SPOOKS IN BOOKS

Evening Star, Issue 20634, 6 November 1930, Page 16

SPOOKS IN BOOKS

A CLASSIC GHOST STORY Possibly the defence of three small children, found straying in the front garden of the old house, long unoccupied: “Well, a ghost used to live here!” started the train of thought (writes Roy Bridges, in the Melbourne 1 Argus ’). The house does not suggest crime as much as the suburban architecture of to-day; the deep stain in one of the rooms is blue-black, not red, ink; the deep stain in another room is too sticky even for Edgar. Wallace; it is not gore; it is glue. But against the walls there is a weight of evidence of spooks and “crooks”; the shelves are loaded with records of criminology, witchcraft, and demonology. The writers range from Knapp and Baldwin, with the 1 Newgate Calendar,’ in the little York Press edition, and the wretchedly printed ‘ Modern Newgate Calendar of 1860, to the live elaborate but not impeccable, volumes of tho Navarro Society; and from King James 1., with his ‘ Daomonologic,’ to Walter Scott, with his ‘Demonology and Witchcraft,’ to lan Ferguson, with 4 The Philosophy of Witchcraft,’ and Montague Summers, with his scholarly and horrific volumes on witchcraft and vampirism. It is a ghastly and ghostly collection made over tho years. It includes Joseph Sheridan le Panu, as the chief of ghost storytellers. He is represented by 1 hi i; Glass Darkly’ and ‘ Madam Growl’s Ghost,’ hut, unhappily, not yet by ‘ The House by the Churchyard.’ Yes, .ho is the chief of his tribe. Poo docs not surpass in stark horror the episode of ‘ Hanging Judge Horrocks,’ tho sketch from which the masterpiece 4 Mr Justice Harbottle ' developed. Ambrose Bierce does not rival him at his' best. Brain Stoker is a cheap sensationalist measured by this Irish writer of mid-Victorian days. Tho collection merely touches the spiritists of to-day, and only on account of their extraordinary rehash of spook stories of the type of tho Red Barn, tho Demon Drummer, the G’ock Lane Ghost, and tho Witches of Salem. It lacks the 4 Nightside of Nature,’ by that cheerful Victorian matron Catherine Crowe. Tho fact that that poor lady, whoso name somehow suggests ‘ Carrion Crow,’ was not quite sane, did not prevent her from telling a ghost storv well, with all the suggestion of implicit belief which to-day makes Summers’s 4 Geography of Witchcraft’ and vampire books better 44 thrillers ” than, say, Frost’s 4 Varney, the Vampire, or Tho Feast of Blood.’ In the ease of Mrs Crowe’s work tho regret is that the shelves do not hold a book 1 handled in Hobart years ago, with a manuscript note on the strangest ghost story within my reading of the old colonial days. A LEGEND OF NORFOLK ISLAND. Carlyle docs not suggest a ghost story of tho typo favoured by Mrs Crowe. My reference to him is for the sake of his description in 4 The French Revolution’ of tho execution of King Louis: “.Tho executioners seize the hapless Louis; six of them . . . bind him to the plank. Abbe Edgeworth, stooping, bespeaks him, 4 Son of St. Louis, ascend to heaven.’ Tho axe clanks down; a King’s life is shorn away. It is Monday, the 21st of January, 17DJ.” In the Hobart copy of the 4 Nightside of Nature ’ an old Tasmanian had written that on that very evening the English folk of Norfolk Island saw in the clouds the figure of a headless man; they watched it with wonder and fear for a considerable time. When the news of the execution at last reached New South'Wales and the island the superstitious drew the obvious inference—the headless cloud had represented the headless King. 1 have found no mention of the story in any record. The Tasmanian who recorded the story in the book was the descendant of one of the Norflok Islanders deported by Downing street upon the decision to turn the earthly paradise of Norfolk Island into a penal settlement proper, and dumped down at the Derwent Settlement, to add to tho difficulties of Lieutenant-governor Collins in finding rations for his charges. Our ancestors in this country doubtless believed this yarn, as they believed a number of time-honoured superstitions —just as Catherine Crowe believed them and just as Violet Tweedale appears to believe the same old stories to-day, on the evidence