HAUNTS OF SPIRITS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XI, Issue 43, 28 October 1893, Page 347

HAUNTS OF SPIRITS.

PLACES WHERE SPOOKS HOLD CARNIVAL. HOUSES GIVEN OVER TO TRADITIONAL SPECTRES—CROSSROADS GHOSTS. The historian of Lord Elain’s mission to China observes that in all countries the sports of childhood are essentially the same, though they may differ in name and unimportant details. It is much the same with popular superstition. The Russian boor whispers a prayer and the Bedouin shepherd mutters a curse at sight of a ghost, but the ghosts themselves betray a strong family likeness, and there is something about haunted houses that would enable

AN EXPERT IN SPOOKS to recognize them at first sight as an experienced farmer would point out a deserted pasture or a neglected orchard. Even at this late hour of the nineteenth century the surface of the habitable globe is dotted with homesteads that have been abandoned for wbat a learned British lawyer called ‘hyperphysical reasons,’ theobstinacy of preternatural visitors who refused to be exorcised or explained away. The house often anything but untenable from an architectural point of view, is

RELINGUISHED TO THE SPOOKS AND SPARROWS, but its desolation does not attract the vandals of the neighbourhood. Doors and windows appear to have been left untouched for years, and the appearance of the surroundings, the rank luxuriance of the lawn and the undisturbed fences distinguish it from a domicile that has become a common loafing ground, after having been abandoned for such prosaic reasons as a collapse of mortgage or the owner’s removal to a more convenient business place. Revenants, that is, ‘ returners,’ the French peasant calls haunting spooks. The chief reason for which they are supposed to revisit the glimpses of the moon might be summed up as missed opportunities for the gratification of a ruling passion. THE PRANKS AND WEIRD NOISES by which goblins have monopolized the possession of a building have thus often a by purpose of revenge. The last occupant of the Chateau of Blamm, where Voltaire saw ‘ the biggest spider webs in Europe,’ had been ousted through chicanery and died in exile, but bis ghost returned with spectral reinforcements, and soon obliged the usurper to sell the place at a sacrifice, since the reason of his removal had been disclosed by the panic-stricken domestics. Eight miles west of Bellinzona, near the northern extremity of the Lags Maggiore on the Swiss border of Italy, there is a castle known as the Casa di Locarno which contrived to weather all the war storms of the middle ages, but about a hundred years ago had to be abandoned in stress of spooks. One afternoon, during the incidental absence of the resident proprietor, an old beggar woman knocked at the door, and being half dead with the fatigue of a long tramp through a pelting sleet storm, was conducted to a vacant guest room and permitted to spread her mantle on a bag full of straw near a comfortable fire. Toward evening the storm increased in fury, and shortly after dark Count Locarno, the owner of the castle, unexpectedly returned with a friend, and at sight of the unwelcome tenant of the guest chamber, lost his temper and peremptorily ordered the old gipsy to pick up her bundle and be gone. The poor crone tried to comply, but was so slow in gathering up her rags that the Count lost his patience altogether and not only hustled her out of the room, but pushed her violently down stairs and ordered his servant to Ming her plunder in the barn ; but on second thought it occurred to him that it would not do to drive a human being out in a winter storm at that hour of the night. The afterthought of hospitality came too late. The old beggar woman had staggered out into the street, and the next morning was found dead under a hedge where she had crouched for shelter. In a semi feudal country of the eighteenth century a trifle like that would not have been mentioned, but soon afterward it was whispered that THE CASTLE OF LOCARNO WAS HAUNTED. Strange groans and the noise of rustling straw had been heard after dark, and servant after servant was discharged for idiotic superstition, as the master of the castle called it, till he came to the conclusion that the building was too rickety and damp to be decently tenable, and that his family needed a change of air. Climatic explanations of that sort are, however, not apt to prevail against the verdict of popular opinion, and in the next neighbourhood of a matter-of-fact city like Cincinnati, 0., a fine hill top building of sixty-eight rooms (originally used as a Baptist seminary), remained vacant for nearly twenty years after the neighbourhood gossip had once saddled it with the name of THE ‘HAUNTED BARRACKS.’ A syndicate of capitalists purchased it for a trifle, and partly recouped themselves by leasing the adjoining park for a pasture. But their attempts to get renters for the aiiy rooms remained in vain, though tramps now and then rose above local prejudice and established a dormitory in the attic, and the business manager at last was actually obliged to pay a man for enjoying the comforts of a fine hill park residence in the role of a janitor. The founder of the building had failed during the war and relinquished it with a re luctance which was probably supposed to have influenced his pout mortem transaction, since his ghost was said to have been seen prowling about the deserted corridors. In the chaos period of mediaeval anarchy and again during the crusades the care of many an old burgh devolved upon the female ancestors of families who still see their spirits wander about the scenes of their solitude. Grillparzer’s drama, ‘Die Ahn Frau,’is founded upon the story of an apparition of that sort in the castle of Orlamunde, but the ‘ White Lady ’ is one of the ghosts whose name is legion, and she haunts the halls or ruins of at least half a hundred mansions of Christian Europe. The ‘ Welfin Lady Guelph,' as we might translate her, was seen in the castle of Brunswick the night before the battle of Zena, and it is said that her former apparition had all but determined the representative of her bouse to resign the command of the Prussian army.

