Supernatural Elements in Heathcliff's Story

The next supernatural element in the story is blowing of a furious storm when Heathcliff after over-hearing some of the words spoken by Cathy to Nelly, disappears from the Heights. The way Nelly describes the storm shows that it has something to do with the wounded feelings of Heathcliff and the agitation in Cathy’s heart resulting from his disappearance. The storm in nature corresponds to the tumult in two young hearts, those of Heathcliff and Cathy.

Much of the behaviour of Heathcliff gives rise to a feeling in our minds that he has been bought over by the devil and is acting under the devil’s commands. The author implies very strongly that Heathcliff has in effect sold his soul to the devil. Every description of the man strengthens this

Since that moment he has been feeling a strange kind of tranquility. Since that time he has been feeling the presence of Cathy close to him. He tells Nelly that he felt Cathy standing by his side, he could almost see her, and yet he could not and since her death, he had been victim of an intolerable torture. He describes this torture as “infernal.” It was a strange way of killing, not by inches but by fractions and hair-breadths, to delude him with the spectre of a hope through eighteen years. There is something supernatural also in his telling Nelly that he is now surrounded with Cathy’s images. He sees her in the clouds, the trees and in every object. The whole world is a collection of dreadful memoranda reminding him of her existence and that he had lost her. He also tells Nelly that Hareton’s aspect seemed to him to be “the ghost of immortal

The country folk would swear on the bible that they have seen Heathcliff’s ghost near the church, on the moors and even at Wuthering Heights. An old man affirms that he had seen two ghosts (of Heathcliff and Cathy) on the moors on every night since Heathcliff’s death. A shepherd boy has reported that his sheep would not move because they have perceived the presence of two phantoms. Its true that Nelly does not fully believe these stories and that Lockwood contradicts them in the closing sentences of the book: but for credulous readers these stories do not have a certain supernatural