twenties when he came
to the United States, drifting West to go on a
ranch in Wyoming. Tiring of this, though not
of his fondness for adventure, he found work in a
Lake Superior mine, where his quickly demonstrated
ability to take care of himself in a rough-and-tumble
encounter won him the position of
superintendent over a gang of men whom it had
hitherto been most difficult to superintend.
As superintendent he was privileged to live by
himself in a small, two-room cabin, somewhat
neater and more comfortable than the ordinary
sleeping-shacks. It was in this cabin that he saw
the ghost.
“I had returned from the mine one evening,
thoroughly tired out,” he said, in telling me the
story, “and sat down to rest for a few minutes
before an open fire. While I was sitting there,
half dozing, I felt a cold current of air, and looked
up, thinking that somebody had thrown the door
open.
“The door was not open, but standing between
me and it was the figure of a young man whom I
instantly recognized as a boyhood chum in India.
He was dressed in polo costume—we had often
played the game together—but for a moment I
forgot all about the incongruity between his dress
and the rough, outlandish place in which I then
saw him. I jumped up, exclaiming:
“‘By Jove, Jack, I’m glad to see you. When
did you get here? And how—’
“I stopped. He had been standing with his
profile toward me. Now he turned, facing me,
and I saw that he was ghastly white, with a deep
cut over one eye. Without a word he walked
past me, gazing at me solemnly, and disappeared
in the inner room.
“I don’t think I am a coward, but I confess
that for a moment I felt faint. Recovering, and
believing that somebody must be playing me a
trick, I made a dash after him.
“There was no one there—and no way in
which anybody could have got out unknown to
me.
“That night I wrote to my father, telling him
what had happened. In his reply he informed me
that my friend had been killed the same day that
I saw him in my cabin on the shore of Lake Superior.
He had been playing polo in far-away
India, had been thrown from his horse, and had
struck on his head, sustaining a wound similar
to that I had seen in my vision.”
Of a somewhat different order, and at once
recalling to mind the adventure of Miss Morison
and Miss Lamont at the Petit Trianon, is an instance
reported by an Englishwoman whose name
must be withheld, for reasons that will become
obvious. With her husband she had recently
moved into a fine old mansion surrounded by a
splendid park, with a broad stretch of lawn between
the trees and the house. The place had
for many years been the home of a family of
ancient lineage.
One night, shortly after eleven o’clock, when
Mrs. M., as I shall call her, had gone to her bedroom,
she thought she heard a moaning sound,
and some one sobbing as though in great distress.
Mr. M. was away from home, the servants
slept in another part of the house, and she was
quite alone except for a friend who had come to
keep her company during her husband’s absence,
and to whom she had said good night a few minutes
before. But being a courageous woman, she
resolved to make an investigation and soon located
the sound as coming from outdoors. Tiptoeing
over to a window on the staircase landing,
she raised the blind and cautiously peered out.
Below, on the lawn, in the pale glow of the
moon, she saw an amazing scene. A middle-aged
man, stern of face and wearing a general’s uniform,
was standing menacingly over a young girl,
who, with hands clasped in anguish, was on her
knees before him. At the sight of his hard, unrelenting
expression, Mrs. M.’s one thought was
not of fear for herself but pity for the unfortunate
girl.
“So much did I feel for her,” she said, in narrating
the affair, “that without a moment’s
hesitation I ran down the staircase to the door
opening upon the lawn to beg her to come in and
tell me her sorrow.”
When she reached the door, the figures of the
soldier and the girl were still plainly visible on the
lawn, and in precisely the same attitude. But
at the sound of her voice they disappeared.
“They did not vanish instantly,” Mrs. M. explained,
“but more like a dissolving view—that
is, gradually. And I did not leave the door until
they had gone.”
Months afterwards, when calling with her
husband at a neighboring house, she noticed on
the wall the portrait of a distinguished-looking
man in a military uniform. At once she recognized
it.
“That,” she told her husband, in an undertone,
“is a picture of the officer I saw on the lawn.”
Aloud she asked: “Whose portrait is that?”
“Why,” replied her host, “it is a portrait of
my uncle, General Sir X. Y. He was born and
died in the house you now occupy. But why do
you ask?”
