The Book of Dreams and Ghosts

ost. Sources of Evidence. The Family Version. A New Old-F

d vengeance on a Macniven, who murdered him. The ghost, practically, "cried Cruachan," and tried to r

ho collected it at Inverawe from a Highland narrator. She

OND

him at full speed; a man ragged, bleeding, and evidently suffering agonies of terror. "The avengers of blood are on my track, Oh, save me!" the poor wretc

ranger to the secret cav

any generations. The entrance was small, and no one passing would for an instant suspect it to be other than a tod's hole, {158a} but within were

aid, {158b} imploring him not to leave him alone. Inverawe was filled with disgust at this coward

d he, "tracked the murderer to within a short distance of this place, and I am here to warn you in case he should seek your protection." Inverawe turned pale and remained silent, not knowing wha

is beloved foster-brother murdered; but as he had plighted his word to save him, save him he must and would. A

page. He looked up and saw his foster-brother standing by the bedside. But, oh, how changed! His fair hair clotted with blood; his face pale and drawn, a

e, shield not the murderer; blood must flow for blood". At daybreak Inverawe hurried off to the cave, and said to Macniven: "I can shield you no longer; you must escape as best you can". Inverawe now hoped to receive no further

and went straight to the

an hill side, brooding over his vision, and people passing him would see the far-away look in his eyes, and would say one to

where the regiment remained inactive till the spring of 1757. One evening when the 42nd were still quartered at this place, Inverawe asked the colonel "if he had ever heard of a place called Ticonderoga". {160} Colonel Grant replied he had never heard the name before. Inv

George, a fort erected by the French. The Highlanders were to form p

name. One of the officers told Colonel Grant that the Indian name of the place was Ticonderoga. Grant, r

y in July. They marched from there, through woods, upon Ticonderoga, having had one successful skirm

cquets. {162} The Grenadiers were to follow, supported by the battalio

ting and carving their way through trees and other obstacles with their claymores. The deadly fire still continued from the fort. As no ladders had been provided for scaling the breastwork, the soldiers climbed on to one another's shoulders, and made hole

iled upon to retire, and it was not till the order had been given for the third time that the Highlanders withdrew from the hopeless encounter. The lo

the dying man's side, who looked reproachfully at him, and said: "You deceived me; this is Ticonderoga, for I have se

fferent regiments with their colours, and recognised many of their friends among the Highlanders. They saw Inverawe and his son fall, and other men whom they knew. When they reached Inveraray they told all their friends of the vision they had just seen. They also took down the names of those they had seen fall, and the time and date of the occurrence. The well-known Danish physician,

oughout Argyll long befo

*

le version of a yet more famo

that rare work, a version dated "Dublin, August, 1802," was published in Notes and Queries of 24th July, 1858. In December, 1896, a member of the Beresford family published in The Nines (a journal of the Wiltshire regiment), the account which follows, derived from a MS. at Curraghmore, written by Lady Betty Cobbe, granddaughter of the ghost-seer, Lady Beresf

RESFOR

of Nicola S., Lady Beresford. She lived to a good old age, in full use of all her faculties, both of body and mind. I can myself remember her, for when a boy I passed through Bath on a journey with my mother, and we went to her house there, and had luncheon. She appeared to my juvenile imagination a very appropriate person to revise and transmit such a tale, and fully adapted to do ample justice to he

ribbon bound round her wrist. This portrait disappeared in an unaccountable manner. It used to hang in one of the drawing-rooms in that mansion, with other family pictures. When Henry, Marquis of Waterford, sold the old town residence of the family and its grounds to the Government as the site of the Education Board, he directed Mr. Watkins, a dealer in pictures, and a man of considerable knowledge in works of art and vertu, to collect the pictures, etc., etc., which were best

esley, daughter of Arthur, Earl of Anglesey. He was born 1665, succeeded his father 1690, and died

ther with his father, migrated to that country in 1643, and returned from it at the Restoration. He was of a good old family, and held considerable landed property in the coun

