After this Kjartan summoned Thorir Wooden-leg, and Thord summoned Thorodd, on the charge of going about the homestead without leave, and depriving men of both health and life; all those who sat beside the fire were summoned in the same way.  Then a court was held at the door, in which the charges were declared, and everything done as in a regular law court; opinions were given, the case summed up, and judgment passed.  After sentence had been pronounced on Thorir Wooden-leg, he rose up and said:  “Now we have sat as long as we can bear”.  After this he went out by the other door from that at which the court was held.  Then sentence was passed on the shepherd, and when he heard it he stood up and said:  “Now I shall go, and I think it would have been better before”.  When Thorgrima heard sentence pronounced on her, she rose up and said:  “Now we have stayed while it could be borne”.  Then one after another was summoned, and each stood up as judgment was given upon him; all of them said something as they went out, and showed that they were loath to part.  Finally sentence was passed on Thorodd himself, and when he heard it, he rose and said:  “Little peace I find here, and let us all flee now,” and went out after that.  Then Kjartan and the others entered and the priest carried holy water and sacred relics over all the house.  Later on in the day he held solemn service, and after this all the hauntings and ghost-walkings at Froda ceased, while Thurid recovered from her sickness and became well again.

CHAPTER XIV

Spiritualistic Floating Hands.  Hands in Haunted Houses.  Jerome
Cardan’s Tale.  “The Cold Hand.”  The Beach-comber’s Tale.  “The Black
Dogs and the Thumbless Hand.”  The Pakeha Maori and “The Leprous
Hand”.  “The Hand of the Ghost that Bit.”

HANDS ALL ROUND

Nothing was more common, in the seances of Home, the “Medium,” than the appearance of “Spirit hands”.  If these were made of white kid gloves, stuffed, the idea, at least, was borrowed from ghost stories, in which ghostly hands, with no visible bodies, are not unusual.  We see them in the Shchapoff case, at Rerrick, and in other haunted houses.  Here are some tales of Hands, old or new.

THE COLD HAND

[Jerome Cardan, the famous physician, tells the following anecdote in his De Rerum Varietate, lib. x., 93.  Jerome only once heard a rapping himself, at the time of the death of a friend at a distance.  He was in a terrible fright, and dared not leave his room all day.]