Ghost hunting

“ Ghosts and spirits have the same qualities and characters, eat the same food, appear in dreams, possess men and animals, help sorcerers, give diseases, determine the success of hunting or agriculture. At first, they are solid things, not truly incorporeal, merely invisible to ordinary people by daylight; though dogs or pigs may see them even then. A ghost is so associated with its corpse, that it is not always clear which it is that escapes from the grave and walks ”

“ In the winter of 1908 my wife was ill, and in the evenings, when my harassing duties in the schoolroom were over, I used to sit by her bedside evolving fresh plots. It was then that I first conceived the idea of writing a ghost book.
In my holidays, which I usually spent in London or the Midlands, never in Cornwall—I always flew away from the precincts of the schoolroom the moment we broke up—I had often gone ghost-hunting, and I now determined to make use of my experiences. Consequently, I mapped out a synopsis of a work on haunted houses, which was at once accepted by Mr. ”

“ By moonlight, when the scenery is most suggestive and unearthly, and the noises of wolves and owls inspire uneasy feelings, the ghost is seen on a hill a mile south of the Watch Dog, her hair blowing, her arms tossing in strange gestures.
If war parties, emigrants, cowboys, hunters, any who for good or ill are going through this country, pass the haunted butte at night, the rocks are lighted with phosphor flashes and the banshee sweeps upon them. ”

“ I believe all the loneliest parts of America, the great, bold Rockies, the vast Californian and Oregon forests are periodically visited by ghosts—ghosts of murdered soldiers, of scalp-raising Indians, of tramp suicides—of all manner of evilly-disposed white and red people, and of neutrarians, spirits that have never inhabited earthly bodies, and which are as grotesque and awe-inspiring as the fantastically carved boulders and queerly shaped tree trunks with which those parts are so lavishly bestrewn.
America, indeed, affords one of the wildest fields in the world for the genuine ghost hunter. ”

“ There heaps of stones or of leaves and branches may often be seen beside the path; they are supposed to mark the places where people have been killed by wild beasts, and the natives think that any passer-by who failed to add a stone or a stick to the pile would himself be seized and devoured by a wild animal.56 Here, though the ghost is not explicitly mentioned, we may perhaps suppose that out of spite he is instrumental in causing others to perish by the same untimely death by which he was himself carried off. ”

“ At every bunch of feathers the ghost stops to consider, "Is this the whole of my body or only a part of it?" The doubt gives him pause, and when at last he has made up his mind fully at all the bunches, and has further wasted valuable time by the zigzag course which he invariably pursues in going from one to another, the hunters are safe at home, and the bilked ghost may stalk in vain round about the village, which he is too timid to enter. ”

“ The rustling of a bush in the evening twilight startles them with the dread of some ghastly apparition; the sight of a pig in the gloaming is converted by their fears into the vision of a horrible spectre. If a man stumbles, it is because a ghost has pushed him, and he fancies he perceives the frightful thing in a tree-stump or any chance object. ”

“ When on the death of a man or woman or child, the ghostly self leaves the body, or at all events when the funeral pig-killing has been performed, the ghost goes away to the tops of the mountains, where apparently it exists as a ghost for ever. ”

“ If the tattoo marks are not there, the old woman pushes the ghost from a cloud and he falls to this world again. Then he wanders all over the world. He is never quiet. He goes about whistling, with no lodge, and people are afraid of him.
When these ghosts visit the sick, they are driven away by smoke from the sacred cedar, or else cedar is laid outside the lodge. When a person hears a ghost whistling he goes outside the lodge and makes a loud noise. If a ghost calls to a loved one and he answers, then he is sure to die soon. ”

“ This spirit was so over-charged with spirit, that he was unable to walk, so was doomed to be carried in a cart to the "cage;" and all the people living round about came next morning to look at the ghost that had been haunting the squire's wine cellar. Oh! what a fortune it would be to any one who could catch a ghost—a real, right down, "'arnest" ghost, and put him in a cage to show him round the country! ”

