True Ghost Stories

by Hereward Carrington

  “The singing arrows darkened the air, the hordes melted before them. ‘More machine guns,’ Bill yelled to Tom. ‘Don’t hear them,’ Tom yelled back, ‘but thank God, anyway, that they have got it in the neck!’

  “In fact, there were ten thousand dead German soldiers left before that salient of the English army, and consequently—no Sedan.

  In Germany the General Staff decided that the English must have employed turpenite shells, as no wounds were discernible on the bodies of the dead soldiers. But the man who knew what nuts tasted like when they called themselves steak, knew also that St. George had brought his Agincourt Bowmen to help the English.”

  Such accounts have been confirmed by others. Thus, Miss Phyllis Campbell, writing in “The Occult Review” (October, 1915), says:

  “I tremble, now that it is safely past, to look back on the terrible week that brought the Allies to Vitry-le-Francois. We had not had our clothes off for the whole of that week, because no sooner had we reached home, too weary to undress, or to eat, and fallen on our beds, than the ‘chug-chug’ of the commandant’s car would sound into the silence of the deserted street, and the horn would imperatively summon us back to duty—because, in addition to our duties as ambulancier auxiliare, we were interpreters to the post, now at this moment diminished to half-a-dozen.

  “Returning at 4.30 in the morning, we stood on the end of the platform, watching the train crawl through the blue-green mist of the forest, into the clearing, and draw up with the first wounded from Vitry-le-Francois. It was packed with dead and dying and badly wounded. For a time we forgot our weariness in a race against time—removing the dead and dying, and attending to those in need. I was bandaging a man’s shattered arm with the majeur instructing me, while he stitched a horrible gap in his head, when Madame de A——, the heroic president of the post, came and replaced me. ‘There is an English in the fifth wagon,’ she said. ‘He wants something—I think a holy picture!’

  “The idea of an English soldier wanting a holy picture struck me, even in that atmosphere of blood and misery, as something to smile at—but I hurried away. ‘The English’ was a Lancashire Fusilier. He was propped in a corner, his left arm tied-up in a peasant woman’s handkerchief, and his head newly bandaged. He should have been in a state of collapse from loss of blood, for his tattered uniform was soaked and caked in blood, and his face paper-white under the dirt of conflict. He looked at me with bright, courageous eyes and asked for a picture or a medal (he didn’t care which) of St. George. I asked him if he was a Catholic. ‘No,’ he was Wesleyan Methodist, ... and he wanted a picture or a medal of St. George, because he had seen him on a white horse, leading the British at Vitry-le-Francois, when the Allies turned.

  “There was an F.R.A. man, wounded in the leg, sitting beside him on the floor; he saw my look of amazement, and hastened in: ‘It’s true, sister,’ he said. ‘We all saw it. First there was a sort of yellow-mist like, sort of risin’ before the Germans as they came on the top of the hill—come on like a solid wall, they did—springing out of the earth just solid—no end to ’em! I just give up. No use fighting the whole German race, thinks I; it’s all up with us. The next minute comes this funny cloud of light, and when it clears off, there’s a tall man with yellow hair in golden armour, on a white horse, holding his sword up, and his mouth open as if he was saying: “Come on, boys! I’ll put the kybosh on the devils!” Sort of “This is my picnic” expression. Then, before you could say “knife,” the Germans had turned, and we were after them, fighting like ninety....’

  “‘Where was this?’ I asked. But neither of them could tell. They had marched, fighting a rearguard action, from Mons, till St. George had appeared through the haze of light, and turned the enemy. They both knew it was St. George. Hadn’t they seen him with a sword on every ‘quid’ they’d ever seen? The Frenchies had seen him too—ask them; but they said it was St. Michæl....”

  Much additional testimony of a like nature might be given—and has been collected by students of psychical research. If the spiritual world ever intervenes in matters mundane, it assuredly did so on this occasion. And it could hardly have chosen a more opportune time. Could the aspiring thoughts of the dead and dying, and those still living and fighting for their country, have drawn “St. George” to earth, to aid in again redeeming his country from a foreign foe? Could a simple “hallucination” have been so widespread and so prevalent? Or might there not have been some spiritual energy behind the visions thus seen—stimulating them, and inspiring and encouraging the stricken soldiers? We cannot say. We only know what the soldiers themselves say; and we also know the undoubted effects upon the enemy. For on both occasions were the Germans repulsed with terrible slaughter. Perhaps the vision of St. George led our soldiers into closer touch and rapport with the consciousness of some high intelligence—or the veil was rent, separating the two worlds—as so often appears to be the case in apparitions and visions of this character.

  Appendix C

  Bibliography

  Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. M. R. James.

  Wandering Ghosts. F. Marion Crawford.

  John Silence. A. Blackwood.

  Modern Ghosts. DeMaupassant, (and others).

  Twenty-five Ghost Stories. W. Bob Holland.

  A Book of Ghosts. Baring Gould.

  The Shape of Fear. Peattie.

  Book of Dreams and Ghosts. Andrew Lang.

  Cock Lane and Common Sense. A. Lang.

  Real Ghost Stories. W. T. Stead.

  More Ghost Stories. W. T. Stead.

  The Great Amherst Mystery. Walter Hubbell.

  The Bell Witch. M. V. Ingram.

  The Alleged Haunting of B—— House. Miss X.

  Haunted Houses and Haunted Men. Hon. John Harris.

  Ghostly Phenomena. Elliott O’Donnell.

  Byways of Ghost Land. Elliott O’Donnell.

  Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters. H. A. Bruce.

  Posthumous Humanity: a Study of Phantoms. D’Assier.

  Apparitions and Thought-Transference. Frank Podmore.

  The New View of Ghosts. F. Podmore.

  Proceedings and Journals of the S. P. R.

  Borderland (Magazine). Ed. by W. T. Stead.

  Haunted Houses of Great Britain. Ingraham.

  The Night Side of Nature. Catherine Crowe.

  The House and the Brain. Bulwer Lytton.

  Nightmare Tales. H. P. Blavatsky.

  Apparitions: a Narrative of Facts. B. W. Saville.

  Startling Ghost Stories. Anon.

  Sights and Shadows. F. G. Lee.

  Dracula. Bram Stoker.

  The Phantom of the Opera. Gaston Leroux.