The National Register.
London, England, 1811-08-04 00:00:00

THE LAM.

'II GIP

ISTS !

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATIONAL REGISTER.

SlR—Finding, with much pleasure, the ease which your va-
luable columns often convey to the public mind, when alarmed
by the fears of invasion, national ruin, and the other bug-bears
of party, I indulge the hope, that sonic of these days you will
spare me a corner, for a little account of the deliverance effected
by some ladies, from a most awful calamity that had like to have
befallen our neighbourhood, within these two months, by the
nightly appearance of not merely one, or two, (which would
have been sufficiently tremendous!) but of a wltok family of
SUPERSTATURALS, or GHOSTS!

To be serious :—I halie the happiness (if happines; consist in
moral safety) to live in a neighbourhood which abounds in old
maids, with here and there a good-natured old married lady.—
Gardeners' grounds, to a considerable extent, enliven our back

two months ago, towards midnight,—the
eventful hour when church-yards yawn !—one of my female
neighbours descried at the extremity of the garden grounds, in
an extensive meadow, (flanked by the parish work house on the
one hand, and an old windmill on the other) a number of strange
lights, which continued for a considerable time, alternately to
twinkle and disappear. Such a sight, you must allow, and at
such ait hour, was truly alarming ! with the same solicitude that
a Galileo, cr a Herschel, would watch the heavens, for a new
star or comet, did my friend, assisted by her servant, sit up night
after night, to trace the orbits of these phenomena ; which regu-
larly appeared about the chosen hour ; and their number in-
creased, with several other signs of a portentous aspect. At
length, the secret was revealed, in confidence, to a dozen or two
of the female branches of the neighbourhood ; and manifold in-
deed were the theories formed, as to the nature of these strange
appearances, and direful was the alarm on account of them.
Every other topic of conversation at the tea-table became insipid.,`
The family concerns of the parish got a respite :—The new-lights
alone attracted netice ; and at length all agreed that Ghosts they
must be; but the perplexing difficulty still remained, to solve
what kind of Ghosts ! I, at length, (from the circumstance, I
presume, of wearing spectacles,) was invited to sit up one night
to examine them; but tIP.3 I declined, treating the subject with
the ridicule I thought it deserved ; for little, indeed, did I then
conjecture what the result would be. Thus matters rested, until
one of the late beautifully-serene Gala nights at Vauxhall,
awakening about midnight, the thought came into my mind, t hat
it was a favourable opportunity for observation. So up I got,
and though the rain was pouring from the heavens, the lights
were in the field, sure enough. 1 soon counted a dozen. Some-
times they formed into clusters, and shot across the meadow.
Sometimes they twinkled bright and clear, and, anon, dull and
vapoury. At length I crept to bed, not a little puzzled to account
satisfactorily for the objects I had seen. On making my report
the following morning, I wished to pass off the matter, by saying,
that the lights were mere Ignisjatuuses, produced by the swam-
piness of the ground. Still, the ladies persevered in the idea of
their being spirits; and one old dame, a bit of a politician, threw
out a hint that these appearances might be the ghosts of the late
idatinistration, forming some plans in the event of a change in
state affairs; and the only material objection to this idea was,
that the lights appeared rather too bright I

I ventured to suggest, that the existence at all of such things as
ghosts was very doubtful; but, in the twinkling of an eye, the
Witch of Endor, from Scripture, and the testimony of that great
man Dr. Johnson, the Leviathan of Literature, were adduced to
overwhelm my puny reasonings ; and finding, even could I
have proved the non-existence of ghosts, that this would be likely
to produce more uneasiness and disquiet than an the ghosts that
ever yet appeared, I gave in completely to the, ladies, adding
that these newly-appeared spirits inuat to fkiaattutiass isee,

'LIE NATIONAL