The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865

The King, to whom all these wonders were duly reported, deplored the scandal, and sent commissioners to look into the affair. To these the six monks of Chantilly, indignant that the Devil should play such pranks before their very faces, suggested, that, if they could but have the palace as a residence, they would undertake speedily to cure it of all ghostly intrusion. A deed, with the royal sign-manual, conveyed Vauvert to the monks of St Bruno. It bears the date of 1259. From that time all disturbances ceased,—the green ghost, according to the creed of the pious, being laid to rest forever under the waters of the Red Sea.[2 - This story is given in Garinet's Histoire de la Magie en France, p. 75.]

Some will surmise that the story of the castle of Putkammer is but a modified version of that of the palace of Vauvert. It may be so. One who was not on the spot, to witness the phenomena and personally to verify all the details, cannot rationally deny the possibility of such an hypothesis. Yet I find little parallel between the cases, and difficulties, apparently insuperable, in the way of accepting such a solution of the mystery.

The French palace was deserted, and nothing was easier than to play off there, unchallenged, such commonplace tricks as the showing of colored lights, the clanking of chains, shrieks, groans, and a howling spectre with beard and tail,—all in accordance with the prejudices of that age; nor do we read that any one was bold enough to penetrate, during the night, into the scene of the disturbance; nor had the King's commissioners any personal motive to urge a thorough research; nor had a pious sovereign, the owner of a dozen palaces, any strong inducement to refuse the cession of one of these, already untenanted and useless, to certain holy men, the objects of his veneration.

Very different, in every respect, is the affair of the Pomeranian castle. It is a narrative of the skeptical nineteenth century, that sets down all ghost-stories as nursery-tales. The owner, and his son, the future possessor, each at separate times and for weeks, reside in the castle, and occupy themselves in repeated attempts to discover whether they have been imposed on. The selfsame trick, if trick it was, is repeated night after night, without variation. The roll of the approaching carriage-wheels, first along the gravelled avenue, then over the paved court-yard, while no carriage was visible,—how were such sounds to be imitated? The fall of footsteps, unaccompanied by aught in bodily form, up the lighted stairway, and past the very side of the bold youth who stepped down to meet them,—what human device could successfully simulate these? The sound of the opening gallery-door and the noises of the midnight orgies, with full opportunity to examine every nook and corner of the scene whence, to every ear, the same identical indications came,—how, in producing and reproducing these, could trickery, time after time, escape detection? Both father and son, it is evident, had their suspicions aroused; and both, as evidently, were men of courage, not to be blinded by superstitious panic. Is it a probable thing that they would destroy an old and valued family mansion, without having exhausted every conceivable expedient to detect imposture?

Nor was this imposture, if as such we are to regard it, conducted in approved form, after the orthodox fashion. It assumed a shape contrary to all usually received ideas. No spectre clanking its chains; no lights burning blue; no groans of the tormented; no ordinary getting-up of a ghostly disturbance. But a mere succession of sounds, indicating, if we are to receive and interpret them literally, the periodical return from the world of spirits of some of its tenants, restless and unblest. Was this the machinery a mystifier was likely to select?

Such are the difficulties which attend the hypothesis of a concerted plan of deception. They will be overlooked by those who have made up their minds that communications between this world and the next are impossible, and who will content themselves with pronouncing, that, though they cannot detect the mode of the imposture, yet imposture of some kind or other it plainly must have been.

And such skeptics will very properly remind us of other difficulties in the way of accepting as a reality the alleged phenomena. What have the spirits of the departed to do with conveyances resembling those of earthly structure? Are there incorporeal carriages and horses? Can grave men admit such fancies as these?[3 - Yet in a recent case, occurring in England, and authenticated in the strongest manner, the "sound of carriages driving in the park when none were there" is one of the incidents given on the authority of the lady who had witnessed the disturbances, and who furnishes a detailed account of them. See "Facts and Fantasies," a sequel to "Lights and Sounds, the Mystery of the Day," by Henry Spicer, London, 1853, pp. 76-101.] Or is all this, even if genuine, only symbolical,—sounds without objective counterpart? Then what becomes of the positive character of this narrative, as a lesson, as a warning to us? The whole degenerates into an acted parable. It fades into the idle pageantry of a dream. Thus we lose ourselves in shadowy conjecture.

But, none the less, the facts, if facts they be, remain to be dealt with. And if at last we concede the ultramundane origin of these manifestations, whether as objective reality or only as truth-teaching allegory, what a field is opened to our speculations regarding the realms of spirit and the possible punishments there in store for those who, by degrading their natures in this world, may have rendered themselves unfit for happiness in the next,—and who, perhaps, still attracted to earth by the debasing excesses they once mistook for pleasure, may be doomed, in the phantom repetition of their sins, to detect their naked reality, to have stamped on their consciousness the vileness of these without the brutal gratifications that veiled it, the essence of vice shorn of its sensual halo, the grossness without the glitter: if so, a terrible expiation!

I beg it may not be imagined, that, because I see grave difficulties in the way of regarding this case as one of imposture, I therefore set it up as proof of a novel theory regarding future punishments. A structure so great cannot be erected on foundation so slender. I but furnish it as a chance contribution towards the probabilities of ultramundane intercourse,—as material for thought,—as one of those hints which future facts may render valueless, but which, on the other hand, other observed phenomena may possibly serve to work out and corroborate and explain.

THE RHYME OF THE MASTER'S MATE

FORT HENRY

None who saw it can forget
How they went into the fight,
Four abreast,—
Thereby was the foe perplexed,—
With the Essex on the right,
That is nearest to the Fort,
And the Cincinnati next,
The St. Louis on her left,
All so gallant and so deft,
And the brave Carondelet.

Boom, boom, from every bow!
(They'll have to answer that!)
From the Rebel bastions, now,
There's a flash.
Cool, keep cool, boys, don't be rash!
Mind your eyes, as the old Boss said;
Keep together and go ahead,—
Not too high and not too low,
Fire slow!

Paff!
Now we have it from the Fort,
And the Rebels all a-crowing;
While the devils'-echoes laugh,
With a loonish thunder-lowing,
After every gun's report:
'Tisn't bird-shot they are throwing,—
'Tisn't chaff!
Ping! Ping!
If you've ever seen the thing
That can fly without a wing
Swifter than the Thunder's bird,
Lightning-clenching, lightning-spurred,—
If you've ever heard it sing,
You will understand the word,
And look out;
For, beyond a mortal doubt,
It can sting!

Thump!
'D y' ever hear anything like it?
Sounded very much like a ten-strike,—it
Appears they're after a spare!
Bet it made the old Boss jump,
Or at any rate awfully screw up his brows,—
Hit the pilot-house,
And he's up there,—
Must 'a' been a hundred-pounder,—
Had the twang of a conical ball,—
Would 'a' gone plumb through a ten-foot wall.
Isn't the old Cinc. a trump?

They meant that for a damper!
Square it off with an eighty shell
And a fifteen-second fuse,
(With all the latest news!)—
Pretty well done, boys, pretty well!
Guess that'll be apt to tell
'Em all about where it came from,
And where it's a-going to,
What it took its name from,
And all it's a-knowing to!
See 'em scamper!

The Conestoga, the Tyler,
And the Lexington, you know,
Are in line a half a mile, or
A little less, below,—
Just this side of the Panther
(Little woody island),
They've their orders–Oh,
But, after all, how can their
Wooden-heads keep silent?
Wonder 'f it don't make 'em feel bad,
Even if they ain't all steel-clad,
At being slighted so!