Ghost Seers

European folklore belief maintains that persons born at a particular time of the day have the power to see ghosts. For example, British folklorist T. F. Thiselton Dyer in The Ghost World (1893), observes:

"Thus it is said in Lancashire that children born during twilight are supposed to have this peculiarity, and to know who of their acquaintance will next die. Some say that this property belongs also to those who happen to be born exactly at twelve o'clock at night, or, as the peasantry say in Somersetshire, 'a child born in chime-hours will have the power to see spirits.' The same belief prevails in Yorkshire, where it is commonly supposed that children born during the hour after midnight have the privilege through life of seeing the spirits of the departed. Mr. Henderson [T. F. Henderson, Notes on the Folk-lore of the Northern Counties, 1866] says that a Yorkshire lady informed him she was very near being thus distinguished, but the clock had not struck twelve when she was born. When a child she mentioned this circumstance to an old servant, adding that 'Mamma was sure her birthday was the 23rd, not the 24th, for she had inquired at the time.' 'Ay, Ay,' said the old woman, turning to the child's nurse, 'mistress would be very anxious about that, for bairns born after midnight see more things than other folk.'&43"

This idea, part of a much larger belief in the significance of various days in explaining little-understood phenomena such as luck, prevailed on the Continent. In Denmark, children born on Sunday had prerogatives far from enviable. The antiquarian Benjamin Thorpe tells how:

"… in Fryer there was a woman who was born on a Sunday, and, like other Sunday children had the faculty of seeing much that was hidden from others. But, because of this property, she could not pass by a church at night without seeing a hearse or a spectre. The gift became a perfect burden to her; she therefore sought the advice of a man skilled in such matters, who directed her, whenever she saw a spectre to say, 'Go to Heaven!' but when she met a hearse, 'Hang on!' Happening sometime after to meet a hearse, she, through lapse of memory cried out, 'Go to Heaven!' and straightway the hearse rose in the air and vanished. Afterwards, meeting a spectre she said to it, 'Hang on!' when the spectre clung round her neck, hung on her back, and drove her down into the earth before it. For three days her shrieks were heard before the spectre would put an end to her wretched life."

It used to be a popular belief in Scotland that those who were born on Christmas Day or Good Friday had the power to see spirits and even command them, a superstition to which Sir Walter Scott alludes in his poem "Marmion" (stanza 22). The Spaniards attributed the haggard and downcast looks of their Philip II to the disagreeable visions to which this privilege subjected him.

Among primitive tribes it was supposed that spirits are visible to some persons and not to others. The people of the Antilles used to believe that the dead appeared on the road when one went alone but not when people went together; among the Finns the ghosts of the dead were to be seen by the shamans and not by men generally, unless in dreams. It was also a popular theory with primitive races that the soul appeared in dreams to visit the sleeper, and hence it was customary for tribes to drink various intoxicating substances under the impression that when thrown into the state of ecstasy they would have pleasing visions.

On this account certain tribes of the Amazon used narcotic plants, producing an intoxication lasting 24 hours. During this period they were said to be subject to extraordinary visions, in the course of which they acquired information on any subject they wished.

For a similar reason the inhabitants of northern Brazil, when anxious to discover some guilty person, administered narcotic drinks to seers, in whose dreams the criminal made his appearance. Californian Indians gave children certain intoxicants to gain from the ensuing vision information about their enemies. The Darien Indians used the seeds of the Datura sanguines to produce in children prophetic delirium, during which they were said to reveal the whereabouts of hidden treasures.

One of the most famous seers in the British Isles was Kenneth Ore, the Brahan Seer of the Highlands of Scotland. The faculty of such prophetic vision was generally known in Scotland as second sight. Other seers favor inducing visions by such means as crystal gazing.

Sources:

Campbell, John L., and Trevor H. Hall. Strange Things: The Story of Fr. Allan McDonald, Ada Goodrich Freer, and the Society for Psychical Research's Enquiry into Highland Second Sight. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968.

Dyer, T. F. Thiselton. The Ghost World. London: Ward & Downey, 1893.

Henderson, William. Notes on the Folk-lore of the Northern Counties, and the Borders. London, 1866. Reprint, London: Folk-Lore Society, 1879.

Mackenzie, Alexander. The Prophecies of the Brahan Seer Doinneach Odhar Fiosaiche. Stirling, Scotland: Eneas Mackay, 1935. Rev. ed., Golspie, Scotland: Sutherland Press, 1970. Reprint, London: Constable, 1977.