Dublin University Magazine, June 1850
THOUGH few men are themselves on visiting terms with their ancestors, most are furnished with one or two decently-authenticated ghost stories. I myself am a firm believer in spectral phenomena, for reasons which I may, perhaps, be tempted to give to the public whenever the custom of printing in folio shall have been happily revived; meanwhile, as they will not bear compression, I keep them by me, and content myself with now and then stating a fact, leaving the theory to suggest itself.
Now it has always appeared to me that the apostles of spectres (if the phrase will be allowed me) have, like other men with a mission, been, perhaps, a little precipitate in assuming their facts, and sometimes find “true ghosts” upon evidence much too slender to satisfy the hard-hearted and unbelieving generation we live in. They have thus brought scandal not only upon the useful class to which they belong, but upon the world of spirits itself — causing ghosts to be so generally discredited, that fifty visits made in their usual private and confidential way, will now hardly make a single convert beyond the individual favoured with the interview; and, in order to reinstate themselves in their former position, they will be obliged henceforward to appear at noon-day, and in places of public resort.
The reader will perceive, then, that I am convinced of the equal impolicy and impropriety of resting the claims of my clients (ghosts in general) upon facts which will not stand the test of an impartial, and even a sceptical scrutiny. And, perhaps, I cannot give a happier illustration of the temper of my philosophy, at once candid and cautious, than is afforded by the following relation, for every tittle of which I solemnly pledge my character at once as a gentleman and a metaphysician.
There is a very agreeable book by Mrs. Crowe, entitled “The Night Side of Nature,” and which, among a dubia caena of authentic tales of terror, contains several which go to show the very trivial causes which have from time to time caused the re-appearance of departed spirits in this grosser world. A certain German professor, for instance, actually persecuted an old college friend with preternatural visitations for no other purpose, as it turned out, than to procure a settlement of some small six-and-eightpenny accounts, which he owed among his tradespeople at the time of his death.
I could multiply, from my own notes, cases still odder, in which sensible and rather indolent men, too, have been at the trouble to re-cross the awful interval between us and the invisible, for purposes apparently still less important — so trivial, indeed, that for the present I had rather not mention them, lest I should expose their memories to the ridicule of the unreflecting. I shall now proceed to my narrative, with the repeated assurance, that the reader will nowhere find in it a single syllable that is not most accurately and positively true.
About four-and-thirty years ago I was travelling through Denbighshire upon a mission which needed despatch. I had, in fact, in my charge some papers which were required for the legal preliminaries to a marriage which was about to take place in a family of consideration, upon the borders of that county.
The season was winter, but the weather delightful — that is to say, clear and frosty; and, even without foliage, the country through which I posted was beautiful. The subject of my journey was a pleasant one. I anticipated an agreeable visit, and a cordial welcome; and the weather and scenery were precisely of the sort to second the cheerful associations with which my excursion had been undertaken. Let no one, therefore, suggest that I was predisposed for the reception of gloomy or horrible impressions. When the sun set we had a splendid moon, at once soft and brilliant; and I pleased myself with watching the altered, and, if possible, more beautiful effects of the scenery through which we were smoothly rolling. I was to put up for the night at the little town of ——; and on reaching the hill — over which the approach to it is conducted, about a short mile from its quaint little street — I dismounted, and directing the postillion to walk his jaded horses leisurely up the winding road, I trod on before him in the pleasant moonlight, and sharp bracing air. A little by-path led directly up the steep acclivity, while the carriage-road more gradually ascended by a wide sweep — this little path, leading through fields and hedgerows, I followed, intending to anticipate the arrival of my conveyance at the summit of the hill.
I had not proceeded very far when I found myself close to a pretty old church, whose ivied tower, and countless diamond window-panes, were glittering in the moonbeams — a high, irregular hedge, overtopped by tall and ancient trees, enclosed it; and rows of funereal yews shewed black and mournful among the wan array of headstones that kept watch over the village dead. I was so struck with the glimpse I had caught of the old churchyard, that I could not forbear mounting the little style that commanded it — no scene could be imagined more still and solitary. Not a human habitation was near — every sign and sound of life was reverently remote; and this old church, with its silent congregation of the dead marshalled under its walls, seemed to have spread round it a circle of stillness and desertion that pleased, while it thrilled me.
