Williams: Morton Ghost Case Review Post 1

Case Study Review: Revisiting the Morton Ghost

Bryan Williams
[This is a post on the topic of apparitions and hauntings that I originally wrote for Halloween on Mike Wilsons Psi Society group on Yahoo in 2008. It was intended to present a summary for lay readers and paranormal enthusiasts to the classic Morton Ghost case from 1892. In addition to providing a classic illustration of a haunting apparition, the case also appears to exhibit some interesting features that, even today, may still provide some useful insights into the nature of the apparitional experience.]

Myth and folklore commonly suggest that the apparition or ghost of a deceased person is linked to a certain place a place that was once inhabited by that person, or was otherwise associated with him or her in life. Over time, that persons spectral figure may be repeatedly seen by people in the area around that particular place. In most cases, this place is usually a house, leading to the idea of a haunting (the term haunting comes from the same root as the word home). Serious attention was given to cases of hauntings and their possible implications for the issue of survival after death when the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded in 1882 by a group of scholars associated with Cambridge University in England (Gauld, 1968). In their attempts to separate fact from fiction, the founding members of the SPR began documenting cases of apparitional and haunting phenomena reported to them by eyewitnesses of every age, gender, race, and creed. One case reported to the SPR that seems to typify the common mythical image of a haunting is the Morton Ghost case, which was initially documented and reported by 19-year-old medical student Rosina C. Despard (Morton, 1892). But because it was her own family who was experiencing the haunting and she wanted them to remain anonymous, Rosina chose to report the case under the pseudonym Miss R. C. Morton, giving the classic case its name. From among her relatives, Rosina was able to personally document several eyewitness accounts that later received independent verification from prominent SPR member Frederic W. H. Myers, who stated that, with one minor exception1, hed ... found no discrepancy in the independent testimonies of the witnesses (p. 311). From about 1882 to 1889, Rosina and several members of her family repeatedly saw the apparition of a woman, which would wander through their home in Cheltenham, England.2 Rosinas own account of the time shed first witnessed the apparition is quite revealing:
The figure was that of a tall lady, dressed in black of a soft woolen material, judging from the slight sound in moving. The face was hidden in a handkerchief held in the right hand. This is all I noticed then; but on further occasions, when I was able to observe her more closely, I saw the upper part of the left side of the forehead, and a little of the hair above. Her left hand was nearly hidden by her sleeve and a fold of her dress. As she held it down a portion of a widows cuff was visible on both wrists, so that the whole impression was that of a lady in widows weeds. There was no cap on the head but a general effect of blackness suggests a bonnet, with long veil or a hood (Morton, 1892, pp. 313 314).

The path that this ghostly widow regularly took through the Despard home is notable because it indicated a specific and repetitive pattern: The path began on the second floor of the house near Rosinas bedroom, usually at a time when she would hear the sound of someone pushing against her bedroom door. Upon opening it, she would see the ghostly widow walking down the hallway landing towards the stairs. The figure would then descend all the way down to the ground floor

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and enter the front drawing room, where it would sit or stand for a brief period of time at a bowshaped window located on the far side of the room. Then it would exit the room and head for a narrow passage leading out to the garden, where it would regularly vanish (See Figure 1).

Figure 1. A floor plan of the ground floor of the Despard home, showing the path taken by the ghostly widow. (Source: Morton, 1892, p. 330)

On the surface, this repetitive pattern of movement by the Morton ghost is suggestive of a phenomenon occurring in other cases involving well-defined apparitions of the dead (Roll, 1981), where it seems that a kind of memory-like trace is somehow psychically retained within the environment of the haunting location, which gets repeatedly played back over time, much in the same way that a video or tape recording can be played back again and again. Some psychical researchers, such as the late Tony Cornell (2002, pp. 391, 413) of Cambridge University, labeled this as the stone tape theory of hauntings, while the Oxford philosopher H. H. Price (1939, 1940) had coined the term place memory to describe this kind of haunting phenomenon.3 However, this is not the only interesting aspect of the case. The Morton case is also interesting because it appears to be a case of collective apparitional experience, in the sense that others aside from Rosina Despard were able to witness the spectral widow at different times. From 1882 to 1884, Rosina had seen the apparition about six times, although she told no one in her family about her encounters with it. During the same period, at least three other people in the house saw the widow. In some cases, the widow looked so solid and life-like to the other people seeing her that she was often mistaken for a real person, as this account illustrates:

