Byways of Ghost-Land Part 3

Like most phantasms, the modern pixies are silent and elusive. They appear and disappear with equal abruptness, contenting themselves with merely gliding along noiselessly from rock to rock, or from bush to bush. Dainty they are not, pretty they are not, and in stature only do they resemble the pixie of fairy tales; otherwise they are true vagrarians, grotesque and often harrowing.

In my _Ghostly Phenomena_ I have given one or two accounts of their appearance in the West of England, but the nearest approach to pixies that I have myself seen, were phantasms that appeared to me, in 1903, on the Wicklow Hills, near Bray. I was out for a walk on the afternoon of Thursday, May 18; the weather was oppressive, and the grey, lowering sky threatened rain, a fact which accounted for the paucity of pedestrians.

Leaving my temporary headquarters, at Bray, at half-past one, I arrived at a pretty village close to the foot of the hills and immediately began the ascent. Selecting a deviating path that wound its way up gradually, I, at length, reached the summit of the ridge.

On and on I strolled, careless of time and distance, until a sudden dryness in my throat reminded me it must be about the hour at which I generally took tea. I turned round and began to retrace my steps homeward. The place was absolutely deserted; not a sign of a human being or animal anywhere, and the deepest silence. I had come to the brink of a slight elevation when, to my astonishment, I saw in the tiny plateau beneath, three extraordinary shapes. Standing not more than two feet from the ground, they had the most perfectly proportioned bodies of human beings, but monstrous heads; their faces had a leadish blue hue, like that of corpses; their eyes were wide open and gla.s.sy. They glided along slowly and solemnly in Indian file, their grey, straggling hair and loose white clothes rustling in the breeze; and on arriving at a slight depression in the ground, they sank and sank, until they entirely disappeared from view. I then descended from my perch, and made a thorough examination of the spot where they had vanished. It was firm, hard, caked soil, without hole or cover, or anything in which they could possibly have hidden. I was somewhat shocked, as indeed I always am after an encounter with the superphysical, but not so much shocked as I should have been had the phantasms been bigger. I visited the same spot subsequently, but did not see another manifestation.

To revert to trees--fascinating, haunting trees. Much credulity was at one time attached to the tradition that the tree on which Jesus Christ was crucified was an aspen, and that, thenceforth, all aspens were afflicted with a peculiar s.h.i.+vering. Botanists, scientists, and matter-of-fact people of all sorts pooh-pooh this legend, as, indeed, many people nowadays pooh-pooh the very existence of Christ. But something--you may call it intuition--I prefer to call it my Guardian Spirit--bids me believe both; and I do believe as much in the tradition of the aspen as in the existence of Christ. Moreover, this intuition or influence--the work of my Guardian Spirit--whether dealing with things psychical, psychological, or physical has never yet failed me. If it warns me of the presence of a phantasm, I subsequently experience some kind or other of spiritual phenomenon; if it bids me beware of a person, I am invariably brought to discover later on that that person's intentions have been antagonistic to me; and if it causes me to deter from travelling by a certain route, or on a certain day, I always discover afterwards that it was a very fortunate thing for me that I abided by its warning. That is why I attach great importance to the voice of my Guardian Spirit; and that is why, when it tells me that, despite the many obvious discrepancies and absurdities in the Scriptures, despite the character of the Old Testament G.o.d--who repels rather than attracts me--despite all this, there was a Jesus Christ who actually was a great and benevolent Spirit, temporarily incarnate, and who really did suffer on the Cross in the manner described in subsequent MSS.,--I believe it all implicitly. I back the still, small voice of my Guardian Spirit against all the arguments scepticism can produce.

Very good, then. I believe in the existence and spirituality of Jesus Christ because of the biddings of my Guardian Spirit, and, for the very same reason, I attach credence to the tradition of the quivering of the aspen. The sceptic accounts for the shaking of this tree by showing that it is due to a peculiar formation in the structure of the aspen's foliage. This may be so, but that peculiarity of structure was created immediately after Christ's crucifixion, and was created as a memento, for all time, of one of the most unpardonable murders on record.

There is something especially weird, too, in the ash; something that suggests to my mind that it is particularly susceptible to superphysical influences. I have often sat and listened to its groaning, and more than once, at twilight, perceived the filmy outline of some fantastic figure writhed around its slender trunk.

