Cock Lane Ghost

“ Is this a gigantic imposture? or are the Witch of Endor and the Cumæan Sibyl revived in the unromantic neighbourhood of the Marble Arch, and under circumstances that altogether remove them from the category of the miraculous? England will take a good deal of convincing on this subject, which is evidently one that no amount of 'involuntary muscular action,' or 'unconscious cerebration,' will cover. What if the good old-fashioned ghost be a reality after all, and Cock Lane no region of the supernatural? ”

“ Iamblichus believed in dreams of this kind, and in voices heard by men wide awake, as in the case of Joan of Arc. When an invisible spirit is present, he makes a whirring noise, like the Cock Lane Ghost! {72} Lights also are exhibited; the medium then by some mystic sense knows what the spirit means. The soul has two lives, one animal, one intellectual; in sleep the latter is more free, and more clairvoyant. In trance, or somnambulism, many cannot feel pain even if they are burned, the god within does not let fire harm them (iii. 4) . ”

“ In this incredulous age it is requisite, before this possibility is admitted, even as a doubt or question, that it should be said that he who inefficiently attempts to defend this power, never has been accustomed to see them, although he has known others besides Blake, on whose veracity and sanity he could equally well rely, who have been thus favoured. The Cock Lane ghost story, the old women's tales, and the young bravo who defies the ghost in the tap-room, that he shudders at in his walk home, are foolishly mixed up with Blake's visions. ”

“ At a house in Cock Lane, Smithfield, tenanted by one Parsons, knockings and other noises were said to occur at night varied by the appearance of a luminous figure, alleged to be the ghost of a Mrs Kent who had died in the house some two years before. A thorough investigation revealed that Parsons’ daughter, a child of eleven, was the source of the disturbance. The object of the Parsons family seems to have been to accuse the husband of the deceased woman of murdering her, with a view to blackmail. Parsons was prosecuted and condemned to the pillory. ”

“ In this way it was elicited that the spirit was that of the deceased lady lodger, who had been poisoned by a dose of ‘red arsenic’ administered by Kent in a glass of purl. This story was so well circulated that thousands of persons of all ranks crowded to Cock Lane to hear ‘the ghost.’ The Duke of York and numerous other noblemen and leaders of fashion squeezed themselves into the wretched room, lit by one tallow candle, and crowded to suffocation, where the manifestations were supposed to take place. ”

“ We greatly prefer, as a good old-fashioned ghost story, this version of Lady Lyttelton’s. There is no real bird, only a fluttering sound, as in the case of the Cock Lane Ghost, and many other examples. The room is ‘preternaturally light,’ as in Greek and Norse belief it should have been, and as it is in the best modern ghost stories. ”

“ The Cock-Lane Ghost, as it was called, kept London in commotion for a considerable time, and was the theme of conversation among the learned and the illiterate, and in every circle, from that of the prince to that of the peasant.
At the commencement of the year 1760, there resided in Cock Lane, near West Smithfield, in the house of one Parsons, the parish clerk of St. Sepulchre's, a stockbroker, named Kent. ”

“ Men of science were, in some cases, puzzled, in others believed that a new force must be recognised, in others talked of unconscious pushing or of imposture. M. Babinet, a member of the Institute, writing in the Revue des Deux Mondes (May, 1854) , explained the ‘raps’ or percussive noises, as the result of ventriloquism! A similar explanation was urged, and withdrawn, in the case of the Cock Lane ghost, and it does not appear that M. Babinet produced a ventriloquist who could do the trick. Raps may be counterfeited in many ways, but hardly by ventriloquism. ”

“ The Cock-lane ghost is a familiar example of a deception of this nature: but this, and every other delusion of a similar character, sink into insignificance before a delusion of our own day and times—Spirit-rapping.
The idea of a communication of the spiritual world with man by the intervention of raps, is not new. ”

