FIVE GHOST STORIES
My personal experience concerning
gruesome ghost stories and apparitions of the dead is somewhat limited; but the
following well-authenticated cases have come to my notice:
First case
In the town of Kempten in the
south of Bavaria there is an old house which in the seventeenth century was
still used as a nunnery; the walls are of great thickness and some of the
passages very narrow.
In this house strange voices were
heard, like sighs and groans and sometimes the ghost of a black-robed nun was
seen, gliding silently through some rooms. Moreover, it happened occasionally
that, when some one went upstairs, it was as If he encountered an invisible
barrier and he had to use his will-power to force his way through it.
In the year 1850, some changes
and repairs were made in the house and a skeleton of a female was found immured
in one of the walls. It appears that a nun was there immured alive and probably
died of starvation: this kind of punishment being frequently employed at those
times for infringement of the rules of the order.
Now we need not suppose that this
ghost was the spirit of a very wicked woman. It may be that she was murdered in
that way out of jealousy or for some similar reason.
The suffering which she had to
endure was sufficient to account for the creation of a thought form of great
persistency.
Second case
The wife of a laboring man whose
husband was absent and his whereabouts unknown to her, lived with her children at
L.
One night, she saw the door of her
sleeping room open and her husband walk in. He first went to the bed where the
two children slept and made over each child the sign of the cross; he then came
to her couch and did the same.
After this he went out and banged
the door with such force that the noise of it awoke the neighbors. It was found
out that the man had died in a hospital at exactly the same hour.
This occurrence may he explained
as having been caused by the intense thought of the dying person. Moreover, the
physical body is a storehouse of a great deal of energy, which becomes liberated
at death and by which such noises may be produced.
Theophrastus Paracelsus says these
things are produced by what he calls the Evestrum.
(For particulars, see my book on Paracelsus,
published by Kegan Paul, Trubner and Co.)
Third case
Mrs. S. of Boston, a lady with
great "mediumistic” faculties, was standing one morning early at her desk,
when the door opened and a laboring man in his working clothes came in and
saluted her.
Being greatly surprised at the
unexpected visit of a stranger, her first thought was that the door had been
left unlocked; but this was not the case. She asked the man where he came from,
and he answered that he had escaped that night from a big fire by jumping out of
the fourth story of a bunting factory; that he came away unharmed, but that many
people had perished on that occasion.
The man could not say by
what means lie came to Boston, neither could he have reached there by
rail in such a short time, as the place of the accident was somewhere near Indianapolis.
In fact that man had perished by
jumping out of the window and did not know he was dead.
Mrs. S. explained the matter to
him, and invited him to call on her again. This he did the next day; but on
this occasion the ghost wore Ms Sunday clothes. Mrs. S. assures me that this
occurrence actually took place on the physical plane; but it may be supposed
that she was in a kind of trance and that it was an astral experience which she
mistook for an external reality.
The burning of that factory,
however, took place on the night in question and Mrs. S. knew nothing about it.
Fourth case
The following case has nothing to
do with trances or dreams, and is well known in Germany. One night at about
eleven o’clock the sentinels who stood guard at the door of the palace where
Field-Marshal General von Moltke lived, saw him come out and presented their
arms. The general wore his usual military dress, but without a sword and was
bareheaded.
At the same time General v. G.
and another gentleman of the Court saw the marshal walking out of the door. He
walked up the street to the place where the bridge was then building to which
afterwards his name was given. There he stood still and seemed to look at the
work.
The two gentlemen were very much
surprised to see Moltke walk about bareheaded and at such an unusual hour and
they followed him for fear that some accident might happen to him. After a
while Moltke turned round a comer and went on, and they followed him again, but
he mysteriously disappeared.
That night Moltke died, and when
the two gentlemen heard of it, they naturally supposed that he had met with an
accident when they saw him near midnight; but it turned out that he had died
already at 9 p.m., or some two hours before they followed him.
The case has been made the
subject of official investigation. The sentinels and the other witnesses were
examined and no circumstance could have been better authenticated. It created a
great sensation at the time, but the "experts” did not know what to make
of it.
