Lang Andrew
The Book of Dreams and Ghosts
LORD ST. VINCENT’S GHOST STORY
Sir Walter Scott, writing about the disturbances in the house occupied by Mrs. Ricketts, sister of the great admiral, Lord St. Vincent, asks: “Who has seen Lord St. Vincent’s letters?” He adds that the gallant admiral, after all, was a sailor, and implies that “what the sailor said” (if he said anything) “is not evidence”.
The fact of unaccountable disturbances which finally drove Mrs. Ricketts out of Hinton Ampner, is absolutely indisputable, though the cause of the annoyances may remain as mysterious as ever. The contemporary correspondence (including that of Lord St. Vincent, then Captain Jervis) exists, and has been edited by Mrs. Henley Jervis, grand-daughter of Mrs. Ricketts. 122
There is only the very vaguest evidence for hauntings at Lady Hillsborough’s old house of Hinton Ampner, near Alresford, before Mr. Ricketts took it in January, 1765. He and his wife were then disturbed by footsteps, and sounds of doors opening and shutting. They put new locks on the doors lest the villagers had procured keys, but this proved of no avail. The servants talked of seeing appearances of a gentleman in drab and of a lady in silk, which Mrs. Ricketts disregarded. Her husband went to Jamaica in the autumn of 1769, and in 1771 she was so disturbed that her brother, Captain Jervis, a witness of the phenomena, insisted on her leaving the house in August. He and Mrs. Ricketts then wrote to Mr. Ricketts about the affair. In July, 1772, Mrs. Ricketts wrote a long and solemn description of her sufferings, to be given to her children.
We shall slightly abridge her statement, in which she mentions that when she left Hinton she had not one of the servants who came thither in her family, which “evinces the impossibility of a confederacy”. Her new, like her former servants, were satisfactory; Camis, her new coachman, was of a yeoman house of 400 years’ standing. It will be observed that Mrs. Ricketts was a good deal annoyed even before 2nd April, 1771, the day when she dates the beginning of the worst disturbances. She believed that the agency was human – a robber or a practical joker – and but slowly and reluctantly became convinced that the “exploded” notion of an abnormal force might be correct. We learn that while Captain Jervis was not informed of the sounds he never heard them, and whereas Mrs. Ricketts heard violent noises after he went to bed on the night of his vigil, he heard nothing. “Several instances occurred where very loud noises were heard by one or two persons, when those equally near and in the same direction were not sensible of the least impression.” 123
With this preface, Mrs. Ricketts may be allowed to tell her own tale.
“Sometime after Mr. Ricketts left me (autumn, 1769) I – then lying in the bedroom over the kitchen – heard frequently the noise of some one walking in the room within, and the rustling as of silk clothes against the door that opened into my room, sometimes so loud, and of such continuance as to break my rest. Instant search being often made, we never could discover any appearance of human or brute being. Repeatedly disturbed in the same manner, I made it my constant practice to search the room and closets within, and to secure the only door on the inside… Yet this precaution did not preclude the disturbance, which continued with little interruption.”
Nobody, in short, could enter this room, except by passing through that of Mrs. Ricketts, the door of which “was always made fast by a drawn bolt”. Yet somebody kept rustling and walking in the inner room, which somebody could never be found when sought for.
In summer, 1770, Mrs. Ricketts heard someone walk to the foot of her bed in her own room, “the footsteps as distinct as ever I heard, myself perfectly awake and collected”. Nobody could be discovered in the chamber. Mrs. Ricketts boldly clung to her room, and was only now and then disturbed by “sounds of harmony,” and heavy thumps, down stairs. After this, and early in 1771, she was “frequently sensible of a hollow murmuring that seemed to possess the whole house: it was independent of wind, being equally heard on the calmest nights, and it was a sound I had never been accustomed to hear”.
On 27th February, 1771, a maid was alarmed by “groans and fluttering round her bed”: she was “the sister of an eminent grocer in Alresford”. On 2nd April, Mrs. Ricketts heard people walking in the lobby, hunted for burglars, traced the sounds to a room whence their was no outlet, and found nobody. This kind of thing went on till Mrs. Ricketts despaired of any natural explanation. After mid-summer, 1771, the trouble increased, in broad daylight, and a shrill female voice, answered by two male voices was added to the afflictions. Captain Jervis came on a visit, but was told of nothing, and never heard anything. After he went to Portsmouth, “the most deep, loud tremendous noise seemed to rush and fall with infinite velocity and force on the lobby floor adjoining my room,” accompanied by a shrill and dreadful shriek, seeming to proceed from under the spot where the rushing noise fell, and repeated three or four times.
