Ghosts Before the Law - Page 2

anecdote. A prisoner on a charge of murder was about to escape, when the court observed him looking suspiciously over his shoulder. 'Is there no one present,' the learned judge asked in general, 'who can give better testimony?' 'My lord,' exclaimed the prisoner, 'that wound he shows in his chest is twice as big as the one I gave him.' In this anecdote, however, the prisoner was clearly suffering from a hallucination, as the judge detected, and we do not propose to consider cases in which phantasms bred of remorse drove a guilty man to make confession.

To return to Scott; he remarks that believers in ghosts must be surprised 'to find how seldom in any country an allusion hath been made to such evidence in a court of justice'. Scott himself has only 'detected one or two cases of such apparition evidence,' which he gives. Now it is certain, as we shall see, that he must have been acquainted with several other examples, which did not recur to his memory: the memory of 1831 was no longer that of better years. Again, there were instances of which he had probably never possessed any knowledge, while others have occurred since his death. We shall first consider the cases of spectral evidence (evidence that is of a dead man's ghost, not of a mere wraith) recorded by Sir Walter, and deal later with those beyond his memory or knowledge. {250} Sir Walter's first instance is from Causes Celebres, (vol. xii., La Haye, 1749, Amsterdam, 1775, p. 247). Unluckily the narrator, in this collection, is an esprit fort, and is assiduous in attempts to display his wit. We have not a plain unvarnished tale, but something more like a facetious leading article based on a trial

Honore Mirabel was a labouring lad, under age, near Marseilles. His story was that, in May (year not given), about eleven at night, he was lying under an almond tree, near the farm of a lady named Gay. In the moonlight he saw a man at an upper window of a building distant five or six paces, the house belonged to a Madame Placasse. Mirabel asked the person what he was doing there; got no answer, entered, and could see nobody. Rather alarmed he went to a well, drew some water, drank, and then heard a weak voice, bidding him dig there for treasure, and asking that masses might be said for the soul of the informant. A stone then fell on a certain spot; stone- throwing is a favourite exercise with ghosts everywhere.

With another labourer, one Bernard, Mirabel dug, found a packet of dirty linen, and, fearing that it might hold the infection of plague, dipped it in wine, for lack of vinegar. The parcel contained more than a thousand Portuguese gold coins. Bernard and his mistress were present at the opening of the parcel, but Mirabel managed to conceal from them the place where he hid it, not a very likely story. He was grateful enough to pay for the desired masses, and he had himself bled four times to relieve his agitation. Mirabel now consulted a merchant in Marseilles,