When she had told the story, her host commented:
“What you say is most singular. For it is an
unhappy fact that Sir X. Y.’s youngest daughter,
a beautiful girl, brought disgrace upon the
family, was disowned and driven from home by
her father, and died broken-hearted.”[5]
Not all ghosts, it is pleasant to know, bring
notification of impending or already consummated
tragedy. Many seem to exist solely for
the purpose of giving a warning of trouble which
may be averted by taking proper precautions,
and sometimes they are a direct means of preventing
disaster. Thus, a guest at a Back Bay hotel
in Boston was hurrying along a dimly lighted
corridor to catch an elevator she thought she
saw waiting for her, when unexpectedly the form
of a man appeared at the entrance to the elevator.
She was almost upon him, and stopped short in
order to avoid a collision. At once he disappeared,
and she then saw that although the door in the
elevator shaft was wide open, the car was at the
bottom of the shaft, into which she certainly
would have fallen had not the phantasmal figure
checked her onward rush.
Or take this instance, reported by Lady Eardley:
“One day I went to my bathroom, locked the
door, undressed, and was just about to get into
the bath, when I heard a voice say:
“‘Unlock the door!’
“I was startled and looked around, but of
course no one was there. I had stepped into the
bath when I heard the voice twice more, saying:
“‘Unlock the door!’
“On this I jumped out and did unlock the door,
and then stepped into the bath again. As I got
in I fainted away and fell down flat in the water.
Fortunately, as I fell, I was just able to catch at
a bell handle, which was attached to the wall
above the tub. My pull brought the maid, who
found me, she said, lying with my head under
water. She picked me up and carried me out.
If the door had been locked I would certainly
have been drowned.”
Still more impressive is an experience in the
life of an Englishwoman named Mrs. Jean Gwynne
Bettany. Her statement is corroborated by her
father and mother.[6]
“On one occasion,” she says, “I was walking
in a country lane. I was reading geometry as
I walked along, a subject little likely to produce
fancies or morbid phenomena of any kind, when,
in a moment, I saw a bedroom in my house known
as the ‘White Room,’ and upon the floor lay my
mother, to all appearance dead. The vision must
have remained some minutes, during which time
my real surroundings appeared to pale and die
out; but as the vision faded, actual surroundings
came back, at first dimly, and then clearly.
“I could not doubt that what I had seen was
real, so, instead of going home, I went at once to
the house of our medical man, and he immediately
set out with me, on the way putting questions
I could not answer, as my mother was to
all appearance well when I left home.
“I led the doctor straight to the ‘White Room,’
where we found my mother actually lying as in
my vision. This was true even to minute details.
She had been seized suddenly by an attack at the
heart, and would soon have breathed her last but
for the doctor’s timely advent.”
Mrs. Bettany’s father, Mr. S. G. Gwynne,
adds:
“I distinctly remember being surprised by
seeing my daughter, in company with the family
doctor, outside the door of my residence; and I
asked: ‘Who is ill?’ She replied: ‘Mamma.’
She led the way at once to the ‘White Room,’
where we found my wife lying in a swoon on the
floor. It was when I asked when she had been
taken ill that I found it must have been after
my daughter had left the house. None of the
servants in the house knew anything of the sudden
illness, which our doctor assured me would
have been fatal had he not arrived when he did.”
In this last case, it should be noted the ghost
seen was an apparition not of a dead person, but
of a living one. This is most important, from the
point of view of gaining insight into the nature
and characteristics of ghosts.
The investigators who, a matter of twenty-five
or thirty years ago, began for the first time to
inquire into the subject in a scientific way, early
made the interesting discovery that phantasms
of the living are seen quite as frequently as phantasms
of the dead. Besides which, it was found
that ghosts could be produced experimentally—that
by a mere act of willing, one person could
make another, sometimes miles distant, see a
ghost. Many successful experiments of the kind,
supported by ample corroborative evidence, are
now on record. For example:
Mr. B. F. Sinclair, at the time a resident of
Lakewood, New Jersey, had occasion to go to
New York to be absent several days. His wife
was not feeling well when he left home, and he
was greatly worried about her.
“That night,” to continue the narrative[7] in his
own words, “before I went to bed, I thought
I would try to find out, if possible, her condition.
I had undressed, and was sitting on the edge of
the bed, when I covered my face with my hands
and willed myself in Lakewood at home, to see
if I could see her. After a little, I seemed to be
standing in her room before the bed, and saw
her lying there, looking much better. I felt
satisfied she was better, and so spent the week
more comfortably regarding her condition.
