Sobs.
Moans.
Thumps.
Dragging of heavy weights.
One dreadful white face.
One little woman.
Lights.
One white skirt hanging from the ceiling.
One footfall which played two notes on the piano (!).
One figure in brown.
One man with freckles.
Two human faces.
One shadow.
One ‘part of the dress of a super-material being’ (Barrister).
One form (Exorcist).
One small column of misty vapour.
Now all this catalogue of prodigies which drove Mrs. G. into the cold, bleak world, was caused, ‘by thought transference from Miss Morris,’ who had been absent for a year, and whose own hallucinations were caused by noises which may have been produced by rats, or what not.
This ingenious theory is too much for Mr. Myers’s powers of belief: ‘The very first effect of Miss Morris’s ponderings was a heavy thump, followed by a deep sob and moan, and a cry of, “Oh, do forgive me,” all disturbing poor Mrs. G. who had the ill luck to find herself in a bedroom about which Miss Morris was possibly thinking… Surely the peace of us all rests on a very uncertain tenure.’ Meanwhile Mr. Myers prefers to regard the whole trouble as more probably caused by the ‘dreams of the dead’ woman who hanged herself with a skipping rope, than by the reflections of Miss Morris. In any case the society seem to have occupied the house, and, with their usual bad luck, were influenced neither by the ponderings of Miss Morris, nor by the frédaines of the lady of the skipping rope. [107 - This is rather overstated; there were knocks, and raps, and footsteps (Proc. S. P. R., Nov., 1889, p. 310).] It may be worth noticing that the raps, knocks, lights, and so forth of haunted houses, the ‘spontaneous’ disturbances, have been punctually produced at savage, classical, and modern séances. If these, from the days of the witch of Endor to our own, and from the polar regions to Australia, have all been impostures, at least they all imitate the ‘spontaneous’ phenomena reported to occur in haunted houses. The lights are essential in the séances described by Porphyry, Eusebius, Iamblichus: they were also familiar to the covenanting saints. The raps are known to Australian black fellows. The phantasms of animals, as at the Wesleys’ house, may be beasts who play a part in the dead man’s dream, or they may be incidental hallucinations, begotten of rats, and handed on by Miss Morris or any one else.
There remains a ghost who illustrates the story, spread all over Europe, of the farmer who was driven from his house by a bogle. As his carts went along the road, the bogle was heard exclaiming, ‘We’re flitting today,’ and it faithfully stayed with the family. This tale, current in Italy as well as in Northern England, might be regarded as a mere piece of folklore, if the incident had not reproduced itself in West Brompton. In 1870 the T.’s took a house here: now mark the artfulness of the ghost, it did nothing for eighteen months. In autumn, 1871, Miss T. saw a figure come out of the dining-room, and the figure was often seen, later, by five independent witnesses. It was tall, dressed in grey, and was chiefly fond of haunting Miss T.’s own room. It did not walk, it glided, making no noise. Mr. T. met it in the hall, once, when he came in at night, and from the street he saw it standing in the drawing-room window. It used to sigh and make a noise as of steps, when it was not visible, it knocked and moved furniture about, and dropped weights, but these sounds were sometimes audible only to one, or a few of the observers. In 1877 the T.’s left for another house, to which Miss T. did not repair till 1879. Then the noises came back as badly as ever, – the bogle had flitted, – and, on Christmas Day, 1879, Miss T. saw her old friend the figure. Several members of the family never saw it at all. One lady, in another case, Miss Nettie Vatas-Simpson, tried to flap a ghost away with a towel, [108 - Proc. S. P. R., April, 1885, p. 144.] but he was not thus to be exorcised. He presently went out through a locked door.
Such are the ordinary or typical phenomena of haunted houses. It is plainly of no use to take a haunted house for a month and then say it is not haunted because you see no ghosts. Even where they have been seen there are breaks of years without any ‘manifestations’. Besides, the evidence shows that it is not every one who can see a ghost when he is there: Miss Morton’s father could not see the lady in black, when she was visible to Miss Morton.
