cially among the natives of
Wangunui, it used to be customary to keep in the houses small carved
images of wood, each of them dedicated to an ancestor of the family, who
was believed occasionally to enter into the image in order to hold
converse with his living descendants.[73] But even without the
intervention of such images the priest could summon up the spirits of
the dead and converse with them in the presence of the relatives or of
strangers; at these interviews, which were held within doors and in the
dark, the voices of the ghosts, or perhaps of the priestly
ventriloquist, were sometimes distinctly audible even to sceptical
Europeans. Nor was the art of necromancy confined to men; for we read of
an old woman who, like the witch of Endor, professed to exercise this
ghostly office, and treated an English visitor to an exhibition of her
powers.[74]

[72] E. Dieffenbach, _Travels in New Zealand_, ii. 67, 118; E.
Shortland, _Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders_,
ii. 83, 84.

[73] E. Shortland, _Traditions and Superstitions of the New
Zealanders_, p. 83.

[74] E. Shortland, _Traditions and Superstitions of the New
Zealanders_, pp. 84 _sqq._; _Old New Zealand_, by a Pakeha
Maori (London, 1884), pp. 122 _sqq._ As to the belief in the
reappearance of the dead among the living compare R. A. Cruise,
_Journal of a Ten Months' Residence in New Zealand_ (London,
1823), p. 186: "The belief in the reappearance of the dead is
universal among the New Zealanders: they fancy they hear their
deceased relatives speaking to them when the wind is high;
whenever they pass the place where a man has been murdered, it
is customary for each person to throw a stone upon it; and the
same practice is observed by all those who visit a cavern at the
North Cape, through which the spirits of departed men are
supposed to pass on their way to a future world."

The spirits of the dead were sometimes useful to the living, for
commonly enough they would appear to their kinsfolk in dreams and warn
them of approaching foes or other dangers. Again, they might be and were
invoked by spells and enchantments to avenge a murder or even to slay an
innocent person against whom the enchanter had a grudge.[75] But for the
most part the ghosts were greatly dreaded as malicious demons who worked
harm to man.[76] Even the nearest and dearest relations were believed to
have th