This warning couplet is still a household word in many parts of New England. It has been observed that even those sceptical persons who profess to put no faith in it whatever, generally take good care to keep on the right side of the window-glass. As bearing upon this branch of the general subject an incident is related by a reputable authority, as having occurred at a party given, not many years ago, by a gentleman holding a considerable station in life. It is therefore repeated here word for word.
“In the midst of a social chat, at the close of the day, a footman rather briskly entered the drawing-room, and walked up to the back of the chair of the hostess and whispered something in her ear; she immediately closed her eyes and gave her hand to the man, and was forthwith led by him from the room. The guests were rather astonished, but after the lapse of a few moments the lady returned and resumed her seat.
“Her sudden departure having occasioned a rather uneasy pause in the conversation, she felt it necessary to state the cause of her singular conduct. She then told us that the New Harvest Moon had just made its appearance, and it was her custom to give a crown to any of her servants that first brought the information to her when that event occurred; and that the reason why she closed her eyes, and was led by the footman out of the room to the open air, was that she might avoid the evil consequences that were sure to happen to her if she obtained her first glimpse of the Harvest Moon through a pane of glass. This lady was highly accomplished, and possessed remarkable sagacity upon most subjects, but was nevertheless a slave to a groundless fear of evil befalling her if she saw this particular New Moon in any other way than in the open air.”
It is passing strange, however, that the gentle and beautiful Queen of the Night should have been mostly associated with a malignant influence. Juliet pleads with Romeo not to swear by the “inconstant moon.” The traditional witch gathers her simples only by the light of the moon, as at no other time do they possess the same virtues to work miraculous cures or potent spells. It is also an old belief that if a person goes to sleep with the moonbeams shining full upon his uncovered face, he will be moonstruck, or become an idiot. I well remember to have seen the officer of the watch awaken a number of sleepers, who had taken refuge on the deck of a vessel from the stifling heat below. Milton speaks of
which has become incorporated with the language under the significant nickname of “luny.”
When we consider the already long list of material or immaterial objects threatening us with dire misfortune, the wonder is how poor humanity should have survived so many dangers ever impending over it like the sword of Damocles. Really, we seem “walking between life and death.” The catalogue is, however, by no means exhausted. A picture, particularly if it be a family portrait, falling down from the wall, bodes a death in the family, or at least some great misfortune. This incident, somewhat startling, it must be confessed, to weak nerves, has been quite effectively used in fiction.
Notwithstanding it is the national color of Ireland, green has the name of being unlucky. More strange still is the statement made by Mr. Parnell’s biographer that the famous Irish leader could not bear the sight of green. Queer notion this, in a son of the Emerald Isle! Mr. Barry O’Brien goes on to say that Parnell “would not pass another person on the stairs; was horror-stricken to find himself sitting with three lighted candles; that the fall of a picture in a room made him dejected for the entire afternoon; and that he would have nothing to say to an important bill, drawn up by a colleague, because it happened to contain thirteen clauses.” It is added that the sight of green banners, at the political meetings he addressed, often unnerved him.
The singular actions of a pet cat have recently gained wide currency and wider comment in connection with the ill-fated steamer Portland, which went down with all on board, during the great gale of November 27, 1898. Not a soul was left to tell the tale. It was remarked that puss came off the boat before the regular hour for sailing had arrived, and though she had never before been known to miss a trip, she could not be called or coaxed back on board, and the doomed craft therefore sailed without her. As a matter of fact, it has been noticed that in times of great disasters, like that just related, superstition that has lain dormant for a time, always shows a new vigor, and finds a new reason for being.
In the course of my rambles along the New England coast, I found many people holding to beliefs of one sort or another, who hotly resented the mere suggestion that they were superstitious. The quaint and curious delusions which have become ingrained in their lives from generation to generation, they do not regard in that light. For one thing they believe that if a dead body should remain in the house over Sunday, there will be another death in the family before the year is out.
The ticking of the death-watch, once believed to forebode the approaching dissolution of some member of the family, so terrifying to our fathers and mothers, is now, fortunately, seldom heard or little regarded. While the superstition did prevail, there was nothing so calculated to strike terror to the very marrow of the appalled listeners as the noise of this harmless little beetle, only a quarter of an inch long, tapping away in the decaying woodwork of an ancient wainscot.
There is no end of legendary matter concerning clocks. Sometimes nervous people have been frightened half out of their wits at hearing a clock that had stopped, suddenly strike the hour. Clocks have been known to stop, too, at the exact hour when a death took place in the house. But even more startling was an instance, lately vouched for by reputable witnesses, of a clock, of the coffin pattern, of course, from which the works had been removed, playing this same grewsome trick. The first case might be accounted for, rationally, by some fault in the mechanism, or some rusty spring suddenly set in motion; but all theories necessarily fail with clocks without works. Admonitions or warnings are often associated with clocks, as has been noticed in connection with marriage customs. And the mystical relation between time and eternity is often brought to mind by the stopping of the watch in a drowned person’s pocket, or the relation of some curious legend like the following, without comment or qualification, in a reputable newspaper:—
“There is a curious legend about the old clock, which is to be superseded by a new one, at Washington, Pennsylvania. It is stated that about twenty years ago a person was hung in the courtyard. The clock, which had always tolled out the hour regularly, stopped at the hour of two o’clock, being the hour at which the drop fell that sent the unfortunate into eternity. Since that time, many aver, the clock has never struck again.”