anuscripts state that Lord Tyrone made his appearance after death; and all the versions of the story, without variation, attribute the same cause and reason, viz., a solemn promise mutually interchanged in early life between John le Poer, then Lord Decies, afterwards Lord Tyrone, and Nicola S. Hamilton, that whichev

or a walk before breakfast. When his wife joined the table very late, her appearance and the embarrassment of her manner attracted general attention, especially that of her husband. He made anxious inquiries as to her health, and asked her apart what had occurred to her wrist, which was tied up with black ribbon

on Tuesday, 14th October, at 4 p.m. Sir Tristram endeavoured to console her, and begged her to restrain her grief, when she assured him that she felt relieved and easier now that she knew the actual fact. She added, 'I can now give you a most satisfactory piece of intelligence, viz., that I am with child, and that it will be a boy'. A son was born in the following July. Sir Tristram survived its birth little more than six years. After his death Lady Beresford continued to reside with her young family at his place in the county of Derry, and seldom went from home. She hardly mingled with any neighbours or friends, excepting with Mr. and Mrs. Jackson, of C

solute conduct forced her to seek and to obtain a separation. After this had continued for four years, General Gorges pretended extreme penitence for his past misdeeds, and with the most solemn promises of amendment induced his wife to live with him again, and she became the mother of a second son. The day month after her confinement happened to be her birthday, and having recovered and feeling

ry subject of your age, and I in consequence sent and consulted the registry, and can most confidently assert that you are only forty-seven this day.' 'You have signed my death-warrant, then,' she cried; 'leave me, I pray, for I have not much longer to live, but have many things of grave i

hty. One night, years after this interchange of promises, I was sleeping with your father at Gill Hall, when I suddenly awoke and discovered Lord Tyrone sitting visibly by the side of the bed. I screamed out, and vainly endeavoured to rouse Sir Tristram. "Tell me," I said, "Lord Tyrone, why and wherefore are you here at this time of the night?" "Have you then forgotten our promise to each other, pledged in early life? I died on Tuesday, at four o'clock. I have been permitted thus to appear in order to assure you that the revealed religion is the true and only one by which we can be saved. I am also suffered to inform you that you are with child, and will produce a son, who will marry my heiress; that Sir Tristram will not live long, when you will marry again, and you will die from the effects of childbirth in your forty-seventh year." I begged from him some convincin

I continued to adopt it for any length of time. He kindly promised me not to speak of it any more, and he kept his promise faithfully. You, my son, came into the world as predicted, and your father died six years after. I then determined to abandon society and its pleasures and not mingle again with the world, hoping to avoid the dreadful predictions as to my second marriage; but, alas! in the one family with which I held constant and friendly intercourse I met the man, whom I did not regard with perfect indifference. Though I struggled to conquer by every means the passion, I at length yielded to his solicitations, and in a fatal moment for my own peac

came on to summon them to her bedside. In an hour the bell rang, and they hastened to the call, but all was over. The two children having ordered every one to retire, knelt do

d in the Cathedral of St. Patrick, in Dublin,

*

and explains his theory that Lady Beresford's anxiety about Lord T

the wound inflicted by the ghost on the hand, or wrist, or brow, of the seer, through Henry More, and Melanchthon, and a medi?val sermon by Eudes de Shirton, to William of Ma

score of f

oard o

tance of a gang of g

"Oh, the ghost spoke, did she?" and displayed scepticism. The evidence, however, left him, as it leave

imposing a certain course of action on a living witness, for definite purposes of their own. The course of action prescribed was undeniably pursued,

ere used for reference. But I think the matter will be more intelligible if I narrate it exactly as it came under my own observa

