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When the dark ages were over, when learning revived, the learned turned their minds to 'Psychical Research, and Wier, Bodin, Le Loyer, Georgius Pictorius, Petrus Thyraeus, James VI., collected many instances of the phenomena still said to survive. Then, for want of better materials, the unhappy, tortured witches dragged into their confessions all the folklore which they knew.
Thereto is added a Tract on Nocturnal Disturbances, which are wont to bode the deaths of Men. Thyraeus begins, 'That certain places are haunted by spectres and spirits, is no matter of doubt, wherein a modern reader cannot confidently follow him.
The inquiries of Thyraeus, Lavaterus, Bodinus, Wierus, Le Loyer, Reginald Scot, and many others, tended on the whole to the negative side as regards the wilder fables about witches, but left the problems of ghosts and haunted houses pretty much where they were before.
He decides that to bury dead bodies below the hearth does not prevent haunting, for 'the hearth has no such efficacy'. Such bodies are not very unfrequently found in old English houses, the reason for this strange interment is not obvious, but perhaps it is explained by the superstition which Thyraeus mentions.
It is to be noticed that Bouchel, in his Bibliotheque du Droit Francais, chiefly cites classical, not modern, instances. Among the most careful and exhaustive post-mediaeval writers on haunted houses we must cite Petrus Thyraeus of the Society of Jesus, Doctor in Theology.
Thomas Aquinas, following St. Augustine, inclines to hold that when there is an apparition of a dead man, the dead man is unconscious of the circumstance. A spirit of one kind or another may be acting in his semblance. Thyraeus rather fancies that the dead man is aware of what is going on. Hauntings may be visual, auditory, or confined to the sense of touch.
Is there such a thing as persistent identity of hallucination among the sane? This was Coleridge's theory, but it is not without difficulties. These questions are the present results of Comparative Psychological Research. Reginald Scot on Protestant expulsion of Ghosts. His boast premature. Savage hauntings. Red Indian example. Classical cases. Petrus Thyraeus on Haunted Houses.
Beyond assuming the influence of spirits over the air, and, apparently, their power of using dead bodies as vehicles for themselves, Thyraeus comes to no distinct conclusion. He endeavours, at great length, to distinguish between haunters who are ghosts of the dead, and haunters who are demons, or spirits unattached. The former wail and moan, the latter are facetious.
Harry. As in the case of meeting an avalanche, 'a weak-minded man would pray, sir, would pray; a strong-minded man would swear, sir, would swear'. Mr. Harry was a strong-minded man, and behaved 'in a concatenation accordingly, although Petrus Thyraeus says that there is no use in swearing at ghosts.
Thyraeus thinks that the air is agitated when sounds are heard, but that is just the question to be solved. As for visual phantasms, these Thyraeus regards as hallucinations produced by spirits on the human senses, not as external objective entities. He now asks why the sense of touch is affected usually as if by a cold body.
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