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Chapter XIV · The Book of Dreams and Ghosts

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  Chapter fourteen of the Book of Dreams and Ghosts. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to
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  volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Ben Tucker. The Book
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  of Dreams and Ghosts by Andrew Lane, Chapter fourteen, spiritualistic floating hands,
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  hands and Haunted Houses, Drum Cardan's tale, the Cold Hand, the Beechcomber's
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  tale, the Black Dogs and the thumbless hand, the Paqueha Maori and the
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  leper's hand, the hand of the ghost that bit hands all round. Nothing
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  was more common in the seances of Home the Medium than the appearance of spirit
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  hands, if these were made of white kid gloves stuffed. The idea,
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  at least was borrowed from ghost stories, in which ghostly hands with no visible
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  bodies are not unusual. We see them in the shop off case at Rherick
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  and another haunted houses. Here are some tales of hands, old or new.
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  The cold hand. Jerome Cardan, the famous physician, tells the following
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  anecdote in his Dorrum Variete Leibex ninety three. Jerome only once heard a wrapping
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  himself at the time of the death of a friend at a distance. He
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  was in a terrible fright and dared not leave his room all day. A
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  story which my father used often to tell. I was brought up, he
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  said, in the house of Joannis Resta, and therein taught Latin to his
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  three sons. Where I left him, I supported myself on my own means.
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  It chanced that one of these lads, while I was studying medicine,
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  fell deadly sick, he being now a young man grown, and I was
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  called in to be with the youth, partly for my knowledge of medison,
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  partly for old Friendship's sake. The master of the house happened to be absent.
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  The patient slept in an upper chamber, one of his brothers and I
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  in a lower room. The third brother, Isidore, was not at home.
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  The rooms was next to a turret, turrets being common in that city.
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  When we went to bed on the first night of my visit, I
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  heard a constant knocking on the wall of the room. What is that,
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  I said, don't be afraid, it is only a familiar spirit, said
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  my companion. They call them follets. It is harmless enough, and seldom
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  so troublesome. As it is now, I don't know what can be the
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  matter with it. The young fellow went to sleep, but I was kept
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  awake for a while, wondering and observing. After half an hour of stillness,
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  I felt a thumb press on my head and a sense of cold.
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  I kept watching the forefinger. The middle finger, and the rest of the
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  hand were next laid on. The little finger nearly reached my forehead. The
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  hand was like that of a boy of ten, to guess by the size,
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  and so cold that it was extremely unpleasant. Meantime, I was chuckling
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  over my luck in such an opportunity of witnessing a wonder and I listened eagerly
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  the hand and stole with the ring finger foremost over my face and down my
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  nose. It was slipping into my mouth, and two finger tips had entered
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  when I threw it off with my right hand, thinking it was uncanny and
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  not relishing it inside my body. Silence followed, and I lay awake,
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  distrusting the specter more or less. In about half an hour, it returned
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  and repeated its former conduct, touching me very lightly yet very chilly. When
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  it reached my mouth, I again drove it away, though my lips were
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  tightly closed. I felt an extreme icy cold in my teeth. I now
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  got out of bed, thinking this might be a friendly visit from the ghost
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  of the sick lad upstairs, who must have died. As I went to
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  the door, the thing passed before me, rapping on the walls. When
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  I was got to the door, it knocked outside. When I opened the
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  door, it began to knock on the turret. The moon was shining.
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  I went on to see what would happen, but it beat on the other
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  sides of the tower, and as it always evaded me, I went up
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  to see how my patient was. He was alive, but very weak.
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  As I was speaking to those who stood about his bed, we heard a
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  noise as if the house was falling in. Rushed my bedfellow, the brother
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  of the sick lad, half dead with terror. When you got up,
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  he said, I felt a cold hand on my back. I thought it
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  was you who wanted to waken me and take me to see my brother.
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  So I pretended to be asleep and lay quiet, supposing that you would go
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  alone when you found me so sound asleep. But when I did not feel
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  you get up, and the cold hand grew to be more than I could
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  bear. I hit out to push your hand away, and felt your place
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  empty but warm. Then I remembered the follet and ran upstairs as hard as
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  I could put my feet to the ground. Never was I in such a
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  fright. The sick lad died on the following night. Here Cardon the Elder
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  stopped, and Jerome, his son, philosophized on the subject. Miss Dindy
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  on the authority of mister Elijah Cope, an itinerant preacher, gives this an
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  dot of similar familiarity with a folet in Staffordshire fairies. I went into a
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  farmhouse to stay at night, and in the evening there came a knocking and
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  the rule as if some one had struck the table. I jumped up.