It is difficult to write with perfect seriousness about haunted houses. The writer will frankly confess that, when living in haunted houses (as he has done at various times when suffering from illness and overwork), he takes a very solemn view of the matter about bed-time. If ‘expectant attention’ on a mind strained by the schools, and a body enfeebled by bronchitis, could have made a man, who was the only occupant of the haunted wing of an old Scotch castle, see a ghost, the writer would have seen whatever there was to see. To be sure he could not rationally have regarded a spectre beheld in these conditions, as a well-authenticated ghost. [109 - To be frank, in a haunted house the writer did once see an appearance, which was certainly either the ghost or one of the maids; ‘the Deil or else an outler quey,’ as Burns says.] As far as his experience of first-hand tales is concerned, the persons known to him who say they have seen ghosts in haunted houses, were neither unhealthy, nor, except in one solitary case, imaginative, nor were they expecting a ghost. The apparition was ‘a little pleasant surprise’. The usual seer is not an invalid, nor a literary person who can always be dismissed as ‘imaginative,’ though he is generally nothing of the kind. But it cannot be denied that ladies either see more ghosts than men or are less reluctant to impart information. The visionary lady who keeps up a regular telepathic correspondence with several friends is likely to see a ghost, and should certainly be entered at ‘fixed local ghosts,’ but there are slight objections to such evidence, as not free from suspicion of fancifulness.
Turning from the seers to the seen, it is difficult or impossible even to suggest an hypothesis which will seem to combine the facts. The most plausible fancy is that which likens the apparitions to figures in a feverish dream. Could we imagine a more or less bad man or woman dead, and fitfully living over again, ‘in that sleep of death,’ old events among old scenes, could we go further and believe that these dreams were capable of being made objective and visible to the living, then we might find a kind of theory of the process. But even if it were possible to demonstrate the existence of such a process, we are as far as ever from accounting for the force which causes noises, or hallucinations of noises, a force of considerable vigour, according to observers. Still less could we explain the rare cases in which a ghost produces a material effect on the inanimate or animate world, as by drawing curtains, or pulling people’s hair and clothes, – all phenomena as well vouched for as the others. A picture projected by one mind on another, cannot conceivably produce these effects. They are such as ghosts have always produced, or been said to produce. Since the days of ancient Egypt, ghosts have learned, and have forgotten nothing. Unless we adopt the scientific and popular system of merely saying ‘Fudge!’ we find no end to the conundrums of the ghostly world. Ghosts seem to know as little about themselves as we do, so that, if we are to discover anything, we must make haste, before we become ghosts ourselves.
Writers on Psychology sometimes make a push at a theory of haunted houses. Mr. James Sully, for example, has done so in his book styled Illusions. [110 - London, 1881, pp. 184-185.] Mr. Sully appears well pleased with his hypothesis, and this, granting the accuracy of a tale for which he is indebted to a gentleman who need not be cited here, argues an easily contented disposition. Here is the statement: —
‘A lady was staying at a country house. During the night and immediately on waking up she had (sic) an apparition of a strange-looking man in mediæval costume, a figure by no means agreeable, and which seemed altogether unfamiliar to her. The next morning, on rising, she recognised the original of her hallucinatory image in a portrait hanging on the wall of her bedroom, which must have impressed itself on her brain before the occurrence of the apparition, though she had not attended to it. Oddly enough, she now learned for the first time that the house at which she was staying had the reputation of being haunted, and by the very same somewhat repulsive-looking mediæval personage that had troubled her inter-somnolent moments. The case seems to me to be typical with respect to the genesis of ghosts, and of the reputation of haunted houses.’
This anecdote affords much joy to the superstitious souls who deal in Psychical Research, or Ghost Hunting. Mr. Sully’s manner of narrating it clearly proves the difference between Science and Superstition. For a Ghost Hunter or Psychical Researcher would not venture to publish a modern ghost story (except for mere amusement), if he had it not at first hand, or at second hand with corroboration at first hand. Science, however, can adduce a case without indicating the evidence on which it rests, as whether Mr. Sully’s informant had the tale from the lady, or at third, fourth, fifth, or a hundredth hand. So much for the matter of evidence. Next, Mr. Sully does not tell us whether the lady ‘had an apparition,’ when she supposed herself to be awake, or asleep, or ‘betwixt and between’. From the phrase ‘inter-somnolent,’ he appears to prefer the intermediate condition. But he does not pretend to have interrogated the lady, the ‘percipient’. Again, the figure wore a ‘mediæval costume,’ the portrait represented a ‘mediæval personage’. Does Mr. Sully believe that the portrait was an original portrait of a real person? and how many portraits of mediæval people does he suppose to exist in English country houses? Taking the Middle Ages as lasting till the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII., say till Holbein, we can assure Mr. Sully that they have left us very few portraits indeed. But perhaps it was a modern picture, a fanciful study of a man in mediæval costume. In that event, Mr. Sully’s case is greatly strengthened, but he does not tell us whether the work of art was, or was not, contemporary with the Middle Ages. Neither does he tell us whether the lady was in the habit of seeing hallucinations.
