Chapter III: Part 3

"Was it not in purl?"--"Yes."

"How long did you live after taking it?"--Three knocks, held to mean three hours.

"Did Carrots" (her maid) "know of your being poisoned?"--"Yes."

"Did you tell her?"--"Yes."

"How long was it after you took it before you told her?" One knock, for one hour.

Here was something tangible, and Knight went to work with a will to refute the terrible charge brought by the invisible accuser. As reported in _The Daily Gazetteer_, which had promised that "the reader may expect to be enlightened from time to time to the utmost of our power in this intricate and dark affair," the maid Carrots was found, and from her was procured a sworn statement that Mrs. Knight had said not a word to her about being poisoned; that, indeed, she had become unconscious twelve hours before her death and remained unconscious to the end. The physician and apothecary who had attended her made affidavit to the same effect, and described the fatal nature of her illness. It was further shown that her death at most benefited Knight by not more than a hundred pounds, of which he had no need, as he was of independent means.

Altogether, he would seem to have cleared himself effectually. Still the knocking continued, and night after night the accusation was repeated. He now resorted, therefore, to a radical step to convince the public that he was the victim of a monstrous fraud.

Asserting that little Miss Parsons herself produced the mysterious sounds, and that she did so at the instigation of her father, he secured an order for her removal to the house of a friend of his, a Clerkenwell clergyman. Here a decisive failure was recorded against the ghost. It had promised that it would knock on the coffin containing Mrs. Knight's remains; and about one o'clock in the morning, after hours of silent watching, during which the spirit gave not a sign of its presence, the entire company adjourned to the church. Only one member was found of sufficient boldness to plunge with Knight into the gloomy depths where the dead lay entombed; and that one bore out his statement that never a knock had been heard. The girl was urged to confess, but persisted in her assertions that the ghost was in nowise of her making.

Afterward, when the knocking had been resumed under more favorable auspices, word came from the unseen world that the fiasco in the church was ascribable to the very good reason that Knight had caused his wife's coffin to be secretly removed. "I will show them!" cried the desperate man. With clergyman, sexton, and undertaker, he visited the vaults once more and not only identified but opened the coffin.

Meanwhile all London was flocking to Cock Lane as to a raree-show, on foot, on horseback, in vehicles of every description. Some, like the celebrated Dr. Johnson who took part in the coffin opening episode in Clerkenwell, were animated by scientific zeal; but idle curiosity inspired the great majority. The gossiping Walpole, in a letter to his friend Montagu, has left a graphic picture of the stir created by the newspaper reports.

"I went to hear it," he writes; "for it is not an apparition but an audition. We set out from the opera, changed our clothes at Northumberland House, the Duke of York, Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke, Lord Hertford, and I, all in one hackney coach, and drove to the spot; it rained in torrents; yet the lane was full of mob, and the house so full we could not get in; at last they discovered it was the Duke of York, and the company squeezed themselves into one another's pockets to make room for us. The house, which is borrowed, and to which the ghost has adjourned, is wretchedly small and miserable; when we opened the chamber, in which were fifty people with no light but one tallow candle at the end, we tumbled over the bed of the child to whom the ghost comes, and whom they are murdering by inches in such insufferable heat and stench. At the top of the room are clothes to dry. I asked if we were to have rope dancing between the acts. We heard nothing; they told us (as they would at a puppet show) that it would not come that night till seven in the morning, that is, when there are only prentices and old women. We stayed, however, till half an hour after one."

The skepticism patent in this letter was shared by all thinking men. Letter after letter of criticism, even of abuse, was poured into the newspapers. No less a personage than Oliver Goldsmith wrote, under the title of "The Mystery Revealed," a long pamphlet which was intended both to explain away the disturbances and to defend the luckless Knight. The actor Garrick dragged into a prologue a riming and sneering reference to the mystery; the artist Hogarth invoked his genius to deride it. Yet there were believers in plenty, and there even seem to have been some who thought of preying on the credulous by opening up a business in "knocking ghosts."

"On Tuesday last," one reads in _The Chronicle_, "it was given out that a new knocking ghost was to perform that evening at a house in Broad Court near Bow Street, Covent Garden; information of which being given to a certain magistrate in the neighborhood, he sent his compliments with an intimation that it should not meet with that lenity the Cock Lane ghost did, but that it should knock hemp in Bridewell. On which the ghost very discreetly omitted the intended exhibition."

Whether or no he took a hint from this publication, it is certain that, finding all other means failing, Knight now resolved to try to lay by legal process the ghost that had rendered him the most unhappy and the most talked of man in London. Going before a magistrate, he brought a charge of criminal conspiracy against Clerk Parsons, Mrs. Parsons, the Parsons servant, the clergyman who had aided the servant in eliciting the murder story from the talkative ghost, and a Cock Lane tradesman. All of these, he alleged, had banded themselves together to ruin him, their malice arising from the quarrel which had led him to remove to Clerkenwell and enter a lawsuit against Parsons. The girl herself he did not desire punished, because she was too young to understand the evil that she wrought. Warrants were forthwith issued, and, protesting their innocence frantically, the accused were dragged to prison.