So, also, the howling of a dog, either by day or by night, under a sick person’s window, is to this day held by the weak-minded to portend the death of that person. Some writers think they have traced this belief to the symbolism of ancient mythology, where the dog stands for the howling night-wind, on which the souls of the dead rode to the banks of the Styx, but this hypothesis seems quite far-fetched.
The winding-sheet in the candle is another self-tormenting belief of evil portent, now happily gone out with the candle.
Then again, to pass from this subject, a single case of nosebleed often excites the liveliest fears on the part of nervous people, on account of a very old belief that it was a sure omen of a death taking place in the family. Not long ago the following choice morsel met my eye while reading in a book: “Our steward has this moment lost a drop of blood, which involuntarily fell from his pug nose. ‘There,’ said he, ‘I have lost my mother—a good friend.’”
Breaking a looking-glass denotes that a death will take place in the family within the year. This mode of self-torture is supposed to derive its origin from the great use formerly made of mirrors by magicians and other obsolete impostors in carrying on their mystical trade. Astrologers also made use of the looking-glass in practising the art of divination or foretelling events, probably by means of some such cunning contrivances as are now employed with startling effects by our own “wizards” and “necromancers.” Quite naturally the innocent glass itself came to be looked upon by the ignorant with superstitious awe, and the breaking of one as the sure forerunner of calamity. We do not think, however, that this old superstition is by any means as widely prevalent as it once was.
It is pleasing to chronicle the total disappearance of that terrible bugaboo, the Evil Eye, which so long kept our ancestors in a state of nervous apprehension fearful to contemplate. It is now only perpetuated by a saying. So with that other equally repulsive belief in the efficacy of touching a dead body, as a means of convicting a suspected murderer by the fresh bleeding from the wound. Both of these superstitions were fully accepted by the first settlers of New England, and perhaps also in other of the colonies. John Winthrop relates a very harrowing case of infanticide, in which this monstrous test was put in practice to convict the erring mother.19 The superstition is said to be of German origin.
The following very curious piece of superstition is found in Colonel May’s Journal of his trip to the Ohio, early in the century. It seems that a man had fallen into the river and was drowned before help could reach him. The following method was employed to recover the body. First they took the shirt which the drowned man had last worn, put a whole loaf of good, new bread, weighing four pounds, into it, and tied it up carefully into a bundle. The bundle was then taken in a boat to the place where the man had fallen in, a line and tackle attached to it, and then set afloat on the water. The rescuers said that the bread would float until it should come directly over the body, when it would sink and thus discover the location of the dead man. Unfortunately, the line was not long enough, so that when the loaf filled with water and sank, the tackle disappeared with it.
Haunted houses have proved an insuperable stumbling-block to those wiseacres who no sooner insist that superstition has died out than the familiar headline in the daily paper, “A haunted house,” stares them full in the face. It is believed that many such houses stand tenantless to-day because of the secret fear they inspire in the minds of the timid or superstitious, who, quite naturally, shrink from living under the same roof with disembodied spirits. It has already been noted that M. Camille Flammarion is a firm believer in haunted houses. Here is what he has to say upon that much debated subject:—
“There is no longer any room to doubt the fact that certain houses are haunted.
“I began the scientific studies of these questions on November 15, 1861, and I have continued it ever since. I have received more than four thousand letters upon these questions from the learned men of every land, and I am glad to be able to say that some of the most interesting letters come from America.”
For every haunted house there must, of course, be an invisible intruder who comes only in the small hours, when the effects of its unwelcome presence would, of course, be most terrifying to weak nerves. But it is to be remarked that we hear nothing nowadays of the old-time, hair-raising, blood-curdling ghost whose coming forebode something terrible about to happen, or who had some awful revelation to make. That type of ghost has passed away. The modern ghost never makes set speeches in a sepulchral voice or leaves a palpable smell of brimstone behind. It comes rather in a spirit of mischief-making, shown in such petty annoyances as setting the house bells ringing, overturning articles of furniture, twitching the bedclothes from off a sleeping person in the coldest of cold nights, putting out the lights, or making a horrible racket, first in one room, then in another, as if it revelled in pure wantonness of purpose. In short, there is no limit to the ingenious deviltries perpetrated by this nocturnal disturber of domestic peace and quiet.
After two or three sleepless nights, followed by days of quaking apprehension, the occupants usually move out, declaring that they would not live in the house if it were given to them. And so it stands vacant indefinitely, shunned by all to whom its evil reputation has become known, a visible monument of active superstition.
That all these things have happened as lately as in this year of grace (1900) is too well known to be denied. And as most people would desire to shun publicity in such a matter, there are probably very many cases that never reach the public eye at all. One such is reported of a family at Charlestown, Massachusetts, being disturbed by strange noises, as of some one pounding on the walls or floors at all hours of the night. Even the police, when summoned, failed to lay hands on the invisible tormentor, who, like the ghost in Hamlet, was here, there, and nowhere in a jiffy.
One of the most singular cases that have come to my knowledge, perhaps because the unaccountable disturbances happened in the daytime, whereas they habitually occur only in the night-time, when churchyards are supposed to yawn, was that of a haunted schoolhouse. This was downright bravado. If we do not err, in this case a bell was repeatedly rung during the regular sessions, by no visible agency, to the amazement of both teachers and scholars. After a vain search for the cause, the schoolhouse was shut up, and so remained for a considerable time, a speechless but tangible witness to the general belief that the devil was at the bottom of it all.
