The Beresford Ghost
Categories: More Ghosts With A PurposeScary Books: The Book Of Dreams And Ghosts
: Andrew Lang
"There is at Curraghmore, the seat of Lord Waterford, in Ireland, a
manuscript account of the tale, such as it was originally received and
implicitly believed in by the children and grandchildren of the lady
to whom Lord Tyrone is supposed to have made the supernatural
appearance after death. The account was written by Lady Betty Cobbe,
the youngest daughter of Marcus, Earl of Tyrone, and granddaughter of
Nicola S., L
of all her faculties, both of body and mind. I can myself remember
her, for when a boy I passed through Bath on a journey with my mother,
and we went to her house there, and had luncheon. She appeared to my
juvenile imagination a very appropriate person to revise and transmit
such a tale, and fully adapted to do ample justice to her subject-
matter. It never has been doubted in the family that she received the
full particulars in early life, and that she heard the circumstances,
such as they were believed to have occurred, from the nearest
relatives of the two persons, the supposed actors in this mysterious
interview, viz., from her own father, Lord Tyrone, who died in 1763,
and from her aunt, Lady Riverston, who died in 1763 also.
"These two were both with their mother, Lady Beresford, on the day of
her decease, and they, without assistance or witness, took off from
their parent's wrist the black bandage which she had always worn on
all occasions and times, even at Court, as some very old persons who
lived well into the eighteenth century testified, having received
their information from eyewitnesses of the fact. There was an oil
painting of this lady in Tyrone House, Dublin, representing her with a
black ribbon bound round her wrist. This portrait disappeared in an
unaccountable manner. It used to hang in one of the drawing-rooms in
that mansion, with other family pictures. When Henry, Marquis of
Waterford, sold the old town residence of the family and its grounds
to the Government as the site of the Education Board, he directed Mr.
Watkins, a dealer in pictures, and a man of considerable knowledge in
works of art and vertu, to collect the pictures, etc., etc., which
were best adapted for removal to Curraghmore. Mr. Watkins especially
picked out this portrait, not only as a good work of art, but as one
which, from its associations, deserved particular care and notice.
When, however, the lot arrived at Curraghmore and was unpacked, no
such picture was found; and though Mr. Watkins took great pains and
exerted himself to the utmost to trace what had become of it, to this
day (nearly forty years), not a hint of its existence has been
received or heard of.
"John le Poer, Lord Decies, was the eldest son of Richard, Earl of
Tyrone, and of Lady Dorothy Annesley, daughter of Arthur, Earl of
Anglesey. He was born 1665, succeeded his father 1690, and died 14th
October, 1693. He became Lord Tyrone at his father's death, and is
the 'ghost' of the story.
"Nicola Sophie Hamilton was the second and youngest daughter and co-
heiress of Hugh, Lord Glenawley, who was also Baron Lunge in Sweden.
Being a zealous Royalist, he had, together with his father, migrated
to that country in 1643, and returned from it at the Restoration. He
was of a good old family, and held considerable landed property in the
county Tyrone, near Ballygawley. He died there in 1679. His eldest
daughter and co-heiress, Arabella Susanna, married, in 1683, Sir John
Macgill, of Gill Hall, in the county Down.
"Nicola S. (the second daughter) was born in 1666, and married Sir
Tristram Beresford in 1687. Between that and 1693 two daughters were
born, but no son to inherit the ample landed estates of his father,
who most anxiously wished and hoped for an heir. It was under these
circumstances, and at this period, that the manuscripts state that
Lord Tyrone made his appearance after death; and all the versions of
the story, without variation, attribute the same cause and reason,
viz., a solemn promise mutually interchanged in early life between
John le Poer, then Lord Decies, afterwards Lord Tyrone, and Nicola S.
Hamilton, that whichever of the two died the first, should, if
permitted, appear to the survivor for the object of declaring the
approval or rejection by the Deity of the revealed religion as
generally acknowledged: of which the departed one must be fully
cognisant, but of which they both had in their youth entertained
unfortunate doubts.
