The Funny Side of Physic Part 37

XI.

GHOSTS AND WITCHES.

"Save and defend us from our _ghostly_ enemies."--COMMON PRAYER.

FOLLY OF BELIEF IN GHOSTS.--WHY GHOSTS ARE ALWAYS WHITE.--A TRUE STORY.--THE GHOST OF THE CAMP.--A GHOSTLY SENTRY-BOX.--A MYSTERY.--THE NAGLES FAMILY.--RAISING THE DEAD.--A LIVELY STAMPEDE.--HOLY WATER.--CaeSAR'S GHOST AT PHILIPPI.--LORD BYRON AND DR. JOHNSON.--GHOST OF A GUILTY CONSCIENCE.--"JOCKEYING A GHOST."--THE WOUNDED BIRD.--A BISHOP SEES A GHOST.--MUSICAL GHOSTS.--A HAUNTED HOUSE.--ABOUT WITCHES.--"WITCHES IN THE CREAM."--HORSE-SHOES.--WOMAN OF ENDOR NOT A WITCH.--WEIGHING FLESH AGAINST THE BIBLE.--THERE ARE NO GHOSTS, OR WITCHES.

Is it not quite time--I appeal to the sensible reader--that such folly was expunged from our literature? What is a ghost? Who ever saw, heard, felt, tasted, or smelled one? Must a person possess some miraculous quality of perception beyond the five senses commonly allotted to man in order to become cognizant of a ghostly presence?

[Ill.u.s.tration: BELIEVERS IN GHOSTS.]

What stupid folly is ghost belief! Yet there are very many individuals in this enlightened day and generation, who, from perverted spirituality, or great credulousness, will accept a ghost story, or a "spiritual revelation," without wincing.

It would seem that many great men of the past, as Calvin, Bacon, Milton, Dante, Lords Byron and Nelson, Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, and others, believed in the existence of ghosts and spirits on this mundane sphere.

There are but two cla.s.ses who believe in ghosts, viz., the ignorant as one cla.s.s, and persons with large or perverted spirituality--phrenologically speaking--as the other. These are the believers in dreams, in ghosts, in spirits, and fortune-telling. These, too, are the religious (?) fanatics, etc.

THE ORIGIN OF THE WORD GHOST

is curious.

"The first significance of the word, as well as 'spirit,' is breath, or wind." It is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is from _gust_, the wind. Hence, a _gust_ of _wind_. The Irish word _goath_, wind, comes nearer to the modern English p.r.o.nunciation, and shows how easily it could have been corrupted to _ghost_.

It is easy to imagine the good old Saxon ladies, sitting around the evening fireside, and just as one of them has finished some marvellous story of that superst.i.tious age, they are startled by a sudden blast of wind, sweeping around the gabled cottage, and her listeners exclaim, in suppressed breath,--

"Hark! There's a fearful gust!"

The transit from _gust_ to _ghost_ is easily done. The clothes spread upon the bushes without, or pinned to the lines, flapping in the night air, are seen through the shutterless windows, and they become the object of attraction. The _effect_ supersedes the _cause_, and the clothes become the gust, goath, or ghost! The clothes, necessarily, must be white, or they _could not be seen in the night time_! Hence a ghost is always clothed in white. Therefore the wind (gust) is no longer the ghost, but any white object seen moving in the night air.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HARK! THERE'S A FEARFUL GUST!"]

"But I am a wandering ghost-- I am an idle breath, That the sweets of the things now lost Are haunting unto death.

Pity me out in the cold, Never to rest any more, Because of my share in the purple and gold, Lost from the world's great store.

"I whirl through empty s.p.a.ce, A hapless, hurried ghost; For me there is no place-- I'm weary, wandering, lost.

Safe from the night and cold, All else is sheltered--all, From the sheep at rest in the fold, To the black wasp on the wall."

Moffat says that a tribe of Caffres formerly employed the word _Morino_ to designate the Supreme Being; but as they sank into savagery, losing the idea of G.o.d, it came to mean only a fabulous ghost, of which they had great terror.

Having briefly shown the folly of the existence of the word in our vocabulary, I will proceed to explode a few of the best authenticated--so called--"ghost stories;" and if I leave anything unexplained in ghostology, let the reader attribute it to either my want of s.p.a.ce in which to write so much, or the neglect of my early education in the _dead languages_.

THE GHOST OF THE CAMP.

I obtained the following story from one of the sentries:--

At Portsmouth, R. I., there was a camp established during the late war, 186-. There was a graveyard in one corner of the enclosed grounds, where several soldier-boys had been buried from the hospital, and here a guard was nightly stationed.

Of course there were many stories told around the campfires, of ghosts and spirits that flitted about the mounds at the dead hours of the night, circulated particularly to frighten those stationed at that point on picket duty.

The body of a soldier had recently been exhumed and placed in a new and more respectable coffin than the pine box coffin furnished by Uncle Sam, in which he had been buried, and the old one was left on the ground.

