Cock Lane and Common-Sense

55

Proceedings S. P. R. Jan., 1894.

56

The Miraculous Conformist. A letter to the Honourable Robert Boyle, Esq. Oxford: University Press, 1666.

57

Fourth edition, London, 1726.

58

In Kirk’s Secret Commonwealth, 1691. London: Nutt, 1893.

59

In the Salem witch mania, a similar case of levitation was reported by the Rev. Cotton Mather. He produced a cloud of witnesses, who could not hold the woman down. She would fly up. Mr. Mather sent the signed depositions to his opponent, Mr. Calef. But Calef would not believe, for, said he, ‘the age of miracles is past’. Which was just the question at issue! See Beaumont’s Treatise of Spirits, p. 148, London, 1705.

60

Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, p. 7. London: Burns, 1875.

61

Popular Tales, iv. 340.

62

The anecdote is published by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, in a letter of Lauderdale’s, affixed to Sharpe’s edition of Law’s Memorialls.

63

See Ghosts before the Law.

64

Proceedings S. P. R., xv. 33.

65

See many examples in Li Fiorette de Misser Santo Francesco.

66

Ch. cxviii.

67

D. D. Home; his Life and Mission, p. 307, London, 1888.

68

Sept. 18, vol. v., 1866.

69

See Colonel Yule’s Marco Polo.

70

Quarterly Journal of Science, July, 1871.

71

Proceedings S. P. R., xix. 146.

72

North American Review, 1893.

73

Proceedings S. P. R., x. 45-100; xix. 147.

74

Incidents in my Life, i. 170.

75

A Paris, chez la Veuve du Carroy, 1621.

76

Folklore of China, 1876, p. 79.

77

Op. cit., p. 74.

78

Paris. Quarto. Black letter. 1528. The original is extremely rare. We quote from a copy once in the Tellier collection, reprinted in Recueil de Dissertations Anciennes et Nouvelles sur les Apparitions. Leloup: Avignon, 1751, vol. ii. pp. 1-87.

79

Proceedings S. P. R., xix. 186. ‘C.’ is a Miss Davis, daughter of a gentleman occupying ‘a responsible position as a telegraphist’. The date was 1888.

80

Satan’s Invisible World Discovered. Edinburgh: Reid, 1685. Pp. 67-69.

81

Manuscript 7170, A, de la Bibliothèque du Roi. Dissertations, ut supra, vol. i. pp. 95-129.

82

Dufresnoy, op. cit., i. 95-129.

83

Compare Bastian, Mensch., ii. 393, cited by Mr. Tylor.

84

De Materia Daemon. Isagoge, p. 539. Ap. Corn. Agripp., De Occult. Philosoph. Lyons, 1600.

85

Aubrey gives a variant in his Miscellanies, on the authority of the Vicar of Barnstaple. He calls Fey ‘Fry’.

86

The Devonshire case, ‘Story of a Something,’ in Miss O’Neill’s Devonshire Idylls, is attested by a surviving witness.

87

Trials of Isobell Young, 1629, and of Jonet Thomson, Feb. 7, 1643. Darker Superstitions of Scotland, p. 593.

88

Witness Rev. E. T. Vaughan, King’s Langley. 1884.

89

Segraisiana, p. 213.

90

Crookes’s Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena usually called Spiritual. 86. London: Burns (second edition).

91

Satan’s Invisible World Discovered, p. 75.

92

A New Confutation of Sadducism, p. 5, writ by Mr. Alexander Telfair, London, 1696.

93

Primitive Culture, vol. i. 368; ii. 304.

94

The reader may also consult Notes on the Spirit Basis of Belief and Custom, a rough draft printed for the Indian Government. While rich in curious facts, the draft contains very little about ‘manifestations,’ except in ‘possession’.

95

Gregory, Dialogues, iv. 39.

96

De Rerum Varietate, xvi. cap. xciii.

97

De Praestigiis Daemon.

98

Si fallere possunt, ut quis videre se credat, cum videat revera extra se nihil: non poterunt fallere, ut credat quis se audire sonos, quos revera non audit? (p. 81).

99

Proceedings S. P. R., xv. 42.

100

There is one possible exception to this rule.

101

S. P. R., viii. 81.

102

Geschichte des Neueren Occultismus, p. 451.

103

Opera, 1605.

104

S. P. R., vi. 149.

105

Proc. S. P. R., viii. 133.

106

Proc. S. P. R., Nov., 1889, p. 269.

107

This is rather overstated; there were knocks, and raps, and footsteps (Proc. S. P. R., Nov., 1889, p. 310).

108

Proc. S. P. R., April, 1885, p. 144.

109

To be frank, in a haunted house the writer did once see an appearance, which was certainly either the ghost or one of the maids; ‘the Deil or else an outler quey,’ as Burns says.

110

London, 1881, pp. 184-185.

111

S. P. R., xv. 64.

112

Proceedings S. P. R., xvi. 332.