Mrs. Ricketts’ “resolution remained firm,” but her health was impaired; she tried changing her room, without results. The disturbances pursued her. Her brother now returned. She told him nothing, and he heard nothing, but next day she unbosomed herself. Captain Jervis therefore sat up with Captain Luttrell and his own man. He was rewarded by noises which he in vain tried to pursue. “I should do great injustice to my sister” (he writes to Mr. Ricketts on 9th August, 1771), “if I did not acknowledge to have heard what I could not, after the most diligent search and serious reflection, any way account for.” Captain Jervis during a whole week slept by day, and watched, armed, by night. Even by day he was disturbed by a sound as of immense weights falling from the ceiling to the floor of his room. He finally obliged his sister to leave the house.
What occurred after Mrs. Ricketts abandoned Hinton is not very distinct. Apparently Captain Jervis’s second stay of a week, when he did hear the noises, was from 1st August to 8th August. From a statement by Mrs. Ricketts it appears that, when her brother joined his ship, the Alarm (9th August), she retired to Dame Camis’s house, that of her coachman’s mother. Thence she went, and made another attempt to live at Hinton, but was “soon after assailed by a noise I never before heard, very near me, and the terror I felt not to be described”. She therefore went to the Newbolts, and thence to the old Palace at Winton; later, on Mr. Ricketts’ return, to the Parsonage, and then to Longwood (to the old house there) near Alresford.
Meanwhile, on 18th September, Lady Hillsborough’s agent lay with armed men at Hinton, and, making no discovery, offered £50 (increased by Mr. Ricketts to £100) for the apprehension of the persons who caused the noises. The reward was never claimed. On 8th March, 1772, Camis wrote: “I am very sorry that we cannot find out the reason of the noise”; at other dates he mentions sporadic noises heard by his mother and another woman, including “the murmur”. A year after Mrs. Ricketts left a family named Lawrence took the house, and, according to old Lucy Camis, in 1818, Mr. Lawrence very properly threatened to dismiss any servant who spoke of the disturbances. The result of this sensible course was that the Lawrences left suddenly, at the end of the year – and the house was pulled down. Some old political papers of the Great Rebellion, and a monkey’s skull, not exhibited to any anatomist, are said to have been discovered under the floor of the lobby, or of one of the rooms. Mrs. Ricketts adds sadly, “The unbelief of Chancellor Hoadley went nearest my heart,” as he had previously a high opinion of her veracity. The Bishop of St. Asaph was incredulous, “on the ground that such means were unworthy of the Deity to employ”.
Probably a modern bishop would say that there were no noises at all, that every one who heard the sounds was under the influence of “suggestion,” caused first in Mrs. Ricketts’ own mind by vague tales of a gentleman in drab seen by the servants.
The contagion, to be sure, also reached two distinguished captains in the navy, but not till one of them was told about disturbances which had not previously disturbed him. If this explanation be true, it casts an unusual light on the human imagination. Physical science has lately invented a new theory. Disturbances of this kind are perhaps “seismic,” – caused by earthquakes! (See Professor Milne, in The Times, 21st June, 1897.)
CHAPTER XI
A Question for Physicians. Professor William James’s Opinion. Hysterical Disease? Little Hands. Domestic Arson. The Wem Case. “The Saucepan began it.” The Nurse-maid. Boots Fly Off. Investigation. Emma’s Partial Confession. Corroborative Evidence. Question of Disease Repeated. Chinese Cases. Haunted Mrs. Chang. Mr. Niu’s Female Slave. The Great Amherst Mystery. Run as a Show. Failure. Later Miracles. The Fire-raiser Arrested. Parallels. A Highland Case. A Hero of the Forty-Five. Donald na Bocan. Donald’s Hymn. Icelandic Cases. The Devil of Hjalta-stad. The Ghost at Garpsdal.