“On Saturday I went home. When she saw
me, she remarked:
“‘I thought something had surely happened
to you. I saw you standing in front of the bed
the night you left, as plain as could be, and I have
been worrying about you ever since.’
“After explaining my effort to find out her
condition, everything became clear to her. She
had seen me when I was trying to see her. I
thought at the time I was going to see her and
make her see me.”
In at least one instance another experimenter,
a German savant named Wesermann, performed
the seemingly impossible feat of creating, by a
simple act of volition, a ghost not of himself but
of a person who was dead.
Herr Wesermann had been greatly troubled by
the conduct of a friend, a young officer in the
German army, and in the hope of reforming him,
“willed” one evening that at eleven o’clock that
night he should see in a dream an apparition of a
lady in whom he had once been greatly interested,
but who had been dead five years.
It chanced that at eleven o’clock, instead of
being in bed and asleep, Herr Wesermann’s friend
was chatting with a brother officer. Nevertheless,
the apparition came to him at the hour appointed,
and was seen, not only by him, but by his companion
also.
The door of his chamber seemed to open, and
the ghost of his dead sweetheart walked in,
“dressed in white, with black kerchief and bared
head.” Both officers started to their feet, and
watched with bulging eyes while the ghost bowed
gravely to them, turned, and without a word disappeared.
They followed instantly, rushing into the corridor,
but saw only the sentry, who solemnly
assured them that nobody but themselves had
entered or left the room.[8]
Facts like these naturally raised in the minds
of many of the investigators a belief that quite
possibly ghosts could be explained without resorting
to the alternative of dogmatically denying
their reality or regarding them as supernatural
beings. This belief was strengthened by other
facts brought to light in the course of experiments
to determine the actuality of telepathy, or thought
transference as it used to be called.
It was discovered that, under certain favoring
conditions, thoughts could indeed be transmitted
from mind to mind without passing through the
ordinary known channels of communication; and
furthermore that thoughts thus transmitted were
often apprehended, not as mere ideas, but in the
form of auditory or visual hallucinations.
Thus, if it were a question of “telepathing”
the idea of a certain playing card, say the three
of diamonds, the recipient, instead of simply
getting the thought, “three of diamonds,” might
hear an hallucinatory voice saying to him, “three
of diamonds,” or might see three diamond-shaped
objects floating before his eyes, the “ghosts” of
three diamonds, so to speak.
Of even greater significance was the discovery
that it frequently happened also that instead of
getting the message which the experimenter had
consciously attempted to send, the recipient
would get other ideas merely latent in the experimenter’s
mind—ideas connected with his environment,
something he had been doing, etc. Or the
recipient might get the right message several
hours after the experiment had been made—receiving
it, for example, in a dream.
The obvious conclusion was that telepathy
must be a function not of a person’s ordinary
consciousness, but of what psychologists call the
subconsciousness, thus accounting for the difficulty
of invariably obtaining satisfactory results
in telepathic experiments.
In the light of these discoveries, then, the belief
has been gaining ground that ghosts—real
ghosts—are at most nothing but mental images
impressed upon one mind by another through the
subtle power of telepathy, and apprehended in
the form of hallucinations of the various senses,
just as any ordinary telepathic message may be
apprehended.
A person is stricken with a mortal illness, is
fatally injured, or is passing through some other
great crisis likely to terminate in death. Consciously
or subconsciously, he thinks of loved ones
far away, and is seized with a longing to get into
touch with them once more, if only to notify
them of the catastrophe threatening him.
Across the intervening space, by what mechanism
we as yet do not know, his thought wings its
way to them, finds lodgment in their subconsciousness,
and thence, when favoring conditions arise—as
in some moment of mental relaxation—is
projected into their consciousness before, at the
time of, or after the sender’s death, and is seen,
or heard, it may be, as a Phantom Drummer, a
Knocking Ghost, or the phantasmal image of the
sender himself.
If, however, conditions are such as to prevent
the message from emerging from the recipient’s
subconsciousness into his field of conscious vision,
it may, on occasion, as telepathic experiments
have proved, be retransmitted to a third party,
and by him be apprehended; as, for example, the
Drummer of Cortachy, in the two instances cited
above, was heard not by members of the Ogilvy
family, but by comparative strangers.
