VII. GHOSTS AND WITCHCRAFTS
CHAPTER. XXXIV
HAUNTED HOUSES. – A NIGHT SPENT ALONE WITH A GHOST. – KIRBY, THE ACTOR. – COLT’S PISTOLS VERSUS HOBGOBLINS. – THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED
A great many persons believe more or less in haunted houses. In almost every community there is some building that has had a mysterious history. This is true in all countries, and among all races and nations. Indeed it is to this very fact that the ingenious author of the “Twenty-seventh-street Ghost” may attribute his success in creating such an excitement. In fact, I will say, “under the rose,” he predicted his hopes of success entirely upon this weakness in human nature. Even in “this day and age of the world” there are hundreds of deserted buildings which are looked upon with awe, or terror, or superstitious interest. They have frightened their former inhabitants away, and left the buildings in the almost undisputed possession of real moles, bats, and owls, and imaginary goblins and sprites.
In the course of my travels in both hemispheres I have been amazed at the great number of such cases that have come under my personal observation.
But for the present, I will give a brief account of a haunted house in Yorkshire, England, in which some twenty years ago, Kirby, the actor, who formerly played at the Chatham Theatre, passed a pretty strange night. I met Mr. Kirby in London in 1844, and I will give, in nearly his own language, a history of his lone night in this haunted house, as he gave it to me within a week after its occurrence. I will add, that I saw no reason to doubt Mr. Kirby’s veracity, and he assured me upon his honor that the statement was literally true to the letter. Having myself been through several similar places in the daytime, I felt a peculiar interest in the subject, and hence I have a vivid recollection of nearly the exact words in which he related his singular nocturnal adventure. One thing is certain: Kirby was not the man to be afraid of trying such an experiment.
“I had heard wonderful stories about this house,” said Mr. Kirby to me, “and I was very glad to get a chance to enter it, although, I confess, the next morning I was about as glad to get out of it.”
“It was an old country-seat – a solid stone mansion which had long borne the reputation of a haunted house. It was watched only by one man. He was the old gardener, – an ancient servant of the family that once lived there, and a person in whom the family reposed implicit confidence.
“Having had some inkling of this wonderful place, and having a few days to spare before going to London to fulfil an engagement at the Surry Theatre, I thought I would probe this haunted-house story to the bottom. I therefore called on the old gardener who had charge of the place, and introduced myself as an American traveller desirous of spending a night with his ghosts. The old man seemed to be about seventy-five or eighty years of age. I met him at the gate of the estate, where he kept guard. He told me, when I applied, that it was a dangerous spot to enter, but I could pass it if I pleased. I should, however, have to return by the same door, if I ever came back again.
“Wishing to make sure of the job, I gave him a sovereign, and asked him to give me all the privileges of the establishment; and if his bill amounted to more, I would settle it when I returned. He looked at me with an expression of doubt and apprehension, as much as to say that he neither understood what I was going to do nor what was likely to happen. He merely remarked:
“‘You can go in.’
“‘Will you go with me, and show me the road?’
“‘I will.’
“‘Go ahead.’
“We entered. The gate closed. I suddenly turned on my man, the old gardener and custodian of the place, and said to him:
“‘Now, my patriarchal friend, I am going to sift this humbug to the bottom, even if I stay here forty nights in succession; and I am prepared to lay all “spirits” that present themselves; but if you will save me all trouble in the matter and frankly explain to me the whole affair, I will never mention it to your injury, and I will present you with ten golden sovereigns.’
“The old fellow looked astonished; but he smirked, and whimpered, and trembled, and said:
“‘I am afraid to do that; but I will warn you against going too far.’
“When we had crossed a courtyard, he rang a bell, and several strange noises were distinctly heard. I was introduced to the establishment through a well-constructed archway, which led to a large stairway, from which we proceeded to a great door, which opened into a very large room. It was a library. The old custodian had carried a torch (and I was prepared with a box of matches.) He was acting evidently ‘on the square,’ and I sat myself down in the library, where he told me that I should soon see positive evidence that this was a haunted house.