Their conviction soon followed, after a trial of which the only obtainable evidence is that it was held at the Guildhall before a special jury and was presided over by Lord Mansfield. Then, "the court desiring that Mr. K----, who had been so much injured on this occasion, should receive some reparation,"[I] sentence was deferred for several months. This enabled the clergyman and the tradesman "to purchase their pardon" by the payment of some five hundred or six hundred pounds to Knight. But the clerk either would not or could not pay a farthing, and on him and his, sentence was now passed. "The father," to quote once more from the meager account in _The Annual Register_, "was ordered to be set in the pillory three times in one month, once at the end of Cock Lane, and after that to be imprisoned two years; Elizabeth his wife, one year; and Mary Frazer, six months to Bridewell, and to be kept there to hard labor." Thus, in wig and gown, did the law solemnly and severely place the seal of disbelief on the Cock Lane ghost; which, it is worth observing, seems to have vanished forever the moment the arrests were made.

* * * * *

But, looking back at the case from the vantage point of chronological distance and of recent research into kindred affairs, it is difficult to accept as final the verdict reached by the "special jury" and concurred in by the public opinion of the day. It is preposterous to suppose that for so slight a cause as a dispute over twelve pounds Clerk Parsons and his associates would conspire to ruin a man's reputation and if possible to take his life; and still more preposterous to imagine that they would adopt such a means to attain this end. Of course, they may have had stronger reasons for being hostile to Knight than appears from the published facts. Yet it is significant that when the clerk was placed in the pillory he seemed to "be out of his mind," and so evident was his misery that the assembled mob "instead of using him ill, made a handsome collection for him."

The more likely, nay the only defensible solution of the problem, is that he, his fellow sufferers, and Knight himself were one and all the victims of the uncontrollable impulses of a hysterical child. The case bears too strong a resemblance to the Tedworth and Epworth disturbances to admit of any other hypothesis. Not that the Parsons girl is to be placed on exactly the same footing as the Mompesson children and Hetty Wesley, and held to some extent responsible for the mischievous phenomena she produced.

On the contrary, the more one studies the evidence the stronger grows the conviction that in her we have a striking and singular instance of "dissociation." She was, it is very evident, strongly attached to the unfortunate Mrs. Knight, doubtless felt keenly the separation from her, and, whether consciously or subconsciously, would cherish a grudge against Knight as the cause of that separation. The news of Mrs. Knight's death would come as a great shock, and might easily act, so to speak, as the fulcrum of the lever of mental disintegration. Then, dimly enough at first but soon with portentous rapidity, her disordered consciousness would conceive the idea that her friend had been murdered and that it was her duty to bring the slayer to justice. From this it would be an easy step to the development, in the neurotic child, of a full fledged secondary personality, akin to that found in the spiritistic mediums of later times.

Now, for the first time, her faculties would seem to her astonished parents to be in the keeping and under the control of an extraneous being, a departed, discarnate spirit; and in this error she and they would be confirmed by the suggestions and foolish questions of those who came to marvel. It needed another great shock--there being in those days no Janet or Prince or Sidis to take charge of the case--the shock of the arrest and imprisonment of her parents, to effect at least partial reintegration and the consequent disappearance of the secondary self, the much debated, malevolent Cock Lane ghost.

FOOTNOTES:

[H] It is proper to observe that the name Knight given to the leading actor in this singular drama rests on inference merely. Doubtless from a fear of libel suits, the contemporary newspapers and magazines speak of him only as Mr. ----, or Mr. K----, there being, so far as the present writer has been able to discover, only one publication (_The Gentleman's Magazine_) so bold as to refer to him as Mr. K----t. Nowhere is his identity made clear. Judging from the prominence of those who rushed to his defense, he would seem to have been a person of considerable importance.

[I] _The Annual Register_ for 1762.

VI

THE GHOST SEEN BY LORD BROUGHAM

It is comparatively easy, when seated before a roaring fire in a well-lighted room, to sneer ghosts out of existence, and roundly affirm that they are without exception the fanciful products of a heated imagination. But the matter takes on a very different complexion, when in that same room and without so much as the opening of a door, one is unexpectedly confronted by the figure of an absent friend, who, it subsequently appears, is about that time breathing his last in another part of the world. Especially would it seem impossible to remain skeptical if there existed between oneself and the friend in question a compact, drawn up years before in an access of youthful enthusiasm, binding whichever should die first to appear to the other at the moment of death.

This, as all students of ghostology are aware, has frequently been the case; and it was precisely the case with the ghost seen by the famous Lord Brougham, the brilliant and versatile Scotchman, whose astonishingly long and successful career in England as statesman, judge, lawyer, man of science, philanthropist, orator, and author won him a place among the immortals both of the Georgian and of the Victorian era.