The weakest point in the whole anecdote and theory is in the statement, ‘oddly enough, she now learned for the first time that the house at which she was staying had the reputation of being haunted’ by the mediæval personage. It certainly would be very odd if one picture in a house troubled ‘the inter-somnolent moments’ of a succession of people, who, perhaps, had never seen, or, like the lady, never attended to it. Such ‘troubles’ are very rare: very few persons have seen a dream which, in Mr. Sully’s words, ‘left behind, for an appreciable interval after waking, a vivid after-impression, and in some cases, even the semblance of a sense perception’. Mathematicians may calculate the chances against a single unnoticed portrait producing this very rare effect, in a series of cases, so as to give rise to a belief in haunting, by mere casual coincidence. In the records of the Psychical Society, one observer speaks of seeing a face and figure at night, which he recognises next morning in a miniature on his chimney-piece. But, in this case, there was no story of haunting, there had been no series of similar impressions on successive occupants of the room, that is the circumstance which Mr. Sully finds ‘odd enough,’ a sentiment in which we may all agree with him. This is exactly the oddity which his explanation does not explain.
While psychological science, in this example, seems to treat matters of evidence rather laxly, psychical conjecture, on the other hand, leaves much unexplained. Thus Mr. Myers puts forward a theory which is, in origin, due to St. Augustine. The saint had observed that any one of us may be seen in a dream by another person, while our intelligence is absolutely unconscious of any communication. Apply this to ghosts in haunted houses. We may be affected by a hallucination of the presence of a dead man or woman, but he, or she (granting their continued existence after death), may know nothing of the matter. In the same way, there are stories of people who have consciously tried to make others, at a distance, think of them. The subjects of these experiments have, it is said, had a hallucination of the presence of the experimenter. But he is unaware of his success, and has no control over the actions of what old writers, and some new theosophists, call his ‘astral body’. Suppose, then, that something conscious endures after death. Suppose that some one thinks he sees the dead. It does not follow that the surviving consciousness (ex hypothesi) of the dead person who seems to be seen, is aware that he is ‘manifesting’ himself. As Mr. Myers puts it, ‘ghosts must therefore, as a rule, represent – not conscious or central currents of intelligence – but mere automatic projections from consciousnesses which have their centres elsewhere,’ αταρ φρενες ουκ ενι παμπαν: as Homer makes Achilles say, ‘there is no heart in them.’ [111 - S. P. R., xv. 64.] All this is not inconceivable. But all this does not explain the facts, namely, the noises, often very loud, and the movements of objects, and the lights which are the common or infrequent accompaniments of apparitions in haunted houses. Now we have (always on much the same level of evidence) accounts of similar noises, and movements of untouched objects, occurring where living persons of peculiar constitution are present, or in haunted houses. These things we discuss in an essay on ‘The Logic of Table-turning’. By parity of reasoning, or at least by an obvious analogy, we are led to infer that more than ‘an automatic projection from the consciousness’ of a dead man is present where he is not only seen, but heard, making noises, and perhaps moving objects. If this be admitted then psychical conjecture is pushed back on something very like the old theory of haunted houses, namely, that a ghost, or spiritual entity, is present and active there.
Long ago, in a little tale called ‘Castle Perilous’ (published in a volume named The Wrong Paradise), the author made an affable sprite explain all these phenomena. ‘We suffer, we ghosts,’ he said in effect, ‘from a malady akin to aphasia in the living. We know what we want to say, and how we wish to appear, but, just as a patient in aphasia uses the wrong word, we use the wrong manifestation.’ This he illustrated by a series of apparitions on his own part, which, he declared, were involuntary and unconscious: when they were described to him by the percipient, he admitted that they were vulgar and distressing, though, as far as he was concerned, merely automatic.