“Not being a very firm believer in the doctrine of houses really haunted, I proposed to keep a pretty good hold of my match-box, and lest there should be any doubt about it, I had also provided myself with two sperm candles, which I kept in my pocket, so I should not be left too suddenly and too long in the dark.
“‘Now Sir,’ said he, ‘I wish you to hold all your nerves steady and keep your courage up, because I intend to stand by you as well as I can, but I never come into this house alone.’
“‘Well, what is the matter with the house?’
“‘Oh! everything, Sir!’
“‘What?’
“‘Well, when I was much younger than I am now, the master of this estate got frightened here by some mysterious appearances, noises, sounds, etc., and he preferred to leave the place.’
“‘Why?’
“‘He had a tradition from his grandfather, and pretty well kept alive in the family, that it was a haunted house; and he let out the estate to the smaller farmers of the neighborhood, and quit the premises, and never returned again, except one night, and after that one night he left. We suppose he is dead. Now, Sir, if you wish to spend the night here as you have requested, what may happen to you I don’t know; but I tell you it is a haunted house, and I would not sleep here to-night for all the wealth of the Bank of England!’
“This did not deter me in the least, and having the means of self-protection around me, and plenty of lucifer matches, etc., I thought I would explore this mystery and see whether a humbug which had terrified the proprietors of that magnificent house in the midst of a magnificent estate, for upward of sixty years, could not be explored and exploded. That it was a humbug, I had no doubt; that I would find it out, I was not so certain.
“I sat down in the library, fully determined to spend the night in the establishment. A door was opened into an adjoining room where there was a dust-covered lounge, and every thing promised as much comfort as could be expected under the circumstances.
“However, before the old keeper of the house left, I asked him to show me over the building, and let me explore for myself the different rooms and apartments. To all this he readily consented; and as he had some prospect before him of making a good job out of it, he displayed a great deal of alacrity, and moved along very quick and smart for a man apparently eighty years of age.
“I went from room to room and story to story. Everything seemed to be well arranged, but somewhat dusty and time-worn. I kept a pretty sharp lookout, but I could see no sort of machinery for producing a grand effect.
“We finally descended to the library, when I closed the door, and bolting and locking it, took the key and put it in my pocket.
“‘Now, Sir,’ I said to the keeper, ‘where is the humbug?’
“‘There is no humbug here,’ he answered.
“‘Well, why don’t you show me some evidence of the haunted house?’
“‘You wait,’ said he, ‘till twelve o’clock to-night, and you will see “haunting” enough for you. I will not stay till then.’
“He left; I staid. Everything was quiet for some time. Not a mouse was heard, not a rat was visible, and I thought I would go to sleep.
“I lay down for this purpose, but I soon heard certain extraordinary sounds that disturbed my repose. Chains were clanked, noises were made, and shrieks and groans were heard from various parts of the mansion. All of these I had expected. They did not frighten me much. A little while after, just as I was going to sleep again, a curious string of light burned around the room. It ran along on the walls in a zigzag line, about six feet high, entirely through the apartment. I did not smell anything bituminous or like sulphur. It flashed quicker than powder, and it did not smell like it. Thinks I: ‘This looks pretty well, we will have some amusement now.’ Then the jangling of bells, and clanking of chains, and flashes of light; then thumpings and knockings of all sorts came along, interspersed with shrieks and groans. I sat very quiet. I had two of Colt’s best pistols in my pocket, and I thought I could shoot anything spiritual or material with these machines made in Connecticut. I took them out and laid them on the table. One of them suddenly disappeared! I did not like that, still my nerves were firm, for I knew it was all gammon. I took the other pistol in my hand and surveyed the room. Nobody was there; and, finally half suspicious that I had gone to sleep and had a dream, I woke up with a grasp on my hand which was holding the other pistol. This soon made me fully awake.