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  My hostess got up in good night, says she, I'm off, But
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  what twas it said? I just a poor old fairy, says she,
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  Old Nancy. She's a poor old thing, been here ever so long,
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  lost her husband and her children. It's about to be left like that all
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  alone. I leave a bit of cake on the table for and sometimes she
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  fetches it, and sometimes she don't. The black Dog and the Thumbless Hand
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  some years ago I published in a volume of tales called The Wrong Paradise.
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  A paper styled My Friend the beech Comber discontained genuine adventures of a kinsman,
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  my oldest and most intimate friend, who had passed much of his life in
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  the Pacific, mainly in a foreign colony and in the wild new he brides.
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  My friend is a man of education, an artist and a student of
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  anthropology and ethnology, engaged on a work of scientific research. He has not
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  committed any of his innumerable adventures warlike or wandering to print the following yarn he
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  sent to me lately in a letter on some points of native customs. Of
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  course, the description of the beachcomber in the book referred to is purely fictitious.
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  The yarn of the thumbless hand is here cast in a dialog, but
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  the whole of the strange experience described as given in the words of a narrator.
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  It should be added that though my friend was present at some amateurre seances
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  in a remote isle of the sea, he is not a spiritualist, never
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  was one, and has no theory to account for what occurred, and no
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  belief in spooks of any description. His faith is plighted to the theories of
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  mister Darwin, and that is his only superstition. The name of the principal
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  character in the yarn is, of course fictitious. The real name is an
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  old but not a noble one. In England. Have the natives the custom
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  of walking through faia, said my friend the Beechcomber, in answer to a
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  question of mind, Not that I I know of. In fact, the
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  soles of their feet are so thick skinned they would think nothing of it.
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  Then have they any spiritualistic games like the Berman's and Maulry's. I've a lot
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  of yarns about them. They are too jolly well frightened of bush spirits to
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  invite them to tea, said the beech comber. A you a fellow who
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  got a bit of land merely by whistling up and down in it at nightfall?
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  They think spirits whistle. No, I don't fancy they go in for
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  seances. But we once had some wee white men and one of the islands
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  not the weeze, native name for the French, real white men. And
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  that led to Bolter's row with me, What about oh about his young woman?
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  I told her the story. It was thoughtless, And yet I don't
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  know that I was wrong. After all, Bolta could not have been a
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  comfortable fellow to marry. In this opinion, Readers of the Beechcomber's narrative will
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  probably agree, I fancy bad moral character, not that I know of queer
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  fish kept queer company, even she was ever so fond of dogs. I
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  don't think a girl would have cared for Bolter's kennel, not in a bedroom
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  anyway, but she surely could have got him to keep them outside. However
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  doggy he was, he was not doggy a bit. I don't know that
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  Bolter ever saw the black dogs himself. He certainly never told me. So.
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  It is that beastly thumbless hand. No woman could have stood it,
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  not to mention the chance of catching cold when it pulled the blankets off.
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  What on earth are you talking about? I can understand a man attended by
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  black dogs that nobody sees but himself. The Catholics tell it of John Knox,
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  and of another reformer, a fellow called Smeaton. Moreover, it is
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  common in delirium trimmings. But you say Bolter didn't see the dogs, No,
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  not so far as they told me, but I did, and other
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  fellows. When with Bolter. Bolter was asleep, he didn't say anything.
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  Also the hand, which was a good deal worse. I don't know if
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  he ever saw it, but he was jolly never, and he had heard
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  of it. The habits of the Beechcomber are absolutely temperate. Otherwise my astonishment
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  would have been less, and I should have regarded all these phenomenas subjective.
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  Tell me about it all, old cock, I said, I'm sure I
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  told you last time I was at home. Never, my memory for yarns
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  is only too good. I hate a chestnut. Well, here goes mind.
