Real Ghost Stories Part 14

"I offered to help her, and she commenced at one end of the batch and I at the other; and before we got halfway through I came across one which I knew was very urgent, and turned away to look up the date of taking it, when cras.h.!.+ went part of the negatives on the floor. This accident seemed so serious that I was almost afraid to pick up the fallen negatives, but on doing so, one by one, I was greatly relieved to find _only one_ was broken; but, judge of my horror to find that that one was Thompson's!

"I muttered something (not loud, but deep), and would fain have relieved my feelings, but the presence of ladies restrained me (this accident being witnessed also by my head printer, Miss L.).

"I could not honestly blame Miss Simon for this--each thought the other was holding the lot, and between us we let them drop.

"The negative was broken in two, right across the forehead of figure. I put the pieces carefully away, and taking out a memo.

form, wrote to Mr. Thompson, asking him to kindly give another sitting, and offering to recoup him for his trouble and loss of time. This letter was posted five minutes after the negative was broken, and the affair was forgotten by me for the time.

"However, on Friday, January 9th, I was in the printing-room upstairs, when I was signalled by the whistle which communicates with the office, and Miss Simon asked if I could go down, as the gentleman had called about the negative. I asked 'What negative?'

'Well,' she replied, 'the one we broke.'

"'Mr. Thompson's,' I answered. 'I am very busy and cannot come down, but you know the terms I offered him; send him up to be taken at once.'

"'But he is _dead_!' said Miss Simon.

"'Dead!' I exclaimed, and without another word I hastened down the stairs to my office. Here I saw an elderly gentleman, who seemed in great trouble.

"'Surely,' said I to him, 'you don't mean to say that this man is dead?'

"'It is only too true,' he replied.

"'Well, it must have been dreadfully sudden,' I said, sympathetically, 'because I saw him only last Sat.u.r.day.'

"The old gentleman shook his head sadly, and said, 'You are mistaken, for he died last Sat.u.r.day.'

"'Nay,' I returned, 'I am not mistaken, for I recognised him by the negative.'

"However, the father (for such was his relations.h.i.+p to my sitter) persisted in saying I was mistaken, and that it was he who called on the Friday and not his son, and, he said, 'I saw that young lady (pointing to Miss Simon), and she told me the photographs would not be ready that week.'

"'That is quite right,' said Miss Simon, 'but Mr. d.i.c.kinson also saw a gentleman on the Sat.u.r.day morning, and, when I showed Mr.

d.i.c.kinson the negative, he said, "Yes, that's the man who called." I told Mr. d.i.c.kinson _then_ of your having called on the Friday.'

"Still Mr. Thompson, sen., seemed to think that we were wrong, and many questions and cross-questions I put to him only served to confirm him in his opinion that I had got mixed; but this he said--no one was authorised to call, nor had they any friend or relative who would know of the portraits being ordered, neither was there any one likely to impersonate the man who had sat for his portrait.

"I had no further interview with the old gentleman until a week later, when he was much calmer in his appearance and conversation, and at this interview he told me that his son died on Sat.u.r.day, January 3rd, at about 2.30 p.m.; he also stated that at the time I saw him (the sitter) he was unconscious, and remained so up to the time of his death. I have not had any explanation of this mysterious visit up to present date, February 26th, 1891.

"It is curious to me that I have no recollection of hearing the man come upstairs, or of him going down. In appearance he was pale and careworn, and looked as though he had been very ill. This thought occurred to me when he said he had been travelling all night.

"James d.i.c.kinson.

"43, Grainger Street, Newcastle."

