Part 34

The demon having one night played some little pranks at the foot of Mr. Monpesson’s bed, it went into another bed, where one of his daughters lay, and passed from one side to the other, lifting her up as it passed under her. At that time there were three kinds of noises in the bed. They attempted to thrust at it with a sword, but it continually evaded them. The following night it came panting like a dog out of breath, when some one present took a bedpost to strike at it, when it was immediately snatched out of her hand; and company coming up stairs at the same time, the room was filled with a nauseous stench, and very hot, although there was no fire on, and during a very sharp winter’s night. It continued panting an hour and a half, panting and scratching; and afterwards went into the adjoining chamber, where it began to knock a little, and seemed to rattle a chair; thus it continued for two or three nights in succession. The old lady’s bible after this was found again among the ashes, with the leaves downwards. It was taken up by Mr. Monpesson, who observed that it lay open at the third chapter of St. Mark, where mention is made of the unclean spirits falling down before our Saviour, and of his giving power to the twelve Apostles to cast out devils, and of the Scribes’ opinion, and that he cast them out through Beelzebub.

The following morning ashes were scattered over the chamber floor, to see what impressions would be left upon it; in the morning, in one place they found the resemblance of a great claw in another that of a smaller one, some letters in another, which could not be decyphered, besides a number of circles and scratches in the ashes, which no one understood except the demon itself.

About this time, the author of the narration went to the house to enquire after the truth of the circumstances which made so much noise in that part of the country. The demon had left off drumming, and the terrible noises it was in the habit of making before he arrived; but most of the remarkable facts already related, were confirmed to him there by several of the neighbours, on whose veracity he could depend, who had witnessed them. It now used to haunt the children after they were gone to bed. On the night he was there, the children went to bed about 8 o’clock; a maid servant immediately came down and informed us that the spirit was come. The neighbours then present went away, as well as two ministers who had previously been some time in the house, but Mr. Monpesson the author, and another gentleman who came with him, went up to the room where the children were in bed. A scratching was heard as they went up stairs, and just as they got into the room, it was perceived just behind the bolster of the bed in which the children lay, and appeared to be lying against the tick. The noise it made was like that made with long nails upon the bolster. There were two little girls, about seven or eight years of age, in the bed. Their hands were outside the bedclothes, so that it was perfectly visible the noise was not made by them which was behind their heads: they had been so used to it of late, and always with some present in the chamber, that they seemed to take very little notice of it. The narrator, who was standing at the head of the bed, thrust his hand behind the bolster from whence the noise proceeded, when it was immediately heard in another part of the bed; but as soon as his hand was taken away, it returned to the same place as before. On being told that it would imitate noises, he made trial by scratching several times upon the sheet, as five, seven, and ten times: it exactly replied to them by equal numbers. He looked under and behind the bed, grasped the bolster, sounded the wall, and made every possible search to find out any trick, contrivance, or other cause, as well as his friend, but could discover nothing. So that in truth he concluded, that the noise was made by some spirit or demon. After it had scratched about for half an hour or more, it got into the middle of the bed under the children, where it lay panting loudly, like a dog out of breath. The author then put his hand upon the place, and plainly felt the bed bearing up against it, as if it contained something within thrusting it up. He grasped the feather to feel if he could distinguish any thing alive; then looked every where about to see if there were any dog or cat, or other creature, in the room; every one present followed his example, but still they discovered nothing. The motion it caused by its panting was so violent, that it had a visible effect on the room and windows. In this manner it continued for half an hour, the time the author was present. During this panting, something was seen in a linen bag that was hung up against another bed, that was taken for a mouse or rat, but upon the closest examination of it, nothing was found in it of any description.

The author and his friend afterwards slept in the very identical chamber where the principal disturbance had been first made. He was awakened by a terrible noise made on the outside of the chamber door. He awoke his friend, and asked three distinct times who was there, but received no answer. At last he exclaimed, “in the name of God who is it, and what would you have? To which a voice answered, nothing with you. Thinking it was some of the servants of the house, they went to sleep again. Mentioning, however, the circumstance the next morning to Mr. Monpesson, he declared that no one of the house lay that way, or had any business thereabouts, and that none of his servants had got up until they were called by him some time after daylight. This the servants confirmed, and protested that the noise was not made by them. Previous to this, Mr. Monpesson had told us, that it would go away in the middle of the night, and return at different times about four o’clock, which was supposed to be about the hour it was heard by the author and his friend.