These remarks of the ghost, were, at least, explicit and intelligible. The theory which he stated with an honourable candour, and in language perfectly lucid, appears to have been adopted by Mr. Frederick Myers, but he puts it in a different style. ‘I argue that the phantasmogenetic agency at work – whatever that may be – may be able to produce effects of light more easily than definite figures… A similar argument will hold good in the case of the vague hallucinatory noises which frequently accompany definite veridical phantasms, and frequently also occur apart from any definite phantasm in houses reputed haunted.’ [112 - Proceedings S. P. R., xvi. 332.] Now where Mr. Myers says ‘phantasmogenetic agency,’ we say ‘ghost’. J’appelle un chat, un chat, et Rollet un fripon. We urge that the ghost cannot, as it were, express himself as plainly as he would like to do, that he suffers from aphasia. Now he shows as a black dog, now as a green lady, now as an old man, and often he can only rap and knock, or display a light, or tug the bed-clothes. Thus the Rev. F. G. Lee tells us that a ghost first sat on his breast invisibly, then glided about his room like a man in grey, and, finally, took to thumping on the walls, the bed and in the chimney. Dr. Lee kindly recited certain psalms, and was greeted with applause, ‘a very tornado of knocks.. was the distinct and intelligible response’. [113 - Sights and Shadows, p. 60.] Now, on our theory, the ghost, if he could, would have said, ‘Thank you very much,’ or the like, but he could not, so his sentiments translated themselves into thumps. On another occasion, he might have merely shown a light, or he might have sat on Dr. Lee’s chest, ‘pressed unduly on my chest,’ says the learned divine, – or pulled his blankets off, as is not unusual. Such are the peculiarities of spectral aphasia, or rather asemia. The ghost can make signs, but not the right signs.
Very fortunately for science, we have similar examples of imperfect expression in the living. Thus Dr. Gibotteau, formerly interne at a hospital in Paris, published, in Annales des Sciences, Psychiques (Oct. and Dec, 1892), his experiments on a hospital nurse, and her experiments on him. She used to try to send him hallucinations. Once at 8 p.m. in summer as he stood on a balcony, he saw a curious reflet blanc, ‘a shining shadow’ like that in The Strange Story. It resembled the reflection of the sun from a window, ‘but there was neither sun, nor moon, nor lighted lamps’. This white shadow was the partial failure of Berthe, the nurse, ‘to show herself to me on the balcony’. In precisely the same way, lights in haunted houses are partial failures of ghosts to appear in form As for the knocks, Dr. Binns, in his Anatomy of Sleep, mentions a gentleman who could push a door at a distance, – if he could push, he could knock. Perhaps a rather larger collection of such instances is desirable, still, these cases illustrate our theory. That theory certainly does drive the cold calm psychical researcher back upon the primitive explanation: ‘A ghaist’s a ghaist for a’ that!’ We must come to this, we must relapse into savage and superstitious psychology, if once we admit a ‘phantasmogenetic agency.’ But science is in quest of Truth, regardless of consequences.
COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE
Cock Lane Ghost discredited. Popular Theory of Imposture. Dr. Johnson. Story of the Ghost. The Deceased Wife’s Sister. Beginning of the Phenomena. Death of Fanny. Recurrence of Phenomena. Scratchings. Parallel Cases. Ignorance and Malevolence of the Ghost. Possible Literary Sources. Investigation. Imitative Scratchings: a Failure. Trial of the Parsonses. Professor Barrett’s Irish parallel. Cause undetected. The Theories of Common-sense. The St. Maur Affair. The Amiens Case. The Sportive Highland Fox. The Brightling Case.
If one phantom is more discredited than another, it is the Cock Lane ghost.
The ghost has been a proverb for impudent trickery, and stern exposure, yet its history remains a puzzle, and is a good, if vulgar type, of all similar marvels. The very people who ‘exposed’ the ghost, were well aware that their explanation was worthless, and frankly admitted the fact. Yet they, no more than we, were prepared to believe that the phenomena were produced by the spiritual part of Miss Fanny L. – known after her decease, as ‘Scratching Fanny’. We still wander in Cock Lane, with a sense of amused antiquarian curiosity, and the same feeling accompanies us in all our explorations of this branch of mythology. It may be easy for some people of common-sense to believe that all London was turned upside down, that Walpole, the Duke of York, Lady Mary Coke, and two other ladies were drawn to Cock Lane (five in a hackney coach), that Dr. Johnson gave up his leisure and incurred ridicule, merely because a naughty child was scratching on a little wooden board.