John Timbs, F.S.A., in his book of _Popular Errors_, published by Crosby, Lockwood & Co. in 1880, quotes from a letter, dated 7th July 1606, thus: "It is stated that at Brampton, near Gainsborough, in Lincolns.h.i.+re, 'an ash tree shaketh in body and boughs thereof, sighing and groaning like a man troubled in his sleep, as if it felt some sensible torment. Many have climbed to the top of it, who heard the groans more easily than they could below. But one among the rest, being on the top thereof, spake to the tree; but presently came down much aghast, and lay grovelling on the earth, three hours speechless. In the end reviving, he said: "Brampton, Brampton, thou art much bound to pray!"' The Earl of Lincoln caused one of the arms of the ash to be lopped off and a hole bored through the body, and then was the sound, or hollow voice, heard more audibly than before, but in a kind of speech which they could not comprehend. This is the second wonderful ash produced by past ages in this district--according to tradition, Ethelreda's budding staff having shot out into the first." So says the letter, and from my own experience of the ash, I am quite ready to accredit it with special psychic properties, though I cannot state I have ever heard it speak.

I believe it attracts phantasms in just the same way as do certain people, myself included, and certain kinds of furniture. Its groanings at night have constantly attracted, startled, and terrified me; they have been quite different to the sounds I have heard it make in the daytime; and often I could have sworn that, when I listened to its groanings, I was listening to the groanings of some dying person, and, what is more harrowing still, to some person I knew.

I have heard it said, too, that the most ghastly screams and gurgles have been heard proceeding from the ash trees planted in or near the site of murders or suicides, and as I sit here writing, a scene opens before me, and I can see a plain with one solitary tree--an ash--standing by a pool of water, on the margin of which are three cl.u.s.ters of reeds. Dark clouds scud across the sky, and the moon only shows itself at intervals. It is an intensely wild and lonely spot, and the cold, dank air blowing across the barren wastes renders it all the more inhospitable. No one, no living thing, no object is visible save the ash. Suddenly it moves its livid trunk, sways violently, unnaturally, backwards and forwards--once, twice, thrice; and there comes from it a cry, a most piercing, agonising cry, half human, half animal, that dies away in a wail and imparts to the atmosphere a sensation of ice. I can hear the cry as I sit here writing; my memory rehea.r.s.es it; it was one of the most frightful, blood-curdling, h.e.l.lish sounds I ever endured; and the scene was on the Wicklow hills in Ireland.

The narcotic plant, the mandrake, is also credited with groaning, though I cannot say I have ever heard it. Though there is nothing particularly psychic about the witch-hazel, in the hands of certain people who are mediumistic, it will indicate the exact spot where water lies under the ground. The people who possess this faculty of discovering the locality of water by means of the hazel, are named dowsers, and my only wonder is that their undeniably useful faculty is not more cultivated and developed.

To my mind, there is no limit to the possibilities suggested by this faculty; for surely, if one species of tree possesses attraction for a certain object in nature, there can be no reason why other species of trees should not possess a similar attraction for other objects in nature. And if they possess this attraction for the physical, why not for the superphysical--why, indeed, should not "ghosts" come within the radius of their magnetism?

The palm and sycamore trees have invariably been a.s.sociated with the spiritual, and made use of symbolically, as the tree of life. An ill.u.s.tration, on a stele in the Berlin Museum, depicts a palm tree from the stem of which proceeds two arms, one administering to a figure, kneeling below, the fruit or bread of life; the other, pouring from a vase the water of life.

On another, a later Egyptian stele, the tree of life is the sycamore.

There is no doubt that the Egyptians and a.s.syrians regarded these two trees as susceptible only to good psychic influences, they figure so frequently in ill.u.s.trations of the benevolent deities. Nor were the Jews and Christians behind in their recognition of the extraordinary properties of these two trees, especially the palm. We find it symbolically introduced in the decoration of Solomon's Temple--on the walls, furniture, and vessels; whilst in Christian mosaics it figures as the tree of life in Paradise (_vide_ Rev. xxii. 1, 2, and in the apsis of S. Giovanni Laterans). It is even regarded as synonymous with Jesus Christ, as may be seen in the illuminated frontispiece to an _Evangelium_ in the library of the British Museum, where the symbols of the four Evangelists, placed over corresponding columns of lessons from their gospels, are portrayed looking up to a palm tree, rising from the earth, on the summit of which is a cross, with the symbolical letters alpha and omega suspended from its arms.

I am, of course, only speaking from my own experience, but this much I can vouch for, that I have never heard of a palm tree being haunted by an evil spirit, whereas I have heard of several cases in which palm leaves or crosses cut from palms have been used, and apparently with effect, as preventives of injuries caused by malevolent occult demonstrations; and were I forced to spend a night in some lonely forest, I think I should prefer, viewing the situation entirely from the standpoint of psychical possibilities, that that forest should be composed partly or wholly of palms.

