The deceptiveness of sound in olden times was very little understood, and hence originated, in most countries, a host of traditionary tales descriptive of sundry mysterious noises which were generally attributed to supernatural agencies. Hence, it is impossible to say how many a ghost story would long ago have found a satisfactory solution if only attention had been paid to the properties of sound. But by disregarding the laws which regulate the conditions upon which sound is oftentimes more or less audible, the imagination has frequently conjured up the most fantastic reasons for some mysterious rumbling which has suddenly trespassed on the silence of the night. Thus, Dr. Tyndall has proved how the atmosphere is occasionally in an unusual degree more transparent or opaque to sound as well as to light, and supported this theory by referring to the audibility of fog-signals, which vary according to the state of the weather. Facts of this kind are of the utmost importance in accounting, it may be, for some apparently inexplicable sound. It is sometimes forgotten, too, that sounds are far more audible at night time than during the day, and what would fail to attract notice, even if heard during the hours of sunlight, would probably be treated in a different aspect when once the darkness of evening had set in. There is perhaps no superstition so deeply rooted in the popular mind as the belief in what are generally termed ‘death-warnings’; the common opinion being that death announces its approach by certain mysterious noises, a powerful illustration of which occurs in ‘Macbeth’ (Act ii. sc. 3), where Lennox graphically describes how, on the awful night in which Duncan is murdered—

Modern folk-lore holds either that a knocking or rumbling in the floor is an omen of death about to happen, or that dying persons themselves announce their dissolution to their friends in such strange sounds.[341]

In recent years one of the most interesting instances of a phantom voice occurred in connection with the death of Mr. George Smith, the well-known Assyriologist. This eminent scholar died at Aleppo, on August 19, 1876, at about six o’clock in the afternoon. On the same day, and at about the same time, as Dr. Delitzsch—a friend and fellow-worker of Mr. Smith—was passing within a stone’s throw of the house in which he had lived when in London, he suddenly heard his own name uttered aloud ‘in a most piercing cry,’ which a contemporary record of the time said ‘thrilled him to the marrow.’ The fact impressed Dr. Delitzsch so much that he looked at his watch, made a note of the hour, and recorded the fact in his note-book, this being one of those straightforward and unimpeachable coincidences which, even to an opponent, is difficult to explain.

There can be no doubt that many of the unearthly noises heard near and in lonely houses on the coast were produced by an illicit class of spirits, that is, through the agency of smugglers, ‘in order to alarm and drive all others but their accomplices from their haunts.’ Thus, in a house at Rottingdean, Sussex, all kinds of strange noises were heard night after night, when suddenly they ceased. Soon afterwards one of a gang of smugglers confessed to their having made a secret passage from the beach close by the house, and that, wishing to induce the occupiers to abandon it, they had rolled at the dead of night tub after tub of spirits up the passage, and so had caused it to be reported that the place was haunted.[342] George Cruikshank tells how, in the wine cellar of a house somewhere near Blackheath, there were sometimes heard strange noises in the evening and at night-time, such as knocking, groaning, footsteps, &c. The master of the house at last determined ‘to lay the ghost’ if possible, and one evening, when these noises had been heard, went with his servants to the cellar, where they discovered an under-gardener in a drunken state. It seems that he had tunnelled a hole from the tool-house through the wall into the cellar.