The matter cannot have been so simple as that, but from the true solution of the problem we are as remote as ever. We can, indeed, study even the Cock Lane Ghost in the light of the Comparative, or Anthropological Method. We can ascertain that the occurrences which puzzled London in 1762, were puzzling heathen philosophers and Fathers of the Church 1400 years earlier. We can trace a chain of ‘Scratching Fannies’ through the ages, and among races in every grade of civilisation. And then the veil drops, or we run our heads against a blank wall in a dark alley. Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, Eskimo, Red Men, Dyaks, Fellows of the Royal Society, Inquisitors, Saints, have perlustrated Cock Lane, and have come away nothing the wiser. Some, of course, have thought they had the secret, have recognised the work of God, ‘dæmons,’ ‘spirits,’ ‘ghosts,’ ‘devils,’ ‘fairies’ and of ordinary impostors: others have made a push at a theory of disengaged nervous force, or animal magnetism. We prefer to leave theory alone, not even accepting with enthusiasm, the hypothesis of Dr. Johnson. ‘He expressed great indignation at the imposture of the Cock Lane ghost, and related, with much satisfaction, how he had assisted in detecting the cheat, and had published an account of it in the newspapers. Upon this subject I incautiously offended him, by pressing him with too many questions,’ says Boswell, – questions which the good doctor was obviously unable to answer.
It is in January, 1762, that the London newspapers begin to be full of a popular mystery, the Cock Lane ghost. Reports, articles, letters, appeared, and the ghost made what is now called a ‘sensation’. Perhaps, the most clear, if the most prejudiced account, is that given in a pamphlet entitled The Mystery Revealed, published by Bristow, in St. Paul’s Churchyard (1762). Comparing this treatise (which Goldsmith is said to have written for three guineas) with the newspapers, The Gentleman’s Magazine and the Annual Register, we get a more or less distinct view of the subject. But the various newspapers repeat each other’s versions, with slight alterations; The Gentleman’s Magazine, and Annual Register, follow suit, the narratives are ‘synoptic,’ while Goldsmith’s tract, if it be Goldsmith’s, is obviously written in defence of the unlucky Mr. K., falsely accused of murder by the ghost.
Mr. K.’s version is the version given by Goldsmith, and thus leads up to the ‘phenomena’ through a romance of middle-class life. In 1756, this Mr. K., a person of some means, married Miss E. L. of L. in Norfolk. In eleven months the young wife died, in childbed, and her sister, Miss Fanny, came to keep house for Mr. K. The usual passionate desire to marry his deceased wife’s sister assailed Mr. K., and Fanny shared his flame. According to Goldsmith, the canon law would have permitted the nuptials, if the wife had not born a child which lived, though only for a few minutes. However this may be, Mr. K. honourably fled from Fanny, who, unhappily, pursued him with letters, and followed him to town. Here they took lodgings together, but when Mr. K. left the rooms, being unable to recover some money which he had lent his landlord, the pair looked out for new apartments. These they found in Cock Lane, in the house of Mr. Parsons, clerk of St. Sepulchre’s.
It chanced (here we turn to the Annual Register for 1762) that Mr. K. left Fanny alone in Cock Lane while he went to a wedding in the country. She asked little Elizabeth Parsons, her landlord’s daughter, to share her bed, and both of them were disturbed by strange scratchings and rappings. These were attributed by Mrs. Parsons to the industry of a neighbouring cobbler, but when they occurred on a Sunday, this theory was abandoned. Poor Fanny, according to the newspapers, thought the noises were a warning of her own death. Others, after the event, imagined that they were caused by the jealous or admonishing spirit of her dead sister. Fanny and Mr. K. (having sued Mr. Parsons for money lent) left his rooms in dudgeon, and went to Bartlet Court, Clerkenwell. Here Fanny died on February 2, 1760, of a disease which her physician and apothecary certified to be small-pox, and her coffin was laid in the vault of St. John’s Church. Now the noises in Cock Lane had ceased for a year and a half after Fanny left the house, but they returned in force in 1761-62. Mr. Parsons in vain took down the wainscotting, to see whether some mischievous neighbour produced the sounds. [114 - British Chronicle, January 18, 1762.] The raps and scratches seemed to come on the bed of little Elizabeth Parsons, just as in the case of the Tedworth drummer, investigated by Glanvill, a hundred years earlier; and in the case at Orleans, 230 years earlier. The Orleans case is published, with full legal documents, from MS. 40, 7170, 4, Bibliothèque du Roi, in Recueil de Dissertations Anciennes et Nouvelles sur les Apparitions, ii. 90 (à Avignon, 1751). ‘Scratching’ was usually the first manifestation in this affair, and the scratches were heard in the bedroom occupied by certain children. The Cock Lane child ‘was always affected with tremblings and shiverings at the coming and going of the ghost’. It was stated that the child had seen a shrouded figure without hands; two other witnesses (one of them a publican) had seen a luminous apparition, with hands. This brilliant being lit up the figures on the dial of a clock. ‘The noises followed the child to other houses,’ and multitudes of people, clergy, nobles, and princes, also followed the child. A certain Mr. Brown was an early investigator, and published his report. Like Adrien de Montalembert, in 1526, like the Franciscans about 1530, he asked the ghost to reply, affirmatively or negatively, to questions, by one knock for ‘yes,’ two for ‘no’. This method was suggested, it seems, by a certain Mary Frazer, in attendance on the child. Thus it was elicited that Fanny had been poisoned by Mr. K. with ‘red arsenic,’ in a draught of purl to which she was partial. She added that she wished to see Mr. K. hanged.
