Haunted Houses - Page 2

by a myth,--there were ghosts in the house! On the other hand, if Reginald Scot asked today, 'Who heareth the noises, who seeth the visions?' we could answer, 'Protestant clergymen, officers in the army, ladies, land-agents, solicitors, representatives of all classes, except the Haunted House Committee of the Psychical Society'.

Before examining the researches and the results of this learned body, we may glance at some earlier industry of investigators. The common savage beliefs are too well known to need recapitulation, and have been treated by Mr. Tylor in his chapter on 'Animism,' {129} and by Mr. Herbert Spencer in Principles of Psychology. The points of difference between these authors need not detain us here. As a rule the spirits which haunt the bush, or the forest, are but vaguely conceived of by the Australian blacks, or Red Men: they may be ghosts of the dead, or they may be casual spirits unattached. An example analogous to European superstition is given by John Tanner in his Narrative of a Captivity among the Red Indians, 1830. In this case one man had slain his brother, or, at least, a man of his own Totem, and was himself put to death by the kindred. The spectres of both haunted a place which the Indians shunned, but Tanner (whose Totem was the same as that of the dead) passed a night on the scene. His dreams, if not his waking moments, for his account is indistinct, were disturbed by the ghosts. It is impossible to ascertain how far this particular superstition was coloured by European influences. {130}

Over classical tales we need not linger. Pliny, Plutarch, Suetonius, St. Augustine, Lucian, Plautus (in the Mostellaria), describe, with more or less of seriousness, the apparitions and noises which haunted houses, public baths, and other places. Occasionally a slain man's phantom was anxious that his body should be buried, and the reported phenomena were akin to those in modern popular legends. Sometimes, in the middle ages, and later, the law took cognisance of haunted houses, when the tenant wished to break his lease. A collection of authorities is given elsewhere, in Ghosts before the Law. It is to be noticed that Bouchel, in his Bibliotheque du Droit Francais, chiefly cites classical, not modern, instances.

Among the most careful and exhaustive post-mediaeval writers on haunted houses we must cite Petrus Thyraeus of the Society of Jesus, Doctor in Theology. His work, published at Cologne in 1598, is a quarto of 352 pages, entitled, 'Loca Infesta; That is, Concerning Places Haunted by Mischievous Spirits of Demons and of the Dead. Thereto is added a Tract on Nocturnal Disturbances, which are wont to bode the deaths of Men.' Thyraeus begins, 'That certain places are haunted by spectres and spirits, is no matter of doubt,' wherein a modern reader cannot confidently follow him.

When it comes to establishing his position Thyraeus most provokingly says, 'we omit cases which are recent and