Before concluding this chapter, I must make a brief allusion to another type of spirit--the BARROWVIAN--that resembles the vagrarian and pixie, inasmuch as it delights in lonely places. Whenever I see a barrow, tumulus or druidical, circle, I scent the probability of phantasms--phantasms of a peculiar sort. Most ancient burial-places are haunted, and haunted by two species of the same genus: the one, the spirits of whatever prehistoric forms of animal life lie buried there; and the other, grotesque phantasms, often very similar to vagrarians in appearance, but with distinct ghoulish propensities and an inveterate hatred to living human beings. In my _Ghostly Phenomena_ I have referred to the haunting of a druidical circle in the North of England, and also to the haunting of a house I once rented in Cornwall, near Castle on Dinas, by barrowvians; I have heard, too, of many cases of a like nature. I have, of course, often watched all night, near barrows or cromlechs, without any manifestations taking place; sometimes, even, without feeling the presence of the Unknown, though these occasions have been rare. At about two o'clock one morning, when I was keeping my vigil beside a barrow in the South of England, I saw a phenomenon in the shape of a hand--only a hand, a big, misty, luminous blue hand, with long crooked fingers. I could, of course, only speculate as to the owner of the hand, and I must confess that I postponed that speculation till I was safe and sound, and bathed in suns.h.i.+ne, within the doors of my own domicile.

Hauntings of this type generally occur where excavations have been made, a barrow broken into, or a dolmen removed; the manifestations generally taking the form of phantasms of the dead, the prehistoric dead. But phenomena that are seen there are, more often than not, things that bear little or no resemblance to human beings; abnormally tall, thin things with small, bizarre heads, round, rectangular, or cone-shaped, sometimes semi- or wholly animal, and always expressive of the utmost malignity.

Occasionally, in fact I might say often, the phenomena are entirely b.e.s.t.i.a.l--such, for example, as huge, blue, or spotted dogs, s.h.a.ggy bears, and monstrous horses. Houses, built on or near the site of such burial-places, are not infrequently disturbed by strange noises, and the manifestations, when materialised, usually take one or other of these forms. In cases of this kind I have found that exorcism has little or no effect; or, if any, it is that the phenomena become even more emphatic.

CHAPTER VI

COMPLEX HAUNTINGS AND OCCULT b.e.s.t.i.a.lITIES

What are occult b.e.s.t.i.a.lities? Are they the spirits of human beings who, when inhabiting material bodies, led thoroughly criminal lives; are they the phantasms of dead beasts--cats and dogs, etc.; or are they things that were never carnate? I think they may be either one or the other--that any one of these alternatives is admissible. There is a house, for example, in a London square, haunted by the apparition of a nude woman with long, yellow, curly hair and a pig's face. There is no mistaking the resemblance--eyes, snout, mouth, jaw, jowls, all are piggish, and the appearance of the thing is hideously suggestive of all that is b.e.s.t.i.a.l. What, then, is it? From the fact that in all probability a very sensuous, animal-minded woman once lived in the house, I am led to suppose that this may be her phantasm--or--one only of her many phantasms. And in this latter supposition lies much food for reflection. The physical brain, as we know, consists of mult.i.tudinous cells which we may reasonably take to be the homes of our respective faculties. Now, as each material cell has its representative immaterial inhabitant, so each immaterial inhabitant has its representative phantasm. Thus each representative phantasm, on the dissolution of the material brain, would be either earth-bound or promoted to the higher spiritual plane. Hence, one human being may be represented by a score of phantasms, and it is quite possible for a house to be haunted by many totally different phenomena of the same person. I know, for instance, of a house being subjected to the hauntings of a dog, a sensual-looking priest, the bloated shape of an indescribable something, and a ferocious-visaged sailor. It had had, prior to my investigation, only one tenant, a notorious rake and glutton; no priest or sailor had ever been known to enter the house; and so I concluded the many apparitions were but phantasms of the same person--phantasms of his several, separate, and distinct personalities. He had brutal tendencies, sacerdotal (not spiritual) tendencies, gluttonous, and nautical tendencies, and his whole character being dominated by carnal cravings, on the dissolution of his material body each separate tendency would remain earth-bound, represented by the phantasm most closely resembling it. I believe this theory may explain many dual hauntings, and it holds good with regard to the case I have quoted, the case of the apparition with the pig's head. The ghost need not necessarily have been the spirit of a dead woman _in toto_, but merely the phantasm of one of her grosser personalities; her more spiritual personalities, represented by other phantasms, having migrated to the higher plane. Let me take, as another example, the case which I personally investigated, and which interested me deeply. The house was then haunted (and, as far as I know to the contrary, is still haunted) by a blurred figure, suggestive of something hardly human and extremely nasty, that bounded up the stairs two steps at a time; by a big, malignant eye--only an eye--that appeared in one of the top rooms; and by a phantasm resembling a lady in distinctly modern costume. The house is old, and as, according to tradition, some crime was committed within its walls many years ago, the case may really be an instance of separate hauntings--the bounding figure and the eye (the latter either belonging to the figure or to another phantasm) being the phantasms of the princ.i.p.al, or princ.i.p.als, in the ancient tragedy; the lady, either the phantasm of someone who died there comparatively recently, or of someone still alive, who consciously, or unconsciously, projects her superphysical ego to that spot. On the other hand, the three different phenomena might be three different phantasms of one person, that person being either alive or dead--for one can unquestionably, at times, project phantasms of one's various personalities before physical dissolution. The question of occult phenomena, one may thus see, is far more complex than it would appear to be at first sight, and naturally so,--the whole of nature being complex from start to finish. Just as minerals are not composed of one atom but of countless atoms, so the human brain is not const.i.tuted of one cell but of many; and as with the material cerebrum, so with the immaterial--hence the complexity. With regard to the phenomena of superphysical b.e.s.t.i.a.lities such as dogs, bears, etc., it is almost impossible to say whether the phantasm would be that of a dead person, or rather that representing one of some dead person's several personalities--the phantasm of a genuine animal, of a vagrarian, or of some other type of elemental.