113

Sights and Shadows, p. 60.

114

British Chronicle, January 18, 1762.

115

Annual Register.

116

Praep. Evang., v. ix. 4.

117

Rudolfi Fuldensis, Annal., 858, in Pertz, i. 372. See Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology, Engl. transl., p. 514.

118

Pseudo-Clemens, Homil., ii. 32, 638. In Mr. Myers’s Classical Essays, p. 66.

119

Avignon, 1751.

120

Compare the case of John Beaumont, F.R.S., in his Treatise of Spirits (1705).

121

Proceedings S. P. R., viii. 151-189.

122

Mrs. Ricketts was a sister of Lord St. Vincent, who tried, in vain, to discover the cause of the disturbances. Scott says (Demonology and Witchcraft, p. 360): ‘Who has heard or seen an authentic account from Lord St. Vincent?’ There is a full account in the Journal of the S. P. R. It appeared much too late for Sir Walter Scott also complains of lack of details for the Wynyard story. They are now accessible. People were, in his time, afraid to make their experiences public.

123

The story is told by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, in his Introduction to Law’s Memorialls, p. xci. Sharpe cites no source of the tradition.

124

We are not discussing Dreams, which are many, but waking hallucinations, which are, relatively rare, and are remembered, unlike Dreams, whether they are coincidental or not.

125

Gurney, op. cit., p. 187.

126

The writer knows a case in which a gentleman, who had gone to bed about eleven p.m., in Scotland, was roused by hearing his own name loudly called. He searched his room in vain. His brother died suddenly, at the hour when he heard the voice, in Canada. But the difference of time proves that the voice was heard several hours before the death. Here, then, is a chance coincidence, which looked very like a case of Telepathy. Another will be found in Mr. Dale Owen’s Debatable Land, p. 364. A gentleman died ‘after breakfast’ in Rhenish Prussia, and appeared, before noon, in New York. Thus he appeared hours after he died.

127

Polack, New Zealand, i. 269.

128

Proceedings S. P. R., xv. 10.

129

The writer has known a case in which a collector of these statistics, disdained non-coincidental hallucinations as ‘of no use’

130

Proceedings S. P. R., xv. 7.

131

Animal Magnetism, pp. 61-64, 1887.

132

The Psychical Society has published the writer’s encounter with Professor Conington, at Oxford, in 1869, when the professor was lying within one or two days of his death at Boston, a circumstance wholly unknown to the percipient. But no jury would accept this as anything but a case of mistaken identity, natural in a short-sighted man’s vague experiences. Mr. Conington was not a man easily to be mistaken for another, nor were many men likely to be mistaken for Mr. Conington. Yet this is what must have occurred. There was no conceivable reason why the professor should ‘telepathically’ communicate with the percipient, who had never exchanged a word with him, except in an examination.

133

Proceedings of Society for Psychical Research, viii. 111.

134

Proceedings of Society for Psychical Research, xiv. 442.

135

Modern Spirit Manifestations. By Adin Ballou. Liverpool, 1853.

136

Proceedings of Society for Psychical Research, xiv. 469.

137

Edinburgh, 1827, vol. i. p. xxxii.

138

In the author’s case the hypnagogic phantasms seem to be created out of the floating spots of light which remain when the eyes are shut. Some crystal-gazers find that similar points de repère in the glass, are the starting-points of pictures in the crystal. Others cannot trace any such connection.

139

Compare Blackwood, August, 1831, in Noctes Ambrosianæ.

140

Paus., ii. 24, I.

141

Bouché Leclercq, i. 339.

142

The accomplished scryer can see as well in a crystal ringstone, or in a glass of water, as in a big crystal ball. The latter may really be dangerous, if left on a cloth in the sun it may set the cloth on fire.

143

Animal Magnetism, second edition, p. 135.

144

Thus an educated gentleman, a Highlander, tells the author that he once saw a light of this kind ‘not a meteor,’ passing in air along a road where a funeral went soon afterwards. His companions could see nothing, but one of them said: ‘It will be a death-candle’. It seems to have been hallucinatory, otherwise all would have shared the experience.

145

Darker Superstitions of Scotland, p. 481, Edinburgh, 1834.

146

Op. cit., p. 473.

147

Op. cit., p. 470

148

It is, perhaps, needless to add that the unhappy patients were executed.

149

Miscellanies, 1857, p. 184.

150

Wodrow, i. 44.

151

Aulus Gellius, xv. 18. Dio Cassius, lib. lxvii. Crespet, De la Hayne de Diable, cited by Dalyell.

152

Miscellanies, 177.

153

A copy presented by Scott to Sir Alexander Boswell of Auchinleck is in the author’s possession; it bears Scott’s autograph.

154

Information from Mr. Mackay, Craigmonie.

155

2 Kings, v. 26.

156

i. 259. Longmans, London, 1811.

157

Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 143.