She would answer other questions, now right, and now wrong. She called her father John, while his real name was Thomas. In fact she was what Porphyry, the Neoplatonist, would have called a ‘deceitful demon’. Her chief effects were raps, scratchings, and a sound as of whirring wings, which filled the room. This phenomenon occurs in a ‘haunted house’ mentioned in the Journal of the Psychical Society. It is infinitely more curious to recall, that, when Mr. Im Thurn, in British Guiana, submitted to the doctoring of a peayman (see p. 39), he heard a sound, ‘at first low and indistinct, and then gathering in volume as if some big winged thing came from far toward the house, passed through the roof, and then settled heavily on the floor, and again, after an interval, as if the same winged thing rose and passed away as it had come’. Mr. Im Thurn thinks the impression was caused by the waving of boughs. These Cock Lane occurrences were attributed to ventriloquism, but, after a surgeon had held his hand on the child’s stomach and chest while the noises were being produced, this probable explanation was abandoned. ‘The girl was said to be constantly attended by the usual noises, though bound and muffled hand and foot, and that without any motion of her lips, and when she appeared to be asleep.’ [115 - Annual Register.] This binding is practised by Eskimo Angakut, or sorcerers, as of old, by mediums (δοχεις) in ancient Greece and Egypt, so we gather from Iamblichus, and some lines quoted from Porphyry by Eusebius. [116 - Praep. Evang., v. ix. 4.] A kind of ‘cabinet,’ as modern spiritualists call a curtain, seems to have been used. In fact the phenomena, luminous apparition, ‘tumultuous sounds,’ and all, were familiar to the ancients. Nobody seems to have noted this, but one unusually sensible correspondent of a newspaper quoted cases of knockings from Baxter’s Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits, and thought that Baxter’s popular book might have suggested the imposture. Though the educated classes had buried superstition, it lived, of course, among the people, who probably thumbed Baxter and Glanvill.
Thus things went on, crowds gathering to amuse themselves with the ghost. On February 1, Mr. Aldrich, a clergyman of Clerkenwell, assembled in his house a number of gentlemen and ladies, having persuaded Parsons to let his child be carried thither and tested. Dr. Johnson was there, and Dr. Macaulay suggested the admission of a Mrs. Oakes. Dr. Johnson supplied the newspapers with an account of what happened. The child was put to bed by several ladies, about ten o’clock, and the company sat ‘for rather more than an hour,’ during which nothing occurred. The men then went down-stairs and talked to Parsons, when they were interrupted by some of the ladies, who said that scratching and knocking had set in. The company returned, and made the child hold her hands outside the bedclothes. No phenomena followed. Now the sprite had promised to rap on its own coffin in the vault of St. John’s, so thither they adjourned (without the medium), but there was never a scratch!
‘It is therefore the opinion of the whole assembly, that the child has some art of making or counterfeiting particular noises, and that there is no agency of any higher cause.’
In precisely the same way the judges in the Franciscan case of 1533, visited the bed of the child where the spirit had been used to scratch and rap, heard nothing, and decided that the affair was a hoax. The nature of the fraud was not discovered, but the Franciscans were severely punished. At Lyons, the bishop and some other clerics could get no response from the rapping spirit which was so familiar with the king’s chaplain, Adrien de Montalembert (1526-7). Thus ‘the ghost in some measure remains undetected,’ says Goldsmith, and, indeed, Walpole visited Cock Lane, but could not get in, apparently after the detection. But, writing on February 2, he may speak of an earlier date.