Miss Simon, in further conversation with me, stated that when the father called on Friday night and asked for the photographs, he came late, at least after the electric light was lit. He seemed disappointed, but made no further remark when he was told they were not ready. Mr. d.i.c.kinson stated that in conversation with the father afterwards, he told him that his son, on the Friday, had been delirious and had cried out for his photographs so frequently that they had tried to get them, and that was why he had called on Friday night. Hebburn is on the south side of the Tyne, about four miles from Newcastle. The father was absolutely certain that it was physically impossible for his son to have left the house. He did not leave it. They knew the end was approaching, and he and his wife were in constant attendance at the death-bed. He also stated that it was impossible, from the position of the bedroom, for him to have left the house, even if he had been able to get out of bed without their hearing him. As a matter of fact, he did not get out of bed, and at the moment when his Double was talking to Mr. d.i.c.kinson in Grainger Street he was lying unconscious at Hebburn.

It is impossible to explain this on the theory that Mr. d.i.c.kinson visualised the impression left upon his mind by Mr. Thompson, for Mr.

d.i.c.kinson had never seen Mr. Thompson in his life. Neither could he have given apparent objectivity to a photograph which he might possibly have seen, although Mr. d.i.c.kinson a.s.serts that he had never seen the photograph until it was brought him on the Sat.u.r.day morning. If he had done so by any chance he would not have fitted his man with a top-coat and hat. It cannot, therefore, be regarded as a subjective hallucination; besides, the evidence afforded by the looking up of the book, the making an entry of what occurred, and the conversation which took place, in which the visitor mentioned facts which were not present in Mr. d.i.c.kinson's own mind, but which he verified there and then by looking up his books, bring it as near certainty as it is possible to arrive in a case such as this. Whoever the visitor was, it was not a subjective hallucination on the part of Mr. d.i.c.kinson.

It is equally impossible to believe that it was the actual Mr. Thompson, because he was at that moment within six hours of death, and the evidence of his father is that his son at that moment was physically incapable of getting out of bed, and that he was actually lying unconscious before their eyes at Hebburn at the moment when his apparition was talking to Mr. d.i.c.kinson at Newcastle. The only other hypothesis that can be brought forward is that some one personated Thompson. Against this we have the fact that Mr. d.i.c.kinson, who had never seen Thompson, recognised him immediately as soon as he saw the negative of his portrait.

Further, if any one had come from Hebburn on behalf of Thompson, he would not have a.s.serted that he was Thompson himself, knowing, as he would, that he was speaking to a photographer, who, if the photographs had been ready, would at once have compared the photographs with the person standing before him, when the attempted personation would at once have been detected. Besides, no one was likely to have been so anxious about the photographs as to come up to Newcastle an hour before the studio opened in order to get them.

We may turn it which way we please, there is no hypothesis which will fit the facts except the a.s.sumption that there is such a thing as a Thought Body, capable of locomotion and speech, which can transfer itself wherever it pleases, clothing itself with whatever clothes it desires to wear, which are phantasmal like itself. Short of that hypothesis, I do not see any explanation possible; and yet, if we admit that hypothesis, what an immense vista of possibilities is opened up to our view!

PART VI.

GHOSTS KEEPING PROMISE.

"There is something in that ancient superst.i.tion Which erring as it is, our fancy loves."--Scott.

Chapter I.

My Irish Friend.

Many of the apparitions that are reported are of phantasms that appear in fulfilment of a promise made to survivors during life. Of this cla.s.s I came, in the course of my census, upon a very remarkable case.

Among my acquaintances is an Irish lady, the widow of an official who held a responsible position in the Dublin Post Office. She is Celt to her back-bone, with all the qualities of her race. After her husband's death she contracted an unfortunate marriage--which really was no marriage legally--with an engineer of remarkable character and no small native talent. He, however, did not add to his other qualities the saving virtues of principle and honesty. Owing to these defects my friend woke up one fine morning to find that her new husband had been married previously, and that his wife was still living.

On making this discovery she left her partner and came to London, where I met her. She is a woman of very strong character, and of some considerable although irregular ability. She has many superst.i.tions, and her dreams were something wonderful to hear. After she had been in London two years her bigamist lover found out where she was, and leaving his home in Italy followed her to London. There was no doubt as to the sincerity of his attachment to the woman whom he had betrayed, and the scenes which took place between them were painful, and at one time threatened to have a very tragic ending.