Not many generations ago, when ghosts were perhaps more numerous than at present, there were professional exorcists who could be hired to clear the premises of ghosts or no pay; but this is now a lost art. As Shakespeare says:—
While upon this interesting subject it may be instructive to know what our ancestors sometimes suffered from similar visitations. We take the following extract from Ben Franklin’s New England Courant, of 1726:—
“They write from Plymouth, that an extraordinary event has lately happened in that neighborhood, in which, some say, the Devil and the man of the house are very much to blame. The man it seems, would now and then in a frolic call upon the Devil to come down the chimney; and some little time after the last invitation, the goodwife’s pudding turned black in the boiling, which she attributed to the Devil’s descending the chimney, and getting into the pot upon her husband’s repeated wishes for him. Great numbers of people have been to view the pudding, and to inquire into the circumstances; and most of them agree that so sudden a change must be produced by a preternatural power. However, ’tis thought it will have this good effect upon the man, that he will no more be so free with the Devil in his cups, lest his Satanic Majesty should again unluckily tumble into the pot.”
But houses are by no means the only things subject to these astounding visitations. Dark and secluded ponds, thick swamps, and barren hillsides often bear that unsavory reputation to-day, it may be from association with some weird tale or legend, or mayhap because such places seldom fail, of themselves, to produce a certain effect upon an active imagination. Let any such person, who has ever been lost in some thick forest, recall his sensations upon first making the unwelcome discovery. The solemn old woods then seem all alive with—
As regards haunted ships, the following incident, taken down as literally as I could transcribe it at the time, from the lips of a seafaring friend, speaks for itself:—
“‘Twas some dozen year ago, may be less, may be more—beats all how time travels when you’ve turned the half-century post—I was aboard of the old Paul Pry—queer name, now, warn’t it? We was a lyin’ in Havana harbor, all snug, about a mile from shore. Well, the mate he was on watch. In port, you know, ships always keep slack watch. Our’n was light, nothin’ in her, hold all swep’ out clean that very day, ’cause we was to begin takin’ in sugar and molasses in the mornin’. All hands were off in the ship’s boat visitin’ another ship—all ’cept the steward. The old man, he was ashore.
“I’m slow, but you just hold your hosses. All to once’t the mate thought he heern somebody walkin’ back’ards and for’ards plumb down in the hold. He walked to the open hatch and called down, ‘Who’s there?’ No answer. He listened. No sound. Thinkin’ it might possibly have been the steward getting his firewood, the mate went for’ard to the steward’s room to see if it was so, and found him fast asleep in his bunk. That settled it. Nobody aboard but them two.
“The mate he said nothin’ to nobody, but got a lantern and slipped quietly down the ladder into the hold, determined to find out who was skylarkin’ there, for I tell you the mate he was a game one all the time, and don’t you b’leeve he warn’t!
“He hunted high and low, from the fore-peak to the run, but not a soul was to be seen anywhere; but just as soon as he stood still he would hear those myster’ous footsteps go trampin’ fore and aft, fore and aft, as plain as day, right by him, where he stood.
“By this time the mate had got pretty well worked up, I want you to know, so he just gin one kinder skeered look around him, and then hustled himself off up that ladder just a leetle mite faster than he came down, wonderin’ to himself what it all could mean, and thinkin’ all sorts of things to once’t.
“Then he went and woke up the steward, and both on ’em went and listened fust at one hatch, then at t’other, and sure enough that consarned tramp, tramp, tramp, was a-goin’ on agin just the same as before. Then they pulled on the hatches. But, Lor’ bless you, it warn’t no use. Them critters down below had the bulge on ’em every time.
“The mate he said nothin’ ’cept to the old man, who looked as black as a new-painted deadeye with the lanyards unrove when he heerd it; but somehow it leaked out among the crew before we sailed, and one or two ran away and laid low till the ship was clean out of the harbor.
“It was gen’lly b’leeved fore and aft that them there footsteps was a warnin’. Hows’ever, the thing quieted down some in a day or two, so nothin’ more was heerd of the walkin’ match down below; but on the third day out, I think it was, we was struck by one of them northers, and in spite of all we could do we was drove ashore on a reef off the Bermudys, where the Paul Pry brought up all standin’, and there she left her old bones. The wreckers they came and took off the crew, and fetched ’em all safe into Nassau. Now if that ship warn’t haunted, I miss my guess. You can’t most always tell about them things, I know; but ef it was skylarkin’, all I’ve got to say is, it was a purty neat job, and don’t you forget it.”