At the time he saw the ghost he was still a young man, thinking far less of what the future might hold than of the pleasures of the present. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a more unlikely subject for a ghostly experience. From his earliest youth, his father, a most matter of fact person, sedulously endeavored to impress him with the belief that the only spirits deserving of the name were those which came in oddly labeled bottles; and in support of this view the elder Brougham frequently related the adventures of sundry persons of his acquaintance who had engaged in the mischievous pastime of ghost hunting. Added to the natural effect of such tales as these was the inherent exuberance of Brougham's disposition and the bent of his mind to mathematics and kindred exact sciences.

It was at the Edinburgh high school that he first met his future ghost, who at the time was a youngster like himself, and became and long remained his most intimate friend. The two lads were graduated together from the high school, and together matriculated into the university, where, in the intervals Brougham could spare from his favorite studies and recreations, and from the company of the daredevil students with whom he soon began to associate, they continued their old time walks and talks.

On one of these walks, the conversation happened to turn to the perennial problem of life beyond the grave and the possibility of the dead communicating with the living. Brougham, mindful of the views maintained by his father, doubtless treated the subject lightly, if not scoffingly; but one word led to another, until finally, in what he afterward described as a moment of folly, he covenanted with his friend that whichever of them should happen to pass from earth first would, if it were at all possible, show himself in spirit to the other, and thus prove beyond peradventure that the soul of man survived the death of the body.

So far as Brougham was concerned, this undertaking was speedily forgotten in the pressure of the many activities into which he plunged with all the ardor of his impetuous nature. His days were given wholly to the pursuit of knowledge; his nights to the pursuit of pleasure, as pleasure was then counted by the roystering young Scotchmen, whose favorite resort was the tavern, and whose most popular pastime was filching signs, bell handles, and knockers, and stirring the city guard to unwonted energy. Under such conditions neither the death pact nor the solemn minded youth with whom he had made it could remain long in his memory; and it is not surprising to find that with the end of college life and the removal of his boyhood's friend to India, where he entered the civil service, they soon became as strangers to each other.

Brougham himself remained in Edinburgh to read for the law, and incidentally to develop with the aid of an amateur debating society the oratorical talents that were in time to make him the logical successor of Pitt, Fox, and Burke in the House of Commons. He continued none the less a lover of pleasure, some of which, however, he now took in the healthy form of long walking trips through the Highlands. In this way he acquired a desire for travel, and when, in the autumn of 1799, an opportunity came for an extended tour of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, he grasped it eagerly. Together with the future diplomat, Lord Stuart of Rothsay, then plain Charles Stuart and the boon companion of many a pedestrian excursion, he sailed for Copenhagen late in September, and by leisurely stages made his way thence to Stockholm, alive to all the varied interests of the novel scenes in which he found himself; but encountering little that was exciting or adventurous, until, after a prolonged sojourn in the Swedish capital and a brief visit to Goeteborg, he started for Norway.

By this time the weather had turned so cold that the travelers resolved to bring their tour to a sudden end, and to press on as rapidly as the bad roads would permit to some Norwegian port, where they hoped to find a ship that would carry them back to Scotland. Accordingly, leaving Goeteborg early in the morning of December 19, they journeyed steadily until after midnight, when they came to an inn that seemed to promise comfortable sleeping accommodations. Stuart lost no time in going to bed; but Brougham decided to wait until a hot bath could be prepared for him.

Plunging into it, and forgetful of everything save the warmth that was doubly welcome after the cold of the long drive, he suddenly became aware that he was not alone in the room. No door had opened, not a footstep had been heard; but in the light of the flickering candles he plainly saw the figure of a man seated in the chair on which he had carelessly thrown his clothes. And this figure he instantly recognized as that of his early playmate, the forgotten chum who, as he well knew, had years before gone from the land of the heather to the land of the blazing sun. Yet here he sat, in the quaintly furnished sleeping chamber of a Swedish roadside inn, gazing composedly at his astounded friend. At once there flashed into Brougham's mind remembrance of the death pact, and he leaped from the bath, only to lose all consciousness and fall headlong to the floor. When he revived, the apparition had disappeared.

There was little sleep for the hard headed Scotchman that night. The vision had been too definite, the shock too intense. But, dressing, he sat down and strove to debate the matter in the light of cold reason. He must, he argued, have dozed off in the bath and experienced a strange dream. To be sure, he had not been thinking of his old comrade, and for years had had no communication with him. Nor had anything taken place during the tour to bring to memory either him or any member of his family, or to turn Brougham's mind to thoughts of India. Still, he found it impossible to believe that he had seen a ghost. At most, he reiterated to himself, it could have been nothing more than an exceptionally clear cut dream. And to this opinion he stubbornly adhered, notwithstanding the receipt, soon after his return to Edinburgh, of a letter from India announcing the death of the friend who had been so mysteriously recalled to his recollection, and giving December 19 as the date of death. More than sixty years later we find him, in his autobiography commenting on the experience anew, granting that it was a strange coincidence but refusing to admit that it was anything more than the coincidence of a dream.