MORE HAUNTED HOUSES
A physician, as we have seen, got the better of the demon in Mrs. Shchapoff’s case, at least while the lady was under his care. Really these disturbances appear to demand the attention of medical men. If the whole phenomena are caused by imposture, the actors, or actresses, display a wonderful similarity of symptoms and an alarming taste for fire-raising. Professor William James, the well-known psychologist, mentions ten cases whose resemblances “suggest a natural type,” and we ask, is it a type of hysterical disease? 124 He chooses, among others, an instance in Dr. Nevius’s book on Demon Possession in China, and there is another in Peru. He also mentions The Great Amherst Mystery, which we give, and the Rerrick case in Scotland (1696), related by Telfer, who prints, on his margins, the names of the attesting witnesses of each event, lairds, clergymen, and farmers. At Rerrick, as in Russia, the little hand was seen by Telfer himself, and the fire-raising was endless. At Amherst too, as in a pair of recent Russian cases and others, there was plenty of fire-raising. By a lucky chance an English case occurred at Wem, in Shropshire, in November, 1883. It began at a farm called the Woods, some ten miles from Shrewsbury. First a saucepan full of eggs “jumped” off the fire in the kitchen, and the tea-things, leaping from the table, were broken. Cinders “were thrown out of the fire,” and set some clothes in a blaze. A globe leaped off a lamp. A farmer, Mr. Lea, saw all the windows of the upper story “as it were on fire,” but it was no such matter. The nurse-maid ran out in a fright, to a neighbour’s, and her dress spontaneously combusted as she ran. The people attributed these and similar events, to something in the coal, or in the air, or to electricity. When the nurse-girl, Emma Davies, sat on the lap of the school mistress, Miss Maddox, her boots kept flying off, like the boot laces in The Daemon of Spraiton.
All this was printed in the London papers, and, on 15th November, The Daily Telegraph and Daily News published Emma’s confession that she wrought by sleight of hand and foot. On 17th November, Mr. Hughes went from Cambridge to investigate. For some reason investigation never begins till the fun is over. On the 9th the girl, now in a very nervous state (no wonder!) had been put under the care of a Dr. Mackey. This gentleman and Miss Turner said that things had occurred since Emma came, for which they could not account. On 13th November, however, Miss Turner, looking out of a window, spotted Emma throwing a brick, and pretending that the flight of the brick was automatic. Next day Emma confessed to her tricks, but steadfastly denied that she had cheated at Woods Farm, and Weston Lullingfield, where she had also been. Her evidence to this effect was so far confirmed by Mrs. Hampson of Woods Farm, and her servant, Priscilla Evans, when examined by Mr. Hughes. Both were “quite certain” that they saw crockery rise by itself into air off the kitchen table, when Emma was at a neighbouring farm, Mr. Lea’s. Priscilla also saw crockery come out of a cupboard, in detachments, and fly between her and Emma, usually in a slanting direction, while Emma stood by with her arms folded. Yet Priscilla was not on good terms with Emma. Unless, then, Mrs. Hampson and Priscilla fabled, it is difficult to see how Emma could move objects when she was “standing at some considerable distance, standing, in fact, in quite another farm”.
Similar evidence was given and signed by Miss Maddox, the schoolmistress, and Mr. and Mrs. Lea. On the other hand Mrs. Hampson and Priscilla believed that Emma managed the fire-raising herself. The flames were “very high and white, and the articles were very little singed”. This occurred also at Rerrick, in 1696, but Mr. Hughes attributes it to Emma’s use of paraffin, which does not apply to the Rerrick case. Paraffin smells a good deal – nothing is said about a smell of paraffin.
Only one thing is certain: Emma was at last caught in a cheat. This discredits her, but a man who cheats at cards may hold a good hand by accident. In the same way, if such wonders can happen (as so much world-wide evidence declares), they may have happened at Woods Farm, and Emma, “in a very nervous state,” may have feigned then, or rather did feign them later.
The question for the medical faculty is: Does a decided taste for wilful fire-raising often accompany exhibitions of dancing furniture and crockery, gratuitously given by patients of hysterical temperament? This is quite a normal inquiry. Is there a nervous malady of which the symptoms are domestic arson, and amateur leger-de-main? The complaint, if it exists, is of very old standing and wide prevalence, including Russia, Scotland, New England, France, Iceland, Germany, China and Peru.
As a proof of the identity of symptoms in this malady, we give a Chinese case. The Chinese, as to diabolical possession, are precisely of the same opinion as the inspired authors of the Gospels. People are “possessed,” and, like the woman having a spirit of divination in the Acts of the Apostles, make a good thing out of it. Thus Mrs. Ku was approached by a native Christian. She became rigid and her demon, speaking through her, acknowledged the Catholic verity, and said that if Mrs. Ku were converted he would have to leave. On recovering her everyday consciousness, Mrs. Ku asked what Tsehwa, her demon, had said. The Christian told her, and perhaps she would have deserted her erroneous courses, but her fellow-villagers implored her to pay homage to the demon. They were in the habit of resorting to it for medical advice (as people do to Mrs. Piper’s demon in the United States), so Mrs. Ku decided to remain in the business. 125 The parallel to the case in the Acts is interesting.