“I tried to recover my balance, and at this moment the candle went out. I lit it with one of my lucifers. No person was visible, but the noises began again, and they were infernal. I then took one of my sperm candles out, and went to unlock the door. I attempted to take the key out of my pocket. It was not there! Suddenly the door opened, I saw a man or a somebody about the size of a man, standing straight in front of me. I pointed one of Colt’s revolvers at his head, for I thought I saw something human about him; and I told him that whether he was ghost or spirit, goblin or robber, he had better stand steady, or I would blow his brains out, if he had any. And to make sure that he should not escape I got hold of his arm, and told him that if he was a ghost he would have a tolerably hard time of it, and that if he was a humbug I would let him off if he would tell me the whole story about the trick.
“He saw that he was caught, and he earnestly begged me not to fire that American pistol at him. I did not; but I did not let go of him. I brought him into the library, and with pistol in hand I put him through a pretty close examination. He was clad in mailed armor, with breastplate and helmet, and a great sword, in the style of the Crusaders. He promised, on condition of saving his life, to give me an honest account of the facts.
“In substance they were, that he, an old family-servant, and ultimately a gardener in charge of the place, had been employed by an enemy of the gentleman who owned the property, to render it so uncomfortable that the estate should be sold for much less than its value; and that he had got an ingenious machinist and chemist to assist him in arranging such contrivances as would make the house so intolerable that they could not live there. A galvanic battery with wires were provided, and every device of chemistry and mechanism was resorted to in order to effect this purpose.
“One by one, the family left; and they had remained away for nearly two generations under the terror of such forms, and appearances, and sights and sounds, as frightened them almost to death. And furthermore, the old gardener added, that he expected his own grand-daughter would become the lady of that house, when the property should have been neglected so long and the place became so fearful that no one in the neighborhood would undertake to purchase it, or to even pass one moment after dark in exploring its horrible mysteries.
“He begged on his knees that I would spare him with his gray hairs, since he had so short a time to live. He declared that he had been actuated by no other motive than pride and ambition for his child.
“I told the poor old fellow that his secret should be safe with me, and should not be made public so long as he lived. The old man grasped my hand eagerly and expressed his gratitude in the strongest terms. Thus, Mr. Barnum, I have given you the pure and honest facts in regard to my adventure in a so called haunted house. Don’t make it public until you are convinced that the old gardener has shuffled off this mortal coil.”
So much for Kirby’s story of the haunted house. No doubt, the old gardener has before this become in reality a disembodied spirit, but that his grand-daughter became legally possessed of the estate is not at all probable. Real estate does not change hands so easily in England. So powerful, however is the superstitious belief in haunted houses, that it is doubtful whether that property will for many years sustain half so great a cash value in the market as it would have done had it not been considered a “haunted house.”
It is to be hoped that, as schools multiply and education increases, the follies and superstitions which underlie a belief in ghosts and hobgoblins will pass away.
CHAPTER XXXV
HAUNTED HOUSES. – GHOSTS. – GHOULS. – PHANTOMS. – VAMPIRES. – CONJURORS. – DIVINING. – GOBLINS. – FORTUNE-TELLING. – MAGIC. – WITCHES. – SORCERY. – OBI. – DREAMS. – SIGNS. – SPIRITUAL MEDIUMS. – FALSE PROPHETS. – DEMONOLOGY. – DEVILTRY GENERALLY
Whether superstition is the father of humbug, or humbug the mother of superstition (as well as its nurse,) I do not pretend to say; for the biggest fools and the greatest philosophers can be numbered among the believers in and victims of the worst humbugs that ever prevailed on the earth.
As we grow up from childhood and begin to think we are free from all superstitions, absurdities, follies, a belief in dreams, signs, omens, and other similar stuff, we afterward learn that experience does not cure the complaint. Doubtless much depends upon our “bringing up.” If children are permitted to feast their ears night after night (as I was) with stories of ghosts, hobgoblins, ghouls, witches, apparitions, bugaboos, it is more difficult in after-life for them to rid their minds of impressions thus made.
But whatever may have been our early education, I am convinced that there is an inherent love of the marvelous in every breast, and that everybody is more or less superstitious; and every superstition I denominate a humbug, for it lays the human mind open to any amount of belief, in any amount of deception that may be practised.