As "Moltke bridge” was then
nearly finished, it seems natural that the old general wished to see it, and
this may have been his last thought, which caused his spirit to create such a
phantasm of himself.
The fact that such
"phantasms” may assume a visible and tangible shape appears as nothing
supernatural, if we consider that "materiality” is also a relative term
and that everything that exists is “material” in a certain sense, even if it consists,
as Shakespeare says, “of such stuff as dreams are made of.”
Things visible and things
invisible are only different “gradations” of matter and an ethereal form may,
under certain conditions, assume a very material aspect by changing its
density.
Fifth case
Such ghosts or mental images may
be of very long duration. In 1860 there was a young lady at Rome, dying of consumption.
Her home was at L. in Switzerland, and she desired to be buried there. So they
started with her on the voyage, but she died on the way at N. and her body was
buried there.
Her wish remained unfulfilled and
seems to keep her shadow in unrest still, because even very recently
"spirit communications” have been received, asking that the remains should
be disinterred and buried in L.
~ *
~
The lesson which such cases teach
seems to me very important. They prove that ideas are real things existing
independently of the human brains from which they have emanated, and being
capable of impressing other minds.
This is a case where a person appears
to be entranced by the spirit of one deceased; the deceased person may have
nothing whatever to do with the communication supposed to come from him or her;
it is merely that the medium has been caught in a certain current of thought.
This is shown by the following
fact: At some spiritistic séances there came repeatedly what seemed to be the
spirit of a certain priest who delivered always the same sermon; but that
sermon stopped at a certain point and the “spirit” could not continue it.
It was discovered afterwards that
the said priest had been struck dead by apoplexy while delivering that sermon
in the pulpit and this occurred exactly at the point of the sermon where the
spirit communication always stopped.
As the sermon was not continued, there
could be no further thought current and consequently no actual impression.
(Occult Review, July 1908, p.44-46)
HISTORICAL GHOSTS
The Lady in Black
Owing to the connexions which I
had, during my youth, with the Court of Bavaria, I was personally acquainted
with the actors in the following story and am enabled to give the following
details:
1) King Ludwig I, having abdicated
his throne owing to the revolution of 1848, retired to Aschaffenburg with his
spouse, the Queen Thérèse, to seek protection from the ravages of cholera,
which at that time prevailed at Munich. There he received visits frequently from
his son-in-law, the Grand duke Ludwig II of Hessen, residing in Darmstadt. They
used to have tea together, subsequently playing cards, and the General Du Jarrÿs
de la Roche took part in the game.
It was once a stormy night when
they met in this manner.
The rain was pouring down, rattling
at the windows, the thunder was rolling, and lightnings illuminated the room.
All at once one of the large doors of the apartment opened, a lady dressed in
black entered and posted herself behind the chair of the Queen. King Ludwig and
both of his guests saw that lady and exchanged looks of surprise; the Grand duke
arose and went to the anteroom, where he asked the officer in charge:
-
“How could you permit
an unknown lady to enter the apartment of their majesties, without having her
properly announced?”
-
“Your Highness will
excuse me?" was the answer; “I have been in attendance here for three
hours, and no one has passed through the ante-room except their majesties and
the General de la Roche.”
The Grand duke returned to his
chair, but the lady in black had disappeared.
The Queen Thérèse noticed by his looks that something was taking place,
and as she begged to have the matter explained, the Grand duke told her about
the apparition and the answer of the officer.
The Queen turned pale and with a trembling voice exclaimed:
-
“This concerns me.”
The cholera at Munich subsided
and having been assured that there was no danger, the Court returned to the
“Wittelsbach Palace.”
In a couple of weeks the Queen
Thérèse was dead.
2) King Maximilian of Bavaria
returned one evening from one of his daily horse-back rides through the royal
park and was about to dress for dinner, when a slight indisposition induced him
to retire to his rooms.
At about eleven o’clock that
night the officer of the bodyguards in charge made his usual round of
inspection at the quarters where the princes and princesses resided. As he came
near the rooms of the ladies of the Court, where the Countess Fugger and the
Baroness Redwitz slept, he saw a lady dressed in black, and with a black veil
covering her head, issuing from one of these rooms and walking slowly along the
corridor. Thinking that she was returning from a visit to one of these ladies,
the Captain called to her, as she was passing by the only staircase which led to
the street door, and told her that the way out was there.