In numerous cases, too, there can be no doubt that strange noises heard in the silent hours of the night have been due to some cleverly-devised trick for the purpose, in many cases, of keeping the house uninhabited, and thereby benefiting, it may be, some impecunious care-taker. A story is told of a ghost—which turned out to be the trick of a Franciscan friar—that answered questions by knocking in the Catholic church of Orleans, and demanded the removal of the provost’s Lutheran wife, who had been buried there.[343] But one of the most eccentric instances of spiritual antics was the noises said to have been heard at Epworth Parsonage in the time of the Rev. Samuel Wesley, these sounds having consisted of ‘knockings’ and ‘groanings,’ of ‘footsteps,’ and ‘rustling of silk trailing along,’ ‘clattering of the iron casement,’ and ‘clattering of the warming pan,’ and all sorts of frightful noises, which frightened even a big dog, a large mastiff, who used, at first, when he heard the noises, ‘to bark, and leap, and snap on one side and the other, and that frequently before anyone in the room heard the noises at all; but after two or three days he used to creep away before the noise began, and by this the family knew it was at hand.’ Mr. Wesley at one time thought it was rats, and sent for a horn to blow them away. But this made matters worse, for after the horn was blown the noise came in the daytime as well. Some of the Wesley family believed it to be supernatural hauntings, and explained the cause of it thus: at morning and evening prayers, ‘when the Rev. Samuel Wesley commenced prayer for the king, a knocking began all round the room, and a thundering knock attended the Amen.’ Mr. Wesley observed that his wife did not say ‘Amen’ to the prayer for the king, but Mrs. Wesley added she could not, for she did not believe that the Prince of Orange was king.[344] Ewshott House, Hampshire, was disturbed by equally strange sounds, and Glamis Castle, with its secret room, has long been famous for the mysterious noises, knocking, and hammering heard at night-time, which a lady once remarked reminded her of the erection of a scaffold.

The miscreant ghosts of wicked people are supposed to make all kinds of unearthly noises, for as they cannot enjoy peace in their graves, they delight in annoying the occupants of their mortal haunts. Lowther Hall, the residence of the ‘bad Lord Lonsdale,’ was disturbed by such uncanny sounds that neither men nor animals were permitted to rest, and many of the ghost stories told of our old country houses describe the peculiar noises made by their ghostly tenants. The mother of the premier, George Canning, used to tell her experiences of a haunted house in Plymouth, where she stayed during a theatrical engagement. Having learnt from a Mr. Bernard, who was connected with the theatre, that he could obtain comfortable apartments for her at a moderate price, she accepted his offer. ‘There is,’ said he, ‘a house belonging to our carpenter that is reported to be haunted, and nobody will live in it. If you like to have it you may, and for nothing, I believe, for he is so anxious to get a tenant; only you must not let it be known that you do not pay any rent for it.’ It turned out as Mr. Bernard had informed her, for night after night she heard all such noises as are wont to proceed from a workshop, although, on examining every part of the house herself, she found nothing to account for this extraordinary series of noises.

Occasionally, it is said, before the perpetration of any dreadful crime, as murder, a supernatural sound is heard. A murder was committed, for instance, at Cottertown, of Auchanasie, near Keith, on January 11, 1797, in connection with which the following facts have been recorded: ‘On the day on which the deed was done, two men, strangers to the district, called at a farmhouse about three miles from the house in which lived the old folk that were murdered. Shortly before the tragic act was committed, a sound was heard passing along the road the two men were seen to take, in the direction of the place at which the murder was perpetrated. So loud and extraordinary was the noise that the people left their houses to see what it was that was passing. To the amazement of every one, nothing was to be seen, though it was moonlight, and moonlight so bright that it aroused attention. All believed something dreadful was to happen, and some proposed to follow the sound. About the time this discussion was going on, a blaze of fire arose on the hill of Auchanasie. The foul deed had been accomplished, and the cottage set on fire. By next day all knew of what the mysterious sound had been the forerunner.’[345] At Wheal Vor Mine an unaccountable noise has been generally supposed to be a warning. On Barry Island, near Cardiff, it is said that certain ghostly noises were formerly heard in it—sounds resembling the clanking of chains, hammering of iron, and blowing of bellows, and which were supposed to be made by the fiends whom Merlin had set to work to frame the wall of crags to surround Carmarthen.