“ If a distant mind can thus demoralise the central terminus of one brain, it may do as much for two or more brains, or they may demoralise each other.
All this is very promising, but telepathy breaks down when the apparition causes some change in the relations of material objects. If there be a physical effect which endures after the phantasm has vanished, then there was an actual agent, a real being, a ‘ghost’ on the scene. For instance, the lady in Scott’s ballad, ‘The Eve of St. John,’ might see and might hear the ghost of her lover by a telepathic hallucination of two senses. ”

“ Stockwell, near Vauxhall, the scene of the antics of this new ghost, became almost as celebrated in the annals of superstition as Cock Lane. Mrs. Golding, an elderly lady, who resided alone with her servant, Anne Robinson, was sorely surprised on the evening of Twelfth-Day, 1772, to observe a most extraordinary commotion among her crockery. Cups and saucers rattled down the chimney—pots and pans were whirled down stairs, or through the windows; and hams, cheeses, and loaves of bread disported themselves upon the floor as if the devil were in them. ”

“ This lady is almost too sportsmanlike, for a psychical researcher, in her habit of giving an apparition the benefit of every imaginable doubt which may absolve him from the charge of being a real genuine ghost. ‘It is true,’ she says, ‘that ghosts are alleged sometimes to produce a physical effect on the external world;’ but to admit this is ‘to come into prima facie collision with the physical sciences’ (an awful risk to run) , so Mrs. Sidgwick, in a rather cavalier manner leaves ghosts who produce physical effects to be dealt with among the phenomena alleged to occur at séances. ”

“ The landlord contented himself with giving his reverence a hearty drubbing, and then turning him out of doors, with a strict injunction to quit the territory of Liege for ever, upon pain of being much more severely treated.
When it is considered, that it is but a few years ago, that a poor woman, within twenty miles of London, lost her life upon supposition that she was a witch; and that it is not many years since the Cock-lane ghost found advocates, even in the heart of London itself, among those who, before, were never accounted fools ”

“ The apparition was ‘a little pleasant surprise’. The usual seer is not an invalid, nor a literary person who can always be dismissed as ‘imaginative,’ though he is generally nothing of the kind. But it cannot be denied that ladies either see more ghosts than men or are less reluctant to impart information. The visionary lady who keeps up a regular telepathic correspondence with several friends is likely to see a ghost, and should certainly be entered at ‘fixed local ghosts,’ but there are slight objections to such evidence, as not free from suspicion of fancifulness. ”

“ What we need, to prove a ghost, and disprove an exclusively telepathic theory, is a ghost who is not only seen, heard, or even touched, but a ghost who produces some change in physical objects. Most provokingly, there are agencies at every successful séance, and in every affair of the Poltergeist, who do lift tables, chairs, beds, bookcases, candles, and so forth, while others play accordions. But then nobody or not everybody sees these agencies at work, while the spontaneous phantasms which are seen do not so much as lift a loo-table, generally speaking. ”

“ She shrieked, and the phantasm vanished. She saw it on a later day. In a third case, a cat merely kept a watchful eye on the ghost, and adopted a dignified attitude of calm expectancy. If beasts can be telepathically affected, then beasts have more of a ‘psychical’ element in their composition than they usually receive credit for; whereas if a ghost is actually in view, there is no reason why beasts should not see it. ”

“ Modern students of ghosts, of course, would not have been staggered by the ghost’s command of Gaelic: they would explain it as a convenient hallucinatory impression made by the ghost on the mind of the ‘percipient’. The old theologians would have declared that a good spirit took Davies’s form, and talked in the tongue best known to Macpherson. Scott’s remark is, that McIntosh’s was ‘no sound jest, for there was nothing more ridiculous in a ghost speaking a language which he did not understand when in the body, than there was in his appearing at all’. But jurymen are not logicians. ”

“ As in the case of meeting an avalanche, ‘a weak-minded man would pray, sir, would pray; a strong-minded man would swear, sir, would swear’. Mr. Harry was a strong-minded man, and behaved ‘in a concatenation accordingly,’ although Petrus Thyræus says that there is no use in swearing at ghosts. The phantasm seemed to be about thirty-five, her features were described as ‘rather handsome,’ and (unromantically) as ‘oblong’. A hallucination, we need hardly say, would not raise the mosquito curtains, this ghost had more heart in it than most. ”