The lady in black paid no attention
to him, but continued her way through several apartments. She finally descended
the stairs slowly, passed by one of the sentinels and disappeared at the
entrance of the chapel. The officer, feeling some suspicion, ran quickly down
stairs, calling to the sentinel to stop the stranger. The guard swore that he
had seen no one. Next morning the King was dead.
The Lady in White
A similar case is the one of the Lady in White, who is said to appear
in the royal castle of Stockholm whenever a death at the Court is about to take
place. The following is an account of such an occurrence given by the Princess
Eugénie, a sister of King Oscar:
« During one of the
last days of the month of March 1871, and a short time before the death of Queen
Louisa, I had been spending the evening with my mother the Queen-widow Jose fin
a. We both were glad that the illness of the Queen had taken a favorable turn,
and that the physicians expected a speedy recovery. It was late at night and I was about to retire,
when the servant entered, informing us that a big fire had broken out in the
vicinity of the castle. My mother
desired to look at it, so we went to the great hall, where it could be seen
from the windows.
After a while we returned, and as
we passed through a room that was connected with the rooms of the Queen by
means of a staircase, I saw a tall lady standing in the middle of the apartment
right below the lighted chandelier. She
was dressed in white silk, and wore a large collar of lace reaching down upon
the shoulders. I felt quite certain that she was one of the ladies of the Court
ordered to wait for the return of my mother and to inform her about the
condition of the Queen. However, the lady in white looked at both of us without
stirring and without showing us any attention.
I had never seen that lady before,
and I thought at first to ask my mother whether she was acquainted with her;
but I did not, because I expected my mother would speak to her and tell me her
name. Great was my surprise when my mother did not seem to see the lady while
we passed her. Still I never suspected anything uncanny about it; I merely
thought that my mother did not wish to notice her because she had not yet been
presented. Nevertheless the fact that none of us had seen that lady before
seemed strange to me; but as my mother said nothing, I kept silent about it.
Before we stepped out of the
room, I turned around once more and saw the lady still standing at the same
place, like a statue of marble. After a few moments she made a few steps in
advance, as if she wanted to come nearer. We entered into the next room and I
immediately asked my mother:
-
“Who was she?”
-
“She?—What she?”
asked my mother in surprise.
-
“She, the lady in a
white dress, who stood there without saluting us.”
My mother stopped and asked in a
voice trembling with fear:
-
“Did you see a
white-dressed lady in the room that leads to the apartments of the Queen?”
-
“Most certainly I
did,” was my answer. “She stood just below the chandelier. Did you not notice
her? I will open the door again to see whether she is still there.”
My mother caught my hand and she
said:
-
“Don’t tell anybody
at present of what you have seen, you have perhaps seen the Lady in White, and that means the
Queen’s death.”
I went to bed, but I could not
sleep for a long time. I prayed for Queen Louisa and for the King, who was
perhaps soon to experience such a loss. Next morning the physicians sent word
that the Queen was worse, and in three days she died. »
This account was given by the
Princess to Pastor Wadstrom and was published in his “Memoirs.”
The explanation in regard to such
cases is that an “elemental” or thought image had been formed for the purpose
of giving warnings of approaching death. Further particulars about the nature
of such appearances may be found in my book on The Life and Writings of
Theophrastus Paracelsus. (Kegan Paul and Co.).
(Occult
Review, July 1907, p.14-17)
THE GHOST OF A CARDINAL
(Reincarnation)
A
very remarkable case which would go to show the truth of the doctrine of
reincarnation came to my knowledge last autumn. My friends at Florence, of whom I already made mention in a previous
article, are in almost continual contact with the invisible world.
They
do not need to hold “sittings” for spiritistic phenomena, because they are
already surrounded by such phenomena, very much against their wishes. There are
often the most unearthly noises in their house, in daytime as well as at night;
noises like the firing of guns, rolling of cannon balls over the floor, moving
of furniture, etc.
What those evidently intelligent
powers are I do not know; but there seem to be a great many “undeveloped and
earth-bound spirits” who come for instruction and aid.