There are also places, as well as houses, which have the reputation of being haunted, sometimes through the commission of a horrible crime in that particular locality, sometimes through the survival of some obscure local tradition. It matters not. Once give the place a bad name, and local tradition preserves the memory of it for many generations. Every schoolboy is familiar with the weird legend of Nix’s Mate, a submerged island at the entrance to Boston Harbor, where pirates were formerly hung in chains. Appledore Island, on the coast of New Hampshire, once had the name of being haunted by the uneasy ghost of one of Captain Kidd’s piratical crew. The face of the spectre was said by those who had seen it, or who thought they had seen it, to be dreadful to behold, and the neck to bear the livid mark of the hangman’s noose. Once, no islander could be found hardy enough to venture himself on Appledore after dark. Indeed, such places of fearsome reputation are found all over New England. For example, there is the shrieking woman of Marblehead, a remarkable spook, who at certain intervals of time could be heard uttering the most heartrending cries for mercy to her inhuman murderers. Then, again, there is the legend of Harry Main, reputed pirate and wrecker, who, by means of false lights, decoyed simple mariners to destruction on the shoals of Ipswich Bar, to which for his many crimes the wretch was doomed to be chained down to the fatal spot to which he had lured his unsuspecting victims.20
Quite naturally these legends mostly cluster about the seacoast, but now and then one is found in the interior. One corner of the town of Chester, New Hampshire, lifts into view an eminence known as Rattlesnake Hill, one rocky side of which is pierced entirely through, thus forming a cavern of great notoriety in all the country round. This cavern is known as the Devil’s Den, and many were the frightful stories told around winter firesides of the demons who, of yore, haunted it, and who, all unseen of mortal eyes, there held their midnight orgies within the gloomy recesses of the mountain.
There are two entrances to this cavern, both leading to an interior, subterranean chamber, whose vaulted roof is thickly studded with pear-shaped protuberances that are said to shine and sparkle when the flame of a torch sheds a ruddy glow upon them. According to popular tradition the path leading to the cavern was always kept open, summer and winter. Many years ago the poet Whittier put the legend into verse:—
The persistent life of such local traditions as these fully attests to the belief of former generations of men in the active agency of the Evil One in human affairs. And not only this, but this omnipresent devil has actually left his mark, legibly stamped, in so many places, and his name in so many others, that to doubt his actual presence were not only unreasonable but ungenerous. Even his footprints are found here and there, yet strange to say, few represent a cloven foot. The sonorous names, Devil’s Pulpit and Devil’s Cartway, are found within a few miles of each other on the coast of Maine. Moreover, do we not know from a perusal of the testimony given at the celebrated witchcraft trials, that the arch-fiend had been both seen and spoken with in propria persona?
It used to be a not uncommon threat with quick-tempered people to say that if their wishes or expectations were not gratified to their liking, they would “haunt you” when they died. I myself have often heard this expression used either in jest or in earnest; and when used it never failed to leave a disagreeable impression on the listener.
It is not a great many years ago since an account was telegraphed all over the country, and duly appeared in the daily newspapers, of an honest citizen, a resident of one of the largest towns in Pennsylvania, whose wife “while yet in good health, frequently admonished her friends that she did not wish her body to be buried in a certain wet graveyard. She threatened to ‘speak to them’ if her wish was not granted, and went so far as to tell them how she would haunt them by coming back in ghostly form. The wife died, and her body was buried in the graveyard she had disliked. Now, strange as it may appear, her husband alleges that, since the funeral took place, she has appeared at his bedside several times each week, always looking at him, and always making motions with her bony hands, as a mark of her displeasure. The husband says he is unable to sleep, and also that he is sure the strange midnight visitor is none other than his wife. He declares that whatever other people may think of it, he himself firmly believes that he has brought the enmity of the spirit upon himself and children by their refusal to grant the wife’s last request. The children’s beds are also visited by her, as they say, and as a consequence the family is kept in constant alarm. One of the nearest neighbors has also seen the ‘spook’ several times, and corroborates the family in every particular. The terrified husband relates the facts himself, and it is the responsibility of the man that warrants publishing his story of the appearance of the spook. He gives the account of the strange happenings in a straightforward manner, which impresses a person with its truth, and he further says it is not imagination, a dream, or an attack of nightmare, but that the spook always comes when he is wide awake. The women and children of the neighborhood are in great terror, and the people hardly venture out of doors after dark.”
Upon the heels of this experience comes the following telegram to the Associated Press, thus disseminating, through its thousand channels, superstition broadcast:—
[“Copyright, 1899, by The Associated Press.]
“London, March 4, 1899. Another link in the chain of illfortune which has followed the famous Newstead Abbey was forged this week. It seems that a curse rests on the abbey, and that the eldest has never succeeded to the estate.
“Byron sold it to Col. Wildman in 1808, who died childless. The trustees sold it to Webb, the famous sportsman, whose eldest son died this week. Byron had the skull which was reported to have belonged to the ghost that haunted the abbey, and he used it as a punch bowl. Webb buried the skull, hoping to lay the ghost.”
As related to the general subject, it is too well known that certain persons to-day profess the power of conversing with disembodied spirits, to need more than a passing reference to this particular form of belief, which some hold to as firmly as to an article of religious faith, while others consider it a delusion or worse. Forty odd years ago spirit rappings convulsed society from one end of the country to the other. Spiritual séances were vehemently denounced from the pulpit, and while fully reported also by the press, the mediums were charged with being rank impostors, humbugs, and the like. Alleged exposure followed exposure. Yet somehow the belief, such as it is, has contrived to outlive ridicule, calumny, and persecution—the common lot of every new and startling departure from the older beliefs—until to-day it has acquired not only the right to live, but also that of calm discussion.