It was in his autobiography, by the way, that he first referred to the confirmatory letter. This fact, taken in connection with his reputation for holding the truth in light esteem and with several vague and puzzling statements contained in the detailed account of the experience itself as set forth in his journal of the Scandinavian tour, has led some critics to make the suggestion that his narrative partakes of the nature of fiction rather than of a sober recital of facts. Against this, however, must be set Brougham's complete and invincible repugnance to accept at face value anything bordering on the supernatural. He took no pleasure in the thought that he had possibly been the recipient of a visit from a departed spirit. On the contrary, it annoyed him, and he sought earnestly to find a natural explanation for an occurrence which remained unique throughout his long life. No one would have been readier to point out the futility of the apparition if the absent friend had really continued hale and hearty after December 19. And it is therefore reasonable to assume that had he wished to falsify at all, he would have given an altogether different sequel to the story of his vision or dream, as he preferred to call it, though the evidence which he himself furnishes shows that he was not asleep.

The question still remains, of course, whether he was justified in dismissing it as a sheer chance coincidence. If it stood by itself, it would obviously be permissible to accept this explanation as all sufficient. But the fact is that it is only one of many similar instances. This was strikingly brought out only a few years ago through a far reaching inquiry, a "census of hallucinations," instituted by a special committee of the Society for Psychical Research.

Enlisting the services of some four hundred "collectors," the committee instructed each of these to address to twenty-five adults, selected at random, the query, "Have you ever, when believing yourself to be completely awake, had a vivid impression of seeing or being touched by a living being or inanimate object, or of hearing a voice; which impression, so far as you could discover, was not due to any external physical cause?" In all, seventeen thousand people were thus questioned, and almost ten per cent. of the answers received proved to be in the affirmative. More than this, it appeared that out of a total of three hundred and fifty recognized apparitions of living persons, no fewer than sixty-five were "death coincidences," in which the hallucinatory experience occurred within from one hour to twelve hours after the death of the person seen.

Sifting these death coincidences carefully, the committee for various reasons rejected more than half, and at the same time raised the total of recognized apparitions of living persons from three hundred and fifty to thirteen hundred. This was done in order to make generous allowance for the number of such apparitions forgotten by those to whom the question had been put, investigation showing that the great majority of hallucinations reported were given as of comparatively recent occurrence, and that there was a rapid decrease as the years of occurrence became more remote.

As a final result, therefore, the committee found about thirty death coincidences out of thirteen hundred cases, or a proportion of one in forty-three. Computing from the average annual death-rate for England and Wales, it was calculated that the probability that any one person would die on a given day was about one in nineteen thousand; in other words, out of every nineteen thousand apparitions of living persons, there should occur, by chance alone, one death coincidence. The actual proportion, however, as established by the inquiry, was equivalent to about four hundred and forty in nineteen thousand, or four hundred and forty times the most probable number, and this when the apparitions reported were considered merely collectively as having been seen at any time within twelve hours after death. Not a few, as a matter of fact, were reported as having been seen within one hour after death, and for these the improbability of occurrence by chance alone was manifestly twelve times four hundred and forty. In view of these considerations the committee felt warranted in declaring that "between deaths and apparitions of dying persons a connection exists which is not due to chance."[J]

Had Lord Brougham lived to study the statistics of this remarkable census of hallucinations, he might have formed a higher opinion of his ghost; but he would also have been in a better position to deny its supernatural attributes. For, if the Society for Psychical Research has made it impossible to doubt the existence of such ghosts as that which he beheld during his travels in Sweden, it has likewise made discoveries which afford a really substantial reason for asserting that they no more hail from the world beyond than do ghosts that are unmistakably the creations of fancy or fraud. This results from the society's investigations of thought transference or telepathy, to use the term now commonly employed.

At an early stage of the experiments undertaken to determine the possibility of transmitting thought from mind to mind without the intervention of any known means of communication, it was found that when success attended the efforts of the experimenters the telepathic message was frequently received not in the form of pure thought but as a hallucinatory image; and what is still more important in the present connection, it was further found possible so to produce not merely images of cards, flowers, books, and other inanimate objects, but also images of living persons.

Thus, as chronicled with corroborative evidence in the society's "Proceedings," an English clergyman named Godfrey telepathically caused a distant friend to see an apparition of him one night; the same result was achieved by a Mr. Sinclair of New Jersey, who, during a visit to New York, succeeded in projecting a phantasm of himself which was clearly seen by his wife in Lakewood; and similarly a Mr. Kirk, while seated in his London office, paid a telepathic visit to the home of a young woman, who saw him as distinctly as though he had gone there in the flesh. In all of these, as in other cases recorded by the society, the persons to whom the apparitions were vouchsafed had no idea that any experiment of the kind was being attempted.