“ Many ghosts have a perfect craze for announcing that bodies or treasures, are buried where there is nothing of the sort. Glanvill has a tale of a ghost who accused himself of a murder, and led a man to a place in a wood where the corpse of the slain was to be found. There was no corpse, the ghost was mad. The Psychical Society have published the narratives of a housemaid and a butler who saw a lady ghost. She, later, communicated through a table her intention to appear at eleven p.m. ”

“ Moreover the committee, as far as the writer is aware, have neglected to add a seer to their number. This mistake, if it has been made, is really wanton. It is acknowledged that not every one has ‘a nose for a ghost,’ as a character of George Eliot’s says, or eyes or ears for a ghost. It is thought very likely that, where several people see an apparition simultaneously, the spiritual or psychical or imaginative ‘impact’ is addressed to one, and by him, or her (usually her) handed on to the rest of the society. ”

“ They are material enough to make a noise as they walk, but not material enough to brush away a thread! This ghost, whose visible form was so much en évidence, could, or did, make no noise at all, beyond light pushes at doors, and very light footsteps. In the curacy already described, noises were made enough to waken a parish, but no form was ever seen. Briefly, for this ghost there is a cloud of witnesses, all solemnly signing their depositions. These two examples are at the opposite poles between which ghostly manifestations vary, in haunted houses. ”

“ Such are the ordinary or typical phenomena of haunted houses. It is plainly of no use to take a haunted house for a month and then say it is not haunted because you see no ghosts. Even where they have been seen there are breaks of years without any ‘manifestations’. Besides, the evidence shows that it is not every one who can see a ghost when he is there: Miss Morton’s father could not see the lady in black, when she was visible to Miss Morton.
It is difficult to write with perfect seriousness about haunted houses. ”

“ In fact, if the sets of abnormal phenomena existed, or were held to exist, savage man scarcely needed the normal phenomena for the basis of his spiritual belief. The normal phenomena lent him such terms as ‘spirit,’ ‘shadow,’ but much of his theory might have been built on the foundation of the abnormal phenomena alone. A ‘veridical hallucination,’ of the dying would give him a ‘wraith’; a recognised hallucination of the dead would give him a ghost: the often reported and unexplained movements and disturbances would give him a vui, ‘house spirit,’ ‘brownie,’ ‘domovoy,’ follet, lar, or lutin. ”

“ But even if it were possible to demonstrate the existence of such a process, we are as far as ever from accounting for the force which causes noises, or hallucinations of noises, a force of considerable vigour, according to observers. Still less could we explain the rare cases in which a ghost produces a material effect on the inanimate or animate world, as by drawing curtains, or pulling people’s hair and clothes,—all phenomena as well vouched for as the others. A picture projected by one mind on another, cannot conceivably produce these effects. ”

“ A similar argument will hold good in the case of the vague hallucinatory noises which frequently accompany definite veridical phantasms, and frequently also occur apart from any definite phantasm in houses reputed haunted.’ {158a} Now where Mr. Myers says ‘phantasmogenetic agency,’ we say ‘ghost’. J’appelle un chat, un chat, et Rollet un fripon. We urge that the ghost cannot, as it were, express himself as plainly as he would like to do, that he suffers from aphasia. ”

“ A third witness, a woman, was shown the treasure by Mirabel.
The narrator here makes the important reflection that Providence could not allow a ghost to appear merely to enrich a foolish peasant. But, granting ghosts (as the narrator does) , we can only say that, in ordinary life, Providence permits a number of undesirable events to occur. Why should the behaviour of ghosts be an exception?
Other witnesses swore to corroborating circumstances. Auguier denied everything, experts admitted that the receipt was like his writing, but declared it to be forged ”