The following extract from Lockhart’s ‘Life of Sir Walter Scott’ records a strange noise which was heard while the new house at Abbotsford was being built, the novelist living in an older part, close adjoining: ‘Walter Scott to Daniel Terry, April 30, 1818.... The exposed state of my house has led to a mysterious disturbance. The night before last we were awakened by a violent noise, like drawing heavy boards along the new part of the house. I fancied something had fallen, and thought no more about it; this was about two in the morning. Last night, at the same witching hour, the very same noise occurred. Mrs. S., as you know, is rather timbersome, so up I got, with Beardie’s broad sword under my arm—

But nothing was out of order, neither can I discover what occasioned the disturbance.’ Mr. Lockhart adds: ‘On the morning that Mr. Terry received the foregoing letter in London, Mr. William Erskine was breakfasting with him, and the chief subject of their conversation was the sudden death of George Bullock, which had occurred on the same night, and nearly as they could ascertain at the very hour when Scott was aroused from his sleep by the “mysterious disturbance” here described. This coincidence, when Scott received Erskine’s minute detail of what had happened in Tenterdon Street (that is, the death of Bullock, who had the charge of furnishing the new rooms at Abbotsford), made a much stronger impression on his mind than might be gathered from the tone of an ensuing communication.’ It seems that Bullock had been at Abbotsford, and made himself a great favourite with old and young. Sir Walter Scott, a week or two afterwards, wrote thus to Terry: ‘Were you not struck with the fantastical coincidence of our nocturnal disturbances at Abbotsford, with the melancholy event that followed? I protest to you the noise resembled half a dozen men at work, putting up boards and furniture, and nothing can be more certain than that there was nobody on the premises at the time. With a few additional touches, the story would figure in Glanville or Aubrey’s collection. In the meantime you may set it down, with poor Dubisson’s warnings, as a remarkable coincidence coming under your own observation.’

In a paper by Mrs. Edwards, in ‘Macmillan’s Magazine,’ entitled ‘The Mystery of Pezazi,’ an account is given of constant disturbing sounds of nocturnal tree-felling heard near a bungalow in Ceylon, where examination proved that no trees had been felled. Mrs. Edwards, her husband, and their servants were on several occasions disturbed by these sounds, which were unmistakable and distinct. The Singhalese attribute these noises to a Pezazi, or spirit. A description of precisely the same disturbances occurs, writes Mr. Andrew Lang,[346] in Sahagun’s account of the superstitions of the Aztecs, and it seems that the Galapagos Islands, ‘suthard of the line,’ were haunted by the midnight axe. ‘De Quincey,’ adds Mr. Lang, ‘who certainly had not heard the Ceylon story, and who probably would have mentioned Sahagun’s had he known it, describes the effect produced by the midnight axe on the nerves of his brother, Pink: “So it was, and attested by generations of sea-vagabonds, that every night, duly as the sun went down and the twilight began to prevail, a sound arose—audible to other islands, and to every ship lying quietly at anchor in that neighbourhood—of a woodcutter’s axe.... The close of the story was that after, I suppose, ten or twelve minutes of hacking and hewing, a horrid crash was heard, announcing that the tree, if tree it were, that never yet was made visible to daylight search, had yielded to the old woodman’s persecution.... The woodcutter’s axe began to intermit about the earliest approach of dawn, and as light strengthened it ceased entirely, after poor Pink’s ghostly panic grew insupportable.”’

Among the American Indians all the sounds that issued from caverns were thought to be produced by their spiritual inhabitants. The Sonora Indians say that departed souls dwell among the caves and nooks of their cliffs, and that echoes often heard there are their voices. Similarly, when explosions were heard, caused by the sulphurous gas from the rocks around the head-waters of Lake Ontario, the superstitious Indians attributed them to the breathing of the Manitous.[347] The modern Dayaks, Siamese, and Singhalese agree with the Esths as to noises being caused by spirits. European folk-lore has long ascribed most of the unexplained noises to the agency of spirits, and to this day Franconian damsels go to a tree on St. Thomas’s Day, knock three times, and listen for the indwelling spirit to inform them from raps within what kind of husbands they are to have. Hence the night is known as ‘Little Knocker’s Night.’ There is the Poltergeist of the German, a mischievous spirit, who wanders about the house at night making all kinds of strange noises.