Previous to the occurrence of the following incident,
I had been a disbeliever in Spirit-knocking. I had never heard any
arguments which seemed to me even plausible, in defence of this
phenomenon, as one supposed to be connected with the unseen world. It
would have revolutionized my whole ideas of the illustrious dead, to
conceive of departed poets, philosophers, statesmen, reformers, or
divines, charmed by a Yankee or London "medium" to amuse idle gossips at
a tea-party, or even when 2s. 6d. a head was paid for the aristocratic
entertainment. It was equally difficult to recognise the resposive
knocks on a table by any spirit, however intelligent, to the questions
of a petulant sceptic, as a legitimate branch of the evidences of
Christianity. No doubt "Satanic influence" in this case, as in many
others, has proved an easy, ready-made way of accounting for what might
seem to be otherwise so unaccountable; and we have heard orthodox
divines speak as if it were unpardonable scepticism to doubt the
presence, or to be blind to the deceitful purposes, of a wicked spirit
on such occasions. Yet remembering the power, the character, and designs
of Satan, as recorded in Scripture, with the mighty work of evil which
he is represented as doing upon earth, it always appeared to us rather
beneath even his contempt, and that of his principalities and powers, to
spend their time and employ their faculties in telling perhaps pious,
yet curious and inquisitive idlers the age of some respectable
middle-aged, meditative curate, who formed one of the party, or the year
in which some old dowager of their acquaintance had died. Yet all this
communicativeness we have heard repeatedly attributed to the Devil. It
never strikes people as a possible thing to speak evil against such
dignities, or to be guilty of lying with reference to their conduct.
Moreover, we never heard knocks at exhibitions of spiritualism, which
seemed to us to be the result of any but a material cause, or to prove
anything save the cleverness of some people, and the immense credulity
of others.
Nevertheless things do happen which we may find it
difficult to account for. Experience teaches us humility while it
enlarges our knowledge. Who has not often been so puzzled by strange and
"mysterious" events in his life, as to have been compelled to fall back
upon the grand text from Hamlet, so familiar to puzzled brains and weak
nerves, "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in
our philosophy!" The reader will judge for himself how far the following
incident tends to increase or diminish faith in mysterious knocking. We
seriously assure him that the facts are strictly accurate in all their
details. The story must, however, be told, as all stories ought to be,
in the first person.
Well then, some years ago, on an autumnal night, I
sat along with an old friend and his sister, conversing round the fire,
upon a subject which has not unfrequently been discussed by persons in
similar circumstances, viz., the possible manifestation of spirits from
the unseen world. The room in which we sat was a large, dimly-lighted
drawing-room in an old family mansion. The night was quite an ideal one
for ghost stories. The wind blew sullenly through the old trees which
surrounded the house, and sometimes whistled through the house itself,
as if searching everywhere for a victim of its anger. The rain fell in
heavy showers which battered fiercely against the glass, followed ever
and anon by a lull and silence, broken only by the tossing branches of
the trees. My friend was, I admit, rather superstitious, and had a rare
collection of curious stories which he told with wonderful power, of
dreams, warnings, sights and sounds, with odd incidents which had been
treasured up in his family as having happened to various members of it
who had served in "the wars" by sea and land, and had been mingled up
with the religious and political "troubles" of the earlier times. Hour
after hour passed until we almost forgot where we were, and lost all
idea of time, till, warned by one of the candles burning to its socket,
we found it was past midnight and full time certainly to retire to bed.
My friend's sister did so, while he himself accompanied me to my room to
tell one other curious fact. By this time he had fairly succeeded in so
far exciting my nervous system, that my sense of hearing seemed
painfully acute, and I acknowledge having had a tendency to pause,
listen, and ask with a low voice, "What was
that?" "Did you not hear something?"
