The Tyrone Ghost
This is also known as the Beresford Ghost, and is one of the most famous cases of its kind on record. The account, as herein given, is that supplied by the granddaughter of Lady Beresford, to whom the experience came; and hence may be considered as accurate as it can be made. It furnishes us with a definite example of a “ghost that touches,” and leaves a permanent mark of its visit, ever afterwards. Here is the account:
“In the month of October, 1693, Sir Tristram and Lady Beresford went on a visit to her sister, Lady Macgill, at Gill Hall, now the seat of Lord Clanwilliam.... One morning Sir Tristram arose early, leaving Lady Beresford asleep, and went out for 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 happened to her wrist, which was tied up with black ribbon tightly bound round it. She earnestly entreated him not to inquire more then, or thereafter, as to the cause of her wearing or continuing afterwards to wear that ribbon; ‘for,’ she added, ‘you will never see me without it.’ He replied: ‘Since you urge it so vehemently, I promise you not to inquire more about it.’
“After completing her hurried breakfast, she made inquiries as to whether the post had yet arrived. It had not yet come in, and Sir Tristram asked: ‘Why are you so particularly eager about letters to-day?’ ‘Because I expect to hear of Lord Tyrone’s death, which took place on Tuesday.’ ‘Well,’ remarked Sir Tristram, ‘I never put you down for a superstitious person, but I suppose that some idle dream has disturbed you.’ Shortly after, the servant brought in the letters; one was sealed with black wax. ‘It is as I expected,’ she cried, ‘he is dead.’ The letter was from Lord Tyrone’s steward to inform them that his master had died in Dublin, on Tuesday, 14 October, at 4 p.m. Sir Tristram endeavored 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 the following July.
“On her forty-seventh birthday, Lady Beresford summoned her children to her side, and said to them: ‘I have something of deep importance to communicate to you, my dear children, before I die. You are no strangers to the intimacy and affection which subsisted in early life between Lord Tyrone and myself.... We had made a solemn promise to one another, that whichever died first should, if permitted, appear to the other.... 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 tried to arouse 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 promises to each other, pledged in early life? I died on Tuesday, at 4 o’clock. I have been permitted thus to appear.... I am also suffered to inform you that you are with child, and will produce a son, who will marry an heiress; that Sir Tristram will not live long, that you will marry again, and you will die in your forty-seventh year.” I begged from him some convincing sign or proof so that when the morning came I might rely upon it, and that it was not the phantom of my imagination. He caused the hangings of the bed to be drawn in an unusual way and impossible manner through an iron hook. I still was not satisfied, when he wrote his signature in my pocketbook. I wanted, however, more substantial proof of his visit, when he laid his hand, which was cold as marble, on my wrist; the sinews shrunk up, the nerves withered at the touch. “Now,” he said, “let no mortal eye while you live ever see that wrist,” and vanished. While I was conversing with him my thoughts were calm, but as soon as he disappeared I felt chilled with horror and dismay, a cold sweat came over me, and I again endeavored, but vainly, to awaken Sir Tristram; a flood of tears came to my relief, and I fell asleep....’
“That year Lady Beresford died. On her deathbed, Lady Riverson unbound the black ribbon and found the wrist exactly as Lady Beresford had described it—every nerve withered, every sinew shrunk....”
In the following case the ghost kept its promise to appear—doing so, to all appearances, in spite of great obstacles. The incident is reported in Mr. W. T. Stead’s Real Ghost Stories, pp. 205-8:
“The following incident occurred to me some years ago, and all the details can be substantiated. The date was August 26, 1867, at midnight. I was then residing in the neighborhood of Hull, and held an appointment under the crown which necessitated my repairing thither every day for a few hours duty. My berth was almost a sinecure; and I had for some time been engaged to a young north country heiress, it being understood that on our marriage I should take her name and ‘stand for the county’ or rather for one of its divisions.
“For her sake I had to break off a love affair, not of the most reputable order, with a girl in Hull. I will call her Louise. She was young, beautiful, and devoted to me. On the night of the 26th of August we took our last walk together, and a few minutes before midnight paused on a wooden bridge running across a kind of canal, locally termed a ‘drain.’ We paused on the bridge, listening to the swirling of the current against the wooden piles, and waiting for the stroke of midnight to part forever. In the few minutes interval she repeated sotto voce, Longfellow’s ‘Bridge,’ the words of which, ‘I stood on the bridge at midnight,’ seemed terribly appropriate. After nearly twenty-five years I can never hear that piece recited without feeling a deadly chill, and the whole scene of two souls in agony again rising before me. Well! Midnight struck and we parted; but Louise said: ‘Grant me one favor, the only one that I shall ever ask you on this earth; promise to meet me here twelve months from to-night at this same hour.’ I demurred at first, thinking it would be bad for both of us, and only re-open partially-healed wounds. At last, however, I consented, saying, ‘Well, I will come if I am alive.’ But she said, ‘Say alive or dead.’ I said, ‘Very well, then, we will meet, dead or alive.’