Dr. Samuel Johnson once asked the pertinent question, “If moral evil be consistent with the government of the Deity, why may not physical evil be consistent with it?” The solemn declaration that the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generations, sometimes recurs to us with startling force, more especially when the awful anathema is brought so near home to us as it is by the following veracious incident.21
There is a certain well-known locality in Essex County, Massachusetts, which has long borne the evil reputation of being haunted, owing to the tradition that a cruel murder was committed there. According to some of the old people from whom I had the story, strange sights and sounds have been both seen and heard near the spot where the crime took place. For instance, a child would be heard crying out most pitifully, though nothing could be seen. One belated horseman positively declared that when passing this accursed place he had seen a child’s coffin moving along the road, as he moved; and that the spectre followed him almost into the town of Ipswich. It is said to be a fact that many of the old folks were afraid to pass this place of dread after dark.
As to the origin of the story, with its highly dramatic features, accounts differ somewhat; but considerable pains have been taken to arrive at the truth, since it is a matter of general notoriety in the neighborhood referred to, although the actual facts may have no relation whatever to the “skeleton in the closet” disclosed by the story itself.
The story goes back to colonial times, and chiefly has to do with the two daughters of a family in good social standing. These young women had for a serving-maid a negro slave, who was treated with marked severity by her haughty mistresses.
In time, the slave woman bore a child. Angered at the coming of the luckless little waif, the cruel sisters resolved to put it out of the way. One day the mother found it hid away in a hogshead of flax, in the garret. Failing in this attempt, the sisters then took the child, stuck pins into its veins, and tried to smother it between two feather beds. When the infant was thought to be quite dead, the body was thrown into a brook, under a nearby bridge which spanned it. Life, however, was not quite extinct, so that the child’s cries were heard by a passing traveller, who rescued it, but it soon after bled to death from the wounds inflicted upon it.
Half crazed by this dastardly act, the forlorn mother then and there called down the curse of God upon the inhuman sisters and their sons to all future generations.
This is substantially the legend. Now for the sequel. It is said to be a fact that all the sons of the daughters of that family, and no others, have ever since been afflicted with a strange and incurable malady, the principal feature being a tendency to profuse bleeding from the most trifling cuts or wounds. After some days have elapsed, a mere scratch will begin to bleed copiously and so continue until the sufferer has lost so much blood that in some cases it is said he has bled to death. From this circumstance the persons so afflicted are known by the name of “bleeders.”
Mr. Felt asserts that the family in which this singular hemorrhage first appeared brought it with them from England; which, if true, would summarily dispose of the legend; but his statement does not accord with the story as told on the spot. It is here related as it was told to me.
Reference was earlier made to the old-time, respectable ghost of our fathers, who like the ghost in Hamlet, made his unwelcome appearance only to subserve the ends of justice. This practical generation hardly realizes, we think, how lately the ghost was accepted in that character, or how trustworthy his evidence was deemed by the purveyors of public intelligence. On turning over the files of the New England Weekly Journal of December 1, 1729, we came across the following ghost story, here reproduced verbatim:—
“Last week, one belonging to Ipswich came to Boston and related that some time since he was at Canso in Nova Scotia, and that on a certain day there appeared to him an apparition in blood and wounds, and told him that at such a time and place, mentioning both, he was barbarously murdered by one, who was at Rhode Island, and desired him to go to the said person and charge him with the said murder, and prosecute him therefor, naming several circumstances relating to the murder; and that since his arrival from Canso to Ipswich the said apparition had appeared to him again, and urged him immediately to prosecute the said affair. The abovesaid person having related the matter was advised and encouraged to go to Rhode Island and engage therein, and he accordingly set out for that place on Thursday last.”22
Dr. Timothy Dwight, in his “Travels,” records, with approval, the following singular superstition relative to the barberry, which is so common in New England. “This bush,” he remarks, “is, in New England, generally believed to blast both wheat and rye. Its blossoms, which are very numerous, and continue a considerable time, emit very copiously a pungent effluvium believed to be so acrimonious as to injure essentially both these kinds of grain.
“In Southborough, a township in the county of Worcester, a Mr. Johnson sowed with rye a field of new ground. At the south end of this field also grew a single barberry bush. The grain was blasted throughout the whole length of the field, on a narrow tract commencing at the bush and proceeding directly in the course, and to the extent, to which the blossoms were diffused by the wind.”
Certes, that was a most extraordinary belief held by the simple country folk in a certain quiet corner of New England, that candles made of the tallow obtained from a dead body, would, when lighted, render the person carrying them invisible; and furthermore that a lighted candle of this description, if placed within a bedroom, would effectually prevent a sleeping person from waking until it should be extinguished. This I had from the lips of a most intelligent and estimable lady, who knew whereof she spoke.
I confess that on hearing this statement I realized that I had now found more than I was looking for. But incredible as it may seem at first, all doubts were set at rest by the following article found among some fragments of old superstition in a certain treatise on that subject. Here is the article verbatim:—
“The Hand of Glory is a piece of foreign superstition common in France, Germany, and Spain; and is a charm used by housebreakers and assassins. It is the hand of a hanged man, holding a candle made of the fat of a hanged man, virgin wax, and siasme of Lapland. It stupefies those to whom it is presented, and renders them motionless, insomuch that they could not stir, any more than if they were dead.”
