Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1856-03-28
STAR,
BIRC NOLL.
A New Ghost Story of Old Virginia.

| pensaole, useless, sable daughter OF Ham,
you can pronounce that inteIjection. If you
have not had Intercourse with any such per-
| son, you cannot initiate the sound, and you
need not try. 1t would be as useless for me
TO attempt to teach you as is to attempt
French without master" or to essay to
convey the Gaulic sounds i'm the characters of
the English alphabet.
/ Eh-eh-em-emI ~
There is deal Of meaning conveyed in
this apparently meaningless sOund-quite as
| much as In Lord Burleigh's shake Of the head
There is more, indeed; for his Lordships's s
rantomime needs daylight sr lamplight, but
Aunt Susannah said or humphed that wise
| exclamation to me in the evening, when you
could no more see her sable pow than you
could discern the exact form of midnight.
Aunt Susannah had been RECALLING me with
ghost story. L had told her that did not
| believe q word of it. / had told her, more
over, that if the spirits of the dead could re
turn to earth, l should be glad to see my
| brothers wlfe-two years dead-whose little
| child found in old Susannah's breast as affec
tlonate heart as ever beat in any bosom,
black or white. SusanDah is my dear little
Charley's nurse. She was his fathers; and
she was looking forward to long line of duty
! In new generation, when my dear sister
sickened and died. She was my nurse. She
was my mothers too. I don't know. These
old apties never grow any older, and nobody
can remember when they seemed any young
| er. can recOllect the time when, if Aunt
ousannah had told me that Phsraoh's daugh-
ter gave her Moses to nurse, when she took
| him out of the Nile, L should have believed
| her There's an idea for Mr. Bsrnum. They
have no Saptismal registers in Egypt-which
is awkward-but Mr.. B. may as well play
upon cur credulity with the hieroglyphic and
demotic inscriptions as TO leave them entirely
to more scientific pretenders
When expressed the doubt ard the wish
above mentioned, Aunty humphed. She then
went on to tell me that L need rot be so skep-
| tical, that she could oppose experience to my
| young ignorance, and demonstrates the pos
| sibiity eff ghosts by proofs of their actual ap
| pearance. Such was the purpOIt Of Susan
| nah 8 remaTks-such is rather a paraphrase
| Ii remember the exact words, they were:
| "Eh-eh-em-em! L hear you talkin'
Needn't tell dis chile dere's no gosisses /
| kno1c dere is ~
l was sileneed for moment, but not con-
| vineed l feel my growing years L am al
| most twenty. L am fresh from boarding
school, and have thirty intimate friends with
whom l correspond. Perhaps I should say
twenty nine-but that would be anticipating
| my story. And one of those friends, my dear
Angeline, was with US on a visit at the very
time Aunt Susannah coldiy included her
under the contempt with which she regards
| all desc ere Yankees" and L was piqued,
| and determined to assert my womanhood. Ii
would not do for girl Of eighteen, with a
! guest in the house to be silehced before Aunt
Susannah. L must convince her that am a
woman, or she will nurse me forever. l told
| her something in exchange for her marvels
l gave her the newest wonders of modern spir-
itualism--how the dead talk with the living
| and not only talk, but write, through the
spiritual telegraph. L did not tell her how
much of my information came from Angeline,
for then ste would have classed it all with
wooden hams, silver side saddles and sur
reptitous meetings Of course, invention was
not spared, and what the books and news
papers, and Angeliue did net furnish, was
supplied from a tOlerably fertile imagination.
How dey lOok1" asked Aunt Susannah.
informed her that no one saw the spirits.
+" How dey speak,"
/ told her that no one heard their voices,
but that these spiritual essences borrowed the
tongues Of living people, who were called me-
diums, or used their fingers to write, or raped
under the tables, or in the walls; giving her,
in short, the most approved relations of spir-
ituslistic phenomena. " Dom believe it. Dey
isn't true spirits S'pose dey can come, can't
dey show themselves. SpOse dey can walk,
can't dey speak? Dom believe it. But don
tell ne dere ISM gOsisses-real gosisses, cause
l know dere is ~
1t seemed as if Sussnnah were resolved to
revenge herself for my unbelief in her ghost
ly narratives, by refusing obstina.ely to credit
the new spiritual manifestations. She would
not believe a world Of the spiritualist theory,
whether that Of Andrew jackson Davis, or the
cancellations Of judges and CT dscant parsons
Whenever l repeated them, she met me with
the inyariable interjection of doubt. As to
any printed accounts Of marvel, she had n
sovereign contempt for all "made up lies,"
which came in the heterodox shape of books
nd Nnthinn in ho of
ghost story is to be believed which comes in
such superstitious form. "Dere is things"
Susannah said, "dat amt to be printed. |
Why dere was gosisses fO' ever dere was q |
printer. S'pose dey goern to be put in books
Put 'em in de Red Sea fust."
The reasoning is plausible, if not logical. |
The connection between the premises and the |
fact is, as Aunt Susannah presents it, that |
the only legitimate vehicle Of ghostly lore is |
oral tradition. 1t proves nothing to print it, |
for you can print nay as well as yea. But |
what has been everywhere believed, and by /
everybody, is surely true. Who don't be- |
lieve in ghosts? Don't you? wish, then,
you could hear Aunt Susannah upon the SUBJ /
ject One word of hers would settle you
YES, less than a word "Eh-eh-em-em" =" |
And when did people not believe in them |
If antiquity is the test and warrant of truth, |
the farther back you 60 into the dim past, |
the more ghosts you find. Spiritual mani |
festatiOns are only the old story in a new |
dress-Aunt Susannah to the contrary not |
withstandipg.
Little Charley cried, and an end was put to
our colloquy. "B'lieve de gosisses is here
now, -" said Aunt Susannah, "if you could only
see 'em. Dey won't let de chile sleep. Dey
make hosses kick in the stable, and shy and
stumble in de road. Hoses see gosisses, or
else what dey 'fraid oh in de dark? En-
en-! You is mighty piert, Mess Carlin,s; but
you fne out one desc days, L tell you :"
1 wonder if everybody is superstitious. L
think sometimes that am AT any rate the |
conversation with old aunty did not at all pre- |
pare me to sit alone and in darkness, while |
the autumn winds suddenly kissing put the |
doors and shutters in motion; and L sought |
the family in the sitting-room. There must |
have been something contagious in the air, or
the spirits must have been at work, infu-
encing all parts of the house at once, for the
family topic tonight was spiritualism. All
were inclined to speak of it lightly, leaving
what they said to be treated as subsequent