"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, whose grandmother was eventually the heiress of Sir
J. Macgill's property. One morning Sir Tristram rose 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 occurred 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 anxious 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 should
have 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 cries; 'he is dead.' The letter was from Lord Tyrone's steward to
inform them that his master had died in Dublin, on Tuesday, 14th
October, at 4 p.m. Sir Tristram endeavoured 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 in the
following July. Sir Tristram survived its birth little more than six
years. After his death Lady Beresford continued to reside with her
young family at his place in the county of Derry, and seldom went from
home. She hardly mingled with any neighbours or friends, excepting
with Mr. and Mrs. Jackson, of Coleraine. He was the principal
personage in that town, and was, by his mother, a near relative of Sir
Tristram. His wife was the daughter of Robert Gorges, LL.D. (a
gentleman of good old English family, and possessed of a considerable
estate in the county Meath), by Jane Loftus, daughter of Sir Adam
Loftus, of Rathfarnham, and sister of Lord Lisburn. They had an only
son, Richard Gorges, who was in the army, and became a general officer
very early in life. With the Jacksons Lady Beresford maintained a
constant communication and lived on the most intimate terms, while she
seemed determined to eschew all other society and to remain in her
chosen retirement.
"At the conclusion of three years thus passed, one luckless day "Young
Gorges" most vehemently professed his passion for her, and solicited
her hand, urging his suit in a most passionate appeal, which was
evidently not displeasing to the fair widow, and which, unfortunately
for her, was successful. They were married in 1704. One son and two
daughters were born to them, when his abandoned and dissolute conduct
forced her to seek and to obtain a separation. After this had
continued for four years, General Gorges pretended extreme penitence
for his past misdeeds, and with the most solemn promises of amendment
induced his wife to live with him again, and she became the mother of
a second son. The day month after her confinement happened to be her
birthday, and having recovered and feeling herself equal to some
exertion, she sent for her son, Sir Marcus Beresford, then twenty
years old, and her married daughter, Lady Riverston. She also invited
Dr. King, the Archbishop of Dublin (who was an intimate friend), and
an old clergyman who had christened her, and who had always kept up a
most kindly intercourse with her during her whole life, to make up a
small party to celebrate the day.
"In the early part of it Lady Beresford was engaged in a kindly
conversation with her old friend the clergyman, and in the course of
it said: 'You know that I am forty-eight this day'. 'No, indeed,' he
replied; 'you are only forty-seven, for your mother had a dispute with
me once on the very subject of your age, and I in consequence sent and
consulted the registry, and can most confidently assert that you are
only forty-seven this day.' 'You have signed my death-warrant, then,'
she cried; 'leave me, I pray, for I have not much longer to live, but
have many things of grave importance to settle before I die. Send my
son and my daughter to me immediately.' The clergyman did as he was
bidden. He directed Sir Marcus and his sister to go instantly to
their mother; and he sent to the archbishop and a few other friends to
put them off from joining the birthday party.
"When her two children repaired to Lady Beresford, she thus addressed
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
the affection which subsisted in early life between Lord Tyrone and
myself. We were educated together when young, under the same roof, in
the pernicious principles of Deism. Our real friends afterwards took
every opportunity to convince us of our error, but their arguments
were insufficient to overpower and uproot our infidelity, though they
had the effect of shaking our confidence in it, and thus leaving us
wavering between the two opinions. In this perplexing state of doubt
we made a solemn promise one to the other, that whichever died first
should, if permitted, appear to the other for the purpose of declaring
what religion was the one acceptable to the Almighty. 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
endeavoured to rouse 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 promise to each other, pledged in early life? I
died on Tuesday, at four o'clock. I have been permitted thus to
appear in order to assure you that the revealed religion is the true
and only one by which we can be saved. I am also suffered to inform
you that you are with child, and will produce a son, who will marry my
heiress; that Sir Tristram will not live long, when you will marry
again, and you will die from the effects of childbirth 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 feel satisfied
that his appearance had been real, 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 pocket-book. 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 endeavoured but vainly to awaken Sir Tristram; a
flood of tears came to my relief, and I fell asleep.