158

This belief is not confined to the Highlands. Mr. Podmore quotes Ghost 636 in the Psychical Society’s collections: ‘The narrator’s mother is said to have seen the figure of a man’. The father saw nothing till his wife laid her hand on his shoulder, when he exclaimed, ‘I see him now’ (S. P. R., Nov., 1889, p. 247).

159

‘Spectral evidence’ was common in witch trials. Wierus (b. 1515) mentions a woman who confessed that she had been at a witch’s covin, or ‘sabbath,’ when her body was in bed with her husband. If there was any confirmatory testimony, if any one chose to say that he saw her at the ‘sabbath,’ that was ‘spectral evidence’. This kind of testimony made it vain for a witch to take Mr. Weller’s advice, and plead ‘a halibi,’ but even Cotton Mather admits that ‘spectral evidence’ is inconclusive.

160

Papon. Arrets., xx. 5, 9. Charondas, Lib. viii. Resp. 77. Covarruvias, iv. 6. Mornac, s. v., Habitations, 27 ff., Locat. and Conduct. Other doctors do not deny hauntings, but allege that a brave man should disregard them, and that they do not fulfil he legal condition, Metus cadens in constantem virim. These doctors may never have seen a ghost, or may have been unusually courageous. They held that a man might get accustomed to the annoyances of bogles, s’apprivoiser avec cette frayeur, like the Procter family at Willington.

161

Miscellanies, p. 94, London, 1857.

162

Hibbert, Philosophy of Apparitions, second edition, p. 224. Hibbert finds Graime guilty, but only because he knew where the body lay.

163

Notices Relative to the Bannatyne Club, 1836, p. 191. Remarkable Trial in Maryland.

164

Paris, 1708. Reprinted by Lenglet Dufresnoy, in his Dissertations sur les Apparitions. Avignon, 1751, vol. iii. p. 38.

165

Second edition, Buon, Paris, 1605. First edition, Angers, 1586.

166

Dr. Lee, in Sights and Sounds (p. 43), quotes an Irish lawsuit in 1890. The tenants were anxious not to pay rent, but were non-suited. No reference to authorities is given. There was also a case at Dublin in 1885. Waldron’s house was disturbed, ‘stones were thrown at the windows and doors,’ and Waldron accused his neighbour, Kiernan, of these assaults. He lost his case (Evening Standard, February 23, 1885, is cited).

167

p. 195, London, 1860.

168

The account followed here is that of the narrator in La Table Parlante, p. 130, who differs in some points from the Marquis de Mirville in his Fragment d’un Ouvrage Inédit, Paris, 1852.

169

For bewitching by touch see Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 150. ‘Library of Old Authors,’ London, 1862.

170

Cotton Mather, op. cit., p. 131.

171

Table Parlante, p. 151. A somewhat different version is given p. 145. The narrator seems to say that Cheval himself deposed to having witnessed this experiment.

172

Gazette des Tribunaux, February 2, 1846, quoted in Table Parlante, p. 306.

173

Table Parlante, p. 174.

174

Hibbert, Apparitions, p. 211.

175

Mather’s own account of the lost sermon (p. 298) is in his Life, by Mr. Barrett Wendell, p. 118. It is by no means so romantic as Wodrow’s version.

176

An account of the method by which the Miss Foxes rapped is given, by a cousin of theirs, in Dr. Carpenter’s Mesmerism (p. 150).

177

See Dr. Carpenter’s brief and lucid statement about ‘Latent Thought’ and ‘Unconscious Cerebration,’ in the Quarterly Review, vol. cxxxi. pp. 316-319.

178

A learned priest has kindly looked for the alleged spiritus percutiens in dedicatory and other ecclesiastical formulæ. He only finds it in benedictions of bridal chambers, and thinks it refers to the slaying spirit in the Book of Tobit.

179

S. P. R., x. 81.

180

London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1877.

181

Quoted by Dr. Carpenter, op. cit., p. vii.

182

Tom. ii. pp. 312, 435, edition of 1768.

183

In the Quarterly Review, vol. cxxxi. pp. 336-337, Dr. Carpenter criticises an account given by Lord Crawford of this performance. He asks for the evidence of the other witnesses. This was supplied. He detects a colloquial slovenliness in a phrase. This was cleared up. He complains that the light was moonlight. ‘The moon was shining full into the room.’ A minute philosopher has consulted the almanack and denies that there was any moon!

184

Lord Crawford’s evidence is in the Report of the Dialectical Society, p. 214

185

Quarterly Review, vol. cxxxi. p. 303.

186

Observe the caution of the Mosstrooper, even in that agitating moment! How good it is, and how wonderfully Sir Walter forecasts a séance.

187

Lucretius, iv. 26-75, Munro’s translation.

188

Def. Orac., 19.

189

Ibid., iv. 193.

190

Porphyry, Vita Plotini.

191

Primitive Culture, i. 404.

192

In the Pandemonium, or Devil’s Cloyster, of Richard Bovet, Gent. (1684).