I do not find any recent mention of the appearance of that ancient bugbear known as the Will-o’-the-wisp, or magical Jack-o’-lantern, associated with the unearthly light sometimes seen flitting about ancient graveyards. Science has practically accounted for this natural phenomenon to the general acceptance; but science has not yet been able to do away with the instinctive dread with which the vicinity of a graveyard is associated in most minds. I well remember how, when a lad, I dreaded to pass a graveyard after dark. There was a sickly feeling of something lurking among those ghostly looking tombstones. I looked another way. I whistled, I looked behind me. Vain effort! I ran from the spot as if all the ghosts my fears had conjured up were close at my heels.
We approach a still different class of evil omens, or such as are believed by many to “cast their shadows before,” in such a manner as to prey upon the spirits, or show their visible effects in the daily actions of men, usually well balanced, with a feeling akin to respectful fear. Let other forms of superstition be never so mirth-provoking, the reality of this one, at least to those of an imaginative or highly impressible nature, is such that we are sobered at once. What concerns such momentous events as life and death is really no jesting matter.
There may be, probably is, a scientific explanation for those fancies that sometimes come over us, with a sinking feeling at the heart. Men usually keep silent. Women more often give utterance to their feelings. How many times have we heard this remark: “O dear, I feel as if something was going to happen!”
There is still another phase of the subject. Probably hundreds, perhaps thousands, could be found, who, at some time or other, have passed through some strange experience, which they are wholly unable to account for on any rational theory or ground whatever. Perhaps it has been to the inner man what the skeleton in the closet is to the family home. Unfortunately, it is only in moments when men lay bare their inmost thoughts to each other that these things, so valuable from the standpoint of psychology, leak out. What is, then, the secret power, which, in our waking hours, our sober consciousness, is able to oppress our spirits like some hideous nightmare? In its nature it seems most often a warning of coming evil or future event,—in fact, an omen of which we obtain the knowledge by accident, or without design or premeditation. Were it not for the fear of ridicule, we are persuaded that a multitude of persons could testify to some very interesting phenomena of this kind, drawn from their own experiences.
There was a woman whom I knew very well, in a little seaport of Maine, a respectable, middle-aged matron, who asserted that no one ever died in that village unless she had a warning. Precisely what the nature of that warning was she would never divulge; but it is nevertheless a fact that she was often consulted by her neighbors when any one was taken seriously ill, and that her oracular dictum received full and entire credit among them.
In that same little seaport the superstition is current that a sick person will not die till ebb tide. As that goes out, so does the life. This particular article of superstitious faith still holds in some parts of England, we understand, and is made use of by Dickens in “David Copperfield.”
The following incident came to my knowledge while I was in the near neighborhood of the place where a recent shocking railroad accident had happened. Naturally, it was the one topic of conversation, far and near. The engine-man, an old and trusted servant of the company, went down with his engine in the wreck. While being dug out from under his engine, crushed and bleeding, the poor fellow said to his rescuers: “Three times I’ve seen a man on the track at this very place, and three times I’ve stopped my engine. I said this morning that I wouldn’t go over the road again; but couldn’t get any one to take my place, and here I am.”
That a sinister presentiment should cross one in moments of extreme peril, may be easily conceived, but why it should occur, and does occur, at times when no known danger threatens, or any mental or physical condition would seem to warrant it, is not so easily understood. Yet history is full of such examples, related, too, not of the weaker sort, but of the strongest characters. Mr. Motley, in his “John of Barneveld,” gives a vivid picture of Henry IV. of France just before his death. The great monarch was on the point of departure, at the head of the best appointed army he had ever commanded, for the war against Spain. “But he delayed for a few days to take part in the public festivities in honor of the coronation of his queen. These festivities he dreaded, and looked forward to them with gloomy forebodings. He was haunted with fears that they involved his own life, and that he should not survive them. He said many times to his favorite minister, Sully: ‘I know not how it is, but my heart tells me that some misfortune is to befall me. I shall never go out of it.’ He had dreams, also, which assumed to him the force of revelations, that he was to die in a carriage, and at the first magnificent festival he gave. Sully asked him why he did not abandon the proposed festivities at the coronation, and actually went to the queen to persuade her to countermand them. But she refused in high indignation, being, as is now supposed, in the conspiracy against his life. The result is well known: the king was assassinated in his carriage by Ravaillac, as the festivities were in progress.”
Every one remembers the curious incident in regard to Lord Thomas Lyttleton’s vision, as related in Boswell’s “Johnson,” predicting the time of his death, and its exact fulfilment; and Johnson’s solemn comments thereon. “It is the most extraordinary thing that has happened in my day. I heard it with my own ears from his uncle, Lord Westcote.” Lord Byron once observed that several remarkable things had happened on his birthday, as they also had to Napoleon. Marie Antoinette, too, was a firm believer in these presentiments. She thus declares herself in language that now seems prophetic: “At my wedding something whispered to me that I was signing my death warrant. At the last moment I would have retreated if I could have done so.”
Our early New England historian, Winthrop, mentions a singular case of presentiment of death, experienced by one Baker, of Salem. This man, on going forth to his work, in the morning, told his wife he should never see her more. He was killed by a stick of timber, falling upon him, that same day.