The reader may be disposed to doubt the
worth of my evidence regarding the supernatural when in such a
state of mind. But it will be seen how impossible it was to have been
mistaken as to the presence of a sound which could not but at once
arrest our attention. For, while thus conversing we suddenly heard a
series of dull heavy knocks, at intervals of a second or so, and as if
directed against the foundation of the house beneath our window. We both
paused and listened, and looked into one another's faces, without
speaking a word ; for my friend had told a striking story that evening
of mysterious knocks, which had been heard half a century ago, before
the death of a reckless and profane old ancestor of his. As we stood and
listened, knock, knock, knock, was heard very distinctly. "You will
smile at me," said my friend, "as if I of course believed that there was
something ghostly in all this, but I rather suspect that these strange
sounds may be caused by some of those more material agents who come
before me as a magistrate. Does it not seem," he said, listening, and
speaking in a whisper, "as if persons were trying to get into the
dining-room below from the flower-garden?" But at this moment a tap was
heard at our bedroom door. It was my friend's sister, begging of him to
" come and see what a strange knocking meant which was outside of her
bedroom." He ran out, but soon returned, looking very grave, and saying,
"I heard it distinctly on the wall near the window in my sister's room."
"Well," said I, "here is a capital opportunity of fairly testing the
supernatural." "Which," he replied, "you are far too sceptical about;"
but immediately added, "I have hit it! It is very ludicrous, after all.
The servants, I am certain, are ironing clothes in the laundry,
connected to this room by a wall. The sounds we hear are those of their
irons on the table." "Not unlikely. Go and see." He came back in a few
minutes, more perplexed than ever, saying, "All the servants, John tells
me, are long ago retired to rest. Listen!"— knock, knock (then a pause
of a few seconds)— knock. We opened the window and looked out, the wind,
by the way, extinguishing our light. I heard the knocking distinctly,
though it occurred at longer intervals. "Ah! my friend," said I, "some
one, I guess, is cutting your trees for firewood near the
bowling-green." "Perhaps so," he said, "but yet I never heard such very
strange knocks, they seem so low and muffled and peculiar. And what an '
eerie' night! It is enough to make any man superstitious. The very
clatter of the leaves, and the distant roar of the waves on the shore,
and the whusch, whusch, of these old trees, the pitch darkness, and old
Tory, with his occasional howl, as if he too heard something; and —Who
goes there?" suddenly demanded my friend, with a loud voice, as he
heard, or seemed to hear, footsteps on the gravel. "Stuff!" I said.
"Don't, man, get frightened. It's all fancy." But my sentence was not
finished when a rough voice replied from out the darkness, "It's I,
sir!" "Peter?" "Yes!" Peter was the game-keeper. ''What are you
about such a night as this? Anything wrong?" "Nothing, sir," replied
Peter, "except those knocks." We both started. "What knocks, Peter ? Who
makes them? Where are they?" "Oh, I don't know, sir, as how anything
about them, only that I have heard them in my house. I thought it might
be poachers, sir, and I hear them everywhere through the woods, but I
can't nohow lay my hands on them."
We listened for about ten minutes. They had ceased.
"If you hear them again, Peter, come and tell us." Peter not making his
appearance for half an hour', and being disturbed no more, we bade
good-night, and retired to rest, considerably puzzled,—my friend
anything but happy. He looked really pained, as he said, "I
can't think it is right to laugh at this." "Pray, don't judge,"
was my reply, "till after breakfast. It is wonderful what an effect a
good breakfast, a fresh morning, daylight, a clear sky, not to speak of
a clear intellect, have in accounting for such things. We shall see in
the morning." As I lay trying to account for the knocks, I fell into a
sound sleep, from which I was awoke only by the knock of the servant,
with hot water, in the morning. "Master is not well," was the first
information I received. "What is wrong, John?" I asked. "Did not sleep
all night, sir; and headache, sir; kept awake I hear with strange knocks
last night, and he don't like them sort of things, and no wonder, this
is not the first time !" said John, shaking his head. He had been long
in the family, and knew much of its secret history.