ST ONE

. One night I and some kinsfolk dined with another old friend of all of

et?" a sunny, pleasant street of respectab

octor to enlighten our ignorance. His story ran thus-I

went away. They made no complaint while tenants. The house stood empty for some time, and all I know personally about the matter is that I, my wife, and the children were in the dining-r

some irritation complaining that I had let them a haunted house! They insisted that there were strange noises, as if heavy weights were being dragged about, or heavy footsteps pacing in the rooms and on the stairs. I said that I knew nothing

nk, he went to a window where he found his hand full of water, to account for which there was no stain on the ceiling, or anything else that he could discover. On another occasion one of the young lad

n Mrs. Claughton, a widow accompanied by two of her children, came to stay with the Buckleys. {177c} She ha

that a servant was coming to call her to Miss Buckley, who was ill. The steps stopped at the door, then the noise was repeated. Mrs. Claughton lit her bedroom candle, opened the door and listened. There was no one there. The clock on the landing pointed to twenty minutes past

e door, which the housemaid had locked outside, and she owns that this passage is dreamlike in her memory. Seeing that her candle was flickering out, she substituted for it a pink one taken fr

the lady

wake for two hours, with gas burning, she fell asleep. The pink candle

d as cowardly. So, as she would stay on at Mr. Buckley's, I suggested that an electric

d happened within the week, we felt that we

ested the use of a postal directory; we found Meresby, a place extremely unknown to fame, in an agricultural district about five hours from London in the opposite direction from Rapingham. To this place Mrs. Claughton said she must go,

r London house (Friday, 13th October), passed a night perturbed by sounds of weeping, "loud moans," and "a very odd noise overhead, like some electric battery gone wrong," in fact, much like th

h one Joseph Wright, the parish clerk. Her duty had been to examine the Meresby parish registers, and to compare certain entries with information given by the ghosts and written by her in her note-book. If the entries in the parish register tallied with her notes, she was to pass the time between one o'clock and half-past one, alone, in Meresby Church, and receive a com

purely sceptical. The railway company, however, vouched for the ticket. The rector of Meresby, b

part of Sunday ni

er morning service on Sunday, and had begged leave to pass part of the night in the church. The curate in vain tried to dissuade her, and finally, washing his hands of it, had left her to Wright the clerk. To him she described a Mr. George Ho

y gone to Meresby, a long and disagreeable journey, and h

hyard, Meresby being a place of which Mrs. Claughton, like most people, now heard for the first time. He gave the dates of his marriage and death, which are correct, and have been seen by Mr. Myers in Mrs. Claughton's note-book. He bade her verify these dates at Meresby, and wait at 1.15 in the morning at the grave of Richard Harte (a person, like all of them, unknown to Mrs. Claughton) at the south-west corner of the south aisle in Meresby Church. This Mr. Harte died on 15th May, 1745, and missed many events of interest by doing so. Mr. Howard also named and described Joseph Wright, of Meresby, as a man who would help her,

ing all this time, and whether they we

t to town, and her governess w

premonitions, with others, were all fulfilled. Mrs. Claughton, in the church at night, continued her conversation with the ghosts whose acquaintance she had made at Rapingham. She obtained, it seems, all the information needful to settling the mysterious matters which disturbed the male ghost who hid his face, and

rish register and on the graves, which he found for her at her request. Mr. Myers, "from a very partial knowledge" of what the Meresby ghosts' business was,

*

me journeys, not to mention the uncomfortable visit to a dark church at midnight, and did all this from a hysterical love of notoriety. This desirable boon she would probably never have obtained, even as far as it is consistent with a pseudonym, if I had not chanced to dine with Dr. Ferrier while the adventure

on in Mrs. Claughton's position would have gone to the Psychical Society at once, as Mar

balance of agnosticism. If ghosts at all, they were

anted, the ghost did the thing itself. Now the modern theory of ghosts, namely, that they are delusions of the senses of the seers, caused s

UT THE

d towards the mantel-piece on which a night-light was burning. Mrs. Gwynne at the same moment seized my arm, and the light was extinguished! Notwithstanding, I distinctly saw the figure returning towards the door, and being under the impression that one of the servants had found her way into our room, I leaped out of bed to intercept the intruder, but found and saw nothing. I rushed to the door and endeavoured to follow the supposed intruder, and it was not until I fou

he same house, unknown to Dr. and Mrs. Gwyn

t of the seer's delusion. But the night-light certainly went out under the figure's hand, and was relit by Dr. Gwynne. Either the