It is quite true that we do not attach nearly as much importance to events happening a long time ago as to those occurring in our own day; for one thing, perhaps, because they do not seem so easy of verification; for another, because we choose to believe that they merely reflect the ignorance of a past age. That there is really no difference in the susceptibility of man to such premonitions, so long as he shall be the creature of feeling, is proved by the most irrefragable testimony. The poet Whittier, who took a peculiar delight in the legendary tales of New England, has related one or two incidents that came within his own knowledge, to this effect. “A very honest and intelligent neighbor of mine,” says the narrator, “once told me that at the precise moment when his brother was drowned in the Merrimack River, many miles distant, he felt a sudden and painful sensation—a death-like chill upon the heart, such as he had never before experienced. And,” adds the poet, “I have heard many similar relations.”
The following, he says, “are the facts,” relative to another incident that happened in his vicinity. “In September, 1831, a worthy and highly esteemed inhabitant of this town (Haverhill, Mass.) died suddenly on the bridge over the Merrimack, by the bursting of a blood-vessel. It was just at daybreak, when he was engaged with another person in raising the draw of the bridge for the passage of a sloop. The suddenness of the event, the excellent character of the deceased, and above all, a vague rumor that some extraordinary disclosure was to be made, drew together a large concourse at the funeral. After the solemn services were concluded, Thomas, the brother of the dead man—himself a most exemplary Christian—rose up and desired to relate some particulars regarding his brother’s death. He then stated—and his manner was calm, solemn, impressive—that more than a month previous to his death, his brother had told him that his feelings had been painfully disturbed by seeing, at different times on the bridge, a quantity of human blood; that sometimes while he was gazing upon it, it suddenly disappeared, as if removed by an invisible hand; ... that many times in the dusk of the evening, he had seen a vessel coming down the river, which vanished just as it reached the draw; and that, at the same time, he had heard a voice calling in a faint and lamentable tone, ‘I am dying!’ and that the voice sounded like his own: that then he knew the vision was for him, and that his hour of departure was at hand. Thomas, moreover, stated that a few days before the melancholy event took place, his brother, after assuring him that he would be called upon to testify to the accounts which he had given of the vision on the bridge, told him that he had actually seen the same vessel go up the river whose spectral image he had seen in his vision, and that when it returned the fatal fulfilment would take place.”
Though of still earlier date, the remarkable premonition of Rev. Samuel Newman, of Rehoboth, will bear being repeated here. According to his biographer, he not only felt a certain presage of the approach of death, but seemed to triumph in the prospect of its being near. Yet he was apparently in perfect health, and preached a sermon from Job xiv. 14, “All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come.” In the afternoon of the following Lord’s Day, he asked the deacon to pray with him, saying he had not long to live. As soon as he had finished his prayer he said the time was come when he must leave the world; but his friends seeing no sign of approaching dissolution, thought it was merely the effect of imagination. Immediately he turned away, saying, “Angels, do your office!” and expired on the spot.
Lord Roberts of Kandahar relates the following of himself: “My intention, when I left Kabul, was to ride as far as the Khyber Pass; but suddenly a presentiment, which I have never been able to explain to myself, made me retrace my steps and hurry back toward Kabul—a presentiment of coming trouble which I can only characterize as instinctive.
“The feeling was justified when, about halfway between Butkhak and Kabul, I was met by Sir Donald Stewart and my chief of the staff, who brought me the astounding news of the total defeat by Ayab Khan of Brigadier-general Burrows’s brigade at Malwand, and of Lieutenant-general Primrose, with the remainder of his force, being besieged at Kandahar.”23
Most people are familiar with the story told by President Lincoln to a friend,—told too, in his own half-playful, half-pathetic way, as if to minimize the effect upon that friend’s mind. It is given in the words of that friend:—
“It was just after my election in 1860, when the news had been coming in thick and fast all day and there had been a great ‘hurrah, boys,’ so that I was well tired out and went home to rest, throwing myself down on a lounge in my chamber. Opposite where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it (and here he got up and placed furniture to illustrate the position), and looking in that glass I saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion vanished. On lying down again, I saw it a second time, plainer if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler—say, five shades—than the other, I got up, and the thing melted away; and I went off, and in the excitement of the hour forgot all about it—nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up and give me a little pang, as if something uncomfortable had happened. When I went home again that night, I told my wife about it, and a few days afterward I made the experiment again, when (with a laugh), sure enough! the thing came again; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was somewhat worried about it. She thought it was a ‘sign’ that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term.”
These are by no means isolated cases. It is said that General Hancock, who had faced the King of Terrors on too many battle-fields to fear him, was pursued by a presentiment of this sort, only too soon to be fully verified. While present as an honored guest at a dinner, surrounded by his old comrades in arms, the general remarked to a friend that he had come there with a premonition that it would be his last visit, and that he had but a short time longer to live. In fact, his lamented death occurred within a short time after.
Instances of fatal presentiments before going into battle are familiar to every veteran of our great Civil War. I have heard many of them feelingly rehearsed by eye-witnesses. The same thing has occurred, under precisely similar conditions, during the late war with Spain. But here is a tale of that earlier conflict, as published broadcast to the world, without question or qualification:—
“In a research for facts bearing upon psychology, Mrs. Bancroft (a daughter-in-law of the historian) has brought to light a strange story relating to either the record of odd ‘spirit communications’ or coincidences. On July 2, 1863, the wives of Major Thomas Y. Brent and Captain Eugene Barnes, two Confederate officers, were together at a wedding in Fayette County, each wearing her bridal dress. While dressing for the occasion Mrs. Brent’s companion discovered a blood spot upon the dress of the major’s wife, which could not be accounted for, and somewhat excitedly exclaimed, ‘It is a bad omen!’ Two days after Mrs. Brent experienced a severe pain in the region of her heart, although at the time in the best of health. This occurred at the birthplace of her husband. Two days later she heard that, while storming a Federal fortification, her husband was killed on July 4, 1863, as far as she could learn, at the identical time that she had experienced the heart pain. The major was shot in the breast by a Minié ball and instantly killed.”