HAUNTED MRS. CHANG
Mr. Chang, of that ilk (Chang Chang Tien-ts), was a man of fifty-seven, and a graduate in letters. The ladies of his family having accommodated a demon with a shrine in his house, Mr. Chang said he “would have none of that nonsense”. The spirit then entered into Mrs. Chang, and the usual fire-raising began all over the place. The furniture and crockery danced in the familiar way, and objects took to disappearing mysteriously, even when secured under lock and key. Mr. Chang was as unlucky as Mr. Chin. At his house “doors would open of their own accord, footfalls were heard, as of persons walking in the house, although no one could be seen. Plates, bowls and the teapot would suddenly rise from the table into the air.” 126
Mrs. Chang now tried the off chance of there being something in Christianity, stayed with a native Christian (the narrator), and felt much better. She could enjoy her meals, and was quite a new woman. As her friend could not go home with her, Mrs. Fung, a native Christian, resided for a while at Mr. Chang’s; “comparative quiet was restored,” and Mrs. Fung retired to her family.
The symptoms returned; the native Christian was sent for, and found Mr. Chang’s establishment full of buckets of water for extinguishing the sudden fires. Mrs. Chang’s daughter-in-law was now possessed, and “drank wine in large quantities, though ordinarily she would not touch it”. She was staring and tossing her arms wildly; a service was held, and she soon became her usual self.
In the afternoon, when the devils went out of the ladies, the fowls flew into a state of wild excitement, while the swine rushed furiously about and tried to climb a wall.
The family have become Christians, the fires have ceased; Mr. Chang is an earnest inquirer, but opposed, for obvious reasons, to any public profession of our religion. 127
In Mr. Niu’s case “strange noises and rappings were frequently heard about the house. The buildings were also set on fire in different places in some mysterious way.” The Christians tried to convert Mr. Niu, but as the devil now possessed his female slave, whose success in fortune-telling was extremely lucrative, Mr. Niu said that he preferred to leave well alone, and remained wedded to his idols. 128
We next offer a recent colonial case, in which the symptoms, as Mr. Pecksniff said, were “chronic”.
THE GREAT AMHERST MYSTERY
On 13th February, 1888, Mr. Walter Hubbell, an actor by profession, “being duly sworn” before a Notary Public in New York, testified to the following story: —
In 1879 he was acting with a strolling company, and came to Amherst, in Nova Scotia. Here he heard of a haunted house, known to the local newspapers as “The Great Amherst Mystery”. Having previously succeeded in exposing the frauds of spiritualism Mr. Hubbell determined to investigate the affair of Amherst. The haunted house was inhabited by Daniel Teed, the respected foreman in a large shoe factory. Under his roof were Mrs. Teed, “as good a woman as ever lived”; little Willie, a baby boy; and Mrs. Teed’s two sisters, Jennie, a very pretty girl, and Esther, remarkable for large grey eyes, pretty little hands and feet, and candour of expression. A brother of Teed’s and a brother of Mrs. Cox made up the family. They were well off, and lived comfortably in a detached cottage of two storys. It began when Jennie and Esther were in bed one night. Esther jumped up, saying that there was a mouse in the bed. Next night, a green band-box began to make a rustling noise, and then rose a foot in the air, several times. On the following night Esther felt unwell, and “was a swelling wisibly before the werry eyes” of her alarmed family. Reports like thunder peeled through her chamber, under a serene sky. Next day Esther could only eat “a small piece of bread and butter, and a large green pickle”. She recovered slightly, in spite of the pickle, but, four nights later, all her and her sister’s bed-clothes flew off, and settled down in a remote corner. At Jennie’s screams, the family rushed in, and found Esther “fearfully swollen”. Mrs. Teed replaced the bed-clothes, which flew off again, the pillow striking John Teed in the face. Mr. Teed then left the room, observing, in a somewhat unscientific spirit, that “he had had enough of it”. The others, with a kindness which did them credit, sat on the edges of the bed, and repressed the desire of the sheets and blankets to fly away. The bed, however, sent forth peels like thunder, when Esther suddenly fell into a peaceful sleep.
Next evening Dr. Carritte arrived, and the bolster flew at his head, and then went back again under Esther’s. While paralysed by this phenomenon, unprecedented in his practice, the doctor heard a metal point scribbling on the wall. Examining the place whence the sound proceeded, he discovered this inscription: —
Esther Cox! You are mine
to kill.