One can only surmise the ident.i.ty of such phantasms, after becoming acquainted with the history of the locality in which such manifestations appear. The case to which I referred in my previous works, _Some Haunted Houses of England and Wales_, and _Ghostly Phenomena_, namely, that of the apparition of a nude man being seen outside an unused burial-ground in Guilsborough, Northamptons.h.i.+re, furnishes a good example of alternatives. Near to the spot, at least within two or three hundred yards of it, was a barrow, close to which a sacrificial stone had been unearthed; consequently the phantasm may have been a barrowvian; and again, as the locality is much wooded and but thinly populated, it may have been a vagrarian; and again, the burial-ground being in such close proximity, the apparition may well have been the phantasm of one of the various personalities of a human being interred there.

One night, as I was sitting reading alone in an isolated cottage on the Wicklow hills, I was half-startled out of my senses by hearing a loud, menacing cry, half-human and half-animal, and apparently in mid-air, directly over my head. I looked up, and to my horror saw suspended, a few feet above me, the face of a Dalmatian dog--of a long since dead Dalmatian dog, with gla.s.sy, expressionless eyes, and yellow, gaping jaws. The phenomenon did not last more than half a minute, and with its abrupt disappearance came a repet.i.tion of the cry. What was it? I questioned the owner of the cottage, and she informed me she had always had the sensation something uncanny walked the place at night, but had never seen anything. "One of my children did, though," she added; "Mike--he was drowned at sea twelve months ago. Before he became a sailor he lived with me here, and often used to see a dog--a big, spotted cratur, like what we called a plum-pudding dog. It was a nasty, unwholesome-looking thing, he used to tell me, and would run round and round his room--the room where you sleep--at night. Though a bold enough lad as a rule, the thing always scared him; and he used to come and tell me about it, with a face as white as linen--'Mother!' he would say, 'I saw the spotted cratur again in the night, and I couldn't get as much as a wink of sleep.' He would sometimes throw a boot at it, and always with the same result--the boot would go right through it." She then told me that a former tenant of the house, who had borne an evil reputation in the village--the peasants unanimously declaring she was a witch--had died, so it was said, in my room. "But, of course," she added, "it wasn't her ghost that Mike saw." Here I disagreed with her. However, if she could not come to any conclusion, neither could I; for though, of course, the dog may have been the earth-bound spirit of some particularly carnal-minded occupant of the cottage--or, in other words, a phantasm representing one of that carnal-minded person's several personalities,--it may have been the phantasm of a vagrarian, of a barrowvian, or, of some other kind of elemental, attracted to the spot by its extreme loneliness, and the presence there, unsuspected by man, of some ancient remains, either human or animal. Occult dogs are very often of a luminous, semi-transparent bluish-grey--a bluish-grey that is common to many other kinds of superphysical phenomena, but which I have never seen in the physical world.