Meanwhile matters were very uncomfortable for Mr. K. Accused by a ghost, he had no legal remedy. Goldsmith, like most writers, assumes that Parsons undertook the imposture, in revenge for having been sued for money lent by Mr. K. He adds that Mr. K. was engaged in a Chancery suit by his relations, and seems to suspect their agency. Meanwhile, Elizabeth was being ‘tested’ in various ways. Finally the unlucky child was swung up in a kind of hammock, ‘her hands and feet extended wide,’ and, for two nights, no noises were heard. Next day she was told that, if there were no noises, she and her father would be committed to Newgate. She accordingly concealed a little board, on which a kettle usually stood, a piece of wood six inches by four. She managed this with so little art that the maids saw her place the wood in her dress, and informed the investigators of the circumstances. Scratches were now produced, but the child herself said that they were not like the former sounds, and ‘the concurrent opinion of the whole assembly was that the child had been frightened by threats into this attempt… The master of the house and his friend both declared that the noises the girl had made this morning had not the least likeness to the former noises.’ In the same way the Wesleys at Epworth, in 1716, found that they could not imitate the perplexing sounds produced in the parsonage. The end of the affair was that Parsons, Mary Frazer, a clergyman, a tradesman, and others were tried at the Guildhall and convicted of a conspiracy, on July 10, 1762. Parsons was pilloried, and ‘a handsome collection’ was made for him by the spectators. His later fortunes, or misfortunes, and those of the miserable little Elizabeth, are unknown. One thing is certain, the noises did not begin in an attempt at imposture on Parsons’s part; he was on good terms with his lodgers, when Fanny was first disturbed. Again, the child could not counterfeit the sounds successfully when she was driven by threats to make the effort. The séance of rather more than an hour, in which Johnson took part, was certainly inadequate. The phenomena were such as had been familiar to law and divinity, at least since 856, A.D. [117 - Rudolfi Fuldensis, Annal., 858, in Pertz, i. 372. See Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology, Engl. transl., p. 514.] The agencies always made accusations, usually false. The knocking spirit at Kembden, near Bingen, in 856 charged a priest with a scandalous intrigue. The raps on the bed of the children examined by the Franciscans, about 1530, assailed the reputation of a dead lady. When the Foxes, at Rochester, in 1848-49, set up alphabetic communication with the knocks, they told a silly tale of a murder. The Cock Lane ghost lied in the same way. The Fox girls started modern spiritualism on its wild and mischievous career, as Elizabeth Parsons might have done, in a more favourable environment. There was never anything new in all these cases. The lowest savages have their séances, levitations, bindings of the medium, trance-speakers; Peruvians, Indians, have their objects moved without contact. Simon Magus, or St. Paul under that offensive pseudonym, was said to make the furniture move at will. [118 - Pseudo-Clemens, Homil., ii. 32, 638. In Mr. Myers’s Classical Essays, p. 66.]
There is a curious recent Cock Lane case in Ireland where ‘the ghost’ brought no accusations against anybody. The affair was investigated by Mr. Barrett, a Professor in the Royal College of Science, Dublin, who published the results in the Dublin University Magazine, for December, 1877. The scene was a small lonely farm house at Derrygonnelly, near Enniskillen. The farmer’s wife had died a few weeks before Easter, 1877, leaving him with four girls, and one boy, of various ages, the eldest, Maggie, being twenty. The noises were chiefly heard in her neighbourhood. When the children had been put to bed, Maggie lay down, without undressing, in the bedroom off the kitchen. A soft pattering noise was soon heard, then raps, from all parts of the room, then scratchings, as in Cock Lane. When Mr. Barrett, his friend, and the farmer entered with a candle, the sounds ceased, but began again ‘as if growing accustomed to the presence of the light’. The hands and feet of the young people were watched, but nothing was detected, while the raps were going on everywhere around, on the chairs, on the quilt, and on the big four-post wooden bedsteads where they were lying. Mr. Barrett now played Moro with the raps, that is, he extended so many fingers, keeping his hand in the pocket of a loose great-coat, and the sounds always responded the right number. Four trials were made. Then came a noise like the beating of a drum, ‘with violent scratching and tearing sounds’.
The trouble began three weeks after the wife’s death. Once a number of small stones were found on Maggie’s bed. All the family suffered from sleeplessness, and their candles, even when concealed, were constantly stolen. ‘It took a boot from a locked drawer,’ and the boot was found in a great chest of feathers in a loft. A Bible was spirited about, and a Methodist teacher (the family were Methodists) made no impression on the agency. They tried to get some communication by an alphabet, but, said the farmer, ‘it tells lies as often as truth, and oftener, I think’.