No sound was here audible but the softened rush of waters, and that sweet note of home and safety, the distant baying of the watch-dog — now and then broken by the sharper rattle of the carriage-wheels upon the dry road. But while I looked upon the sad and solemn scene before me, these sounds were interrupted by one which startled, and, indeed, for a moment, froze me with horror. The sound was a cry, or rather a howl of despairing terror, such as I have never heard before or since uttered by human voice. It broke from the stillness of the churchyard; but I saw no figure from which it proceeded — though this circumstance, indeed, was scarcely wonderful, as the broken ground, the trees, tall weeds, and tomb-stones afforded abundant cover for any person who might have sought concealment. This cry of unspeakable agony was succeeded by a silence; and, I confess, my heart throbbed strangely, when the same voice articulated, in the same tone of “Why will you trouble the dead? Who can torment us before the time? I will come to you in my flesh, though after my skin worms destroy this body — and you shall speak to me, face to face.”
This strange address was followed by a another cry of despair, which died away as suddenly as it was raised.
I never could tell why it was I was not more horror-stricken than I really was by this mysterious, and, all things considered, even terrible interpolation. It was not until the silence had again returned, and the faint rustling of the frosty breeze among the crisp weeds crept towards me like the stealthy approach of some unearthly influence, that I felt a superstitious terror gradually inspire me, which hurried me at an accelerated pace from the place. A few minutes, and I heard the friendly voice of my charioteer hallooing to me from the summit of the hill.
Reassured, as I approached him, I abated my speed.
“I saw you standing on the stile, sir, by the churchyard,” he said, as I drew near, “and I ask your pardon for not giving you the hint before, but they say it is not lucky; and I called to you loud and lusty to come away, sir; but I see you are nothing the worse of it.”
“Why, what is there to be afraid of there, my good fellow?” I asked, affecting as much indifference as I was able.
“Why, sir,” said the man, throwing an uneasy look in the direction, “they do say there’s a bad spirit haunts it; and nobody in these parts would go near it after dark for love or money.”
“Haunted!” I repeated; “and how does the spirit shew himself?” I asked.
“Oh! lawk, sir, in all sorts of shapes — sometimes like an old woman almost doubled in two with years,” he answered—” sometimes like a little child agoing along a full foot high above the grass of the graves; and sometimes like a big black ram, strutting on his hind legs, and with a pair of eyes like live coals; and some has seen him in the shape of a man, with his arm raised up towards the sky, and his head hanging down, as if his neck was broke. I can’t think of half the shapes he has took at different times; but they’re all bad: the very child, they say — when he comes in that shape — has the face of Satan — God bless us! — and nobody’s ever the same again that sees him once.”
By this time I was again seated in my vehicle, and some six or eight minutes’ quick driving whirled us into the old-fashioned street, and brought the chaise to a full stop before the open door and well-lighted hall of the Bell Inn. To me there has always been an air of indescribable cheer and comfort about a substantial country hostelrie, especially when one arrives, as I did, upon a keen winter’s night, with an appetite as sharp, and something of that sense of adventure and excitement which, before the days of down-trains and tickets, always, in a greater or less degree, gave a zest to travelling. Greeted with that warmest of welcomes for which inns, alas! are celebrated, I had soon satisfied the importunities of a keen appetite; and having for some hours taken mine ease in a comfortable parlour before a blazing fire, I began to feel sleepy, and betook myself to my no less comfortable bedchamber.
It is not to be supposed that the adventure of the churchyard had been obliterated from my recollection by the suppressed bustle and good cheer of the “Bell.” On the contrary, it had occupied me almost incessantly during my solitary ruminations; and as the night advanced, and the stillness of repose and desertion stole over the old mansion, the sensations with which this train of remembrance and speculation was accompanied became anything but purely pleasant.
I felt, I confess, fidgety and queer — I searched the corners and recesses of the oddly-shaped and roomy old apartment — I turned the face of the looking-glass to the wall — I poked the fire into a roaring blaze — I looked behind the window-curtains, with a vague anxiety, to assure myself that nothing could be lurking there. The shutter was a little open, and the ivied tower of the little church, and the tufted tops of the trees that surrounded it, were visible over the slope of the intervening hill. I hastily shut out the unwelcome object, and in a mood of mind, I must confess, favourable enough to any freak my nerves might please to play me, I hurried through my dispositions for the night, humming a gay air all the time, to re-assure myself’, and plunged into bed, extinguishing the candle, and — shall I acknowledge the weakness? — nearly burying my head under the blankets.
I lay awake some time, as men will do under such circumstances, but at length fatigue overcame me, and I fell into a profound sleep. From this repose I was, however, aroused in the manner I am about to describe. A very considerable interval must have intervened. There was a cold air in the room very unlike the comfortable atmosphere in which I had composed myself to sleep. The fire, though much lower than when I had gone to bed, was still emitting flame enough to throw a flickering light over the chamber. My curtains were, however, closely drawn, and I could not see beyond the narrow tent in which I lay.