I have heard of several houses in Westmoreland and Devon, always in the vicinity of ancient burial-places, being haunted by blue dogs, and sometimes by blue dogs without heads. Indeed, headless apparitions of all sorts are by no means uncommon. A lady, who is well known to me, had a very unpleasant experience in a house in Norfolk, where she was awakened one night by a scratching on her window-pane, which was some distance from the ground, and, on getting out of bed to see what was there, perceived the huge form of a s.h.a.ggy dog, without a head, pressed against the gla.s.s.

Fortunately for my informant, the manifestation was brief. The height of the window from the ground quite precluded the possibility of the apparition being any natural dog, and my friend was subsequently informed that what she had seen was one of the many headless phantasms that haunted the house. Of course, it does not follow that because one does not actually see a head, a head is not objectively there--it may be very much there, only not materialised. A story of one of these seemingly headless apparitions was once told me by a Mrs Forbes du Barry whom I met at Lady D.'s house in Eaton Square. I remember the at-home to which I refer, particularly well, as the entertainment on that occasion was entirely entrusted to Miss Lilian North, who as a reciter and raconteur is, in my opinion, as far superior to any other reciter and raconteur as the stars are superior to the earth. Those who have not heard her stories, have not listened to her eloquent voice--that appeals not merely to the heart, but to the soul--are to be pitied. But there--I am digressing. Let me proceed. It was, I repeat, on the soul-inspiring occasion above mentioned that I was introduced to Mrs Forbes du Barry, who must be held responsible for the following story.

"I was reading one of your books the other day, Mr O'Donnell," she began, "and some of your experiences remind me of one of my own--one that occurred to me many years ago, when I was living in Worthing, in the old part of the town, not far from where the Public Library now stands. Directly after we had taken the house, my husband was ordered to India. However, he did not expect to be away for long, so, as I was not in very good health just then, I did not go with him, but remained with my little boy, Philip, in Worthing. Besides Philip and myself, my household only consisted of a nursery-governess, cook, housemaid, and kitchen-maid. The hauntings began before we had been in our new quarters many days. We all heard strange noises, scratchings, and whinings, and the servants complained that often, when they were at meals, something they could not see, but which they could swear was a dog, came sniffing round them, jumping up and placing its invisible paws on their lap.

Often, too, when they were in bed the same thing entered their room, they said, and jumped on the top of them. They were all very much frightened, and declared that if the hauntings continued they would not be able to stay in the house. Of course, I endeavoured to laugh away their fears, but the latter were far too deeply rooted, and I myself, apart from the noises I had heard, could not help feeling that there was some strangely unpleasant influence in the house. The climax was brought about by Philip. One afternoon, hearing him cry very loudly in the nursery, I ran upstairs to see what was the matter. On the landing outside the nursery I narrowly avoided a collision with the governess, who came tearing out of the room, her eyes half out of her head with terror, and her cheeks white as a sheet. She said nothing--and indeed her silence was far more impressive than words--but, rus.h.i.+ng past me, flung herself downstairs, half a dozen steps at a time, and ran into the garden. In an agony of fear--for I dreaded to think what had happened--I burst into the nursery, and found Philip standing on the bed, frantically beating the air with his hands. 'Take it away--oh, take it away!' he cried; 'it is a horrid dog; it has no head!' Then, seeing me, he sprang down and, racing up to me, leaped into my open arms. As he did so, something darted past and disappeared through the open doorway. It was a huge greyhound without a head! I left the house the next day--I was fortunately able to sublet it--and went to Bournemouth. But, do you know, Mr O'Donnell, that dog followed us! Wherever we went it went too, nor did it ever leave Philip till his death, which took place in Egypt on his twenty-first birthday. Now, what do you think of that?"

"I think," I replied, "that the phantasm was very probably that of a real dog, and that it became genuinely attached to your son. I do not think it was headless, but that, for some reason unknown for the present, its head never materialised. What was the history of the house?"

"It had no history as far as I could gather," Mrs Forbes du Barry said.

"A lady once lived there who was devoted to dogs, but no one thinks she ever had a greyhound."

"Then," I replied thoughtfully, "it is just possible that the headless dog was the phantasm of the lady herself, or, at least, of one of her personalities!"

Mrs du Barry appeared somewhat shocked, and I adroitly changed the conversation. However, I should not be at all surprised if this were the case.