I went immediately to my friend's bedroom, and found
him feverish, and suffering visibly from the effects of a sleepless
night. He seemed dull and depressed. I rallied him on the excitement
occasioned by the events of the previous evening. "My good fellow,"
replied my friend, "don't think me either superstitious, or under the
influence of fear. But you know the story about the knocks heard on a
memorable occasion in this very family; and believing, as I do, that
story, I would think it almost profane to despise or laugh at anything
which, for aught I know, may be sent by a benevolent Ruler to
warn me. Besides, you know there was something in these knocks
utterly inexplicable." Seeing my friend so serious, I became alarmed. I
knew enough regarding the effects of imagination on the health, to
excite my fears, lest some morbid idea might take possession of his
mind. "If you are really serious," I said, "I shall be so also, and I
beg to say, that I reject, with unutterable contempt, the belief in such
superstitious nonsense. I abhor the idea of supposing it possible that
the Lord, who alone has the keys of hell and death, should adopt such
means as these to warn you or frighten you." "Pray account then for
them." "I cannot at present. I only blame you for doing so; for
you assume, without the slightest evidence, that they are
supernatural, and that if so, they prognosticate evil. Did you
ever hear what a great German philosopher said to an atheist, who told
him that the day might come when man would no more believe in a God than
they do now in ghosts? Should that day, was his reply, ever occur,
depend upon it, men will believe in ghosts again. Even so." "I do not
see the meaning of your anecdote on the point in hand?" "This far,
certainly, that the only cure for superstition, and a belief in ghosts,
is faith in the reality of a living God." "I hope I believe in Him,"
said my friend. "I hope you do," I replied; "and if so, how can you for
one moment believe that such a God, who has given us His Word and
Spirit, and conscience, and experience, and common sense, to guide and
instruct us, should ever, even when these fail, have recourse to such a
medium of instruction as raps and knocks, mysterious sights and sounds,
all shadowy, impalpable, meaningless, except they receive such meanings
as may be given to them by a loose fancy—or by a supper of toasted
cheese," I added, looking hard at my friend; ''which, by the way,
generally creates the ghost, and men in vain try to account for it."
"All very fine, but you heard the knocks as well as myself." I really
had forgot them for a moment, in realizing and expressing my utter
dislike to the fearful state of mind which would even entertain
seriously the question of such things being supernatural. "What of the
witches in Scripture?" "Wicked! and so were all who believed in them,
because either professing to possess or to believe in a power which
belonged alone to God. Let us take care lest we trifle with the same
practical atheism in our own day." My friend was silent, but not
satisfied. He seemed to nurse his faith in the knocks, as if he had
received some special compliment from unseen powers. "I will investigate
this said night-wonder," I continued, "without delay. In the meantime,
get up and aid me." "Should we not send for Peter?" "Certainly," I said;
and ringing the bell, I asked John to send for the gamekeeper to come
immediately to see us. I resumed my toilette, and was ready to discuss
the grave problem, as I heard Peter's heavy foot ascending the stair.
"Well, Peter," asked his master, "what of the knocks?" "Oh, sir," said
Peter, "I found out all about them this morning, and"—my friend rose on
his elbow, and listened attentively, "and what?"—"a fisherman's boat,
sir. The Jacksons had put into the creek, and, just at the very time we
were searching for the knocks, they were splitting a large block of
drift wood to make a fire. That was all." "How very strange!" said my
friend. ''And how very simple," I added, but refrained from pursuing a
subject which had emerged so naturally from the darkness of the
marvellous to the daylight of the commonplace. But yet the fact was
interesting, if for no other cause than adding another illustration to
the many already existing, of what may be called the ventriloquism of
sounds. For here were knocks nearly half a mile from the house, yet so
modified and transmitted by wind and rain and trees, that they seemed to
be at our very ears, and, to Peter, everywhere. So ends my story. My
faith in Spirit-knocking has not been increased thereby, nor my
detestation of superstition lessened.