More than this, evidence has been accumulating
to make it certain that in most cases not even
telepathy is involved in the creation of ghosts,
but that they are merely products of the seer’s
own subconsciousness. This was first clearly indicated
by the results of an interesting “census
of hallucinations,” originated some years ago at
the International Congress of Psychology, and
simultaneously carried on—principally by members
of the Society for Psychical Research—in
the United States, England, France, Germany,
and other countries. To thousands of persons
the question was put:
“Have you ever, when believing yourself to
be completely awake, had a vivid impression of
seeing or being touched by a living being or inanimate
object, or of hearing a voice, which impression,
so far as you could discover, was not
due to any external physical cause?”
Of the 27,339 replies received to this question[9]
no fewer than 3,266 were in the affirmative. Many
of those replying narrated true “ghost stories”
similar to the ones given above; many testified
to apparitions not of dead persons but of living
friends; and in addition to this, the replies of
many others brought out the interesting fact
that there often were “ghosts” of inanimate
objects—of hats and chairs and tables as well
as of human beings.
One respondent, Mrs. Savile Lumley, testified
that, in broad daylight and while taking a calisthenic
lesson, she and another young woman
“distinctly saw a chair over which we felt we
must fall, and called out to each other to avoid it.
But no chair was there.”
The Reverend G. Lyon Turner, professor of
philosophy at the Lancashire Independent College,
Manchester, England, woke up one morning to
find the ceiling of his room adorned with a huge
chandelier of some ten arms, and the jets shining
brightly through the ground-glass globes at the
end of each arm. He knew that when he went to
bed no chandelier had been there, and naturally
feared that something was the matter with his
eyesight.
“I moved my head,” he said, “to see whether
the phantom moved, too. But no, it remained
fixed; and the objects behind and beyond it
became more or less completely visible as I
moved, exactly as would have been the case had
it been a real chandelier. So I woke my wife,
but she saw nothing.”
Even more bizarre was the phantasm that
appeared to another Englishman. Here is his
own account of it:
“I had just gone to bed, and was—at least,
this was my impression at the time—quite
awake. The door of my room was ajar, and there
was a light in the passage which half-illumined
my room. Suddenly I became aware of a series
of slight taps on the passage outside. These taps
were not sufficiently loud for a human footstep;
on the other hand, the volume of their sound was
greater than that made by a walking-stick. I
fully remember sitting up in bed and beholding
two top-boots trot rapidly across the room and
vanish into the opposite wall. The illusion was
astonishingly vivid, and I can recall the details
to this day. I have never had a waking dream
since, and have never experienced ambulant top-boots
except on this occasion.”
Whence the origin of these odd apparitions?
The reply of modern science is that they were
nothing more than the weird externalization of
ideas latent in the minds of those perceiving them.
Indeed, in the case of Mr. Turner there is absolute
proof that this was the case, for that gentleman
afterwards identified the phantom chandelier
with one familiar to him as hanging from the
ceiling of the college chapel in which he daily said
prayers. Furthermore, there is proof—of which
an abundance will be given in subsequent chapters—that
often the ideas thus externalized relate
to things once seen or heard but long since forgotten;
it may be to things seen or heard in a
wholly unconscious, or, rather, subconscious,
way. And as with ideas of things, so with ideas
of persons.
In this connection, as illuminating vividly the
problem of ghosts, may well be given an experience
narrated to me by Doctor Morton Prince,
the eminent Boston psychopathologist, or medical
psychologist.
A patient of his came to him one morning in a
condition of extreme nervousness, declaring that
the previous night she had seen a ghost. “I woke
up,” said she, “and saw at the foot of my bed
a young woman, who gradually faded away.”
She maintained that at no time had she seen anybody
resembling the apparition, but in the minute
description she gave, Doctor Prince at once recognized
a relative of his, with whom he remembered
he had been talking in the hall when the
patient last visited him. Saying nothing to her he
quietly assembled a few photographs, and, before
she departed, asked her to look them over.
“Why,” she said, picking one up, “here is my
ghost!”
“Yes,” was Doctor Prince’s reply, “and you
saw your ghost in this house when you were here
only a few days ago. I was talking to her as you
came in.”
“But,” objected the patient, “I certainly did
not see her, for I noticed somebody was with you,
and I purposely turned away as I passed, lest I
should seem rude.”