Mr. Hubbell has verified the inscription, and often, later, recognised the hand, in writings which “came out of the air and fell at our feet”. Bits of plaster now gyrated in the room, accompanied by peels of local thunder. The doctor admitted that his diagnosis was at fault. Next day he visited his patient when potatoes flew at him. He exhibited a powerful sedative, but pounding noises began on the roofs and were audible at a distance of 200 yards, as the doctor himself told Mr. Hubbell.
The clergy now investigated the circumstances, which they attributed to electricity. “Even the most exclusive class” frequented Mr. Teed’s house, till December, when Esther had an attack of diphtheria. On recovering she went on to visit friends in Sackville, New Brunswick, where nothing unusual occurred. On her return the phenomena broke forth afresh, and Esther heard a voice proclaim that the house would be set on fire. Lighted matches then fell from the ceiling, but the family extinguished them. The ghost then set a dress on fire, apparently as by spontaneous combustion, and this kind of thing continued. The heads of the local fire-brigade suspected Esther of these attempts at arson, and Dr. Nathan Tupper suggested that she should be flogged. So Mr. Teed removed Esther to the house of a Mr. White.
In about a month “all,” as Mrs. Nickleby’s lover said, “was gas and gaiters”. The furniture either flew about, or broke into flames. Worse, certain pieces of iron placed as an experiment on Esther’s lap “became too hot to be handled with comfort,” and then flew away.
Mr. Hubbell himself now came on the scene, and, not detecting imposture, thought that “there was money in it”. He determined to “run” Esther as a powerful attraction, he lecturing, and Esther sitting on the platform.
It did not pay. The audience hurled things at Mr. Hubbell, and these were the only volatile objects. Mr. Hubbell therefore brought Esther back to her family at Amherst, where, in Esther’s absence, his umbrella and a large carving knife flew at him with every appearance of malevolence. A great arm-chair next charged at him like a bull, and to say that Mr. Hubbell was awed “would indeed seem an inadequate expression of my feelings”. The ghosts then thrice undressed little Willie in public, in derision of his tears and outcries. Fire-raising followed, and that would be a hard heart which could read the tale unmoved. Here it is, in the simple eloquence of Mr. Hubbell: —
“This was my first experience with Bob, the demon, as a fire-fiend; and I say, candidly, that until I had had that experience I never fully realised what an awful calamity it was to have an invisible monster, somewhere within the atmosphere, going from place to place about the house, gathering up old newspapers into a bundle and hiding it in the basket of soiled linen or in a closet, then go and steal matches out of the match-box in the kitchen or somebody’s pocket, as he did out of mine, and after kindling a fire in the bundle, tell Esther that he had started a fire, but would not tell where; or perhaps not tell her at all, in which case the first intimation we would have was the smell of the smoke pouring through the house, and then the most intense excitement, everybody running with buckets of water. I say it was the most truly awful calamity that could possible befall any family, infidel or Christian, that could be conceived in the mind of man or ghost.
“And how much more terrible did it seem in this little cottage, where all were strict members of church, prayed, sang hymns and read the Bible. Poor Mrs. Teed!”
On Mr. Hubbell’s remarking that the cat was not tormented, “she was instantly lifted from the floor to a height of five feet, and then dropped on Esther’s back… I never saw any cat more frightened; she ran out into the front yard, where she remained for the balance (rest) of the day.” On 27th June “a trumpet was heard in the house all day”.
The Rev. R. A. Temple now prayed with Esther, and tried a little amateur exorcism, including the use of slips of paper, inscribed with Habakkuk ii. 3. The ghosts cared no more than Voltaire for ce coquin d’Habacuc.
Things came to such a pass, matches simply raining all round, that Mr. Teed’s landlord, a Mr. Bliss, evicted Esther. She went to a Mr. Van Amburgh’s, and Mr. Teed’s cottage was in peace.
Some weeks later Esther was arrested for incendiarism in a barn, was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment, but was soon released in deference to public opinion. She married, had a family; and ceased to be a mystery.
This story is narrated with an amiable simplicity, and is backed, more or less, by extracts from Amherst and other local newspapers. On making inquiries, I found that opinion was divided. Some held that Esther was a mere impostor and fire-raiser; from other sources I obtained curious tales of the eccentric flight of objects in her neighbourhood. It is only certain that Esther’s case is identical with Madame Shchapoff’s, and experts in hysteria may tell us whether that malady ever takes the form of setting fire to the patient’s wardrobe, and to things in general. 129
After these modern cases of disturbances, we may look at a few old, or even ancient examples. It will be observed that the symptoms are always of the same type, whatever the date or country. The first is Gaelic, of last century.
