TO MAKE YOUR FLESH CREEP

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1868, 3 February 1892, Page 6

TO MAKE YOUR FLESH CREEP

1 Real Ghost Stories ' is Mr Stead's latest publication. Here are some of them : — THE CLAIRVOYANT AND THE MURDERER. The idea of using the clairvoyant as a spiritual sleuth hound to track down an unknown murderer has always been a fascinating one. A Swedish doctor gives an account of a case in whioh everything in the vision tallied with the case afterwards got together against a particular man, who had a feud with the murdered man, but who got off with a sort of " not proven " verdict. The clairvoyant was hypnotised in my wife's presence, and then ordered j "to look for the place where the murder had been committed and see the whole scene, follow the murderer in his flight, and describe him and his home and the motive for the murder." Miss Olsen then spoke as follows, in great agitation* sometimes using violent gestures. I took notes of her exact words, and reproduce them here fully: — "Itiß between two villages — I see a road — in a wood — now it is coming — the gun — now he is coming along, driving — tbe horse is afraid of the stones — hold the horse ! hold the horse ! now ! now he is killing him !— he was kneeling when he fired — blood ! blood ! — now he is running in the wood — seize him ! — he is running in an opposite direction to the horse in many circuits — not on any footpaths, He wears a cap and grey clothes — light — has long, coarse, brown hair, which has not been cut for a long time — grey-blue eyeB — treacherous looks — great dark-brown beard — he ia accustomed to work on the land. I believe he has cut his right band. He has a scar or a streak between his thumb and forefinger. He is suspicious and a coward. The murderer's home iB a red wooden house, standing a little way back from the road. On the ground floor is a room which leads into the kitchen, and from that again into the passage. There is also a larger room which does not communicate with the kitchen. The church ot Wissefjerda is situated obliquely to your right when you are standing in the passage. His motive was enmity ; it seems as if he had bought something — taken something— a paper. He went away from home at daybreak, and the murder was committed in the evening." Mias Olsen was then awakened, and, like all my subjects, she remembered perfectly what she had been seeing, which had made a very profound impression on her. Everything tallied, as it turned out, down to the scar on the hand. The clairvoyant had never seen the murderer in her life, and knew nothing of the circumstances. WARNED IN VAIN. " Supernatural" warnings are sometimes on absurdly trivial subjects ; sometimes, while serious, and even tragic, they seem powerless to avert the danger against which they warn. Mr Stead quotes a story from the accumulation of the S.P.R. which "is full of the tragic fascination which attaches to the struggle of a brave man, repeatedly warned of his coming death, struggling in vain to avert the event which was to prove fatal, and ultimately perishing within the sight of those to whom he had revealed the vision." Tbe story in brief is as follows :—: — Mr Fleet was third mate on the sailing ship Fersian Empire, which left Adelaide for London in 1868. One of the crew, Cleary by name, dreamed before starting that on Christmas morning, as the Persian Empire was passing Cape Horn in a heavy gale, he was ordered with the rest of his watch to secure a boat hanging in davits over the side. He and another got into the boat, when a fearful sea broke over the ship, washing them both out of the boat into the sea, where they were both drowned. The dream made such an impression upon him that he was most reluctant to join the ship. On Christmas Eve, when they we nearing Cape Horn, Cleary had a repetition of his dream, exact in all particulars. He uttered a terrible cry, and kept muttering " I know it will come true." On Christmas T>&y, exactly as he had foreseen, Cleary and the rest of the watch were ordered to secure a boat hanging in the davits. Cleary flatly refased. He said he refused beoause he knew he would be drowned, that all the circumstances of his dream had come true up to that point, and if he went into that boat he would die. He was taken below to the captain, and his refusal to discharge duty was entered in the log. Then the chief officer, Douglas, took the pen to sign his name. Cleary suddenly looked at him, and exclaimed " I will go to my duty, for now I know the other man in my dream." He told Douglas, as they went on deck, of his dream. They got into the boat, and, when they were making all tight, a heavy sea struck the vessel with such force that the crew would have been washed overboard had they not clung to the mast. The boat was turned over, and Douglas and Cleary were flung into the sea. They swam for a little time and then went down. It was just three months after he had dreamed of it before leaving Adelaide. a sister's dream. Here is another thrilling sailor story bearing on the subject of apparitions at the moment of death : — A great gust of wind seized the half-Blackened main-topsail, and sent it fluttering into fragments. At the same moment the ship reeled nearly on her beam end?, and above the howling of the gale we heard a sudden cry of despair. I was horrified to see an apprentice, J P , sent whirling headlong from the masthead into the sea. Even yet I can see the look of agony stamped on his upturned face, and I can hear the very tones of his heartrending cry " Oh, Lucy, Lucy !" as he disappeared for ever in the darkness below. After the storm abated the captain made a careful note of the exact time of the occurrence, the position of the ship, and the other particulars. He seemed struck at my mention of the exclamation I had overheard falling from the poor fellow's lips as he clutched in vain at the yielding air. " Ah," he said, "that must have been his Bister, Lucy V ,to whom he waß greatly attached." The rest of tbe voyage passed without incident, and as soon as the ship arrived at Liverpool I made my way to the train which was to take me to Manchester. I was walking idly along the platform when I saw the face of an old gentleman, who, with a young lady on his arm, was elbowing his way through the crowd. His resemblance to our lost mate was so striking that I stood and looked at him. The young lady's eyes happened suddenly to meet mine. Instantly toe gave a violent start, uttered a low scream, and exclaiming: — " Oh, look, there's the face of my dream,' stared at me as if fascinated. Her companion gently rallied her, and half led, half ' carried her to the nearest waiting room. As he passed he begged me to come with them, and handed me his card. When we were alone the old gentleman explained that the sight of my face had reminded his daughter of a very peculiar and unpleasant dream, to which she still persisted in attaching importance. He said : "At the present moment, indeed, we are on our way to discover if the owners of my son's ship have received any news of its arrival, I said : "lam an apprentice of the C , and have but lately left her lying in the harbor. " "Then," the young lady cried, "I must be right. It must be true. 'Twas the man's face I saw gazing at him as he fell. I saw Joe's ship in the midst of a fearful storm, and him clinging to the slippery shrouds. A bright flash seemed to pass before my eyes, and I saw him falling backwards into the sea. I saw your face in the momentary gleam, and I awoke, perfectly terrified to hear the sound of my own l j,.ho — « O Lucy ! Lucy J'— whispered in my ean>." The ex-

