Certain Sight

The Reaper Cometh

Late on a spring night 200 years ago a man was surprised to find himself standing in the garden outside his house. He was puzzled. How had he got there? He remembered falling asleep in his bed, but for the life of him couldn't remember waking, getting out of bed and walking into the garden. But there he was, cold in the night air, shivering, his bare feet soaking in the wet grass. When he tried the door it was locked. How had this happened?

The setting moon had turned the landscape into a foreign country of black and grey. Everything seemed larger than it did by day and the trees stretched skeletal arms across the star studded sky. But he could see the welcoming light of his bedroom, the comforting glow spreading across the grass. He was relieved. His wife would let him in, and could be relied upon not to tease him about his sleep walking!

He looked through the window and could see his wife in bed. He was irritated – she had gone to bed leaving the candles burning. But the candle light lent a disturbing effect to the image of his wife. Her face was sunk amongst the pillows, and it seemed old and sallow, and her hands clutched the sheets like parchment claws.

He didn't want to scare his wife by tapping on the window so he stepped close up to the pane and concentrated all his will on waking her. After a few minutes she stirred, sat up in bed and looked straight at him. He gave her a gentle, reassuring smile. The result was a shock! For a moment she just stared, then her head began to bob backwards and forwards on her straining neck; her eyes bulged and grew wider; her mouth opened and her lips drew back tight; and then she screamed. But it was a nightmare scream – soundless.

He stumbled backward, and then his wife found her voice. Her screaming ripped the air and went on and on. It rose and fell and rose again. He knocked on the window trying to put an end to the dreadful noise. And then he saw a curious thing. He saw it quite clearly. He saw the gleaming bones of his forearm joined to his wrist bones. He saw the pebbly knuckles of his fingers, all loosely bound by rotten strands of ligaments and the decaying shreds of his own shroud. Then all was darkness as he descended into nothingness again.

Who was he? What did he see and think that night? Where did he go? Who knows for sure? But the woman knew with certainty and with the instinctive knowledge of a wife. The grinning skeleton tapping on her window had been her dead husband, risen from his grave of many years, yearning for the comforts of home.

It would seem he had joined the legions of restless dead. The ghosts of men, women and children who are no longer of this world but have still not found peace in another. For many centuries members of the spirit world have walked amongst the living. They come in many guises and for many reasons. Some manifest themselves as simple rustling in halls, shadows in corners or cold spots in the room. Some take human form, their appearance familiar save for the ashen pallor of the grave and their frightening and illusive insubstantiality. They appear and disappear randomly and exist totally as they did in their world. Doors and walls form no barriers, they pass through effortlessly.

But more disturbing are those who come through not whole as they were in life, but in the appearance of those who have been long rotting in the grave. Their animated corpses bound with the shreds of their rotting earth-caked shrouds. Some return as at the moment of their death – armless, bloodied, mutilated – or horribly headless.

What are their motives? Why are they here? Their reasons are varied. Some come to complete unfinished business, some come determined on vengeance for a real or imagined wrong. Some, wrongdoers in life, continue to re-enact their crimes, denied the peace of death. Some have been summoned by the living – ghosts can be called from the grave – although it's wrong to do so. Some come because of envy. They resent those still possessing the gift of life and bring their malevolent force to terrify unfortunate victims. And then there are those harmless, wistful spirits, just reluctant or unable to leave the scenes of their lives.

The sighting of any apparition, no matter how innocuous, strikes terror into the hearts of the living. Fear of the dead is an ancient fear. It goes against the forces of nature and natural progression for them to walk again. It violates the orderly structure of our universe. But even worse than this – they remind us that we too shall die one day.

It is hard to accept death as the conqueror of life. Hard to believe that one day our bodies warmed by the sun in summer and the comforting fire of winter will one day lie cold and forever alone in the dark. That the eyes that greet the blossoming of spring and the voice that sings its praises will be forever blind and mute. No matter how good your life, no matter how shiny and bright, the end is always the same – the solitary plot of earth. Below that patch of ground, sweet flesh decays, becomes gray and falls from the bones. Our hearts and brains melting to nothing. This is mortality. We end alone, forever in the dark. And behind the smile of even the most benevolent ghost is the cold leering of the cadaver: "Just as I am, so shall you be" he whispers.

In days gone by, the world was a wilder, more dangerous place and the margins between the natural and supernatural were not so distinct. People were well acquainted with the manifestations of death amongst life. They looked for signs of the Reaper, so that they would be ready when he called and not go to their graves unprepared, with no goodbyes, afraid.

For centuries people have looked for signs in simple domestic anomalies. A clock that stopped or chimed between the hours interrupting the regular march of time, can mean Death is watching you. Study the candle as it melts, if the wax slides down the candle in a single broad stream like the winding sheet, it can be another sign. If bees swarm unnaturally, instead of to fields or orchards looking for nectar, but swarm down your chimney and into the house, they may be winged souls looking for companions. If the farmyard cockerel crows in the middle of the night, breaking the silence, there is another sign.

Birds, more than any other creature, were always seen as heralds of Death. With their unique ability to soar in the sky above the earth, they can see any stranger and observe any change. A bird that beat against a window or worse, flew into a house, was thought to bring the very worst news to those inside. Owls, with their sharp eyes, see every movement in the dark, and know when the Reaper is near. An owl hooting persistently near a house or tapping on the window brought a bleak message. And, of course, who could forget the raven. With it's wheeling flight and bright, intelligent eyes, it was always a precursor of death. The raven has always been seen as prophetic. It was sacred to Apollo and the oracles in ancient Greece; in Arabia, it was called Abu Zájir – 'Father of Omens'. When a raven deserted its noisy flock to fly alone over a house, or croak harshly near the door, the family expected the worst. We in Britain have always believed that the raven can detect the odour of decay in a sick person before their death.