"'In the morning your father got up without disturbing me; he had not
noticed anything extraordinary about me or the bed-hangings. When I
did arise I found a long broom in the gallery outside the bedroom
door, and with great difficulty I unhooded the curtain, fearing that
the position of it might excite surprise and cause inquiry. I bound
up my wrist with black ribbon before I went down to breakfast, where
the agitation of my mind was too visible not to attract attention.
Sir Tristram made many anxious inquiries as to my health, especially
as to my sprained wrist, as he conceived mine to be. I begged him to
drop all questions as to the bandage, even if I continued to adopt it
for any length of time. He kindly promised me not to speak of it any
more, and he kept his promise faithfully. You, my son, came into the
world as predicted, and your father died six years after. I then
determined to abandon society and its pleasures and not mingle again
with the world, hoping to avoid the dreadful predictions as to my
second marriage; but, alas! in the one family with which I held
constant and friendly intercourse I met the man, whom I did not regard
with perfect indifference. Though I struggled to conquer by every
means the passion, I at length yielded to his solicitations, and in a
fatal moment for my own peace I became his wife. In a few years his
conduct fully justified my demand for a separation, and I fondly hoped
to escape the fatal prophecy. Under the delusion that I had passed my
forty-seventh birthday, I was prevailed upon to believe in his
amendment, and to pardon him. I have, however, heard from undoubted
authority that I am only forty-seven this day, and I know that I am
about to die. I die, however, without the dread of death, fortified
as I am by the sacred precepts of Christianity and upheld by its
promises. When I am gone, I wish that you, my children, should unbind
this black ribbon and alone behold my wrist before I am consigned to
the grave.'
"She then requested to be left that she might lie down and compose
herself, and her children quitted the apartment, having desired her
attendant to watch her, and if any change came on to summon them to
her bedside. In an hour the bell rang, and they hastened to the call,
but all was over. The two children having ordered every one to
retire, knelt down by the side of the bed, when Lady Riverston unbound
the black ribbon and found the wrist exactly as Lady Beresford had
described it--every nerve withered, every sinew shrunk.
"Her friend, the Archbishop, had had her buried in the Cathedral of
St. Patrick, in Dublin, in the Earl of Cork's tomb, where she now
lies."
The writer now professes his disbelief in any spiritual presence, and
explains his theory that Lady Beresford's anxiety about Lord Tyrone
deluded her by a vivid dream, during which she hurt her wrist.
Of all ghost stories the Tyrone, or Beresford Ghost, has most
variants. Following Monsieur Haureau, in the Journal des Savants, I
have tracked the tale, the death compact, and the wound inflicted by
the ghost on the hand, or wrist, or brow, of the seer, through Henry
More, and Melanchthon, and a mediaeval sermon by Eudes de Shirton, to
William of Malmesbury, a range of 700 years. Mrs. Grant of Laggan has
a rather recent case, and I have heard of another in the last ten
years! Calmet has a case in 1625, the spectre leaves
The sable score of fingers four
on a board of wood.
Now for a modern instance of a gang of ghosts with a purpose!
When I narrated the story which follows to an eminent moral
philosopher, he remarked, at a given point, "Oh, the ghost _spoke_,
did she?" and displayed scepticism. The evidence, however, left him,
as it leaves me, at a standstill, not convinced, but agreeably
perplexed. The ghosts here are truly old-fashioned.
My story is, and must probably remain, entirely devoid of proof, as
far as any kind of ghostly influence is concerned. We find ghosts
appearing, and imposing a certain course of action on a living
witness, for definite purposes of their own. The course of action
prescribed was undeniably pursued, and apparently the purpose of the
ghosts was fulfilled, but what that purpose was their agent declines
to state, and conjecture is hopelessly baffled.
The documents in the affair have been published by the Society for
Psychical Research (Proceedings, vol. xi., p. 547), and are here used
for reference. But I think the matter will be more intelligible if I
narrate it exactly as it came under my own observation. The names of
persons and places are all fictitious, and are the same as those used
in the documents published by the S.P.R.
