Religious excitement and hallucination. St. Anthony. Zulu
catechumens. Haunted Covenanters. Strange case of Thomas Smeaton.
Law's 'Memorialls'. A deceitful spirit. Examples of insane and
morbidly sensitive ghosts. 'Le revenant qui s'accuse s'excuse.'
Raising the devil in Irvine. Mode of evocation. Wodrow. His
account of Margaret Lang, and Miss Shaw of Bargarran. The unlucky
Shaws. Lord Torphichen's son. Cases from Wodrow. Lord Middleton's
story. Haunted house. Wraiths. Lord Orrery's ghost no
metaphysician. The Bride of Lammermoor. Visions of the saints.
Their cautiousness. Ghost appearing to a Jacobite. Ghost of a
country tradesman. Case of telepathy known to Wodrow. Avenging
spectres. Lack of evidence. Tale of Cotton Mather.
In spite of a very general opinion to the opposite effect, it is not
really easy to determine in what kind of age, and in what conditions
of thought and civilisation, ghosts will most frequently appear, and
ghostly phenomena will chiefly abound. We are all ready to aver
that 'ghaists and eldritch fantasies' will be most common 'in the
dark ages,' in periods of ignorance or superstition. But research
in mediaeval chronicles, and in lives of the saints makes it
apparent that, while marvels on a large and imposing scale were
frequent, simple ordinary apparitions and haunted houses occur
comparatively seldom. Perhaps they were too common to be thought
worth noticing, yet they are noticed occasionally, and, even in
these periods of superstition, were apparently regarded as not quite
everyday phenomena.
One thing in this matter is tolerably certain, namely, that intense
religious excitement produces a tendency to believe in marvels of
all sorts, and also begets a capacity for being hallucinated, for
beholding spectres, strange lights, dubious miracles. Thus every
one has heard of the temptation of St. Anthony, and of other early
Christian Fathers. They were wont to be surrounded by threatening
aspects of wild beasts, which had no real existence. In the same
way the early Zulu converts of Bishop Callaway, when they retired to
lonely places to pray, were haunted by visionary lions, and
phantasms of enemies with assegais. They, probably, had never heard
of St. Anthony's similar experiences, nor, again, of the diabolical
attacks on the converts of Catholic missionaries in Cochin China,
and in Peru.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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