There lies before me, as I write, the authoritative statement of an army officer, a survivor of the terrible charge up San Juan Hill, before Santiago de Cuba, to the effect that just before advancing to the charge a brother officer had confided to him a conviction that the speaker would be killed, entreating his friend to receive his last messages for his relatives. In this case, too, the fatal premonition was fully verified. The doomed man was shot while bravely storming the Spanish stronghold.
Still another story of this war has been widely published, so lately as this chapter was begun. It has reference to the death of the bandmaster of the United States ship Lancaster, then cruising in the South Atlantic. Upon learning that the Lancaster was to touch at Rio de Janeiro the bandmaster requested his discharge, giving as his reason that he had for years been under the presentiment that if he went to that port he would die of yellow fever. A discharge was refused him. The ship entered the harbor of Rio, and the bandmaster immediately took to his bed with all the symptoms of yellow fever. The identity of the malady soon established itself. He was taken to the plague hospital on shore and there died. One of the bandsmen who kissed him as he was being removed from the ship also died. The account goes on to say that “these two are the only cases reported at Rio for months. The fever has not spread, and no man besides the unfortunate bandsman caught the fever, the health of the ship’s crew remaining excellent.”
The number of persons who have testified to having seen the apparitions or death wraiths of dying or deceased friends is already large, as the records of various societies for psychical research bear witness. These phenomena are not in their nature forewarnings of something that is about to happen, but announcements of something that already has happened. They therefore can have no relation to what was formerly known as “second sight.”
In spite of all that our much-boasted civilization has done in the way of freeing poor, fallible man from the thraldom of superstition, there is indubitable evidence that a great many people still put faith in direct revelations from the land of spirits. In the course of a quiet chat one evening, where the subject was under discussion, one of the company who had listened attentively, though silently all the while, to all manner of theories, spiced with ridicule, abruptly asked how we would account for the following incident which he went on to relate, and I have here set down word for word:—
“My grandparents,” he began, “had a son whom they thought all the world of. From all accounts I guess Tom was about one of the likeliest young fellows that could be scared up in a day’s journey. Everybody said Tom was bound to make his mark in the world, and at the time I speak of he seemed in a fair way of doing it, too, for at one and twenty he was first mate of the old Argonaut which had just sailed for Calcutta. This would make her tenth voyage. Well, as I am telling you, the very day after the Argonaut went to sea, a tremendous gale set in from the eastward. It blew great guns. Actually, now, it seemed as if that gale would never stop blowing.
“As day after day went by, and the storm raged on without intermission, you may judge if the hearts of those who had friends at sea in that ship did not sink down and down with the passing hours. Of course, the old folks could think of nothing else.
“Let me see; it was a good bit ago. Ah, yes; it was on the third or fourth night of the gale, I don’t rightly remember which, and it don’t matter much, that grandfather and grandmother were sitting together, as usual, in the old family sitting-room, he poring over the family Bible as he was wont to do in such cases, she knitting and rocking, or pretending to knit, but both full of the one ever present thought, which each was trying so hard to hide from the other.
“Dismally splashed the raindrops against the window-panes, mournfully the wind whined in the chimney-top, while every now and then the fire would spit and sputter angrily on the hearth, or flare up fitfully when some big gust came roaring down the chimney to fan the embers into a fiercer flame. Then there would be a lull, during which, like an echo of the tempest, the dull and distant booming of the sea was borne to the affrighted listener’s ears. But nothing I could say would begin to give you an idea of the great gale of 1817.
“Well, the old folks sat there as stiff as two statues, listening to every sound. When a big gust tore over the house and shook it till it rocked again, gran’ther would steal a look at grandmother over his specs, but say never a word. The old lady would give a start, let her hands fall idly upon her lap, sit for a moment as if dazed, and then go on with her knitting again as if her very life depended on it.
“Unable at length to control her feelings, grandmother got up out of her chair, with her work in her hand, went to the window, put aside the curtain, and looked out. I say looked out, for of course all was so pitch-dark outside that nothing could be seen, yet there she stood with her white face pressed close to the wet panes, peering out into the night, as if questioning the storm itself of the absent one.
“All at once she drew back from the window with a low cry, saying in a broken voice: ‘My God, father, it’s Tom in his coffin! They’re bringing him up here, to the house.’ Then she covered her face with her hands, to shut out the horrid sight.
“‘Set down ’Mandy!’ sternly commanded the startled old man. ‘Don’t be making a fool of yourself. Don’t ye know tain’t no sech a thing what you’re sayin’? Set down, I say, this minnit!’
“But no one could ever convince grandmother that she had not actually seen, with her own eyes, her dear boy Tom, the idol of her heart, lying cold in death. To her indeed it was a revelation from the tomb, for the ship in which Tom had sailed was never heard from.”