There had been as I awaked a clanking among the fire-irons, as if a palsied hand was striving to arrange the fire, and this rather unaccountable noise continued for some seconds after I had become completely awake.
Under the impression that I was subjected to an accidental intrusion, I called out first in a gentle and afterwards in a sharper tone —
“Who’s there?”
At the second summons the sounds ceased, and I heard instead the tread of naked feet, as it seemed to me, upon the floor, pacing to and fro, between the hearth and the bed in which I lay. A superstitious terror, which I could not combat, stole over me; with an effort I repeated my question, and drawing myself upright in the bed, expected the answer with a strange sort of trepidation. It came in terms and accompanied with accessaries which I shall not soon forget.
The very same tones which had so startled me in the churchyard the evening before, the very sounds which I had heard then and there, were now filling my ears, and spoken in the chamber where I lay.
“Why will you trouble the dead? Who can torment us before the time? I will come to you in my flesh, though after my skin worms destroy this body,’ and you shall speak with me face to face.”
As I live, I can swear the words and the voice were the very same I had heard on the occasion I have mentioned, but (and mark this) repeated to no one. With feelings which I shall not attempt to describe, I heard the speaker approach the bed — a hand parted the bed-curtains and drew them open, revealing a form more horrible than my fancy had ever seen — an almost gigantic figure — naked, except for what might well have been the rotten remnant of a shroud — stood close beside my bed-livid and cadaverous grimed as it seemed with the dust of the grave, and staring on me with a gaze of despair, malignity, and fury too intense almost for human endurance.
I cannot say whether I spoke or not, but this infernal spectre answered me as if I had.
“I am dead and yet alive,” it said—” the child of perdition — in the grave I am a murderer, but here I am APOLLYON. Fall down and worship me.”
Having thus spoken, it stood for a moment at the bedside, and then turned away with a shuddering moan, and I lost sight of it, but after a few seconds it came again to the bedside as before.
“When I died they put me under Mervyn’s tombstone, and they did not bury me. My feet lie toward the west — turn them to the east and I will rest — maybe I will rest — I will rest — rest — rest.”
Again the figure was gone, and once again it returned, and said —
“l am your master — I am your resurrection and your life, and therefore, fall down and worship me.”
It made a motion to mount upon the bed, but what further passed I know not, for I fainted.
I must have lain in this state for a long time, for when I became conscious the tire was almost extinct. For hours that seemed interminable I lay, scarcely daring to breathe, and afraid to get up lest I should encounter the hideous apparition, for aught I knew, lurking close beside me. I lay, therefore, in an agony of expectation such as I will not attempt to describe, awaiting the appearance of the daylight.
Gradually it came, and with it the cheerful and reassuring sounds of life and occupation. At length I mustered courage to reach the bell-rope, and having rung lustily, I plunged again into bed.
“Draw the window-curtains — open the shutters,” I exclaimed as the man entered, and these orders executed, “look about the room,” I added, “and see whether a cat or any other animal has got in.”
There was nothing of the sort; and satisfied that my visitant was no longer in the chamber, I dismissed the man, and hurried through my toilet with breathless precipitation.
Hastening from the hated scene of my terrors, I escaped to the parlour, whither I instantly summoned the proprietor of “the Bell” in propria persona. I suppose I looked scared and haggard enough, for mine host looked upon me with an expression of surprise and inquiry.
“Shut the door,” said I.
It was done.
“I have had an uneasy night in the room you assigned me, sir; I may say, indeed, a miserable night,” I said.
“Pray,” resumed I, interrupting his apologetic expressions of surprise, “has any person but myself ever complained of — of being disturbed in that room?”
“Never,” he assured me.
I had suspected the ghastly old practical joke, so often played off by landlords in story-books, and fancied I might have been deliberately exposed to the chances of a “haunted chamber.” But there was no acting in the frank look and honest denial of mine host.
“It is a very strange thing,” said I, hesitating; “and I do not see why I should not tell you what has occurred. And as I could swear, if necessary, to the perfect reality of the entire scene, it behoves you, I think, to sift the matter carefully. For myself, I cannot entertain a doubt as to the nature of the truly terrible visitation to which I have been subjected; and, were I in your position, I should transfer my establishment at once to some other house as well suited to the purpose, and free from the dreadful liabilities of this.
I proceeded to detail the particulars of the occurrence of the past night, to which he listened with nearly as much horror as I recited them with.
“Mervyn’s tomb!” he repeated after me; “why that’s down there in L —— r: the churchyard you can see from the window of the room you slept in.”
“Let us go there instantly,” I ex claimed, with an almost feverish anxiety to ascertain whether we should discover in the place indicated anything corroborative of the authenticity of my vision.