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  You don't profess to explain the thing. Only. I don't think I
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  did wrong in telling the young woman, For however you account for it,
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  it was not nice. A good many years ago that came to the island
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  as a clerk or Normy bolta English or jew His name's not Jewish now,
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  and I really don't know about his breed. The most curious thing about his
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  appearance was his eyes. They were large, black and had a peculiar dull
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  dead luster. Did they shine in the dark. I knew a fellow at
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  Oxford whose eyes did chairs ran after him. I never noticed. I don't
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  remember. Psychically, as you superstitious man call it, Bolta was still more
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  queer. At that time. We were all gone on spirit rapping. Bolta
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  turned out a great acquisition medium or what not? Mind you of not saying
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  bolt was straight and the dark. You'd tell you what you had in your
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  hand, exact time of your watch, and so on. I didn't take
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  stock in this, and one night brought some photographs with me and asked for
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  a description of them. This he gave, correctly, winding up by saying,
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  the one nearest your body is that of here. My friend named a
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  person well known to both of us, whose name I prefer not to introduce
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  here. This person, I may add, had never been in or near
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  the island, and was totally unknown to Bolter. Of course, my friend
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  went on, the photographs were all the time inside my pocket. Now,
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  really, Bolta had some mystic power of seeing in the dark. Hyperesthesia,
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  said I hyper criticism, said the beech comber. What happened next might be
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  hyperesthesia. I suppose you mean abnormally intensity of the senses. But how could
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  hyperesthesia see through a tweed coat and lining well, what happened next. Bolter's
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  firm used to get sheep by every mail from Blank and send them regularly to
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  their station six miles off. One time they landed late in the afternoon,
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  and yet were foolishly sent off Bolter in chart. I said at the time
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  he would lose half the lot, as it would be dark long before he
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  could reach the station. He didn't lose them. Next day I met one
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  of the niggers who had sent to lend him a hand and ask the results.
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  Master said, the nigger Bolter is a devil. He sees at night
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  when the sheep ran away to right or left, and the dark he told
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  us where to follow. He heard them, I suppose, said I maybe,
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  but you must be sharp to have sharper senses than these niggers. Anyhow,
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  that was not Bolter's account of it. When I saw him and spoke
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  to him, he said simply yes, that when excited or interested to seek
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  or find anything in obscurity, the object became covered with a dim glow light
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  which rendered it visible, but things in a pocket? That also said he
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  curious, isn't it? Probably the Raunchen rays are implicated therein e Did you
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  ever read doctor Gregory's letters on agnimal magnetism, the cove that invented Gregory's mixture.
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  Yes, beast, he must have been no never read him. He
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  says that Major Buckley's hypnotized subjects saw hidden objects in a blue light. Mytto's
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  inside a nut, for example, Raunchon raised for a fiver, but Bolter
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  said nothing about seeing blue light. Well, after three or four seances,
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  Bolter used to be very nervous and unwilling to sleep alone. So I once
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  went with him to his one roomed hut. We turned into the same bed.
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  I was awakened later by a noise and movement in the room, found
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  the door open, the full moon streaming and making light like day in the
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  place full of great, big black dogs. Well, anyhow, there were
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  four or five. They were ramping about, seemingly playing. One jumped on
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  the bed, another rubbed his muzzle on mine. The bed was low,
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  and I slept outside. Now, I never had anything but love for dogs
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  of any kind, and as nespar love casts out fear, I simply got
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  up, turned them all out, shut the door, and turned in again
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  myself. Of course, my idea was that they were flesh and blood and
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  I allude to physical fear. I slept, but was anew awakened by a
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  ghastly feeling that the blanket was being dragged and creeping off the bed. I
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  pulled it up again, but anew began the slow movement of descent. Rather
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  surprised, I pulled it up afresh and held it, and must have dozed
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  off, as I suppose, I awoke to feel it being pulled again.
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  It was slipping, slipping, and then with a sudden, violent jerk,
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  it was thrown on the floor. Ill fowl. Dear that during all this
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  I had glanced several times at Bolter, who seemed profoundly asleep, but now
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  alarmed, I tried to wake him in vain, he slept like the dead,
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  his face always a pasty white, now like mar in the moonlight.
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  After some hesitation, I put the blanket back on the bed and held it
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  fast. The pulling at once began and increased in strength, and I,
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  by this time thoroughly armed, put all my strength against it, and hung
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  on like grim death. To get a better hold. I had taken a
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  turn over my head, or perhaps simply to hide, when suddenly I felt
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  a pressure outside on my body and a movement like fingers. They gradually approached
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  my head. Mad with fear, chucked off the blanket, grabbed a hand,
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  gazed on it for one moment in silent horror, and threw it away
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  no wonder. It was attached to no arm or body. It was hair
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  and dark colored. The fingers were short, blunt, with long claw like
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  nails, and it was minus a thumb. Too frightened to get up,
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  I had to stop in bed, and I suppose fail to sleep again after
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  fresh vain attempts to awaken Bolter. Next morning I told him about it.
