THE TRUTH ABOUT GHOSTS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1034, 9 February 1882, Page 4

THE TRUTH ABOUT GHOSTS.

Under this heading tin extensive esrre ■, ..licence mi* ueen on in tael leading journals. Some of the stories I related are ver;,’ remarkable. One | correspondent writes :—“ Ghosts or I no ghosts, apparitions are a fact. My i own aunt was engaged to be married | to a gentleman, who after his engage-! incut, went to China. One night | during Ins absence iny aunt awoke her I mother, with whom she was sleeping,] and said ‘ Mother, there is James at tlie foot of the lied.’ My grandmother saw' nothing, but rny aunt was broken in heart and spirit from that night. Letters still continued to come for lour months from the affianced, the! last of which said he might be home before his letter, if not the trousseau was to be prepared at once. The ship by which James was expected arrived a week after the letter, with the news that he had died from the effects of ;ati accident on the very day of the apparition. My aunt never recovered her spirits. I well remember her dejected face, though it is nearly 40 years since her death. She was the eldest of a family of nine, and her father, mother, and eight brothers and sisters were witnesses to her constant 1 despondency and firm conviction that I she would never see James again in flesh. Can we account for this on the ] mere principle of coincidence ? There is hardly a family in England that has ] not some incident to relate ; but the -Sadduces, who neither believe in angel ’nor spirit, are'so credulous that they prefer to believe negative to positive evidence—that is, the weaker evidence •of those who have not seen to the stronger of those who have.”

Another writer states that while staying at Brighton with some friends in November, 1879, he was walking alone on a moonlight night on the seaside of the Esplanade, when a carriage and pair drew up alongside the rails. He was greatly startled, as the wheels made no noise, but he at once took half-a-dozen steps towards the carriage, aud then distinctly recognised its occupants as his grandmother, an old lady of 83, whom he had left perfectly well at Cheltenham a few days before, also her coachman and footman on the box. Vaulting over the rails he made one step forward to greet her, when to his horror the whole thing vanished. On his relatingthe circumstances to his friends they of course laughed at him, but next morning they received a telegram that the-old lady had been found dead in her bed, at 7.30 that morning. Previous to this occurrence the correspondent had always laughed at the bare idea of ghosts. In the third case, which also •occurred in November, 1879, tljjj writer states that he and his family were sitting round the. fire, when they distinctly heard a vehicle stop outside their house, and someone open their gate and walk up the garden path. “ 1 went out to the hall door myself, and there, under the portico, I saw an old friend of mine, whom I then thought ■to be in India, and he was standing with a paper in his right band; but before I could even speak he faded gradually away. The shock of seeing his ghost prostrated me for some days. Eventually it turned out that he dropped down dead that very hour, and with that paper in his right hand.” A lady correspondent states that on one occasion she aw’oke suddenly in the night and saw distinctly standing in the corner of the bedroom a figure clad from head to foot in armor, the visor •down. As she gazed at the figure she recognised it as the eldest brother of a very intimate girl friend of hers. She closed her eyes, and on re-opening the figure had vanished. She dressed and went down stairs. Her mother started early that morning by the Highland line for the North, aud she accompanied her to the station, but was afraid to tell her what she had seen. That evening she received a telegram from her mother to this effect: “ Arrived all safe and well; ‘Young Monro’ died this morning.” The lady adds that the death of the young man was sudden and unexpected. These • are but specimens of a large number of similar personal narratives which have appeared in our contemporary’s •columns.