pression of my face must have conveyed but too well tbe meaning of my silence. "My God !" cried Mr ,"is it true, then 1 Is he dead ?" I Btammered : " Too true, sir. Yes, every word of it. I was beside him at the moment, and even tried to Bave him. On comparing notes, we found that the dream took place the very day, and, allowing for the difference in longitude, even the very hour when the accident occurred ! A TERRIBLE BIDE. The scene of the following ghastly adventure is a solitary country road at night. We skip the rider's previous dream, and come at once to the " creeps." Nothing remarkable occurred for the first half-hour. The moon was shining brightly. By-and-bye the route went straight through a cutting where the hedges were a little higher than ordinary. On arriving at this point he noticed that his horse changed his easy trot into a walking pace, and seemed somewhat uneasy. However, the cutting was passed, and again they were on the moonlit road, which he could see stretching away in front over the undulating hills. Cantering along, they had not proceeded far before the animal dropped into a walk again. Encouragement and caresses were vain ; walk he would. Suddenly the horse came to a dead halt in the middle of the road. The suddenness of stopping nearly unseated the rider, but he urged the animal forward. The horse was induced to walk on again, although apparently very uneasy. They had not gone many yards before the horse stopped again so suddenly that he had to clutch the animal's mane to prevent being thrown headlong upon the highway. What was the meaning of such strange behaviour ? Then there flashed through his mind the circumstances of his dream. Yes, there were all the accompaniments of his picture — the bay horse, the moonlit road, the sudden stoppages. Surely it was a warning. Twice had the creature halted, and he recollected his dream made him the third time fall head foremost on the road. He got off, and, throwing the bridle over his arm, coaxed the horse to move onward. He noticed that the animal was covered with perspiration, as if after a hard gallop, and that he was trembling violently. Repeatedly, too, he glanced searchingly at the hedges. What could be the matter ? The strange conduct of the horse became yet stranger. More suddenly than before the animal came to a dead halt. The animal was in deep distress. His nostrils were distended ; sweat covered his limbs ; his eyes were bent in one direction, with every symptom of terror. Not seeing anything remarkable at first in the direction in which the horse was grazing, Foster tried to urge him onward ; in vain ! Passing round to the other side of the animal's head, Poster was induced to look more closely towards that portion of the somewhat low hedge which the horse so intently regarded. There in the moonlight, hanging, bending limp and apparently lifeless over the hedge, was the body of a tall man. With arms outstretched, the figure seemed touching the ground with its fingers, the legs being on the other side of the hedge. What was his horror to see the body move ! Slowly, mechanically, the long arms were outstretched ; uplifted ; the body swayed up, up; and there in the bright moonlight was the man's face. How ghastly it looked ! The glassy eyes were staring at the young man, whose blood seemed chilling in his veins. Motionless, upright as an elm, with outstretched arms stood the gaunt spectre. Its throat was cut. There stood the group. The horse terrified ; the young man speechless, terror-stricken ; and the hideous something seemingly regarding them with his stony gaze, while blood appeared to flow from its throat. How long he remained Foster could not afterwards tell ; but, after an interval that seemed an age, the horrible vision began, as slowly and mechanically as before, to bend its erect body forward, until it resumed its former position, hanging over the hedge. With a mighty effort the young man induced the horses to move on once more, but, on looking back, he was startled again to see the erect figure of the nocturnal spectre — uplifted arms, ghastly features, and blood-red thoat. Just as slowly as before the tall body bent forward ; the arms dropped down, down, until some intervening bushes shut out the horrible apparition from view, Foster reached home near midnight. Afterwards he learnt that a man had been murdered on the very spot where he had seen the tall figure. AN EERIE STORY FROM THE SHETLANDS. Here is a sample of the narratives repeated in good faith by the superstitious folks of the remote Shetlands :— One day in 