of her books, like 4 Mellow Sheaves’ and 4 Ghosts 1 Have Seen,’ and just as Montague Summers, as a clever craftsman, conveys tho impressions of belief in a whole range of horrors like vampirism, demoniac possession, the modern practice of diabolism, and the celebration of tho Black Mass. This is not the reason for satisfaction in the climax of the story of the Cock Lane Ghost. My version is from the queer little York Press edition of trials from the 4 Newgate Calendar,’ the highly moral and profitable compilation of Andrew Knapp and William Baldwin of the eighteen-twenties. In spite of Hogarth and his cruelly satirical 4 Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism,’ dated in 1762, when the Cock Lan© Ghost was at the height of its career and was drawing packed houses, Montague Summers indirectly suggests tho ghost to have been a perfectly good ghost. Tho commentator in tho York Press ‘Calendar’ is a little more sceptical; there is a definite resemblance of the dear child, who figures in the career of the Cock Lane Ghost, as the commentator describes it, to tho littlo angels of the Salem Witch Hunts of tho sixteen-nineties. In 1760 Parsons, the parish clerk of St. Sepulchre’s, had as his lodger in his house in Cock lane, near West Smithfield, a stockbroker named Kent. Mrs Kent was dead; her sister Fanny kept house for Kent. Kent and she felt 44 a mutual affection,” and each made a will in tho other’s favour. Parsons borrowed money from Kent and did not pay it back. They quarrelled, Kent left the liouso and “ instituted legal proceedings to recover his money.” At this stage Miss Fanny died, apparently of smallpox, and was buried in the vault of St. John’s Cburclj, Clorkemvell. Parsons hinted that Kent had poisoned her to inherit her estate. THE COCK LANE GHOST. Not till 1762 did the Cock Lane Ghost support Parsons; then rumours spread that the ghost of the murdered lady had appeared to Parsons’s daughter a girl aged 12 years, and bad declaredKent to have administered poison. Parsons had started tho story, of course, and now to a very storm of questions he answered that for two years his household had been disturbed by knocking and scratching on the doors and walls. In proof lie invited the neighbours to call and listen for themselves. From tho first he made a very fair profit out of public curiosity. Crowds visited the house and were charged for admittance to hear tho ghost. They could not see it. it would appear only to tho child. It would signify “Yes” or “No” to questions by one or two knocks while tho child was in the room. In the presence of three clergymen and twenty other persons, including two negroes, and in answer to decidedly leading questions it accused Kent of having murdered poor Miss Fanny by putting poison’in purl.- 'The sensation grew accordingly. Parsons and his ghost did a thriving trade, and Kent was in peril of his life. Then tho ghost blundered badly. Tho Rev. Mr Aklritch obtained a pro-

miso from it that it would prove itself to bo genuine by knocking on tbq lid of its coffin in the vault at midnight. On the night appointed the dear child was taken to Mr Aldritcli’s liouso near the church and there put to bed. Many persons were assembled; the bed bad been carefully examined to prevent fraud. Tho child asserted that the ghost was there somewhere; sho could not see it; but as her hands were held by women not a sound was heard, not oven a scratch on the wall. Tho ghost would not manifest itself; in the vault at midnight it would not knock, and it would not scratch, though Mr Aidrich appealed to it to do if it was a spirit. Even when Mr Kent asked it directly whether ho really had poisoned his sister-in-law it made not a sign. So back went Mr Aldritcb and bis party to the house, and though the dear child protested that there was a ghost and that sho had not been tricking everybody to ruin Kent by her father’s orders she was packed off homo. Promptly Kent took action for conspiracy against Parsons and his wife and daughter, tho Rev. Mr Moor and other patrons of the deception. Moor and his associates w<ye told by the court exactly what it thought of them. Parsons was pilloried and gaoled, and nis wife and her servant were duly imprisoned, too.