Not long ago there came an
entity, claiming to be the spirit of a cardinal D. This cardinal asserted that
in his past life he had committed a murder. He said that he had poisoned a
certain person, and that this person was now reincarnated and living as a young
boy at Florence.
He gave the age and the name of
the boy as G.P., and described him. He said that he could not find peace until
he had received forgiveness from that boy for having murdered him in his past
incarnation.
He
gave the street and the number of the house where the boy lived, and begged
that our friends should hunt him up, tell him the story and ask his
forgiveness.
Research proved that this
cardinal had been living at the time stated.
Thereupon our friends started to
hunt for the boy, whom they finally found after some difficulties caused by the
fact that he was an adopted son of a family, living in a tenement now occupied
by many poor people, and that his real name was but little known.
To make the matter still more
interesting, this boy had a dream in which he witnessed the perpetration of the
murder. After
having been told the request of the cardinal, he, of course, freely pardoned
him, and the spirit appeared only once more and expressed his gratitude.
This case hardly admits of any
other explanation, except that the whole thing was a comedy played by some
“elemental.”
It
is surely more probable that the spirit of the cardinal was actually
earth-bound and detained in purgatory until his conscience had found the relief
desired, by being pardoned by his victim.
(Occult Review, March
1907, p.143)
THE GHOST OF MY GRANDMOTHER
(The souls of ghosts)
« My mother died on the
eighteenth of October, 1838, and my first child was born on the twenty-second
of November of the same year. Her great desire was to live to see the child; but her
wish was not gratified, and it may be supposed that she died with that thought
in her mind.
Now, after the child was born,
the attendants put it into a cradle, when, to the surprise of all, my mother
entered the room, walked up to the cradle, looked lovingly at the child, smiled
with a joyful expression in her face, after which she disappeared, and never
was seen again.
All those present, the physician
and the rest, saw her as plainly as they ever saw her when she was alive. It never occurred to
me, when she entered the room, to think that she was dead, and that the
apparition was only a ghost.
I even called out to her,
‘Mother!’ None of us were frightened, but only surprised, and before we had
time to recollect our thoughts, the apparition was gone. »
The
above account was given to me by my mother, and that first-born child was
myself.
Now,
it may be supposed that if that ghost of my grandmother had been in possession
of all the faculties of my grandmother before her death, she would probably
have paid some attention to my mother and the rest; but she took no notice of
them.
The thought of seeing the child
seemed to absorb her entirely and leave no room for any other desire.
This circumstance seems to supply
an answer to the question:
What is the real
nature or “soul” of a ghost?
By the term “soul” we understand
a form of will combined with a thought which guides and controls it, and the
shape which that form assumes would naturally be that of the person as she
appeared while alive — clothes and all, as she habitually used to appear — and
as the image of herself existed in her own imagination, or as it was contained
within her mind.
In our dreams we do not see
ourselves nude or in a dress which we never wear; but we sometimes dream of
appearing in our night-clothes in society where we would not thus appear, and
such dreams are evidently caused by the act of undressing at bedtime,
impressing itself upon the subconscious mind.
If the soul is a form of will
impressed by a certain thought, the soul of a ghost would consequently only be
a single thought projected by a corresponding desire, and forming an image
which, under favorable conditions, may be semi-materialized or fully
materialized and dense enough to become visible and tangible on the physical
plane.
Such an image would only last as
long as the desire or thought which ensouls it exists.
The
“ghost” is thus what Sankaracharya calls the “dream body,” and such a form may
be of long or short duration, according to the strength of the impression
received by the mind of the dying personality.*
(* Further explanations may be
found in Sankaracharya’s Tattwa Bodha, German translation. Liepzig: A. Weber).
It is said that the dream bodies
of suicides, executed criminals, or such as die during a fit of passion, are
very enduring, and they continually perform and repeat the scenes which took
place shortly before their death.
The
man who shoots himself repeats his act in his post-mortem dream-state; the
executed criminal is continually tried and executed again, until the vibrations
caused by the real act cease and the power is exhausted.
But while this play takes place
within the lower principles of his nature, his real soul, belonging to his
higher nature, may be in an entirely different state (?).
(Occult Review, November
1906, p.246-247)
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