The improbability of any ancient remains being interred under or near the house, precludes the idea of barrowvians, whilst the thickly populated nature of the neighbourhood and the entire absence of loneliness, renders the possibility of vagrarians equally unlikely. That being so, one only has to consider the possibility of its being a vice elemental attracted to the house by the vicious lives and thoughts of some former occupant, and I am, after all, inclined to favour the theory that the phantasm was the phantasm of the old dog-loving lady herself, attaching itself in true canine fas.h.i.+on to the child Philip.

The most popular animal form amongst spirits--the form a.s.sumed by them more often than any other--is undoubtedly the dog. I hear of the occult dog more often than of any other occult beast, and in many places there is yet a firm belief that the souls of the wicked are chained to this earth in the shape of monstrous dogs. According to Mr Dyer, in his _Ghost World_, a man who hanged himself at Broomfield, near Salisbury, manifested himself in the guise of a huge black dog; whilst the Lady Howard of James I.'s reign, for her many misdeeds, not the least of which was getting rid of her husbands, was, on her death, transformed into a hound and compelled to run every night, between midnight and c.o.c.k-crow, from the gateway of Fitzford, her former residence, to Oakhampton Park, and bring back to the place, from whence she started, a blade of gra.s.s in her mouth; and this penance she is doomed to continue till every blade of gra.s.s is removed from the park, which feat she will not be able to effect till the end of the world. Mr Dyer also goes on to say that in the hamlet of Dean Combe, Devon, there once lived a weaver of great fame and skill, who the day after his death was seen sitting working away at the loom as usual. A parson was promptly fetched, and the following conversation took place.

"Knowles!" the parson commanded (not without, I shrewdly suspect, some fear), "come down! This is no place for thee!" "I will!" said the weaver, "as soon as I have worked out my quill." "Nay," said the vicar, "thou hast been long enough at thy work; come down at once." The spirit then descended, and, on being pelted with earth and thrown on the ground by the parson, was converted into a black hound, which apparently was its ultimate shape.

Some years ago, Mr Dyer says, there was an accident in a Cornish mine whereby several men lost their lives, and, rather than that their relatives should be shocked at the sight of their mangled remains, some bystander, with all the best intentions in the world, threw the bodies into a fire, with the result that the mine has ever since been haunted by a troop of little black dogs.

According to the _Book of Days_, ii. p. 433, there is a widespread belief in most parts of England in a spectral dog, "large, s.h.a.ggy, and black," but not confined to any one particular species. This phantasm is believed to haunt localities that have witnessed crimes, and also to foretell catastrophes. The Lancas.h.i.+re people, according to Harland and Wilkinson in their _Lancas.h.i.+re Folk-lore_, call it the "stuker" and "trash": the latter name being given it on account of its heavy, slopping walk; and the former appellation from its curious screech, which is a sure indication of some approaching death or calamity. To the peasantry of Norfolk and Cambridges.h.i.+re it is known as "the shuck," an apparition that haunts churchyards and other lonely places. In the Isle of Man a similar kind of phantasm, called "the Mauthe dog," was said to walk Peel Castle; whilst many of the Welsh lanes--particularly that leading from Mowsiad to Lisworney Crossways--are, according to Wirt Sikes' _British Goblins_, haunted by the gwyllgi, a big black dog of the most terrifying aspect.

Cases of hauntings by packs of spectral hounds have from time to time been reported from all parts of the United Kingdom; but mostly from Northumberland, Yorks.h.i.+re, Lancas.h.i.+re, c.u.mberland, Wales, Devon, and Cornwall. In the northern districts they are designated "Gabriel's hounds"; in Devon, "the Wisk, Yesk, or Heath hounds"; in Wales, "the Cwn Annwn or Cwn y Wybr" (see Dyer's _Ghost World_); and in Cornwall, "the devil and his dandy dogs." My own experiences fully coincide with the traditional belief that the dog is a very common form of spirit phenomena; but I can only repeat (the same remark applying to other animal manifestations), that it is impossible to decide with any degree of certainty to what category of phantasms, in addition to the general order of occult b.e.s.t.i.a.lities, the dog belongs. It seems quite permissible to think that the spirits of ladies, with an absorbing mania for canine pets, should be eventually earth-bound in the form of dogs--a fate which many of the fair s.e.x have a.s.sured me would be "absolutely divine," and far preferable to the orthodox heaven.