“ The shouting immediately after the death, and afterwards at the funeral, are steps towards driving it there; and the pig-killing ceremony completes the process. On reaching the mountains the ghost becomes one of two things. The ghost of a young or grown-up person up to, say, forty or forty-five years of age becomes the shimmering light upon the ground and undergrowth, which occurs here and there where the dense forest of the mountains is penetrated by the sun’s beams. It is apparently only the light which shimmers on the ground and undergrowth, and not that in the air. ”

“ But even when the ghosts have departed to their island home, they are by no means strictly confined to it. They can return, especially at night, to roam about the woods and the villages, and the living are very much afraid of them, for the ghosts delight in doing mischief. It is especially in the first few days after a death that the ghost is an object of terror, for he is then still loitering about the village. ”

“ Why did I not reach the stockade? Because, my friend, I am no real ghost to be invisible in the night, nor am I a bird to fly. 'T was in the shadow of that big building yonder that I ran into a nest of those copper-colored fiends, and 't was nip and tuck which of us won, had I not, by pure good luck, chanced to stumble into this hole, and so escape them. Perchance they also thought me a ghost, who knows? ”

“ He artfully conceals himself in some mangrove bushes just beyond the town, from which he rushes out in the nick of time to fell the passing ghosts. Whenever he kills a ghost, he cooks and eats him and that is the end of the poor ghost. ”

“ The firebearer now sets the fire on the ground and calls on the ghost to come and take it. They firmly believe that he does so and that having got it he hies away to cast the glowing embers down at the door of the man who has done him to death. They even fancy they see the flickering light carried by the invisible hand retreating through the shadows into the depth of the forest; and in order to follow it with their eyes they will sometimes climb tall trees or launch a canoe and put out to sea, gazing intently at the glimmering ray till it vanishes from their sight in the darkness. ”

“ And to keep the victim's ghost quiet while his body is being devoured, a cut from a joint is very considerately placed on a tree outside of the house, so that he may eat of his own flesh and be satisfied. At the conclusion of the banquet, the people shout, brandish spears, beat the bushes, blow horns, beat drums, and make all kinds of noises for the purpose of chasing the ghost or ghosts of the murdered and eaten men away from the village. But while they send away the souls, they keep the skulls and jawbones of the victims ”

“ If after such an offering and invocation the night wind rustles the tops of the trees or shakes the thatch of leaves on the roofs, they know that the ghost is in the village. The twinkle of a glow-worm near his grave is the glitter of his eye. In the morning, too, before they sally forth to the woods, one of the next of kin to the dead huntsman will go betimes to his grave, stamp on it to waken the sleeper below, and call out, "So-and-so, come! ”

“ To prevent the risk of any avaricious follower or serf, or any other promiscuous pilferer, uncovering his body during the night, in order to possess himself of the glittering prize, his surviving friends circulate the story that his ghost, frowning fearfully, as such ghosts are wont, is seen nightly to guard the tumulus, girt in the golden armour. Terror fills the superstitious minds of the inhabitants of the district, and no man for his life will venture to approach the Carnedd after sunset. ”

“ Like most deserted and isolated country buildings it has gained the reputation of being haunted. No one, however, takes the report very seriously, and, for that matter, it would be an especially healthy and sturdy ghost who would risk haunting a place which affords so little protection from the weather. ”

“ Most ancient burial-places are haunted, and haunted by two species of the same genus: the one, the spirits of whatever prehistoric forms of animal life lie buried there; and the other, grotesque phantasms, often very similar to vagrarians in appearance, but with distinct ghoulish propensities and an inveterate hatred to living human beings. In my Ghostly Phenomena I have referred to the haunting of a druidical circle in the North of England, and also to the haunting of a house I once rented in Cornwall, near Castle on Dinas, by barrowvians ”