One object of these chapters consists in showing how open everybody is to deception, that nearly everybody “hankers” after it, that solid and solemn realities are frequently set aside for silly impositions and delusions, and that people, as a too general thing, like to be led into the region of mystery. As Hudibras has it:
“Doubtless the pleasure is as great
Of being cheated as to cheat;
As lookers-on feel most delight
That least perceive a juggler’s sleight;
And still the less they understand,
The more they admire his sleight of hand.”
The amount or strength of man’s brains have little to do with the amount of their superstitions. The most learned and the greatest men have been the deepest believers in ingeniously-contrived machines for running human reason off the track. If any expositions I can make on this subject will serve to put people on their guard against impositions of all sorts, as well as foolish superstitions, I shall feel a pleasure in reflecting that I have not written in vain. The heading of this chapter enumerates the principal kinds of supernatural humbugs. These, it must be remembered, are quite different from religious impostures.
It is astonishing to reflect how ancient is the date of this class of superstitions (as well as of most others, in fact,) and how universally they have prevailed. Nearly thirty-six hundred years ago, it was thought a matter of course that Joseph, the Hebrew Prime Minister of Pharaoh, should have a silver cup that he commonly used to do his divining with: so that the practice must already have been an established one.
In Homer’s time, about twenty-eight hundred years ago, ghosts were believed to appear. The Witch of Endor pretended to raise the ghost of Samuel, at about the same time.
To-day, here in the City of New York, dream books are sold by the edition; a dozen fortune-tellers regularly advertise in the papers; a haunted house can gather excited crowds for weeks; abundance of people are uneasy if they spill salt, dislike to see the new moon over the wrong shoulder, and are delighted if they can find an old horse-shoe to nail to their door-post.
I have already told about one or two haunted houses, but must devote part of this chapter to that division of the subject. There are hundreds of such – that is, of those reputed to be such; and have been for hundreds of years. In almost every city, and in many towns and country places, they are to be found. I know of one, for instance, in New Jersey, one or two in New York, and have heard of several in Connecticut. There are great numbers in Europe; for as white men have lived there so much longer than in America, ghosts naturally accumulated. In this country there are houses and places haunted by ghosts of Hessians, and Yankee ghosts, not to mention the headless Dutch phantom of Tarrytown, that turned out to be Brom Bones; but who ever heard of the ghost of an Indian? And as for the ghost of a black man, evidently it would have to appear by daylight. You couldn’t see it in the dark!
I have no room to even enumerate the cases of haunted houses. One in Aix-la-Chapelle, a fine large house, stood empty five years on account of the knockings in it, until it was sold for almost nothing, and the new owner (lucky man!) discovered that the ghost was a draft through a broken window that banged a loose door. An English gentleman once died, and his heir, in a day or two, heard of mysterious knockings which the frightened servants attributed to the defunct. He, however, investigated a little, and found that a rat in an old store room, was trying to get out of an old-fashioned box trap, and being able to lift the door only partly, it dropped again, constituting the ghost. Better pleased to find the rat than his father, the young man exterminated rat and phantom together.
A very ancient and impressive specimen of a haunted house was the palace of Vauvert, belonging to King Louis IX, of France, who was so pious that he was called Saint Louis. This fine building was so situated as to become very desirable, in the year 1259, to some monks. So there was forthwith horrid shriekings at night-times, red and green lights shone through the windows, and, finally, a large green ghost, with a white beard and a serpent’s tail, came every midnight to a front window, and shook his fist, and howled at those who passed by. Everybody was frightened – King Louis, good simple soul! as well as the rest. Then the bold monks appearing at the nick of time, intimated that if the King would give them the palace, they would do up the ghost in short order. He did it, and was very thankful to them besides. They moved in, and sure enough, the ghost appeared no more. Why should he?