I cannot see why the shape of a dog should be appropriated by the less desirable denizens of the occult world. But, that it is so, there is no room to doubt, as the following ill.u.s.tration shows. As soon as the trial of the infamous slaughterer X---- was over, and the verdict of death generally known, a deep sigh of relief was heaved by the whole of civilisation--saving, of course, those pseudo-humanitarians who always pity murderers and women-beaters, and who, if the law was at all sensible and just, should be hanged with their b.e.s.t.i.a.l _proteges_. From all cla.s.ses of men, I repeat, with the exception of those pernicious cranks, were heard the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns: "Well! he's settled. What a good thing! I am glad! The world will be well rid of him!"

Then I smiled. The world well rid of him! Would it be rid of him? Not if I knew anything about occult phenomena. Indeed, the career on earth for such an epicure in murder as X---- had only just begun; in fact, it could hardly be said to begin till physical dissolution. The last drop--that six feet or so plunge between grim scaffolding--might in the case of some criminals, mere tyros at the trade, terminate for good their connection with this material plane; but not, decidedly not, in the case of this bosom comrade of vice elementals.

From both a psychological and superphysical point of view the case had interested me from the first. I had been anxious to see the man, for I felt sure, even if he did not display any of the ordinary physiognomical danger signals observable in many b.e.s.t.i.a.l criminals, there would nevertheless be a something about or around him, that would immediately warn as keen a student of the occult as myself of his close a.s.sociation with the lowest order of phantasms. I was not, however, permitted an interview, and so had to base my deductions upon the descriptions of him given me, first hand, by two experts in psychology, and upon photographs. In the latter I recognised--though not with the readiness I should have done in the photo's living prototype--the presence of the unknown brain, the grey, silent, stealthy, ever-watchful, ever-lurking occult brain. As I gazed at his picture, as in a crystal, it faded away, and I saw the material man sitting alone in his study before a glowing fire. From out of him there crept a shadow, the shadow of something big, bloated, and crawling. I could distinguish nothing further. On reaching the door it paused, and I felt it was eyeing him--or rather his material body--anxiously. Perhaps it feared lest some other shadow, equally baleful, equally sly and subtle, would usurp its home. Its hesitation was, however, but momentary, and, pa.s.sing through the door, it glided across the dimly lighted hall and out into the freedom of the open air.

Picture succeeding picture with great rapidity, I followed it as it curled and fawned over the tombstones in more than one churchyard; moved with a peculiar waddling motion through foul alleys, halting wherever the garbage lay thickest, rubbed itself caressingly on the gory floors of slaughter-houses, and finally entered a dark, empty house in a road that, if not the Euston Road, was a road in every way resembling it.

The atmosphere of the place was so suggestive of murder that my soul sickened within me; and so much so, in fact, that when I saw several grisly forms gliding down the gloomy staircases and along the sombre, narrow pa.s.sages, where X----'s immaterial personality was halting, apparently to greet it, I could look no longer, but shut my eyes. For some seconds I kept them closed, and, on re-opening them, found the tableau had changed--the material body before the fire was re-animated, and in the depths of the bleared, protruding eyes I saw the creeping, crawling, waddling, enigmatical shadow vibrating with murder. Again the scene changed, and I saw the physical man standing in the middle of a bedroom, listening--listening with blanched face and slightly open mouth, a steely glimmer of the superphysical, of the malignant, devilish superphysical, in his dilated pupils. What he is antic.i.p.ating I cannot say, I dare not think--unless--unless the repet.i.tion of a scream; and it comes--I cannot hear it, but I can feel it, feel the reverberation through the crime-kissed walls and vicious, tainted atmosphere.

Something is at the door--it presses against it; I can catch a glimpse of its head, its face; my blood freezes--it is horrible. It enters the room, grey and silent--it lays one hand on the man's sleeve and drags him forward. He ascends to the room above, and, with all the brutality of those accustomed to the dead and dying, drags the---- But I will not go on. The grey unknown, the occult something, sternly issues its directions, and the merely physical obeys them. It is all over; the plot of the vice elementals has triumphed, and as they gleefully step away, one by one, patting their material comrade on the shoulder, the darkness, the h.e.l.lish darkness of that infamous night lightens, and in through the windows steal the cold grey beams of early morning. I am a.s.sured; I have had enough; I pitch the photograph into the grate. The evening comes--the evening after the execution. A feeling of the greatest, the most unenviable curiosity urges me to go, to see if what I surmise, will actually happen. I leave Gipsy Hill by an early afternoon train, I spend a few hours at a literary club, I dine at a quiet--an eminently quiet--restaurant in Oxford Street, and at eleven o'clock I am standing near a spot which I believe--I have no positive proof--I merely believe, was frequented by X----. It is more than twelve hours since he was executed; will anything--will the shape, the personality, I antic.i.p.ate--come? The night air grows colder; I shrink deeper and deeper into the folds of my overcoat, and wish--devoutly wish--myself back again by my fireside.

