One by one the great superstitions of the world are slowly but surely disappearing. It was not long ago when we, in this new country of enlightenment, believed in witchcraft, and were burning witches at the stake; but now it would take a long hunt to find a man, woman or child who believed in that horrible and disastrous superstition. The same is almost true of "Ghosts," for that word is now used more in jest than in earnest; but to believe in "apparitions" is not altogether of past centuries, for there are still many who cling to the delusion of supernatural appearances. The modern way of putting it is "Spirits."

Authors, poets and dramatists of all ages, sacred and profane, have made endless allusions to supernatural appearances, not only because ghosts are convenient and entertaining characters to introduce, not only because writers naturally tried to reflect the beliefs of the periods of which they wrote, but because they could make a deeper impression on the minds of a superstitious world. Shakespeare makes fine use of the Ghost in Hamlet and in Macbeth, just as Goethe does of Mephistopheles in Faust. Not only is fiction and the drama full of Ghosts, but there are hundreds of volumes in the libraries giving serious, and apparently "well-authenticated" cases of supernatural appearances. Mrs. Crowe's "Nightside of Nature" is probably the classic of this line of literature—at least, it appears to be quoted more than any other. The author of Robinson Crusoe wrote "An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions; being an account of what they are and what they are not, when they come and when they come not; as also how we may distinguish between apparitions of Good and Evil Spirits, and how we ought to behave to them; with a variety of surprising and diverting examples never published before."

I have frequently been asked by believing friends, "How do you account for this?"—following with, perchance, an elaborate account of what the aunt's mother's sister's nephew once saw. My answer has always been, and still is, to those friends, to Mrs. Crowe, Daniel DeFoe and all others, "I cannot account for what somebody else saw, says he saw, or thinks he saw; but let me see it and I will guarantee to give you a reasonable explanation." John Ruskin says somewhere that the greatest thing in this world is to see something and to be able to tell simply and accurately just what you saw, and nothing else. There is the secret! I remember the first time I saw Hermann the Great, and how I went home and told everybody about the wonderful trick he had performed. Of course, nobody could tell me how it was done, for, from the way I described it, it was an impossibility. Sometime later I had occasion to meet Mr. Hermann in his dressing room, and I then learned how the trick was done. How simple! I had been duped and deceived. My eyes had not seen aright. How different was the story I had told, from the story Hermann told!

I have often thought, if Hermann had been in the Ghost business, what harm could he not have done!

We all know what becomes of the bodies and clothing of the dead. Of this there can be no doubt. What becomes of the soul, the spirit, nobody knows. Assuming that this does not die, which seems probable, we know that it cannot again live within the same body and apparel, for that is destroyed. To assume that the spirit procures a new and similar body and clothing, is to assume the existence of material, physical matter in the spiritual world. Does it not require quite a stretch of a sacrilegious imagination to picture a clothing factory in the spiritual world? And yet, we are told that ghosts appear "in the very clothes they used to wear." Mrs. Bargrave "took hold of Mrs. Veal's gown several times" and recognized the velvet. (Drelincourt on Death, 1700). We are also told of "rustling of silk," "creaking of shoes" and "sounds of footsteps" (Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World, Owen).

Even the voice is recognized, although the various organs that produced the original voice on earth have long since perished. We all seem to have a notion that ghosts should be light, thin and airy, but, it seems, there must be fat ghosts, too. I remember at least one fat ghost, for I yanked it into my lap in the middle of a highly interesting seance at Mrs. Calder's, a famous Ghost producer who once thrived in New York. The ghost was alleged to be a famous Plymouth church preacher whose name is too revered to be mentioned in this connection.

Some Ghosts have even appeared in iron armour, and some with walking sticks, swords or shovels. People have heard, seen and felt all these—the word felt might be used in a double sense here, because one vicious ghost is said to have delighted in thumping his hosts with a cane—so it can be assumed that such material things as clothing, armour and canes are to be had in the other world. And yet, ghosts are transparent! You can see right through them. They disappear through a stone wall, through a carpeted, oaken floor, and through a locked and bolted door. You can shoot at them, run them through with a sword, and you touch nothing.

Again, the same Ghost frequently appears in many places at one and the same time. DeFoe tells of the burglars who found the same ghost in a chair in every room in the house at the same moment. Still again, we have "well-authenticated" cases of beggar Ghosts in rags, of one-armed Ghosts, beheaded Ghosts, blind Ghosts, hungry Ghosts, thirsty Ghosts, worried, tormented and unhappy Ghosts, and wicked, revengeful Ghosts. Is, then, the spirit world (heaven), no improvement on our own world? Mr. Kardec once asserted that we are surrounded by "myriads of spirits—good, bad and indifferent," which quite alarmed the author of "Mary Jane," who feared accidents might happen among such a crowd of spirits. Mr. Baker, it was, who set the author at ease, by explaining that "the spirits can walk through one another and not feel it."

It is a wonder that, in a world so full of humbuggers, get-rich-quicksters, fakirs and delusionists, greater effort has been made to profit by the greatest of all passions. For every human weakness we have a gold seeker, be it a Barnum, Munyon, a Lydia Pinkham, a 520% Miller, a Dowie, a Dis de Bar, or a Sister Fox. Some want to be tall, some short, some fat, some thin, some rich, some healthy, some beautiful, etc., etc., and there is always an army of fakirs, honest, semi-honest and otherwise, ready to make them so for a monetary consideration payable in advance. But, the greatest distress, the greatest passion, the greatest longing and yearning, is for the dead. What a tremendous army is the army of the mourners! What a gold mine to the man who can bring the mourner and the departed together! Ghost makers do not necessarily mean to defraud, nor do they always perform for money. There are good and bad, as in all else, and they sometimes fool themselves in their efforts to fool others. The Imagination is a wonderful organism. It is the greatest machine on earth, because it can do the greatest things. But, beware of it—it is not to be trusted; it will expand your credulity, undermine your reason, and give you a taste of the delirium tremens—which makes you see things!