The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction | Page 4

* * * This opinion which, perhaps, prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth(!): those that never heard of one another would not have agreed in a tale which nothing but experience could make credible."--_Rasselas_, chap. xxx.
[4] When the grammarians could not interpret some word in a sentence, which they could make without it, they used to attribute the unfortunate word to a natural redundancy in the language, and in the same manner all ghost stories could be solved by referring it to "an exuberance," &c. &c.
During the celebrated Peninsular campaign, as a lady, whose son, a French officer in Spain, was seated in her room, she was astonished to perceive the folding doors at the bottom of the apartment slowly open, and disclose to her eyes, her son. He begged her not to be alarmed, and informed her that he had been just killed by a grape-shot, and even showed her the wound in his side; the doors closed again and she saw no more. In a few days she received a letter, which informed her that her son had fallen, after distinguishing himself in a most gallant manner, and mentioning the time of his death, which happened at precisely the same moment the apparition was seen by her! And when I add that the lady was not _at all addicted to superstition_, the strangeness of the occurrence is considerably increased. What inference is to be drawn from this extraordinary tale? I confess I cannot, and do not, believe that apparitions revisit the earth even at the "glimpses o' the moon," nor does this story at all change my opinion, and for one grand reason, which is this--That it is highly improbable that the course of nature would be interrupted for the production of so insignificant an effect, for it appears an unnecessary exertion of divine power, when the good attained would be little or none.
Let us, therefore, attribute it to a powerful imagination acting on a mind already affected with anxiety, and I believe we shall have no occasion for yielding to the idea of an apparition to explain the circumstance. I am acquainted with another tale of the same kind, but I am debarred from relating it, from my not being authorized to do so by the person, a gentleman of large property in Scotland, to whom it occurred. Lord Byron was much addicted to that species of superstition of which I am treating: the gloomy idea of spirits revisiting the earth to gaze on those who they loved, was congenial to his mind, and an overheated fancy indulged beyond its due limits, converted the morbid visionary into the superstitious ascetic.
There is an account of a ghost related in the Notes to Moore's Life of the Noble Poet (vol. i.) I have mentioned, which I shall detail here, as it may have escaped the memory of some of your readers. A captain of a merchant vessel was on a voyage to some port; having retired to rest, he was disturbed in the night by a horrid dream, that his brother, an officer in the navy was drowned. He awoke and perceived something dark lying at the foot of the hammock, and on putting out his hand discovered it was a naval uniform, wet. Some days after this his dream was confirmed by a letter informing him of his brother's death by drowning.
At Oakhampton, in Devonshire, there are the remains of a beautiful castle dismantled by Henry VIII. on the attainder of Henry Courtenay, which is situated in a park, concerning which many traditions exist, one of which I will give here as it was told by a native. A great many years ago, there lived a lady at Oakhampton Castle, who was famous for her love of cruelty and for unbounded ostentation. This lady was killed, and her ghost haunted some house in Oakhampton much to the discomfiture of all the inhabitants thereof. A conclave of "most grave and reverend signiors" was convoked, who ordained that the disturbed spirit should every night pluck a blade of grass till all should be gathered. And now, every night at the chilly hour of midnight, the lady in a splendid coach with four skeleton horses, a skeleton coachman, and skeleton footmen, is to be seen in the park obeying the dictum of the Oakhampton worthies. This legend will be found, I am told, in "Fitz, of Fitzford," by Mrs. Bray. I shall not comment on this, as it evidently appears a wild legend, on which we can found nothing.
There is another tale which I shall recount here, since I can vouch for its authenticity.
During the Irish Rebellion of 1798, a gentleman went to take possession of a house in a lone district