Indeed, there is on record an apparently well authenticated instance of the experimental production of an apparition not of the living but of the dead. This occurred in Germany many years ago, when a certain Herr Wesermann undertook to "will" a military friend into dreaming of a woman who had long been dead. The sequel may be related in Herr Wesermann's own words:

"A lady, who had been dead five years, was to appear to Lieutenant N. in a dream at 10.30 P.M., and incite him to good deeds. At half-past ten, contrary to expectation, Herr N. had not gone to bed but was discussing the French campaign with his friend Lieutenant S. in the ante-room. Suddenly the door of the room opened, the lady entered dressed in white, with a black kerchief and uncovered head, greeted S. with her hand three times in a friendly manner; then turned to N., nodded to him, and returned again through the doorway.

"As this story, related to me by Lieutenant N., seemed to be too remarkable from a psychological point of view for the truth of it not to be duly established, I wrote to Lieutenant S., who was living six miles away, and asked him to give me his account of it. He sent me the following reply:

"'On the thirteenth of March, 1817, Herr N. came to pay me a visit at my lodgings about a league from A----. He stayed the night with me. After supper, and when we were both undressed, I was sitting on my bed and Herr N. was standing by the door of the next room on the point also of going to bed. This was about half-past ten. We were speaking partly about indifferent subjects and partly about the events of the French campaign. Suddenly the door of the kitchen opened without a sound, and a lady entered, very pale, taller than Herr N., about five feet four inches in height, strong and broad of figure, dressed in white, but with a large black kerchief which reached to below the waist.

"'She entered with bare head, greeted me with the hand three times in complimentary fashion, turned round to the left toward Herr N., and waved her hand to him three times; after which the figure quietly, and again without any creaking of the door, went out. We followed at once in order to discover whether there were any deception, but found nothing. The strangest thing was this, that our night-watch of two men whom I had shortly found on the watch were now asleep, though at my first call they were on the alert; and that the door of the room, which always opens with a good deal of noise, did not make the slightest sound when opened by the figure.'"[K]

It is also significant that, as was made evident by the census of hallucinations, by far the larger number of apparitions reported are those of persons still alive and well. In these cases, nobody being dead, it is absurd[L] to raise the cry of spirits, and the only tenable hypothesis is that, through one of the several causes which seem to quicken telepathic action, a spontaneous telepathic hallucination has been produced. Now, the experiments conducted by the society and by independent investigators have shown that telepathic messages often lie dormant for hours beneath the threshold of the receiver's consciousness, being consciously apprehended only when certain favoring conditions arise; as, for example, when the receiver has fallen asleep, or into a state of reverie, or when, tired out after a long day's work, he has utterly relaxed mentally. This is technically known as "deferred percipience," and, considered in conjunction with the discoveries mentioned, it is amply sufficient to dislodge from the realm of the supernatural the ghost seen by Lord Brougham, and every ghost that is not a mere imposter.

In the Brougham case the exciting cause of the hallucination seems to have been the death pact. As he lay dying in India, the mind of the whilom schoolboy would, consciously or unconsciously, revert to that agreement with the friend of his youth, and thence would arise the desire to let him know that the plighted word had not been forgotten. Across the vast intervening space, by what mechanism we as yet do not know, the message would flash instantaneously, to remain unapprehended, perhaps for hours after the death of the sender, until, in the quiet of the Swedish inn and resting from the fatigues of the journey, Brougham's mental faculties passed momentarily into the condition necessary for its objective realization.

Then, precisely as in experimental telepathy the receiver sees a hallucinatory image of the trinket or the book; with a suddenness and vividness that could not fail to shock him, the message would find expression by the creation before Brougham's startled eyes of a hallucinatory image of the friend who, as he was to learn later, had died that same day thousands of miles from Sweden. Knowing nothing of the possibilities of the human mind, as revealed, if only faintly, by the labors of a later generation, it was inevitable he should believe he had no alternative between dismissing the experience as a peculiar dream or admitting that in very truth he had looked upon a ghost.

FOOTNOTES:

[J] The committee's report will be found in the tenth volume of the "Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research."

[K] Translation from the "Journal of the Society for Psychical Research," Vol. IV. p. 218.

[L] I had originally written "impossible," but a critic of my "Riddle of Personality," in which this point was taken up, has convinced me that "absurd" is the better word. The critic in question writes: "what evidence has the author that an apparition of the living is not a spirit? Why may not the spirit of the living person have left his body and appeared to his friend? Such is the view of many people, and it coincides with certain phenomena in dreams." But, to raise only one objection: If the apparition appear at a moment when the person seen is actively engaged elsewhere--it may be in writing a book, or preaching a sermon--what is it that is seen, and what is it that is writing or preaching? Is the "spirit" present in both places at the same time--in the shadowy apparition, and in the living, breathing, busily-occupied human entity? Assuredly, if it be not "impossible" to raise the cry of spirits in such a case, it would at all events seem "absurd" to do so.

VII

THE SEERESS OF PREVORST

Modern spiritism, as every student of that fascinating if elusive subject is aware, dates from the closing years of the first half of the nineteenth century. But the celebrated Fox sisters, whose revelations at that time served to crystallize into an organized religious system the idea of the possibility of communication between this world and the world beyond, were by no means the first of spiritistic mediums. Long before their day there were those who professed to have cognizance of things unseen and to act as intermediaries between the living and the dead; and although lost to sight amid the throng of latter-day claimants to similar powers, the achievements of some of these early adventurers into the unknown have not been surpassed by the best performances of the Fox girls and their long line of successors.