The ghosts of Woodstock are well known. How they tormented the Puritan Commissioners who came thither in 1649, to break up the place, and dispose of it for the benefit of the Commonwealth! The poor Puritans had a horrid time. A disembodied dog growled under their bed, and bit the bed-clothes; something invisible walked all about; the chairs and tables danced; something threw the dishes about (like the Davenport “spirits;”) put logs for the pillows; flung brickbats up and down, without regard to heads; smashed the windows; threw pebbles in at the frightened commissioners; stuck a lot of pewter platters into their beds; ran away with their breeches; threw dirty water over them in bed; banged them over the head – until, after several weeks, the poor fellows gave it up, and ran away back to London. Many years afterward, it came out that all this was done by their clerk, who was secretly a royalist, though they thought him a furious Puritan, and who knew all the numerous secret passages and contrivances in the old palace. Most people have read Sir Walter Scott’s capital novel of “Woodstock,” founded on this very story.
The well known “Demon of Tedworth,” that drummed, and scratched, and pounded, and threw things about, in 1661, in Mr. Mompesson’s house turned out to be a gipsy drummer and confederates.
The still more famous “Ghost in Cock Lane,” in London in 1762, consisted of a Mrs. Parsons and her daughter, a little girl, trained by Mr. Parsons to knock and scratch very much after the fashion of the alphabet talking of the “spirits” of to-day. Parsons got up the whole affair, to revenge himself on a Mr. Kent. The ghost pretended to be that of a deceased sister-in-law of Kent, and to have been poisoned by him. But Parsons and his assistants were found out, and had to smart for their fun, being heavily fined, imprisoned, etc.
A very able ghost indeed, a Methodist ghost – the spectral property, consequently, of my good friends the Methodists – used to rattle, and clatter, and bang, and communicate, in the house of the Rev. Mr. Wesley, the father of John Wesley, at Epworth, in England. This ghost was very troublesome, and utterly useless. In fact, none of the ghosts that haunt houses are of the least possible use. They plague people, but do no good. They act like the spirits of departed monkeys.
I must add two or three short anecdotes about ghosts, got up in the devil-manner. They are not new, but illustrate very handsomely the state of mind in which a ghost should be met. One is, that somebody undertook to scare Cuvier, the great naturalist, with a ghost having an ox’s head. Cuvier woke, and found the fearful thing glaring and grinning at his bedside.
“What do you want?”
“To devour you!” growled the ghost.
“Devour me?” quoth the great Frenchman – “Hoofs, horns, graminivorous! You can’t do it – clear out!”
And he did clear out.
A pious maiden lady, in one of our New-England villages, was known to possess three peculiarities. First, she was a very religious, honest, matter-of-fact woman. Second, she supposed everybody else was equally honest; hence she was very credulous, always believing everything she heard. And third, having “a conscience void of offense,” she saw no reason to be afraid of anything; consequently, she feared nothing.
On a dark night, some boys, knowing that she would be returning home alone from prayer-meeting, through an unfrequented street, determined to test two of her peculiarities, viz., her credulity and her courage. One of the boys was sewed up in a huge shaggy bear-skin, and as the old lady’s feet were heard pattering down the street, he threw himself directly in her path and commenced making a terrible noise.
“Mercy!” exclaimed the old lady. “Who are you?”
“I am the devil!” was the reply.
“Well, you are a poor creature!” responded the antiquated virgin, as she stepped aside and passed by the strange animal, probably not for a moment doubting it was his Satanic Majesty, but certainly not dreaming of being afraid of him.
It is said that a Yankee tin peddler, who had frequently cheated most of the people in the vicinity of a New England village through which he was passing, was induced by some of the acute ones to join them in a drinking bout. He finally became stone drunk; and in that condition these wags carried him to a dark rocky cave near the village, then, dressing themselves in raw-head-and-bloody-bones’ style, awaited his return to consciousness.
As he began rousing himself, they lighted some huge torches, and also set fire to some bundles of straw, and three or four rolls of brimstone, which they had placed in different parts of the cavern. The peddler rubbed his eyes, and seeing and smelling all these evidences of pandemonium, concluded he had died, and was now partaking of his final doom. But he took it very philosophically, for he complacently remarked to himself.
“In hell – just as I expected!”
A story is told of a cool old sea captain, with a virago of a wife, who met one of these artificial devils in a lonely place. As the ghost obstructed his path, the old fellow remarked:
“If you are not the devil, get out! If you are, come along with me and get supper. I married your sister!”