The minutes glide by slowly. The streets are very silent now. With the exception of an occasional toot-toot from a taxi and the shrill whistle of a goods train, no other sounds are to be heard. It is the hour when nearly all material London sleeps and the streets are monopolised by shadows, interspersed with something rather more substantial--namely, policemen. A few yards away from me there slips by a man in a blue serge suit; and then, tip-toeing surrept.i.tiously behind him, with one hand in his trousers-pocket and the other carrying a suspicious-looking black bag, comes a white-faced young man, dressed in shabby imitation of a West End swell; an ill-fitting frock-coat, which, even in the uncertain flicker of the gas-lamps, p.r.o.nounces itself to be ready made, and the typical shopwalker's silk hat worn slightly on one side. Whether this night bird goes through life on tiptoe, as many people do, or whether he only adopts that fas.h.i.+on on this particular occasion, is a conundrum, not without interest to students of character to whom a man's walk denotes much.

For a long time the street is deserted, and then a bedraggled figure in a shawl, with a big paper parcel under her arm, shuffles noiselessly by and disappears down an adjacent turning. Then there is another long interval, interrupted by a pretentious clock sonorously sounding two. A feeling of drowsiness creeps over me; my eyelids droop. I begin to lose cognisance of my surroundings and to imagine myself in some far-away place, when I am recalled sharply to myself by an intensely cold current of air. Intuitively I recognise the superphysical; it is the same species of cold which invariably heralds its approach. I have been right in my surmises after all; this spot is destined to be haunted. My eyes are wide enough open now, and every nerve in my body tingles with the keenest expectation. Something is coming, and, if that something is not the phantasm of him whom I believe is earthbound, whose phantasm is it?

There is a slight noise of scratching from somewhere close beside me. It might have been the wind rustling the leaves against the masonry, or it might have been--I look round and see nothing. The sound is repeated and with the same result--NOTHING! A third time I heard it, and then from the dark road on one side of me there waddles--I recognise the waddling at once--a shadow that, gradually becoming a little more distinct, develops into the rather blurry form of a dog--a gaunt, hungry-looking mongrel. In a few seconds it stops short and looks at me with big swollen eyes that glitter with a something that is not actually b.e.s.t.i.a.l or savage, something strange yet not altogether strange, something enigmatic yet not entirely enigmatic. I am nonplussed; it was, and yet it was not, what I expected. With restless, ambling steps it slinks past me, disappearing through the closed gate by my side. Then satisfied, yet vaguely puzzled, I come away, wondering, wondering--wondering why on earth dogs should thus be desecrated.

Contrary to what one would imagine to be the case from the close a.s.sociation of cats with witches and magic, phantasms in a feline form are comparatively rare, and their appearance is seldom, if ever, as repulsive as that of the occult dog. I have seen phantasm cats several times, but, though they have been abnormally large and alarming, only once--and I am anxious to forget that time--were they anything like as offensive as many of the ghostly dogs that have manifested themselves to me. In my _Haunted Houses of England and Wales_ I have given an instance of dual haunting, in which one of the phenomena was a big black cat with a fiendish expression in its eyes, but otherwise normal; and, _a propos_ of cats, there now comes back to me a story I was once told in the Far West--the Golden State of California. I was on my way back to England, after a short but somewhat bitter absence, and I was staying for the night at a small hotel in San Francisco. The man who related the anecdote was an Australian, born and bred, on his way home to his native land after many years' sojourn in Texas. I was sitting on the sofa in the smoke-room reading, when he threw himself down in a chair opposite me and we gradually got into conversation. It was late when we began talking, and the other visitors, one by one, yawned, rose, and withdrew to their bedrooms, until we found ourselves alone--absolutely alone. The night was unusually dark and silent.

Leaning over the little tile-covered table at which we sat, the stranger suddenly said: "Do you see anything by me? Look hard." Much surprised at his request, for I confess that up to then I had taken him for a very ordinary kind of person, I looked, and, to my infinite astonishment and awe, saw, floating in mid-air, about two yards from him, and on a level with his chair, the shadowy outlines of what looked like an enormous cat--a cat with very little hair and unpleasant eyes--decidedly unpleasant eyes. My flesh crawled!

"Well?" said the stranger--who, by-the-by, had called himself Gallaher,--in very anxious tones, "Well--you don't seem in a hurry, nor yet particularly pleased--what is it?"