“ During these days everybody is afraid to go alone into the forest for fear of meeting him, and if a dog or a pig strays in the wood and is lost, the people make sure that the ghost has made off with the animal, and the aggrieved owners roundly abuse the sorrowing family, telling them that their old father or mother, as the case may be, is no better than a thief. ”

“ I have been busily engaged penning descriptions of the ghosts I and others have seen, when I have been startled by the fact that my paper, originally white, has suddenly become the colour of the sky, and on looking hastily up to discover a reason, have been in no small measure shocked to see my candle burning a bright blue. An occult manifestation of sorts has invariably followed. I am often warned of the near advent of the occult in this same manner when I am investigating in a haunted house—the flame of the candle burns blue before the appearance of the ghost. ”

“ This ghost is variously designated as a sea-horse, a pig, a dragon, or a griffin, but if any one attempts to ascertain its exact nature, by looking out of the window when the sound of its flying footsteps is heard, he is duly punished by waking up on the morrow with a very swollen face. A bold spirit, who once recklessly thrust his head far out of the window to satisfy his curiosity, is said to have been stricken with such sudden and exaggerated inflammation that the window frame had to be removed before he could again draw in his head! ”

“ Hence, when a bear is killed, its ghost accompanies its skin into the hunter’s hut; and the skin is hung up with the appropriate tools for four or five days. Then the bear-ghost is driven out by a magic formula, takes with it the souls of the tools, and reports well of the hunter in bear-soul land. Whilst in the hut, as an honoured guest, nothing is done that it dislikes in human customs. ”

“ As soon as the sun went down every evening, the ghost opened a cannonade of bricks and stones upon the unhappy friend and the inmates of his house, which did not terminate till cock-crowing in the morning; and so expert an archer was this pawky ghost, that he scarcely ever missed an aim, while every stroke would kill a bullock. ”

“ The ghost's path leads him to the volcanic vents of the burning hill Garat, and as he runs along the ghosts assemble to receive him. They beat him, ghost as he already is, to death, then cut him to pieces, and each ghost will take a piece. ”

“ Then they came and stood around the man, just as people do when they hunt rabbits. The man lay flat beneath the fallen tree, and one ghost came and climbed on the trunk of that tree. Suddenly the ghost gave the cry [Pg 121] that a man does when he hits an enemy, “A-he!” Then the ghost kicked the man in the back.
Before the ghost could get away, very suddenly the man shot at him and wounded him in the legs. So the ghost cried as men do in pain, “Au! ”

“ Exorcism of ghosts by means of leaves and pig's blood. Sometimes it appears that a beating is administered for the purpose of ridding people of a ghost who may be clinging too closely to their persons; in such cases the blows, though they descend on the bodies of the living, are really aimed at the spirit of the dead, and have no other object than to drive it away, just as a coachman will flick the back of a horse with his whip to rid the beast of a fly. ”

“ Dayton, O., March 25.—A thousand people surround the grave yard in Miamisburg, a town near here, every night to witness the antics of what appears to be a genuine ghost. There is no doubt about the existence of the apparition, as Mayor Marshall, the revenue collector and hundreds of prominent citizens all testify to having seen it. Last night several hundred people, armed with clubs and guns, assaulted the specter, which appeared to be a woman in white. ”

“ The common practice of placing logs on the grave is, I think, not so much to prevent the ghost from getting out, as to prevent the dingoes from disinterring the body. The breaking of the bones by the Herbert River tribes is a very clear example of the precautions taken to prevent the ghost from wandering, although it is an exceptionally severe means of doing so. The practice of burying implements, ornaments, or weapons with the dead is clear proof that they are supposed to continue their lives as ghosts in the sky-land much as they had done when in the body on earth. ”

“ No! but followed the phantom of his dear old master, who was walking about the farm, and no doubt wanted to give him a ride. Query, If a horse is not frightened at a ghost, why should dogs be frightened at the sight of them? And also, if a goose would be frightened if it saw a ghost? Asses, we know, are sometimes frightened at nothing, and as a ghost is "next to nothing," they must of course be frightened at ghosts. ”