Fiends, Ghosts, and Sprites Part 9

_Boor._ Mistress, it grows somewhat pretty and dark.

_Gertrude._ What then?

_Boor._ Nay, nothing. Do not think I am afraid, Although, perhaps, you are.

_Ger._ I am not. Forward!

_Boor._ Sure but you are. Give me your hand; fear nothing.

There's one leg in the wood; do not fall backwards!

What a sweat one on's are in; you or I!

Pray G.o.d it do not prove the plague. Yet sure It has infected me; for I sweat too: It runs out at my knees. Feel, feel, I pray you!

_Ger._ What ails the fellow?

_Boor._ Hark! hark! I beseech you: Do you hear nothing?

_Ger._ No.

_Boor._ List! a wild hog; He grunts! now 'tis a bear; this wood is full of 'em!

And now a wolf, mistress; a wolf! a wolf!

It is the howling of a wolf.

_Ger._ The braying of an a.s.s, is it not?

_Boor._ Oh, now one has me!

Oh my left ham! farewell!

_Ger._ Look to your shanks, Your breech is safe enough; the wolf's a fern-brake.

_Boor._ But see, see, see! there is a serpent in it!

'T has eyes as broad as platters; it spits fire!

Now it creeps tow'rds us; help me and say my prayers!

'T hath swallowed me almost; my breath is stopt: I cannot speak! Do I speak, mistress?--tell me.

_Ger._ Why thou strange timorous sot, canst thou perceive Anything i' th' bush but a poor glowworm.

_Boor._ It may be 'tis but a glowworm now; but 'twill Grow to a fire-drake presently.

_Ger._ Come then from it!

I have a precious guide of you, and courteous, That gives me leave to lead myself the way thus. [_Holla._

_Boor._ It thunders; you hear that now?

_Ger._ I hear one holla.

_Boor._ 'Tis thunder! thunder! see a flash of lightning Are you not blasted, mistress? Pull your mask off; 'T has play'd the barber with me here: I have lost My beard, my beard! Pray G.o.d you be not shaven; 'T will spoil your marriage, mistress.

_Ger._ What strange wonders fear fancies in a coward!

_Boor._ Now the earth opens!

_Ger._ Prithee hold thy peace.

We have now glanced at the princ.i.p.al illusions to which the senses of sight and hearing are liable, and the bearing which they have on the subject of spectral apparitions and other phenomena which it has been customary to regard as manifestations of the supernatural.

But a false appreciation of sensations excited by natural objects is not the only mode in which we are liable to be deceived, for we are apt to regard sensations excited by the action of the mind, or by a disordered condition of the nervous system, or both combined--subjective sensations--as sensations excited by natural objects--objective sensations.

To the erroneous perceptions arising from this source the term _hallucination_ has been given, and the phantasmata to which they give rise are more important than those arising from illusions, since the judgment is often unable to correct them, and they may impose equally on the wisest and the most ignorant.

It is a law in physiology that a nerve of special sensation, (including in that term its central as well as its peripheral terminations,) in whatever manner it may be excited, can only produce that sensation to which it is appointed. Thus the nerve of sight, whether it be excited by natural or artificial light, or mechanical stimulus from without, or by morbid changes within, can only give rise to the sensation of light; the nerve of hearing, sound; the nerve of smell, odours; and so on.

If the ball of the eye is pressed upon (say by the finger at the inner angle) when the eyelids are closed, or the light otherwise excluded, certain luminous figures will be perceived. This arises from the pressure exciting the inner coat of the eye (the _retina_), which is formed princ.i.p.ally by the expansion of the nerve of light (the _optic nerve_), and is the tissue in which the changes necessary for the production of the sensation of light are induced by the rays of light from without.

The luminous figures caused by mechanical excitation of this, the peripheral termination of the nerve of sight, vary in intensity in different individuals and at different times. They are sometimes very brilliant, and have been observed to be iridescent. In form they are circular, radiating, or regularly divided into squares, which have been compared by Purkinje to the figures produced by the vibrations communicated to a fine powder scattered on a plate of gla.s.s, along one edge of which a violin-bow is drawn; or to the rhomboidal figures formed on the surface of water in a gla.s.s, thrown into vibration by the same means.

A familiar ill.u.s.tration of the excitation of a sensation of light by mechanical stimulus is the brilliant sparks of light, starlike figures, &c., caused by a blow on the eye, or by a fall on the head.

A sensation of light may also be caused by the pa.s.sage of a current of electricity through the eyeball; by mental emotion, as grief, pa.s.sion, &c.; and by a morbid state of the brain or optic nerve. It is often also induced by a disordered state of the health, and under this condition the luminous appearance occasionally a.s.sumes a bluish, green, yellow, or even red tint.

When an excess of blood is determined in the vessels of the eye, either from position or other cause, a luminous arborescent figure is occasionally observed in the field of vision on entering a dark apartment. This, according to Purkinje, is due to pressure on the retina by the distended blood-vessels. A luminous spot is also sometimes observed isochronous with the pulse.

In ourselves, in ordinary health a lambent bluish coloured cloud of light constantly floats before the eyes in a darkened apartment; and there are probably few who would not perceive a greater or less sensation of light on being shut up in profound darkness.