Especially is this true of the mediumship of a young German woman, Frederica Hauffe, who in the course of her short, pitiful, and tragic career is credited with having displayed more varied and picturesque supernatural gifts than the most renowned wonder-worker of to-day. Like many modern mediums she was of humble origin, her birthplace being a forester's hut in the Wuertemberg mountain village of Prevorst; and here, among wood-cutters and charcoal-burners, she passed the first years of her life. Even while still a child she seems to have attracted wide-spread attention on account of certain peculiarities of temperament and conduct. It was noticed that though naturally gay and playful she occasionally assumed a strangely intent and serious manner; that in her happiest moments she was subject to unaccountable fits of shuddering and shivering; and that she seemed keenly alive not merely to the sights and sounds of every-day life but to influences unfelt by those about her. This last trait received a sudden and unexpected development when, at the age of twelve or thirteen, she was sent to the neighboring town of Loewenstein to be educated under the care of her grand-parents, a worthy couple named Schmidgall.

Grandfather Schmidgall was an exceedingly superstitious old man, with a singular fondness for visiting solitary and gloomy places, particularly churchyards; and he soon began to take the little girl with him on such strolls. But he discovered, much to his amazement, that though she listened with avidity to the tales he told her of the romantic and mysterious events that had occurred within the somber ruins with which the countryside was liberally endowed, she was reluctant to explore those ruins or wander among the graves where he delighted to resort. At first he was inclined to ascribe her reluctance to weak and sentimental timidity, but he speedily found reason to adopt an altogether different view. He noticed that whenever he took her to graveyards or to churches in which there were graves, her frail form became greatly agitated, and at times she seemed rooted to the ground; and that there were certain places, especially an old kitchen in a nearby castle, which he could not persuade her to enter, and the mere sight of which caused her to quake and tremble. "The child," he told his wife, "feels the presence of the dead, and, mark you, she will end by seeing the dead."

He was, therefore, more alarmed than surprised when one midnight, long after he had fancied her in bed and asleep, she ran to his room and informed him that she had just beheld in the hall a tall, dark figure which, sighing heavily, passed her and disappeared in the vestibule. With awe, not unmixed with satisfaction, Schmidgall remembered that he had once seen the self-same apparition; but he prudently endeavored to convince her that she had been dreaming and sent her back to her room, which, thenceforward, he never allowed her to leave at night.

In this way Frederica Hauffe's mediumship began. But several years were to pass before she saw another ghost or gave evidence of possessing supernormal powers other than by occasional dreams of a prophetic and revelatory nature. In the meanwhile she rejoined her parents and moved with them from Prevorst to Oberstenfeld, where, in her nineteenth year, she was married. It was distinctly a marriage of convenience, arranged without regard to her wishes, and the moment the engagement was announced she secluded herself from her friends and passed her days and nights in weeping. For weeks together she went without sleep, ate scarcely anything, and became thin, pale, and feeble. It was rumored that she had set her affections in another quarter: but her relatives angrily denied this and asserted that once married she would soon become herself again.

They were mistaken. From her wedding day, which she celebrated by attending the funeral of a venerable clergyman to whom she had been warmly attached, her health broke rapidly. One morning she awoke in a high fever that lasted a fortnight and was followed by convulsive spasms, during which she beheld at the bedside the image of her grandmother Schmidgall, who, it subsequently developed, was at that moment dying in distant Loewenstein. The spasms continuing, despite the application of the customary rude remedies of the time, it was decided to send for a physician with some knowledge of mesmerism, which was then becoming popular in Germany. To the astonishment of those who thronged the sick room, the first touch of his hand on her forehead brought relief. The convulsions ceased, she became calm, and presently she fell asleep. But on awaking she was attacked as before, and try as he might the physician could not effect a permanent cure. To all his "passes" she responded with gratifying promptitude, only to suffer a relapse the moment she was released from the mesmeric influence.

At this juncture aid was received from a most extraordinary source, according to the story Frederica told her wondering friends. With benign visage and extended hand, the spirit of her grandmother appeared to her for seven successive nights, mesmerized her, and taught her how to mesmerize herself. The results of this visitation, if not altogether fortunate, were at least to some extent curative. There were periods when she was able not merely to leave her bed but to attend to household duties and indulge in long walks and drives. But it was painfully apparent that she was still in a precarious condition.

From her infancy she had always been powerfully affected by the touch of different metals, and now this phenomenon was intensified a thousand-fold. The placing of a magnet on her forehead caused her features to be contorted as though by a stroke of paralysis; contact with glass and sand made her cataleptic. Once she was found seated on a sandstone bench, unable to move hand or foot. About this time also she acquired the faculty of crystal-gazing; that is to say, by looking into a bowl of water she could correctly describe scenes transpiring at a distance. More than this, she now declared that behind the persons in whose company she was she perceived ghostly forms, some of which she recognized as dead acquaintances.