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In the summer of 1882 [the widow appeared] to my sister, Mrs. K., when the figure was thought to be a Sister of Mercy who had called at the house, and no further curiosity was aroused. She was coming down the stairs rather late for dinner at 6:30, it being then quite light, when she saw the figure cross the hall in front of her, and pass into the drawing-room. She then asked the rest of us, already seated at dinner, Who was that Sister of Mercy whom I have just seen going into the drawing-room? She was told there was no such person, and a servant was sent to look; but the drawing-room was empty, and she was sure no one had come in. Mrs. K. persisted that she had seen a tall figure in black, with some white about it; but nothing further was thought of the matter (Morton, 1892, p. 314).

Rosinas younger brother and another little boy also saw the widow while they were playing outside on the terrace one afternoon in December of 1883. They both happened to look into the bow window of the drawing room and saw the figure standing there, weeping bitterly. Upon running inside immediately afterward to see who was crying, they found no one in the drawing room, and the maid told them that no one had come into the house (p. 314). One encounter with the widow had an interesting perceptual feature, in that Rosina was apparently the only one, out of several people in the room, to see the apparition. She wrote:
I went into the drawing-room, where my father and sisters were sitting, about 9 in the evening, and sat down on a couch close to the bow window. A few minutes after, as I sat reading, I saw the figure come in at the open door, cross the room and take up a position close behind the couch where I was. I was astonished that no one else in the room saw her, as she was so very distinct to me. My youngest brother, who had before seen her [in the example above], was not in the room. She stood behind the couch for about half an hour, and then as usual walked to the door (p. 315).

If not due to mere hallucination, then this encounter suggests a possible ESP component to Rosinas experience. This may account for why the apparition was only seen by a select few within her family (usually Rosina and her sisters), and not everyone. Her father and her invalid mother, for example, apparently never once saw the apparition throughout the entire period of their residence in the house. Being a woman of scientific training, Rosina was very clever in devising ways to test whether or not the apparition was a physical manifestation. In several instances, she had suspended very fine lengths of string across the stairs at different heights (anywhere from 6 inches above the step to as high as 3 feet). The string was lightly fastened to the stairway banister and the far wall with marine glue, and anyone passing on the stairs would run into the string and knock it loose without feeling a thing. However, in the two times that Rosina saw the apparition on the stairs, the figure had simply passed through the string without undoing it, suggesting that it was not composed of solid matter, despite its appearance. As another way to test its physicality, Rosina had tried to touch the apparition on several occasions, but she wrote that ... she [the widow] always eluded me. It was not that there was nothing there to touch, but that she always seemed to be beyond me, and if followed into a corner, simply disappeared (p. 315, her italics). Based on a suggestion by Frederic Myers, Rosina also kept a camera handy to try and capture the apparition on film. Unfortunately, the bad lighting conditions occurring at night, when the apparition would usually make its wandering stroll through the house, did not allow her to be successful. Rosina also thought of trying to communicate with the apparition by verbally addressing it, and by making signs. In most cases, these attempts were unsuccessful and the apparition said or did nothing, but in a few rare instances, it seemed to slightly acknowledge her presence. Rosinas

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account of her first attempt to communicate with the apparition in 1884 exhibits one such instance:
I opened the drawing-room door softly and went in, standing just by it. She [the widow] came in past me and walked to the sofa and stood still there, so I went up to her and asked her if I could help her. She moved, and I thought she was going to speak, but she only gave a slight gasp and moved towards the door. Just by the door I spoke to her again, but she seemed as if she were quite unable to speak (p. 314).