Another circumstance connected with this seemingly mysterious business was, that the author’s servant coming up to him in the morning, told him, that one of his horses, the one which he had rode, was all in a sweat, and appeared in every other respect as if it had been out all night. His friend and him went down to the stable, and actually found him in the state he was represented to be. On inquiry how the horse had been treated, he was assured that the animal had been well fed, and taken care of as he used to be; his servant besides was extremely careful of his horses. “The horse,” says the author, “I had had a good time, and never knew but he was very sound. But after I had rid him a mile or two very gently over a plain down from Mr. Monpesson’s house, he fell lame, and having made a hard shift to bring me home, died in two or three days, no one being able to imagine what he ailed. This, I confess, might be the consequence of an accident, or some unusual distemper, but all things put together, it seems very probable that it was somewhat else.”

Mr. Monpesson then stated, that one morning a light appeared in the children’s chamber, and a voice was heard crying—a witch! a witch! for at least an hundred times together. At another time, seeing some wood move on the chimney of a room where he was, he fired a pistol among it; and on examining the place afterwards, several drops of blood were discovered on the hearth, and on several parts of the stairs. For two or three nights after the discharge of the pistol nothing was heard, but it returned, and so persecuted a little child newly taken from the nurse, that the poor infant was not suffered to rest either day or night; nor would the mischievous demon suffer a candle to burn in the room, but either ran up the chimney with them alight, or threw them under the bed. It so frightened this child by leaping upon it, that it continued in fits for several hours; and ultimately they were obliged to remove the children out of the house. Something was heard the next night, about the hour of midnight, coming up stairs; it knocked at Mr. Monpesson’s door, but he not answering, it went up another pair of stairs to his man’s chamber, and appeared to him at his bed foot. The exact shape and proportion of the demon he could not discover; all he saw was a great body, with two red and glaring eyes, which for some time were steadily fixed upon him; and at length they disappeared.

On another occasion, in the presence of strangers, it purred in the children’s bed like a cat, and lifted the children up so forcibly, that six men could not keep them down; upon which they removed the children to another bed, but no sooner were they laid here than this became more troubled than the first. In this manner it continued for four hours, and so unmercifully beat the poor children’s legs against the posts, that they were obliged to sit up all night. It then emptied chamber-pots, and threw ashes into the beds, and placed a long iron pike in Mr. Monpesson’s, and a knife into his mother’s. It would fill porringers with ashes, throw every thing about, and kick up the devil’s diversion from morning till night, and from night till morning.

About the beginning of April, 1663, a gentleman that lay in the house, had all his money turned black in his pockets; and one morning Mr. Monpesson going into his stable, found the horse he was accustomed to ride upon, lying on the ground with one of its hind legs in its mouth, and fastened there in such a manner, that several men with a leaver, had the greatest difficulty in getting it out. After this there were a number of other remarkable things occurred, but the author’s account extends no farther; with the exception that Mr. Monpesson wrote him word, that the house was afterwards, for several nights, beset with seven or eight beings in the shape of men, who, as soon as a gun was discharged, would scud away into an adjoining arbour.

The drummer, however, it appears, was apprehended in consequence of these strange and mysterious occurrences. He was first, it seems, committed to Gloucester jail for stealing, where a Wiltshire man going to see him, the drummer enquired the news in Wiltshire: the reply was, none: No, returned he, do you not hear of the drumming at a gentleman’s house at Tedworth? That I do, said the other, enough: “I, quoth the drummer, I have plagued him (or something to that purpose) and he never shall be quiet until he has made me satisfaction for taking away my drum. Upon information made to this effect, the drummer was tried for a wizzard at Sarum, and all the main circumstances here related being sworn to at the assizes, by the minister of the parish, and several others of the most intelligent and substantial inhabitants, who had been eye and earwitnesses of them, from time to time, for many years past; the drummer was sentenced to transportation, and accordingly sent away; and as the story runs, ’tis said, that by raising storms, and terrifying the seamen, he contrived, some how or other, to get back again. And what is still as remarkable, is, that during his restraint and absence, Mr. Monpesson’s house remained undisturbed; but as soon as the demon of his quiet returned, he fell to his old tricks again as bad as ever.”

The drummer had been a soldier under Cromwell, and used to talk much of “gallant books” which he had of an old fellow, who was counted a wizzard.

On the authority of Mr. Glanvil, who had it from Mr. Monpesson, we have the following story.