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  He said several men who had thus passed the night with him and seen this
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  hand, but added he it's lucky you didn't have the big black dogs also
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  tap low. I was to have slept again with him next night to look
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  further into the matter, but a friend of his came from that day,
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  so I could not renew the experiment, as I had fully determined to do.
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  By the bye. I was troubled for months after by the same feeling
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  that the clothes were being pulled off the bed, and as the yarn of
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  the black dogs on the Thomba's hand. I think, said I that you
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  did no harm in telling Bolter's young woman. I never thought of it when
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  I told her or of her interest in the kennel, But by George she
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  soon broke off her engagement. Do you know Manning the Paqueta Mowory, the
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  fellow who wrote Old New Zealand? Oh what about him? He did not
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  put it in his book, but he told the same yarn without the dogs,
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  as having happened to himself. He saw the whole arm, and the
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  hand was leprous, augh, said the beech comber. Next morning he was
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  obliged to view the body of an old Mowory who had been murdered in his
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  garden the night before. That old man's hand was the hand he saw.
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  I know a room in an old house in England where plucking off the bedclothes
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  goes on every now and then, and has gone on as long as the
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  present documents have been there. But I only heard lately, and they only
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  heard from me, that the same thing used to occur in the same room,
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  and no other in the last generation when another family lived there. Anybody
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  see anything? No, Only footsteps are heard creeping up before the twitches come
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  off. And what do the people do? Nothing? We set a camera
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  once to photograph the spook. He did not sit. It's rum, said
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  the beech comber. But mind you as to spooks, I don't believe a
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  what of it. The ghosts that bit the idiots. Scotch laired in the
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  story, would not let the dentist put his fingers in his mouth, for
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  I'm fia, yell bite me. The following anecdote proves that a ghost may
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  entertain a better founded alarm. On this score, A correspondent of Notes and
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  Query's third September eighteen sixty four is responsible for the narrative given almost verbatim from
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  the lips of the lady herself. A person of tried veracity. Emma s,
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  one of several children, was sleeping alone with her face toward the west,
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  a large house near sa in the Staffordshire Moorlands. As she had given
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  orders to her maid to call her at an early hour. She was not
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  surprised at being awakened between three and four on a fine August morning in eighteen
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  forty by a sharp tapping at her door, When, in spite of a
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  thank you, I hear to the first and second raps, with the third
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  came a rush of wind, which caused the curtains to be drawn up in
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  the center of the bed. She became annoyed in sitting up, called out,
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  Marie, what are you about? Instead, however, of her servant,
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  she was astonished to see the face of an aunt by marriage, peering
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  above and between the curtains, And at the same moment, whether unconsciously she
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  threw forward her arms or whether they were drawn forward, as it were in
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  a orten of air, she cannot be sure. One of her thumbs was
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  sensibly pressed between the teeth of the apparition, though no mark afterwards remained on
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  it. All this notwithstanding, she remained collected and unalarmed, but instantly arose,
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  dressed and went downstairs, where she found not a creature stirring. Her
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  father, on coming down shortly afterwards, naturally asked what had made her rise
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  so early, rallied her on the cause, and soon afterwards went on to
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  his sister in law's house, where he found that she had just unexpectedly died.
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  Coming back again, and not noticing his daughter's presence in the room in
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  consequence of her being behind a screen near the fire, he suddenly announced the
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  event to his wife as being of so remarkable a character that he could in
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  no way account for it, as may be anticipated. Emma, overhearing this,
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  unlooked forward anoment of her dream at once fell to the ground in a
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  fainting condition. On one of the thumbs of the corpse was found a mark
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  as if it had been bitten in death agony. We have now followed the
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  ghostly from its germs and dreams and momentary hallucinations of eye or ear, up
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  to the most prodigious narratives which popular invention has built on bases probably very slight.
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  Where facts and experience, whether real or hallucinatory experience end, where the
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  myopic fancy comes in. Readers may decide for themselves. End of Chapter fourteen,
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  end of the Book of Dreams and Ghosts by Andrew Lange.