A NAMELESS, BI T NOT VOICELESS, SPECTRE in white stalks about the royal pulace at Stockholm and was once seen by two princes who were engaged in a game of chess with their tutor for referee. A slight noise attracted the attention of one of the players to the door of the adjoin-

ing room, and, noticing bis affrighted stare, bis brother, too, looked around, and in the flicker of the wax candles saw a white shape standing as if in an attitude of prayer. Then it pointed toward the window with a low moan and vanished like a pale mist. The tutor turned around too late to see the phantom, but had heard the moaning sound, and he took a note of the day and hour. The mails travelled slowly in those days, but about two weeks after a courier from the seat of war arrived with the report that on the evening of the apparition the King of Sweden had expired on the battlefield of Luetzen. CROSSROAD GHOSTS were supposed to be the spirits of travellers who had peiished in defending their property against highwaymen, and who haunted the scene of the tragedy either to warn other wayfarers or to reveal the place where the assassins had secreted their corpses. But evil spirits, too, could now and then be seen at the crossing of two roads. • Were wolves,' the author of the ‘ Witches' Hammer ’ writes, ‘ trot along the highway till they come to a place where another road crosses, and when there the symbol of salvation obliges them to stand irresolute, till they bethink themselves of turning aside and pursuing their journey by a roundabout path.’ THE SPANISH AMERICAN GHOSTS, by the way, are less squeamish on that point, and often re move a wayside cross merely to put the padre to the trouble of fishing it out of a frog pond. A spook who haunts the old military road from Puebla to the sea coast played that trick so often that the orthodox neighbours tried to trap him in the act, but he made his escape by suddenly assuming the form of a coyote and slipping of! into the chaparral with a derisive yelp. MEXICAN SPOOKS also hang about the hiding places of buried treasuie, and attempts to discover their hoards may once in a while lead to practical results in a country where the bosom of mother earth is really the most popular savings bank An Acapulco sharper went too far in trying to sell a pamphlet with full directions for securing the assistance of a bonanza goblin, and was arrested for complicity in a charge of trespass. Condorcet, in a note of bis description of a journey to the Levant, informs us that the spirits of Tartar horsemen are supposed to career about the walls of Banorah and startle the camping caravans with their midnight shouts. Similar sounds were for centuries believed to have been heard on the battlefield of Marathon. Not the vanquished but the victors indulged in these MIDNIGHT ORGIES, probably in a supposed attempt to enjoy a post-mortem share of the triumph which their valour had prepared for their surviving countrymen. The wild Odin worship of the pagan Goths, too, reserved the rewards of Walhalla for the victorious fighter, whose spirit the valkyres rescued from the pile of the slain. They alone were conducted to the throne of the war god, and after his resignation in favour of the scriptural deity, accompanied him on his nocturnal excursions, while the best the unheroic dead could hope for was rest and oblivion.