Unlike her grandmother, these new visitants from the unknown world did not provide her with the means of regaining her lost health. On the contrary, from the time they first put in their appearance she grew far worse, suffering not so much from convulsive attacks as from an increasing lassitude. She complained that eating was a great tax on her strength, and that rising and walking were out of the question. Unable to comprehend this new turn of affairs, her attendants lost all patience, declared that if she had made up her mind to die she might as well do so as at once, and tried to force her to leave her bed. Finally her parents intervened, and at their request she was brought back to Oberstenfeld.

Here she found an altogether congenial environment, and for a while showed marked improvement. Here too, and in a most sensational way, her mediumship blossomed into full fruition. She had been home for only a short time when the family began to be disturbed by mysterious noises for which they could find no cause. A sound like the ringing of glasses was frequently heard, as were footsteps and knockings on the walls. Her father, in particular, asserted that sometimes he felt a strange pressure on his shoulder or his foot. The impression grew that the house, which was part of the ancient, picturesque, and none too well preserved cathedral of Oberstenfeld, was haunted by the spirits of its former occupants.

One night, shortly after retiring to the room which they shared in common, Frederica, her sister, and a maid servant saw a lighted candle, apparently of its own volition, move up and down the table on which it was burning. The sister and the servant saw nothing more; but Frederica the next instant beheld a thin, grayish cloud, which presently resolved into the form of a man, about fifty years old, attired in the costume of a medieval knight. Approaching, this strange apparition gazed steadfastly at her, and in a low but clear tone urged her to rise and follow it, saying that she alone could loosen its bonds. Overcome with terror, she cried out that she would not follow, then ran across the room and hid herself in the bed where her sister and the servant lay panic-stricken. That night she saw no more of the apparition: but the maid, whom they sent to sleep in the bed she had so hurriedly vacated, declared that the coverings were forcibly drawn off her by an unseen hand.

The next night the apparition appeared to Frederica again, and to her alone. This time it seemed not sorrowful but angry, and threatened that if she did not rise and follow she would be hurled out of the window. At her bold retort, "In the name of Jesus, do it!" the apparition vanished, to return a few nights later, and after that to show itself to her by day as well as by night.

It now informed her that it was the ghost of a nobleman named Weiler, who had slain his brother and for that crime was condemned to wander ceaselessly until it recovered a certain piece of paper hidden in a vault under the cathedral. On hearing this, she solemnly assured it that by prayer alone could its sins be forgiven and pardon obtained, and thereupon she set herself to teach it to pray. Ultimately, with a most joyous countenance, the ghost told her that she had indeed led it to its Redeemer and won its release; and at the same time seven tiny spirits--the spirits of the children it had had on earth--appeared in a circle about it and sang melodiously. Nor did they leave her until the protecting apparition of her grandmother interrupted their thanksgivings and bade them be gone.

Whether or no the happy ghost notified others in kindred plight of the success that had attended her efforts, it is certain that, if the contemporary records are to be accepted, the few short years of life remaining to her were largely occupied in ministering to the wants of distressed spirits. Phantom monks, nobles, peasants, pressed upon her with terrible tales of misdeeds unatoned, and begged her to instruct them in the prayers which were essential to salvation. There was one specially importunate group, the apparitions of a young man, a young woman, and a new-born child wrapped in ghostly rags, which gave her no peace for months. The child, they said, was theirs and had been murdered by them, and the young woman in her turn had been murdered by the young man. Naturally, they were in an unhappy frame of mind, and until she was able to send them on their way rejoicing their conduct and language were so extravagant that they appalled her more than did any other of the numerous seekers for grace and rest.

The dead were not the only ones to whom she ministered. Side by side with the gift of ghost-seeing and ghost-conversing, and with the no less remarkable gift of speaking in an unknown tongue and of setting forth the mysteries of the hereafter, she developed the peculiar faculty of peering into the innermost being of spirits still in the flesh, detecting the obscure causes of disease, and prescribing remedies. Strange to say, her own health remained poor, and gradually she became so feeble that from day to day her death seemed imminent. But her parents were resolved to do all they could for her, and at last bethought themselves of placing her in the hands of the much talked of physician, Justinus Kerner, who lived in the pleasant valley town of Weinsberg and was said to be an adept in every branch of the healing art, notably in the mesmerism which alone appeared to benefit her. To Kerner, therefore, she was sent; and it is not difficult to imagine the delight with which she exchanged the gloomy mountain forests for the verdant meadows and fragrant vineyards of Weinsberg.