But these are all natural creatures, and whilst their behaviour may be odd, it could be explained away as simple oddities with reasonable explanations, and not necessarily harbingers of Death. But there were other indications of death that had no logical or natural explanation and that could never be dismissed with a shrug of indifference.

One of these was black dogs – nightwalkers feared all over the British Isles. They were given different names – Black Shuck in East Anglia, Skriker and Trash-hound in Lancashire, Padfoot in Yorkshire – but they were all variations of the same black dog. Usually appearing in country lanes, loping along, searching for solitary travellers who should have been safely at home. It was said that as the dog got closer it grew in size until it was as big as a calf, its eyes the size of saucers glowing red in the dark – full of hatred and hunger. Everyone knew that when they saw the dog, even if it passed them and gave them the barest glance, their time had come.

And then, throughout Britain and France, there were the eerie banshees wailing for the dying. Banshee comes from the Gaelic bean side, which means 'women of the fairy folk'. Some were fairies, but some were ghosts themselves. They would attach themselves to families and mourned any death within it. Sometimes the family would hear the dreadful cries swirling round inside the house at night, but sometimes the wailing would come from outside and they would look out to see a very thin woman with streaming long hair and eyes red from weeping. She would float in the air around the house looking in windows searching for the one whose death was imminent, and when she beckoned they had to go.

In Scotland the banshee was a washing woman. Very small and squat, sometimes even quite grotesque, she could be seen by travellers, squatting by pools and fords, forever beating bloodstained shrouds against the rocks and crooning to herself. It was believed that if you dared to speak to her you would hear the names of those about to die, and if you wished, you could hear your own fate. Often thought to be the ghost of a woman who had died in childbirth, the Scottish bean-nighe had suffered an untimely death, a sudden cessation of the normal course of life. So, she was doomed to be the beckoner of the living, washing the shrouds of those about to join her, and doomed to do so until the date of what would have been her natural death.

And then there was another beckoner. Not exclusive to Celtic countries, it appeared in every country and all walks of life. It was a quiet creature but it's demand was merciless, and anyone who saw it knew its intention. Heralded by snatched visions – maybe a half seen face in the window watching intently, an unnatural quiet stillness, the strange sensation of rustling movement quickly vanishing. But then, when you look in the mirror you become aware of an image behind you, looking at you through the mirror, lips moving in a parody of a smile. You are aware that it is you standing behind you, the same in every physical detail, but the chest does not rise and fall with any breath and no voice comes from those pallid lips. This is the most frightening of apparitions – in Britain known as the fetch but in Germany called the Doppelganger, or 'double goer'. These spirits can assume the physical appearance of those about to die. Sometimes they appear to friends or relatives and their impersonation is so convincing that if you were to meet them casually you could easily mistake them for the real person. Usually though, they deliver their message to the person themselves. After death the fetch leaves its mortal image and returns to whatever world it has come from.

All of these however, are no more than heralds of the ultimate hunter of souls, Death himself. A terrifying slayer of man, woman and child, with no respector of class, position or wealth. He assumes many shapes but every country knows him and has tales about him. In Brittany he is known as the Ankou, and is thought to be Cain, eldest son of Adam, doomed to roam the earth forever collecting human carrion. But others believe he is the ghost of the last man to die each year, and his job is to fill new graves until his successor takes over. Englishmen who travelled to the Arab lands reported that there Death was a tall woman, hooded in black. But for most people he is simply Death.

But his appearance seems to be similar wherever he is found. Always tall and gaunt, often wearing a wide brimmed hat, and sometimes appearing as a skeleton wrapped in a tattered shroud. The Ankou moved through Brittany at night. He walked with a stiff awkward stride, his head moving from side to side as he scented the air – the sockets of his eyes were empty, the Ankou was blind. Sometimes he would carry a club or sword, sometimes the familiar scythe over his shoulder. He always had a cart drawn either by horse or oxen, which he used to carry away those he had come for. You always knew he was about for you could hear the creaking cart wheels and his heavy footsteps. Being blind was not a problem for Ankou. He would travel the roads and byways waiting patiently for those who ignored the curfew bells. These unfortunate souls would find themselves struck between the shoulder blades by a heavy hand and pushed face down into the dirt which filled their nostrils as a reminder of the earth which would soon be their final home. If you were unfortunate enough to be caught by the Ankou at dusk, you might live for another 2 years, but those who encountered him at night would be dead within a month.

In England, Scotland, Wales, Germany and Scandinavia, Death came with much more noise and was not alone. He rode a huge horse across the night sky leading a troop of horsemen. They were easy to spot. When the clouds scudded across the moon, they might appear as shadows on the wind, surrounded by their ghostly hounds. Their shouts and laughter could be heard in the cottages and castles of the people below, and few would venture out on such a night. It was better not to look, for madness and death was the result for any who saw them.

In general the Death dealers do their work at a leisurely pace. A workman here, a businessman there, and a lord or a prince in between. The laws of nature prevail and one untimely death is balanced by the delivery of a new born. But sometimes Death comes with a vengeance. It brings pestilence, plagues, famines and wars. At times like this Death spreads quickly and is no respector of persons. During the pestilence and plague of the Middle Ages it was chronicled that "a third of the world died". Famine followed plague, and war followed famine, the troubles of that time were limitless. Thousands of people fell before the Reaper's swinging scythe, and whole villages disappeared forever.

But eventually and gradually, the devastation abated. And for centuries Europe was free of the horrors brought by those years of plague. But Death will always become bored and find wars, famines and diseases to occupy and satisfy him, and the envious or vengeful spirits left behind by his scythe will continue to prey on the living. Their powers of terrorizing are great indeed.