“Well, I shan’t say no,” said he, obviously bracing himself for an effort of courage; “but we’ll take Faukes, and James the helper, with us; and please, sir, you’ll not mention the circumstance as has occurred to either on ‘em.”
I gave him the assurance he asked for, and in a few minutes our little party were in full march upon the point of interest.
There had been an intense black frost, and the ground, reverberating to our tread with the hollow sound of a vault, emitted the only noise that accompanied our rapid advance. I and my host were too much preoccupied for conversation, and our attendants maintained a respectful silence. A few minutes brought us to the low, gray walls, and bleak hedgerows that surrounded the pretty old church, and all its melancholy and picturesque memorials.
“Mervyn’s tomb lies there, I think, sir,” he said, pointing to a corner of the churchyard, in which piles of rubbish, withered weeds, and brambles were thickly accumulated under the solemn, though imperfect, shelter of the wintry trees.
He exchanged some sentences with our attendants in Welch.
“Yes, sir, that’s the place,” he added, turning to me.
And as we all approached it, I bethought me that the direction in which, as I stood upon the stile, I had heal’d the voice on the night preceding, corresponded accurately with that indicated by my guides. The tomb in question was a huge slab of black marble, supported, as was made apparent when the surrounding brambles were removed, upon six pillars, little more than two feet high each. There was ample room for a human body to lie inside this funeral pent-house; and, on stooping to look beneath, I was unspeakably shocked to see that something like a human figure was actually extended there.
It was, indeed, a corpse — and, what is more, corresponded in every trait with the infernal phantom which, on the preceding night, had visited, and appalled me.
The body, though miserably emaciated, was that of a large-boned, athletic man, of fully six-feet-four in height; and it was, therefore, no easy task to withdraw it from the receptacle where it had been deposited, and lay it, as our assistants did, upon the tomb-stone which had covered it. Strange to say, moreover, the feet of the body, as we found it, had been placed toward the west.
As I looked upon this corpse, and recognised, but too surely, in its proportions and lineaments every trait of the apparition that had stood at my bed-side, with a countenance animated by the despair and malignity of the damned, my heart fluttered and sank within me, and I recoiled from the effigy of the demon with terror, second only to that which had thrilled me on the night preceding.
Now reader — honest reader — I appeal to your own appreciation of testimony, and ask you, having these facts in evidence, and upon the deposition of an eye and ear witness — whose veracity, through a long life, has never once been compromised or questioned — have you, or have you not, in the foregoing story, a well-authenticated ghost story?
Before you answer the above question, however, it may be convenient to let you know certain other facts which were clearly established upon the inquest that was very properly held upon the body which in so strange a manner we had discovered.
I purposely avoid details, and without assigning the depositions respectively to the witnesses who made them, shall restrict myself to a naked outline of the evidence as it appeared.
The body I have described was identified as that of Abraham Smith, an unfortunate lunatic, who had, upon the day but one preceding, made his escape from the neighbouring parish workhouse, where he had been for many years confined. His hallucination was a strange, but not by any means an unprecedented one. He fancied that he had died, and was condemned; and, as these ideas alternately predominated, sometimes spoke of himself as an “evil spirit,” and sometimes importuned his keepers to “bury him” — using habitually certain phrases, which I hud no difficulty in recognising as among those which he had addressed to me. He had been traced to the neighbourhood where his body was found, and had been seen and relieved scarcely half a mile from it about two hours before my visit to the churchyard! There were, further, unmistakeable evidences of some person’s having climbed up the trellis-work to my window on the previous night — the shutter of which had been left unbarred, and, as the window might have been easily opened with a push, the cold which I experienced, as an accompaniment of the nocturnal visit, was easily accounted for. There was a mark of blood upon the window-stool, and a scrape upon the knee of the body corresponded with it. A multiplicity of other slight circumstances, and the positive assertion of the chamber-maid that the window had been opened, and was but imperfectly closed again, came in support of the conclusion, which was to my mind satisfactorily settled by the concurrent evidence of the medical men, to the effect that the unhappy man could not have been many hours dead when the body was found.
Taken in the mass, the evidence convinced me; and though I might still have clung to the preternatural theory, which, in the opinion of some persons, the facts of the case might still have sustained, I candidly decided with the weight of evidence, “gave up the ghost,” and accepted the natural, but still somewhat horrible explanation of the occurrence. For this candour I take credit to myself. I might have stopped short at the discovery of the corpse, but I am no friend to “spurious gospels let our faith, whatever it is, be founded in honest fact. For my part, I steadfastly believe in ghosts, and have dozens of stories to support that belief; but this is not among them. Should I ever come, therefore, to tell you one, pray remember that you have to deal with a candid narrator.