Kerner, who is better known to the present generation as mystic and poet than as physician, was justly accounted one of the celebrities of the day. Eccentric and visionary, he was yet a man of solid learning and an intense patriot. It was owing to him, as his biographers fondly recall, that Weinsberg's most glorious monument, the well named Weibertrube, was not suffered to fall into utter neglect, but was instead restored to remind all Germans of that distant day, in the long gone twelfth century, when the women of Weinsberg, securing from the conqueror the promise that their lives would be spared, and that they might take with them from the doomed city their most precious belongings, staggered forth under the burden not of jewels and treasure but of their husbands, whom they carried in their arms or on their backs. Thus was a massacre averted, and thus did the name of "Woman's Faithfulness" attach itself to the castle in the shadow of which Kerner spent his days. But at the time of which we write neither the castle nor poetry held first place in his thoughts; instead, he was absorbed in the practice of his profession. And so, with the ardor of the enthusiast and the sympathy of the true physician, he welcomed to Weinsberg the sufferer of whom he had heard much and of whom he was to become both doctor and biographer.[M]

It was in November, 1826, that he first met her. She was then twenty-five, and thus had been for six years in a state of almost constant ill health. Her very appearance moved him profoundly. Her fragile body, he relates in the graphic word picture he drew, enveloped her spirit but as a gauzy veil. She was extremely small, with Oriental features and dark-lashed eyes that were at once penetrating and "prophetic." When she spoke his conviction deepened that he was looking on one who belonged more to the world of the dead than to the world of the living; and he speedily became persuaded that she actually did, as she claimed, commune with the dead.

Less than a month after her arrival at Weinsberg, and being in the trance condition that was now frequent with her, she announced to him that she had been visited by a ghost, which insisted on showing her a sheet of paper covered with figures and begged her to give it to his wife, who was still alive and would understand its significance and the duty devolving upon her of making restitution to the man he had wronged in life.

Kerner was thunderstruck at recognizing from her description a Weinsberg lawyer who had been dead for some years and was thought to have defrauded a client out of a large sum of money. Eagerly he plied Frederica with questions, among other things asking her to endeavor to locate the paper of which the ghost spoke.

"I see it," said she, dreamily. "It lies in a building which is sixty paces from my bed. In this I see a large and a smaller room. In the latter sits a tall gentleman, who is working at a table. Now he goes out, and now he returns. Beyond these rooms there is one still larger, in which are some chests and a long table. On the table is a wooden thing--I cannot name it--and on this lie three heaps of paper; and in the center one, about the middle of the heap, lies the sheet which so torments him."

Knowing that this was an exact account of the office of the local bailiff, Kerner hastened to that functionary with the astonishing news, and was still more astonished when the bailiff told him that he had been occupied precisely as she said. Together they searched among the papers on the table; but could find none in the lawyer's handwriting. Frederica, however, was insistent, adding that one corner of the paper in question was turned down and that it was enclosed in a stout brown envelope. A second search proved that she was right, and on opening the paper it was found to contain not only figures but an explicit reference to a private account book of which the lawyer's widow had denied all knowledge. Still more striking was the fact, according to Kerner's narrative, that when the bailiff, as a test, placed the paper in a certain position on his desk and went to Frederica, pretending that he had it with him, she correctly informed him where it was and read it off to him word by word.

Although the sequel was rather unsatisfactory, inasmuch as the widow persisted in asserting that she knew nothing of a private account book and refused to yield a penny to the injured client, Kerner was so impressed by this exhibition of supernatural power that, in order to study his patient more closely, he had her removed from her lodgings to his own house. Thither also, as soon as he learned that their presence seemed to increase her susceptibility to the occult influences by which she was surrounded, he brought her sister and the maid servant of the dancing candle episode.

Then ensued greater marvels than had ever bewitched the family at Oberstenfeld. Invisible hands threw articles of furniture at the enthusiastic doctor and his friends; ghostly fingers sprinkled lime and gravel on the flooring of his halls and rooms; spirit knuckles beat lively tattoos on walls, tables, chairs, and bedsteads. And all the while ghosts with criminal pasts flocked in and out, seeking consolation and advice. Only once or twice, however, did the physician himself see anything even remotely resembling a ghost. On one occasion a cloudy shape floated past his window; and on another he saw at Frederica's bedside a pillar of vapor, which she afterward told him was the specter of a tall old man who had visited her twice before.

But if he neither saw the ghosts nor heard them speak, it was sufficiently demonstrated to him that they were really in evidence. The knocking, furniture throwing, and gravel sprinkling were the least of the wonders of which it was permitted him to be a witness. Once, when Frederica was taking an afternoon nap, a spirit that was evidently solicitous for her comfort drew off her boots, and in his presence carried them across the room to where her sister was standing by a window. Again at midnight, after a preliminary knocking on the walls, he observed another spirit, or possibly the same, open a book she had been reading which was lying on her bed.

Most marvelous of all, when her father died she herself enacted the role of ghost, the news of his death being conveyed to her supernaturally and her cry of anguish being supernaturally conveyed back to the room where his corpse lay, in Oberstenfeld, and where it was distinctly heard by the physician who had attended him in his last moments. After this crowning piece of testimony the good Kerner felt that no doubt of her unheard of powers could remain in the most skeptical mind.