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"About the month of November in the year 1682, in the parish of Spraiton, in the county of Devon, one Francis Fey (servant to Mr. Philip Furze) being in a field near the dwelling-house of his said master, there appeared unto him the _resemblance_ of... The Dancing Devil
On 16th November, 1870, Mr. Shchapoff, a Russian squire, the narrator, came home from a visit to a country town, Iletski, and found his family in some disarray. There lived with him his mother and his wife's mother, ladies of about sixty-nine, his ... The Dancing Devil
On 16th November, 1870, Mr. Shchapoff, a Russian squire, the narrator, came home from a visit to a country town, Iletski, and found his family in some disarray. There lived with him his mother and his wife's mother, ladies of about sixty-nine, his ... The Dead Shopman
Swooning, or slight mental mistiness, is not very unusual in ghost seers. The brother of a friend of my own, a man of letters and wide erudition, was, as a boy, employed in a shop in a town, say Wexington. The overseer was a dark, rather hectic-loo... The Dead Shopman
Swooning, or slight mental mistiness, is not very unusual in ghost seers. The brother of a friend of my own, a man of letters and wide erudition, was, as a boy, employed in a shop in a town, say Wexington. The overseer was a dark, rather hectic-loo... The Deathbed
Miss C., a lady of excellent sense, religious but not bigoted, lived before her marriage in the house of her uncle D., a celebrated physician, and member of the Institute. Her mother at this time was seriously ill in the country. One night the gir... The Deathbed
Miss C., a lady of excellent sense, religious but not bigoted, lived before her marriage in the house of her uncle D., a celebrated physician, and member of the Institute. Her mother at this time was seriously ill in the country. One night the gir... The Deathbed Of Louis Xiv
"Here is a strange story that the Duc d'Orleans told me one day in a tete-a-tete at Marly, he having just run down from Paris before he started for Italy; and it may be observed that all the events predicted came to pass, though none of them could h... The Deathbed Of Louis Xiv
"Here is a strange story that the Duc d'Orleans told me one day in a tete-a-tete at Marly, he having just run down from Paris before he started for Italy; and it may be observed that all the events predicted came to pass, though none of them could h... The Denton Hall Ghost
A day or two after my arrival at Denton Hall, when all around was yet new to me, I had accompanied my friends to a ball given in the neighbourhood, and returned heartily fatigued. At this time I need not blush, nor you smile, when I say that on... The Devil Of Hjalta-stad {246}
The sheriff writes: "The Devil at Hjalta-stad was outspoken enough this past winter, although no one saw him. I, along with others, had the dishonour to hear him talking for nearly two days, during which he addressed myself and the minister, Sir G... The Devil Of Hjalta-stad {246}
The sheriff writes: "The Devil at Hjalta-stad was outspoken enough this past winter, although no one saw him. I, along with others, had the dishonour to hear him talking for nearly two days, during which he addressed myself and the minister, Sir G... The Difficulty Of Crossing A Field
One morning in July, 1854, a planter named Williamson, living six miles from Selma, Alabama, was sitting with his wife and a child on the veranda of his dwelling. Immediately in front of the house was a lawn, perhaps fifty yards in extent betwe... The Dog Fanti
Mrs. Ogilvie of Drumquaigh had a poodle named Fanti. Her family, or at least those who lived with her, were her son, the laird, and three daughters. Of these the two younger, at a certain recent date, were paying a short visit to a neighbouring co... The Dog Fanti
Mrs. Ogilvie of Drumquaigh had a poodle named Fanti. Her family, or at least those who lived with her, were her son, the laird, and three daughters. Of these the two younger, at a certain recent date, were paying a short visit to a neighbouring co... The Dog In The Haunted Room
The author's friend, Mr. Rokeby, lives, and has lived for some twenty years, in an old house at Hammersmith. It is surrounded by a large garden, the drawing-room and dining-room are on the right and left of the entrance from the garden, on the grou...