On the spontaneous appearance of light in the field of vision when it is darkened, Muller, the distinguished Prussian physiologist, writes:--"If we observe the field of vision, keeping the eyes closed, it occasionally happens that we perceive not only a certain degree of luminousness, but further, that we discover a more marked glimmering of light, affecting even, in certain cases, the form of circular waves, which are developed from the centre towards the periphery, where they disappear. Sometimes the faint light resembles a nebulosity, spots, and more rarely, in myself, it is reproduced with a certain rhythm. To this spontaneous appearance of light in the eye, which is always very vague, are related the more clearly delineated forms which show themselves at the moment we are about to fall asleep, and which depend upon the influence of the imagination isolating the nebulous glimmerings one from the other, and clothing them with more distinct forms."[58]

The degree to which this sensation of light is produced in health, and the power which the imagination has over it, vary greatly in different individuals.

Muller writes:--

"I had occasion, in 1828, to converse with Goethe upon this subject, which had an equal interest for both of us. Knowing that when I was tranquilly extended in bed, the eyes closed, but not asleep, I frequently perceived figures that I could observe distinctly, he was curious to know what I experienced then: I told him that my will had not any influence either upon the production or the metamorphoses of these figures, and that I never distinguished anything symmetrical, anything that had the character of vegetation. Goethe, on the contrary, was able to appoint at will a theme, which afterwards transformed itself, after a fas.h.i.+on apparently involuntary, but always in obedience to the laws of harmony and symmetry: a difference between two men, of which one possessed the poetical imagination in the highest degree of development, whilst the other devoted his life to the study of reality and of nature.

"Goethe says, 'When I close the eyes, on lowering the head, I imagine that I see a flower in the middle of my visual organ; this flower does not for a moment preserve its form: it is quickly decomposed, and from its interior are born other flowers with coloured or sometimes green petals; these are not natural flowers, but fantastic, nevertheless regular, figures, such as the roses of sculptors. It was impossible for me to regard this creation fixedly, but it continued as long as I wished, without increasing or diminis.h.i.+ng. Even when I figured to me a disc charged with various colours, I saw continually borne from the centre towards the circ.u.mference, new forms comparable to those that I could perceive in a kaleidoscope."[59]

Illusions arising from the production of the sensation of light, whether by pressure, mental emotion, or a disordered state of the health, have been a most prolific source of ghosts.

Imagine a person suffering from severe grief occasioned by the loss of a friend or relative; or one subject to superst.i.tious terrors. On retiring to rest in a darkened apartment, the attention is attracted and wonder raised by the appearance of a cloud of pale white, or blueish coloured light (the colours which ghosts love to deck themselves in, and which are most readily excited) floating before the eyes. Unacquainted with its nature and source, he is naturally startled, and his superst.i.tious fears are awakened. The imagination next coming into play, the luminous cloud is moulded into the form of the person recently dead, or of the superst.i.tious ideas most prominent in the mind of the individual at the time.

Or suppose a superst.i.tious person pa.s.sing, in the obscurity of the night, a place where some foul crime had been perpetrated. Terror gives rise to the production of a vivid sensation of light in the field of vision, and the imagination, as in the previous case, works out the rest.

The following cases are examples of the influence which the spontaneous appearance of light in the field of vision exercises in the development of spectral apparitions.

A gentleman who had lost his wife from a painful and protracted disease, for some time subsequently was troubled by her phantom, which remained before his eyes so long as he was in obscurity. On a light being brought, or during the day, this spectre vanished, but no sooner was he placed in darkness than it appeared vividly limned before him, and was a source of constant terror.[60]

This phantom was evidently due to the production of the sensation of light in the field of vision, and the subsequent effects of the imagination.

A gentleman with whom we are acquainted happened, when young, to have a severe fall on the head. After this accident and until he attained the age of eleven years, he was subject to visions of brilliant and variously coloured light, when he retired to bed at night, and all light in his room had been extinguished. Occasionally these visions were so gorgeous and resplendent that he is accustomed to compare them to the jewelled decorations of the palaces of the genii in the Arabian Nights'

Entertainment. When about eleven years of age he got possession of a volume of legends and romances, which were pregnant with supernatural events and personages; and a friend injudiciously gave him a work full of ghost-stories, and ent.i.tled, "News from the Invisible World." These works he read with avidity, and the effect upon the mind was such that henceforth his nightly visions were transformed into foul, horrid, and often variously coloured spectres, rendering the period of time intervening between retiring to rest and sleep, one of unmitigated terror, and it became necessary to have a light constantly burning in the room until sleep occurred. After the twelfth year the intensity of the visions rapidly diminished, and at length only occurred when he turned himself upon his face in bed. In this position a sensation as if the bed had pa.s.sed from under him occurred, and his eye formed the centre of a circle of imps which whirled rapidly round it. The number of these spectres next began to diminish, and by the time he was fifteen years of age, but one remained, and this appeared only occasionally.

This solitary spectre gradually lost its fiend-like form, and a.s.sumed that of a respectable-looking old Roman, clothed in a toga; and it at length vanished to re-appear no more.