“The gentleman, Mr. Hill, who was with me, being in company with one Compton of Somersetshire, who practised physic, and pretends to strange matters, related to him this story of Mr. Monpesson’s disturbance. The physician told him, he was sure it was nothing but a rendezvous of witches, and that for an hundred pounds he would undertake to rid the house of all disturbance. In pursuit of this discourse, he talkt of many high things, and having drawn my friend into another room, apart from the rest of the company, said, he would make him sensible that he could do something more than ordinary, and asked him who he desired to see; Mr. Hill had no great confidence in his talk, but yet being earnestly pressed to name some one, he said he desired to see no one so much as his wife, who was then many miles distant from them at her home. Upon this, Compton took up a looking-glass that was in the room, and setting it down again, bid my friend look into it, which he did, and then, as he most solemnly and seriously professeth, he saw the exact image of his wife, in that habit which she then wore, and working at her needle in such a part of the room, there also represented, in which and about which time she really was, as he found upon enquiring upon his return home. The gentleman himself averred this to me, and he is a sober, intelligent, and credible person. Compton had no knowledge of him before, and was an utter stranger to the person of his wife. The same man is again alluded to, in the story of the witchcrafts of Elizabeth Styles, whom he discovered to be a witch, by foretelling her coming into a house, and going out again without speaking. He was by all accounted a very odd person.”

THE DEMON OF JEDBURGH.

In 1752, when Captain Archibald Douglass, who was then on a recruiting party in the South of Scotland, his native country, lay in the town of Jedburgh, his serjeant complained to him that the house in which he was quartered was haunted by a spirit, which had several times appeared to him by candle light in a very frightful form. The captain, who was a man of sense and far from being superstitious, treated the serjeant as a person who had lost his reason, threatened to cane him as a coward, and told him that goblins and spirits were beneath the notice of a soldier. The captain the night following had a strange dream, in which he saw the landlady of the inn, where the serjeant lay, in company with a great number of other females, ascending in the air, some riding on brooms, some on asses, and others on cats, &c. The landlady invited him to accompany them in their aërial excursion, to which consenting, he got upon a goat behind one of the women, and was carried with great velocity to a large heath near London, which he well knew on their arrival.

When all the females had alighted, his ears were suddenly alarmed with a thousand yells the most hideous that could be conceived, to the sound of which they all danced in a circle. The captain was placed in the centre; beholding all the wild vagaries with wonder and horror. When the music had ceased and the dancing closed, suddenly he found himself by a phalanx of infernal furies, whose forks were all aimed at his breast. The horror of this scene suddenly awaked the captain, who was glad to find himself safe and in a sound skin at his mother’s house, where he lay that night.

The next morning the serjeant, like the knight of the sorrowful countenance, waited on the captain for fresh orders, again declaring that he had seen the apparition which had threatened his life. The captain heard him with less impatience and inattention than he had the preceding day, saying, I myself have had a restless night and a terrible dream, but these things, I tell you again, are beneath the notice of a soldier. However, continued the captain, I am resolved to sift this matter till I discover the ground of your complaint. I have a notion that you, like myself, have been making too free with the bottle. The serjeant replied, most solemnly declaring that he was most perfectly in his senses when he saw a frightful spectre standing at the side of his bed, and which changing its appearance, retired in the shape of a great black cat, jumping from the window over the church steeple. Now to let your honour into a secret, continued the soldier, I was informed this morning, that the landlady is neither more nor less than a witch, and her goodman is second-sighted, and can tell, awake him from his sleep when you please, the precise hour of the night, and the exact minute.

To cut short our story, the captain at night accompanied the serjeant, well provided with fire arms, and a sword, to the chamber alluded to. Having placed the arms upon the table, he lay down by the soldier’s side in a bed without curtains, but enclosed with a frame of wainscoting with sliding doors. At midnight, they heard three knocks on one of the pannels, when the captain arose, ran to the door, which he found fast locked, and having a candle, searched every corner of the room without making any discovery. He lay down a second time, and about an hour after again heard the knocking three distinct times as before. Attempting to get up, the whole wainscoting tumbled down upon the bed, the violent noise of which alarmed the serjeant, who cried out, the witch! the witch is within! It was a considerable time before they could extricate themselves from the boarding, but so sooner was the captain disentangled than he saw a prodigious large sable cat flying to the window, at which he fired a pistol, and shot off one of its ears.