“The next year I was on the spot a few minutes before the time; and, punctual to the stroke of midnight, Louise arrived. By this time I had begun to regret the arrangement I had made; but it was of too solemn a nature to put aside. I therefore kept the appointment; but said that I did not care to renew the compact. Louise, however, persuaded me to renew it for one more year; and I consented, much against my will; and we again left each other, repeating the same formula, ‘Dead or Alive.’
“The next year after passed rapidly until the first week in July, when I was shot dangerously in the thigh by a fisherman named Thomas Piles, of Hull, a reputed smuggler. A party of four of us had hired his ten-ton yawl to go yachting round the Yorkshire coast, and amuse ourselves by shooting sea-birds amongst the millions of them at Flamborough Head. The third or fourth day out I was shot in the right thigh by the skipper Piles; and the day after, one and a quarter ounce of number 2 shot were cut out therefrom by the coastguard surgeon at Bridlington Quay (whose name I forget for the moment), assisted by Dr. Alexander Mackey, at the Black Lion hotel. The affair was in all the papers at the time, about a column of it appearing in the Eastern Morning News, of Hull.
“As soon as I was able to be removed (two or three weeks) I was taken home, where Dr. Melburne King, of Hull, attended me. The day—and the night—(the 26th of August) came. I was then unable to walk without crutches, and that for only a short distance, so had to be wheeled about in a Bath chair. The distance to the trysting place being rather long, and the time and the circumstances being very peculiar, I did not avail myself of the services of my usual attendant, but specially retained an old servant of the family, who frequently did confidential commissions for me, and who knew Miss Louise well. We set forth ‘without beat of drum’ and arrived at the bridge about a few minutes to midnight. I remember that it was a brilliant starlight night, but I do not think that there was any moon—at all events, at that hour. ‘Old Bob,’ as he was always affectionately called, wheeled me to the bridge, helped me out of the Bath chair, and gave me my crutch. I walked on to the bridge, and leaned my back against the white painted rail top, then lighted my briar-root, and had a comfortable smoke.
“I was very much annoyed that I had allowed myself to be persuaded to come a second time, and determined to tell Louise positively that this should be our last meeting. Besides, now, I did not consider it fair to Miss K., with whom I was again ‘negotiating.’ So, if anything, it was in rather a sulky frame of mind that I awaited Louise. Just as the quarters before the hour began to chime I distinctly heard the ‘clink, clink’ of the little brass heels, which she always wore, sounding on the long flagged causeway, leading for 200 yards up to the bridge. As she got nearer, I could see her pass lamp after lamp in rapid succession, while the strokes of the large clock at Hull resounded through the stilly night.
“At last the patter, patter of the tiny feet sounded on the woodwork of the bridge, and I saw her distinctly pass under the lamp at my side. When she got close to me I saw that she had neither hat nor cape on, and concluded that she had taken a cab at the further end of the flagged causeway, and (it being a very warm night) had left her wraps in the cab, and, for purposes of effect, had come the short distance in evening dress.
“‘Clink, clink,’ went the brass heels, and she seemed about passing me, when I suddenly, urged by an impulse of affection, stretched out my arms to receive her. She passed through them, intangible, impalpable, and as she looked at me I distinctly saw her lips move, and form the words ‘Dead or Alive.’ I even heard the words, but not with my outward ears, with something else, some other sense—what, I know not. I felt startled, surprised, but not afraid, until a moment afterwards, when I felt, but could not see, some other presence following her. I could feel, though I could not hear, the heavy, clumsy thud of feet following her; and my blood seemed turned to ice. Recovering myself with an effort, I shouted out to Old Bob, who was safely ensconsed with the Bath chair in a nook out of sight round the corner: ‘Bob, who passed you just now?’ In an instant the old Yorkshire-man was by my side. ‘Ne’er a one passed me, sir.’ ‘Nonsense, Bob,’ I replied, ‘I told you that I was coming to meet Miss Louise, and she just passed me on the bridge, and must have passed you, because there is no where else she could go. You don’t mean to tell me you didn’t see her?’ The old man replied solemnly: ‘Maister Rob, there’s something uncanny about it. I heered her come on the bridge, and off it, and I knaw them clickety heels onywhere! but I’m domned, sir, if she passed me! I’m thinking we’d better gang.’ And ‘gang’ we did; and it was the small hours of the morning (getting daylight) before we left off talking over the affair, and went to bed.
“The next day I made inquiries from Louise’s family about her, and ascertained that she had died in Liverpool three months previously, being apparently delirious for a few hours before her death, and, our parting compact evidently weighing on her mind, as she kept repeating, ‘Dead or Alive—shall I be there?’—to the utter bewilderment of her friends, who could not divine her meaning—being, of course, entirely unaware of our agreement.”
This completes the examples of the so-called “Pact” cases. In the following example, the phantasmal form conveyed a piece of information to the percipient which he could not well have known by any normal means.