Spectre of the Brocken at Home

Abstract

HAVING occasion ten days ago to go into my garden about half past ten o'clock at night I found there was a thick white fog, through which, however, a star could be seen here and there. I had an ordinary bedroom candlestick in my hand with the candle lighted, in order to find the object I wanted. To my great surprise I found that the lighted candle projected a fantastic image of myself on the fog, the shadow being about twelve feet high, and of an oddly distorted character, just as the spectre of the Brocken is said to be. It is of course usual on going into the open air to use a lantern with a solid back for any light that may be wanted, and with this, of course, such a shadow would not be seen; but in this charmingly foggy valley of the Thames, and in these days of “Physics without Apparatus,” the effect I saw can probably be seen only too often. May not the gigantic spirits of the Ossianic heroes, whose form is composed of mist, through which the stars can be seen, be derived from the fantastic images thrown upon the mountain fogs from the camp fires of the ancient Gaels? In a land where mists abound a superstitious people might very readily come to consider a mocking cloud-spectre to be supernatural, though it was really their own image magnified. If it be true that in our earlier stages of development we resemble more nearly the past forms of life and thought, I may mention in this connection that, thinking to amuse a little child of three, I threw a magnified shadow of her on the wall with a candle, and then, by moving it in the usual way, made the figure suddenly small. Instead of the changing shadow giving the pleasure intended, the child was terrified, as the warriors of Morven may have been when they saw their shadows on the clouds.