Partly to protect himself from the inclemency of the weather, and quite as much to show his utter disregard of all ghostly visitors, my informant secured the old pine coffin, "washed it out, though it was impossible to remove all the stains," and, driving a stake firmly into the ground, he stood the coffin on one end, and, removing the lid, used to stand therein on rainy nights.

"When it did not rain, I turned it down, and my companion and myself used to sit on the bottom.

"One day a soldier-boy had died in the hospital, and his friends came to take the body home for Christian burial. It was necessary to remove him in a sheet to the place where they had an elegant casket, bought by his wealthy friends, to receive the remains.

"That very night I was on duty with my friend Charley S., when, near midnight, seated upon the empty coffin, with my gun resting against the side, and my head resting in the palms of my hands, I fell into a drowse.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GRAVE SENTRY.]

"Waking up suddenly, I saw something white through the darkness before me; for it was a fearfully dark night, I a.s.sure you. I rubbed my sleepy eyes to make sure of my sight, and took another look. I discerned a form, higher than a man, moving about over the mounds but a few yards distant.

It had wide side-wings, but they did not seem to a.s.sist in the motion of the body part, which did not reach to the ground. I thought I must be asleep, and actually pinched my legs to awake myself before I took a final look at his ghosts.h.i.+p. There he stood, stock still. I listened for my companion, without removing my eyes from the white object before me. Still I was not scared, but meant to see it out. I knew I could not see a man far through that impenetrable darkness, for there were no stars nor moon to reveal him. I would not call for help, for if it was a farce to scare me, I should become the laughing-stock of the whole camp.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GHOST IN CAMP.]

"Just then I heard the gra.s.s crackle, and I knew Charley was approaching in the rear. Still there hung the apparition. I arose from the coffin, my eyes fixed on the object before me, picked up my musket, took deliberate aim at the centre of the thing, and just as I c.o.c.ked my rifle, I heard Charley set back the hammer of his 'death-dealer.' He, too, had discovered the very remarkable appearance, whatever it was; and now the guns of two 'unfailing shots' covered the object. In another second it had suddenly disappeared! I then spoke, and we ran forward, but found nothing! Where had it gone so very suddenly? It had vanished without sight or sound. We gave up the search; but still I did not believe we had seen anything supernatural.

"There was no little discussion in camp on the following day on the subject. Charley said but little. I could not explain the remarkable phenomenon, and a splendid ghost story was about established, in spite of me, before the mystery became unravelled.

"A tall fellow, who worked about the hospital, and who a.s.sisted in taking away the corpse, was returning with the sheet, when he thought he would give the sentry a scare from his coffin by throwing the sheet over his head and stretching out his arms like wings. His clothes being black, his legs did not show; hence the appearance of a white object floating in the air. Hearing the guns c.o.c.ked, he instantly jerked the sheet from his head; winding it up, he turned and ran away. This accounted for it becoming so instantaneously invisible.

"'Yes,' said the sentry, 'and in a second more you would have been made a ghost!'"

RAISING THE DEAD.

_The Nagles Family._--The following remarkable and ridiculous affair transpired in a village where the writer once resided. The Nagleses were Irish. The family consisted of old Nagles, his wife,--who did was.h.i.+ng for my mother,--John Tom and Tom John, besides Mary. The reason of having the boys named as above was, that in case either died, the sainted names would still be in the family. This was old Mrs. Nagles' explanation of the matter.

The old man worked about the wharves, wheeled wood and carried coal, and did such like jobs during summer, and chopped wood in the winter. I well remember of hearing stories of his greenness when he first came to town.

He was early employed to wheel wood on board a coaster lying at the dock.

The captain told him to wheel a load down the plank, cry "Under!" to the men in the hold, and tip down the barrow of wood. All went well till old Nagles got to the stopping-place, over the hold, when he dumped down the load, and cried out, "Stand ferninst, there, down cellar!" to the imminent peril of breaking the heads of the wood-stevedores below.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD NAGLES.]

I well remember also the first appearance of the two boys at the village school one winter.

"What is your name?" inquired the master of the eldest.

"Me name, is it? John Tom Nagles, sir, is me name, and who comes after is the same."

He always was called by us boys "John Tom Nagles, sir," thenceforward. He certainly was the rawest specimen I ever met.

One day the old man was wheeling wood on board a vessel. It was at low water, and there was a distance of sixteen feet from the plank to the bottom of the vessel's hold. The poor old fellow, by some mishap or neglect, let go the barrow, when he called, "Stand ferninst, there, below!" when wood, barrow, and old Mr. Nagles, all went down together. By the fall he broke his neck. I never shall forget the awful lamentation set up by the combined voices of the poor old woman, John Tom, Tom John, and Mary, as they followed the corpse, borne on a wagon, past our house, on the way from the vessel to the Nagles' residence.