Following the encounter in which she was the only one to see the figure in the drawing room, Rosina followed the apparition as it exited. She states, I spoke to her as she passed the foot of the stairs, but she did not answer, although as before she stopped and seemed as though about to speak (p. 315, her italics). This suggests that, rather than simply being a mindless spectral image, the ghostly widow may have at times exhibited some simple degree of intelligence by acknowledging Rosinas attempts to address her, even if only by looking Rosinas way, but not speaking. Another suggestion of intelligence by the apparition comes from the fact that it would regularly make changes in its movement path to avoid streams of sunlight and people or objects in its way (e.g., it once avoided Rosinas father when he stood in its way, even though he did not see it himself; p. 317). One of the most interesting encounters with the widow involved an instance where four people each saw the figure in rapid succession, again exemplifying the collective nature of the apparitional experience. On this occasion, Rosina stated that her sister E. had been singing in the drawing room. She then wrote:
[E.] said she had seen the figure in the drawing-room, close behind her as she sat at the piano. I went back into the room with her, and saw the figure in the bow window in her usual place. I spoke to her several times, but had no answer. She stood there for about 10 minutes or a quarter of an hour, then went across the room to the door, and along the passage, disappearing in the same place by the garden door. My sister M. then came in from the garden, saying that she had seen her coming up the kitchen steps outside. We all three then went out into the garden, when Mrs. K. called out from a window in the first storey that she had just seen her pass across the lawn in front, and along the carriage drive towards the orchard. This evening, then, altogether 4 people saw her. My father was then away, and my youngest brother was out (pp. 317 318).

In addition to seeing the apparition, some of the family also occasionally heard footsteps, and on one such occasion, the footsteps seemed to be pacing up and down the second-floor landing. This drew the attention of Rosinas three sisters and two family maids, who emerged from their rooms with lit candles in their hands to see who was causing the ruckus. As the unseen footsteps passed them, they reported feeling a cold wind, though their candles were not blown about (p. 320). This suggests that the wind may have been a subjective feeling, and not a physical breeze. On another occasion, when Rosinas sister E., her mother, and a maid heard footsteps pass close by them on the landing, they suddenly felt an icy shiver (p. 325). E. herself had an encounter with the spectral widow on another night, when she was again singing in the drawing room. She stopped in the middle of her song when she suddenly ... felt a cold, icy shiver, and I saw the figure bend over me, as if to turn over the pages of my song (p. 325). Although it appeared solid and life-like in the beginning, the spectral widow seemed to gradually fade over time, and by 1889, it had vanished completely. Inquiries made by the Despard family revealed that the apparition most resembled the second wife of a previous occupant of the house, although the woman did not die in the house. The Despards finally left the house in 1893,

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and it changed hands a number of times afterward. Remarkably, the haunting phenomena seemed to continue even up until the 1980s, but at a greatly reduced frequency. Supposedly, the spectral widow even reappeared a few times to a few witnesses outside on the grounds in front of the house, although the testimonies given by these witnesses show some degree of inconsistency (MacKenzie, 1988). By this time, the case was pretty well known in the local Cheltenham area, and that knowledge could have influenced the expectations and subsequent perceptions of these later witnesses, whether consciously or unconsciously. The fact that the Morton case seems to exhibit: 1) instances of collective apparitional experience, 2) a possible example of a retained place memory in the form of a recurring apparition, which may have shown a minor degree of awareness; 3) a possible ESP component to the ghosts appearance, and 4) suggestions of immateriality in the apparitions figure despite its solid-looking form, make it one of the most interesting cases of a haunting ever documented by the SPR. Unfortunately, few cases like the Morton case have ever surfaced since the 1800s, but it still serves as a valuable example of a classic haunting for parapsychological study.4
Notes 1.) This involved an elderly male witness who couldnt recall an event that had happened six years before. 2.) Because of its location, the Morton case was also known and referred to by some as the Cheltenham Ghost case (e.g., Collins, 1948). 3.) H. H. Price should not be confused with Harry Price, the popular ghost hunter of the 1930s; they are two separate people. 4.) Incidentally, Rosina Despard went on to become a practicing physician in the field of forensic medicine, which was quite a notable accomplishment for a woman in the late 1800s.

References (in order of text citation):

Gauld, A. (1968). The Founders of Psychical Research. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Morton, R. C. (1892). Record of a haunted house. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 8, 311 332. Collins, B. A. (1948). The Cheltenham Ghost. London: Psychic Press. Roll, W. G. (1981). A memory theory for apparitions. In W. G. Roll & J. Beloff (Eds.) Research in Parapsychology 1980 (pp. 5 7). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. Cornell, T. (2002). Investigating the Paranormal. New York: Helix Press. Price, H. H. (1939). Haunting and the psychic ether hypothesis: With some preliminary reflections on the present condition and possible future of psychical research. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 45, 324 343. Price, H. H. (1940). Some philosophical questions about telepathy and clairvoyance. Philosophy, 15, 363 374. MacKenzie, A. (1988). Continuation of the Record of a Haunted House. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 55, 25 32.