Royalty and well-known personages have seen ghosts in all ages of the world’s history; certainly they are not exempt from the common run of humanity so far as ghostly visitations are concerned! Mr. Stead has compiled a number of notable cases of this character, of which the following are probably the most noteworthy:
ROYAL
Henry IV. of France told D’Aubigne that, in the presence of himself, the Archbishop of Lyons, and three ladies of the Court, the Queen (Margaret of Valois) saw the apparition of a certain Cardinal afterwards found to have died at the moment.
Abel the Fratricide, King of Denmark, still haunts the woods of Poole, near the city of Sleswig.
Valdemar IV. haunts Gurre Wood, near Elsinore.
Charles XI., of Sweden, accompanied by his chamberlain and state physician, witnessed the trial of the assassin of GartavusIII., which occurred nearly a century later.
James IV., of Scotland, was warned by an apparition against his intended expedition into England. He, however, proceeded and fell at Flodden Field.
Charles I., of England, was also warned by an apparition, but paying no heed, was disastrously defeated at Naseby.
Queen Elizabeth is said to have been warned of her death by the apparition of her own double.
EMPERORS
Trajan and Caracalla both saw apparitions, which they recorded.
Theodosius and Julian the Apostate both beheld apparitions, at important crises in their lives.
FAMOUS MEN
Sir Robert Peel and his brother both saw Lord Byron in London when he was in reality lying dangerously ill of a fever in Patras. During the same fever, he also appeared to others.
Julius Caesar, Xerxes, Drusus, Pausanius, Dio (General of Syracuse), Admiral Coligni all saw apparitions, which made a deep impression on them in every case.
Napoleon, at St. Helena, saw and conversed with the apparition of Josephine, who warned him of his approaching death. Blucher, on the day of his death, was also told of it by an apparition. General Garfield saw and conversed with his father, latterly deceased. Lincoln had a certain premonitory dream which occurred three times in relation to important battles, and the fourth on the eve of his assassination.
Dante, son of the poet, was visited in a dream by his father, who conversed with him and told him (correctly) where to find the missing thirteen cantos of the “Commedia.”
Goethe saw his own double riding by his side under conditions which really occurred years later.
Tasso saw and conversed with beings invisible to those about him.
Cellini was dissuaded from suicide by the apparition of a young man who frequently visited and encouraged him.
Mozart was visited by a mysterious person who ordered him to compose a requiem, and came frequently to inquire after its progress, but disappeared on its completion, which occurred just in time for its performance at his own funeral.
Ben Johnson was visited by the apparition of his eldest son with the mark of a bloody cross upon his forehead at the moment of his death by the plague.
Thackery wrote: “It is all very well for you who have probably never seen spirit manifestations to talk as you do, but had you seen what I have witnessed you would hold a different opinion.”
Hugh Miller, Maria Edgeworth, Captain Marryat, Madame de Stael, Sir Humphrey Davy, William Harvey, Francis Bacon, Martin Luther, George Fox, Cardinal Newman, Bishop Wilberforce, and many others have seen apparitions, or held converse with the unseen world in one form or another, as recorded by themselves.
Among the famous historical hauntings, we must not forget to mention the famous Cock Lane Ghost which occurred about 1760. According to a brief paragraph printed in the London Ledger, 1762, we read that:
“For some time a great knocking having been heard in the night, at the officiating parish clerk’s of St. Sepulchre’s, in Cock Lane near Smithfield, to the great terror of the family, and all means used to discover the meaning of it having failed, four gentlemen sat up there last Friday night, among whom was a clergyman standing withinside the door, who asked various questions. On his asking whether anyone had been murdered, no answer was made; but on his asking whether anyone had been poisoned, it knocked one and thirty times. The report current in the neighborhood is that a woman was some time ago poisoned, and buried in St. John’s Clerkenwell, by her brother-in-law.”
These knockings and phenomena occurred for a considerable time, until the whole community became interested in the manifestations. While various theories were advanced at the time—and since—to explain this ghost, no definite conclusion has ever been arrived at.
The Drummer of Tedworth is a still older and equally famous ghost, who flourished about a hundred years before the Cock Lane Ghost, and was investigated (and the results carefully recorded) by Sir Joseph Glanvil, F.R.S., who wrote a book about the case: “Sadducismus Triumphatus,” which was also devoted to the general phenomena of witchcraft. Here, also, we find records of unaccountable “knockings” and similar phenomena, which lasted for a considerable time, and which have never yet been explained.
The ghost which invaded John Wesley’s house stayed with them for several years, and manifested his presence in a variety of elaborate and ingenious ways. Those who are interested in this ghost and his doings should read Wesley’s Journal; also the various discussions, pro and con., which have appeared in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, from time to time. It is a most curious and suggestive record.
The Devils of Loudon might also be cited as an interesting case of psychic phenomena; and here trance, automatic speech, etc., were observed—as well as the usual physical phenomena. This is perhaps one of the earliest cases which was closely observed, and in which skeptical criticism was applied. This case will be found recorded in Mr. H. Addington Bruce’s “Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters.”