1830 a fisherman of the name of Grey found that, when returning from fishing, his boat stopped without any apparent cause. In vain he stra'ned at the oars ; it would not move a foot. He looked over the prow, thinking he might have got entangled in seaweed, but the water was clear. He thought he might have struck on a hidden shoal, and rocked the boat. She rocked freely, showing there was water under her keel. Grey then looked over the stern, and to his horror he saw a man, whom be knew had been dead for six months, holding on to the sternpost. This man was one with whom he had bad some little quarrel, and Grey besought him to free the boat, saying that he had hoped that death would have cancelled all enmity between them. Without replying, the man still held on, and at last, in despair, Grey took his axe and hacked off the sternpost, when the boat at once shot forward. The man, however, cried out that Grey and he should meet again in six weeks. Grey, in great fear, hastened home and told his family and friends of the occurrence. In six weeks, at the exact time the dead man had named, Grey was found in the morning dead in bed. A son of Robert Grey, who saw the mutilated boat come in, was, at any rate, keeping a sailors' boarding-house in Antwerp ; but there are many in the Shetland Isles who well remember the circumstances, and seeing the boat with the sternpost cut off. GHOSTS AGGRESSIVE AND TANGIBLE. Ghosts take many and various forms, and there are a few pretty terrifying ones in Mr Stead's collection. There are diabolical floating faces and mutilated trunks. There is a ghost which inflicted its company on an unhappy living friend for a walk of some duration, which it enlivened with a long and detailed account of its violent death, and with the spectacle of its body "burning from within, outwards unconsumed." There are aggressive ghosts which pull off one's bedclothes, or grapple with one in a confusion of material and immaterial. There is even a ghost which attacked a railway porter at night accompanied by a ghostly dog, which actually bit the porter in the calf of his leg. And there is one which strikes us as the only instance we have yet come across of a "warm, soft, and plump" ghoßt — but the poor thing only consisted of a hand and arm, and we will conclude with a very creepy tale which shows that a mutilated ghost does not always correspond with a mutilated corpse. The apparition may fit itself out, it seems, with the very parts which are missing iuthe mortal remains, to say nothing of making its presence known by an energetic smack on the back:— "About the middle of the first decade of this century there lived in the little seaport town of Girvan, in Ayrshire, a young man and his Bister ; they were warmly attached to each other. My grandmother, from whom I heard their story, was intimately acquainted with the young woman. The brother followed the precarious and dangerous avocation of the fisher, and our story Begins with the loss of his life by the

swamping of his boat in a storm. For a week or two his sister was inconsolable; her mind dwelt in imagination on the loved form of her brother tossed amongst the weeds and ooze on tbe bed of the ocean, the food for fishes, and the dwelling place for creeping things." [At this stage the body was discovered in a rooky part of the coast owing to a singularly vivid dream dreamt by a casual visitor to the town — an incident remarkable in itself, but not to our present purpose. The corpse, which was much decomposed, had lost the right hand. Thiß mutilation made a deep and painful impression on the sister's mind.] " Ever and anon she would burst out into a fit of weeping, wringing her own hands, and bewailing the loss of her brother's hand. This continued for about a week, until one nighty preparatory to going to bed, she had undressed ; but, before she had got into bed, overcome by the force of her emotions, she threw her face on the pillow and burst out weeping, and bemoaning the lost hand, and scarcely bad she done so when, with a cry of fear, she sprang from the bed. Her cries soon brought the other inmates of the house to her room, and, when questioned, she informed them that when she had thrown herself on the bed she felt some one give her a slap on the back, as if with the open hand, and that the place where she was struck was still pricking from the effects of the blow, and put her hand over her shoulder to point out the place where she was struck. They examined the place, and over the shoulder blade, in livid blue, was the impression of a man's right hand."