“All the same,” said Doctor Prince, “you saw
her without being conscious of it—saw her, as it
were, out of the corner of your eye. One fleeting
glance would be enough to give you the memory
image that you mistook for a ghost.”
Undoubtedly Doctor Prince was right, and
undoubtedly this dual law of subconscious perception
and memory is enough to account for
some of the most impressive ghosts cited in this
chapter. Even the strange haunting of the Petit
Trianon, as experienced by Miss Morison and Miss
Lamont, may be said to find its explanation here.
It is true that both Miss Morison and Miss
Lamont profess to have known little about the
history of the Petit Trianon previous to their
visit to Versailles. But their detailed report of
the haunting contains statements showing that,
subconsciously at any rate, they must have possessed
considerable knowledge of the place. Miss
Morison admits that she had, as a girl, great enthusiasm
for Marie Antoinette, and had read not
a little about her, including an article descriptive
of her summer home; while Miss Lamont is a
teacher of French history, and accordingly must
have had rather more knowledge than the average
person regarding the life story of Queen Marie.
Besides which, and most significant, there was
published, just before they went to Versailles,
an illustrated magazine article picturing a historical
fête in the gardens of the Petit Trianon,
with some account of its history.
It is worth noting, too, that the two ladies were
not haunted in exactly the same way, each of
them seeing certain people and scenes that were
not visible to the other. On the theory of a supernatural
manifestation this would be hard to
explain, but the difficulty vanishes if we recognize
that the subconscious knowledge of the Trianon
possessed by each must necessarily have differed.
The problem remains to account for the fact,
as distinct from the facts, of the haunting. Why
should Miss Morison and Miss Lamont, among
all the thousands of visitors to the Petit Trianon,
alone have had such an experience? To this,
assuredly, there is no answer if one is going to
stick to the old-fashioned notion of ghosts and
attribute to them objective reality. But the
answer is very simple on the modern scientific
hypothesis.
Miss Morison and Miss Lamont, the psychologist
would say, were haunted for the reason that,
being of exceptionally romantic, impressionable
temperaments, the ideas associated in their minds
with the Petit Trianon, appealed to them with
such “suggestive” force as to plunge them for
the time being into a state of “psychical dissociation,”
during which their subconsciousness obtained
complete control over the upper consciousness,
and flooded them with its latent memories
of all that they had ever read or heard about the
place and its historic residents. In other words,
they were as two persons “dreaming awake.”
The same explanation would obviously apply
to the ghostly vision seen on the lawn by Mrs. M.
Nor do we need to go beyond the hypothesis of
subconscious perception to account for the experiences
of Lady Eardley and the guest at the
Boston hotel. In the latter case it is necessary to
assume nothing more than that the lady who saw
the apparition at the elevator entrance perceived
her danger without being aware of it, and subconsciously
developed the hallucination that enabled
her to avoid it.
As to the Eardley case, it is a well-established
medical fact that some diseases, in their initial
stages, cause organic changes too slight to be
noticed by the sufferer’s upper consciousness, but
plainly perceptible to his subconsciousness which,
through symbolical dreams or hallucinations,
sometimes seeks to convey to the upper consciousness
a warning that all is not well.
I myself have had such an experience. A number
of years ago, beginning in the summer, I was
troubled by a recurrent nightmare in which, although
the details were not always the same,
the central incident never varied. Always the
nightmare ended with a phantom cat clawing
viciously at my throat. I did not then know as
much about dreams as I do now, so, beyond
thinking vaguely that “it must mean something,”
I paid no attention to this repeated nightmare.
At the end of six months I had an attack of
grippe, necessitating treatment by a throat specialist,
who speedily discovered in my throat a growth
of which I consciously had had no knowledge.
With its removal the recurrent dream of the cat
instantly ceased to trouble me.
Lady Eardley’s case was, doubtless, quite similar,
the only difference being that the subconscious
warning was conveyed to her upper consciousness,
not in dream, but as an auditory hallucination.
And, in the somewhat parallel case of the ghost
seen by Doctor Langtry, it seems a safe assumption
that if the frightened clergyman had advised
the child’s father to place her under medical care
at once, the subsequent fatality might have been
averted.
In the Langtry case, however, there must have
been operative also a telepathic factor. And since
the telepathic explanation of ghosts is still the
subject of much controversy, it will be well, before
proceeding farther, to state exactly what is
known to-day regarding telepathy.