Next morning the captain called the landlord, and enquired how long his house had been haunted. The landlord replied, you must ask my wife, when she returns home, for she is seldom in bed after midnight. Just as the husband was so saying, the wife came into the kitchen, and falling into a swoon upon seeing the captain, fell down prostrate on the floor, discomposed her head-dress, and discovered a terrible wound on the left side of her head and the want of an ear. The captain swore that he would take her before the provost, in order that she might be committed for trial, but the husband interfering, and the captain well knowing that he could not continue in the country till the next circuit, contented himself with telling the story among the circle of his friends, none of whom had the least reason to doubt his veracity, as he was a gentleman of strict honour, undaunted courage, and tried integrity.—It may be inferred from this that witches have a capacity of changing their outward form, and appearing in the shape of a cat, or the like, at the will; but this might only be in the imagination of the captain and the serjeant, for it would be hard to account for the loss of this witch’s real ear, had she changed her body to that of the animal upon which the captain supposed he had fired.

How to reconcile these and various similar stories to the standard of common credence, is a task no less difficult than problematical; and to ascertain the real cause of the scarcity, now-a-days, of such mysterious and unaccountable occurrences, is at least a proof that the devil has been losing latterly, from some cause or other, much of his ascendancy over the human mind. To attempt to explain, or do away with the supposition, that spirits, apparitions, demons, or other preternatural agents, “hobgoblins damned,” or undamned, would be to attack the fundamental parts of the christian religion, which we are told and taught to believe constitutes a part of the law of the land. The wisest philosophers, heroes, and vagrants, have all, from the remotest antiquity downwards, testified to their appearance; and divines themselves have been equally orthodox, and active in promulgating the force of their testimony in support of the doctrine of preternatural agency; which neither the supposition of a morbid imagination, “contained in tabular views of the various comparative degrees of faintness, vividness, or intensity, supposed to exist between sensations and ideas, when conjointly excited or depressed,” can account for on rational principles, when the mind is curious to be divested of all these presumed causes. That there are states and conditions of the mind, when, from intensity of excitement, the imagination may be played upon no one will deny; but that such causes should always have existed, is equally as preposterous and absurd—still between these and imposture, perhaps truth may lie; and then it is a point of scepticism that does little honour to the social compact, to cast even a shade of doubt on the moral character of a man, whose veracity was never before impeached on any other subject.

THE GHOST OF JULIUS CÆSAR.

Marcus Brutus, one of the murderers of Julius Cæsar, being one night in his tent, saw a monstrous figure come in about the third hour of the night. Brutus immediately cried out, what art thou, a man or a god? and why art thou come hither? The spectre answered, I am thy evil genius; thou shalt see me at Philippi. Brutus calmly answered, I will meet thee there. However, he did not go, but relating the affair to Cassius, who being of the sect of Epicurus, and believing nothing of these matters, told him it was a mere fancy; that there was no such thing as genii or other spirits, which could appear to men; that even if they should appear, they could not assume a human shape or voice, and had no power over men. Though Brutus was somewhat encouraged by those reasons, he could not entirely get the better of his uneasiness: but this very Cassius, in the midst of the battle of Philippi, saw Julius Cæsar, whom he had assassinated, riding up to him full speed, which terrified him so much, that he fell upon his own sword.

The ghosts of the slain at the battle of Marathon.

Pausanias writes, that four hundred years after the battle of Marathon, there were still heard in the place where it was fought, the neighing of horses, and the shouts of soldiers, animating one another to the fight. Plutarch also speaks of spectres seen, and dreadful howlings heard in the public baths, where several citizens of Chœronea, his native town, had been murdered. He says, that the inhabitants had been obliged to shut up these baths, but that, notwithstanding the precaution, great noises were still heard, and dreadful spectres frequently seen by the neighbours. Plutarch, who is an author of acknowledged gravity and good sense, frequently makes mention of spectres and apparitions; particularly he says, that in the famous battle above alluded to, several soldiers saw the apparition of Theseus fighting for the Greeks and against the Persians.

Familiar spirit or ancient Brownie.

It is recorded in Socrates, that after the defeat of the Athenian army under the prætor Laches, as he was flying in company with the Athenian general, and came to a place where several roads met, he refused to go the same road that the others took, and the reason being asked him, he answered that his genus, or familiar spirit, who frequently attended him, dissuaded him from it; and the event justified the precaution, for all those who went a different way, were killed, or made prisoners by the enemy’s cavalry.

GIPSIES—EGYPTIANS.

In most parts of the continent the gipsies are called Cingari, or Zingari; the Spaniards call them Gitanos, the French Bohemiens or Bohemiennes.

It is not certain when the Gipsies, as they are now termed, first appeared in Europe; but mention is made of them in Hungary and Germany, so early as the year 1417. Within 10 years afterwards we hear of them in France, Switzerland and Italy. The date of their arrival in England is more uncertain; it is most probable that it was not until near a century afterward. In the year 1530, they are spoken of in the following manner, in the penal statutes.