Mr. Barrett, and a friend, on two occasions, could detect no method of imposture, and, as the farmer did not believe that his children, sorely distressed by the loss of their mother, would play such tricks, at such a time, even if they could, the mystery remains unsolved. The family found that the less attention they paid to the disturbances, the less they were vexed. Mr. Barrett, examining some other cases, found that Dr. Carpenter’s and other theories did not account for them. But it is certain that the children, as Methodists, had read Wesley’s account of the spirit at Epworth, in 1716. Mr. Barrett was aware of this circumstance, but was unable to discover how the thing was managed, on the hypothesis of fraudulent imitation. The Irish household seems to have reaped no profit by the affair, but rather trouble, annoyance, and the expense of hospitality to strange visitors.
The agency was mendacious, as usual, for Porphyry complains that the ‘spirits’ were always as deceitful as the Cock Lane ghost, feigning to be gods, heroes, or the souls of the dead. It is very interesting to note how, in Greece, as Christianity waxed, and paganism waned, such inquiring minds as that of Porphyry fell back on séances and spiritualism, or superstitions unmentioned by Homer, and almost unheard of in the later classical literature. Religion, which began in Shamanism, in the trances of Angakut and Birraark, returned to these again, and everywhere found marvel, mystery, imposture, conscious, or unconscious. The phenomena have never ceased, imposture has always been detected or asserted, but that hypothesis rarely covers the whole field, and so, if we walk in Cock Lane at all, we wander darkling, in good and bad company, among diviners, philosophers, saints, witches, charlatans, hypnotists. Many a heart has been broken, like that of Mr. Dale Owen, by the late discovery of life-long delusion, for we meet in Cock Lane, as Porphyry says, yενος απατηλης φυσεως παντομορφον και πολυτροπον. Yet this ‘deceptive race’ has had its stroke in the making of creeds, and has played its part in human history, while it contributes not a little to human amusement. Meanwhile, of all wanderers in Cock Lane, none is more beguiled than sturdy Common-sense, if an explanation is to be provided. When once we ask for more than ‘all stuff and nonsense,’ we speedily receive a very mixed theory in which rats, indigestion, dreams, and of late, hypnotism, are mingled much at random, for Common-sense shows more valour than discretion, when she pronounces on matters (or spirits) which she has never studied.
Beautiful instances of common-sense explanations, occur in two stories of the last century, the St. Maur affair (1706), and the haunted house of Amiens, (1746). The author of ‘Ce qu’on doit penser de l’aventure arrivée a Saint Maur,’ was M. Poupart, canon of St. Maur, near Paris. The good canon, of course, admits Biblical apparitions, which are miraculous, and admits hallucination caused by the state of the visual organs and by fever, while he believes in something like the Lucretian idea, that bodies, dead bodies, at least, shell off a kind of peel, which may, on occasion, be visible. Common ghosts he dismisses on grounds of common-sense; if spirits in Purgatory could appear, they would appear more frequently, and would not draw the curtains of beds, drag at coverlets, turn tables upside down, and make terrible noises, all of which feats are traditional among ghosts.
M. Poupart then comes to the adventure at St. Maur. The percipient, M. de S., was a man of twenty-five: his mother seems to have been a visionary, and his constitution is described as ‘melancholic’. He was living alone, however, and his mother has no part in the business. The trouble began with loud knocks at his door, and the servant, when she went to open it, found nobody there. The curtains of his bed were drawn, when he was alone in the room, and here, of course, we have only his evidence. One evening about eleven, he and his servants heard the papers on a table being turned over, and, though they suspected the cat, no cat could be found. When S. went to bed, the same noise persisted in his sitting-room, where the cat, no doubt, could easily conceal herself, for it is not easy to find a cat who has motives for not being found. S. again hunted for the animal, but only heard a great rap on the wall. No sooner had S. gone back to bed, than the bed gave a violent leap, and dashed itself against the wall: the jump covered four feet. He called his servants, who replaced the bed, but the curtains, in their sight, were drawn, and the bed made a wild rush at the fireplace. This happened again twice, though the servants held on gallantly to the bed. Monsieur S. had no sleep, his bed continued to bound and run, and he sent on the following day, for a friend. In that gentleman’s presence the leaps made by the bed ended in its breaking its left foot, on which the visitor observed that he had seen quite enough. He is said, later, to have expressed sorrow that he spoke, but he may have had various motives for this repentance.
On the following night, S. slept well, and if his bed did rise and fall gently, the movement rather cradled him to repose. In the afternoon, the bolts of his parlour door closed of their own accord, and the door of a large armoire opened. A voice then bade S. do certain things, which he was to keep secret, go to a certain place, and find people who would give him further orders. S. then fainted, hurt himself, and with difficulty unbolted his door. A fortnight later, S., his mother, and a friend heard more rapping, and a heavy knock on the windows.