Fortunately, although she never ceased to cherish a very pa.s.sionate affection for her lover, she refused to resume her old relations with him, and after many stormy scenes he departed for Italy, loading her with reproaches. Some months after his departure she came to me and told me she was afraid something had happened to him. She had heard him calling her outside her window, and shortly afterwards saw him quite distinctly in her room. She was much upset about it.

I pooh-poohed the story, and put it down to a hallucination caused by the revival of the stormy and painful scenes of the parting. Shortly afterwards she received news from Italy that her late husband, if we may so call him, had died about the same time she heard him calling her by her name under her window in East London.

I only learnt when the above was pa.s.sing through the press that the unfortunate man, whose phantasm appeared to my friend, died suddenly either by his own hand or by accident. On leaving London he drank on steadily, hardly being sober for a single day. After a prolonged period of intoxication he went out of the house, and was subsequently found dead, either having thrown himself or fallen over a considerable height, at the foot of which he was found dead.

I asked Mrs. G. F.--to write out for me, as carefully as she could remember it after the lapse of two years, exactly what she saw and heard. Here is her report:--

_The Promise._

"In the end of the summer of 1886 it happened one morning that Irwin and myself were awake at 5.30 a.m., and as we could not go to sleep again, we lay talking of our future possible happiness and present troubles. We were at the time sleeping in Room No. 16, Hotel Was.h.i.+ngton, overlooking the Bay of Naples. We agreed that nothing would force us to separate in this life--neither poverty nor persecution from his family, nor any other thing on earth. (I believed myself his wife then.) We each agreed that we would die together rather than separate. We spoke a great deal that morning about our views of what was or was not likely to be the condition of souls after death, and whether it was likely that spirits could communicate, by any transmitted feeling or apparition, the fact that they had died to their surviving friends. Finally, we made a solemn promise to each other that whichever of us died first would appear to the other after death if such was permitted.

"Well, after the fact of his being already married came to light, we parted. I left him, and he followed me to London on December '87. During his stay here I once asked if he had ever thought about our agreement as to who should die first appealing to the other; and he said, 'Oh, Georgie, you do not need to remind me; my spirit is a part of yours, and can never be separated nor dissolved even through all eternity; _no, not even_ though you treat me as you do; even though you became the wife of another you cannot divorce our spirits. And whenever my spirit leaves this earth I will appear to you.'

"Well, in the beginning of August '88 he left England for Naples; his last words were that I would never again see him; I should _see_ him, but not alive, for he would put an end to his life and heart-break.

After that he never wrote to me; still I did not altogether think he would kill himself. On the 22nd or 23rd of the following November ('88), I posted a note to him at Sarno post office. No reply came, and I thought it might be he was not at Sarno, or was sick, or travelling, and so did not call at the post office, and so never dreamed of his being dead."

_Its Fulfilment._

"Time went on and nothing occurred till November 27th (or I should say 28th, for it occurred at 12.30, or between 12 and 1 a.m., I forget the exact time). It was just at that period when I used to sit up night after night till 1, 2, and 3 o'clock a.m. at home doing the cla.s.s books; on this occasion I was sitting close to the fire, with the table beside me, sorting cuttings. Looking up from the papers my eyes chanced to fall on the door, which stood about a foot and a half open, and right inside, but not so far in but that his clothes touched the edge of the door, stood Irwin; he was dressed as I last had seen him--overcoat, tall hat, and his arms were down by his sides in his natural, usual way. He stood in his exact own perfectly upright att.i.tude, and held his head and face up in a sort of dignified way, which he used generally to adopt on all occasions of importance or during a controversy or dispute. He had his face turned towards me, and looked at me with a terribly meaning expression, very pale, and as if pained by being deprived of the power of speech or of local movements.