The door continued to open, and at last I caught sight of something so extraordinary that my guilty conscience at once associated it with the Devil, with regard to whom I distinctly recollected to have spoken that afternoon in a sceptical, and I frankly admit, very disrespectful manner. But far from feeling the proximity of that heat which all those who profess authority on Satanic matters ascribe to Satan, I felt decidedly cold—so cold, indeed, that my hands grew numb and my teeth chattered. At first I only saw two light, glittering eyes that fixed themselves on me with an expression of diabolical glee, but I was soon able to perceive that they were set in a huge, flat face, covered with fulsome-looking yellow spots about the size of a threepenny bit. I do not remember noticing any of the other features, save the mouth, which was large and gaping. The body to which the head was attached was quite nude, and covered all over with spots similar to those on the face. I cannot recall any arms, though I have vivid recollections of two thick and, to all appearances, jointless legs, by the use of which it left the doorway, and, gliding noiselessly over the carpet, approached an empty bed, placed in a parallel position to my own. There it halted, and thrusting its misshapen head forward, it fixed its malevolent eyes on me with a penetrating stare. On this occasion, I was far less frightened than on any of my subsequent experiences with the occult. Why, I cannot say, for the manifestation was certainly one of the most hideous I have ever seen. My curiosity, however, was far greater than my fear, and I kept asking myself what the Thing was, and why it was there?
It did not seem to me to be composed of ordinary flesh and blood, but rather of some luminous matter that resembled the light emanating from a glow-worm.
After remaining in the same attitude for what seemed to me an incalculably long time, it gradually receded, and assuming, all of a sudden, a horizontal attitude, passed head first through the wall opposite to where I sat. Next day, I made a sketch of the apparition, and showed it to my relatives, who, of course, told me I had been dreaming. About two weeks later I was ill in bed with a painful, if not actually dangerous, disease. I was giving an account of this manifestation at a lecture I delivered two or three years ago in B., and when I had finished speaking was called aside by one of my audience who very shyly told me that he, too, had had a similar experience. Prior to being attacked by diphtheria, he had seen a queer-looking apparition that had approached his bedside and leaned over him. He assured me that he had been fully awake at the time, and had applied tests to prove that the phenomenon was entirely objective.
A number of other cases, too, have been reported to me, in which various species of phantasms have been seen before different illnesses. Hence I believe that certain spirits are symbolical of certain diseases, if not the actual creators of the bacilli from which those diseases arise. To these phantasms I have given the name of Morbas. I have seen two other morbas in addition to the one I have already described. The first case happened to me when I was in Dublin, reading for the Royal Irish Constabulary at the then well-known Queen’s Service Academy, Ely Place. I lodged in Merrion Street, and above my rooms were those of a Mr. Charles Clifford, at that time a briefless barrister, but who afterwards established a big reputation in the West Indies, where he eventually died. I became very friendly with Mr. Clifford, whose father had been a contemporary with several of my relations—also barristers—at Trinity College. One particularly mild evening,—if I remember rightly it was in the beginning of September—I was chatting away with him in his sitting-room, when he suddenly complained of feeling extremely cold, and asked me if I would mind shutting the window, as I was nearest to it. As I got up in order to carry out his wishes, I noticed that the curtain on the near side of the recess (it was a bay window) was rustling in a very peculiar manner, and I was just going to call my friend’s attention to it when I perceived the most odd-looking, yellow hand suddenly emerge from the drapery. Sick with fear, but urged on by a curiosity I could not restrain, I approached the curtain, and, pulling it aside vigorously, found myself confronted by the tall, nude, yellow figure of something utterly indefinable. It seemed to me to be wholly composed of some vibrating, luminous matter. Its head was large and round, its eyes light green, oblique and full of intense hatred. I did not notice any other features. Its awful expression of malignity so fascinated me that I could not remove my gaze from its face, and I was standing still and staring at it helplessly, unable to move or speak, when Clifford asked what in the world was the matter. The moment he spoke the phenomenon vanished, and the spell which its appearance had cast over me being thus broken, I shut the window and returned to my seat.
I did not mention what I had seen to Clifford, as he was of an extremely nervous temperament, and, like the majority of Irishmen, very superstitious. I made, however, a note of the occurrence in my diary, and was not surprised when, eight or nine days later, Clifford was ill in bed with a malignant disease.
The second instance happened when I was on tour with No. 1 Company of “The Only Way.” We were performing in Plymouth, and I was sharing rooms with an actor of the name of Cornelius, who had lately joined us from a Dramatic School in Oxford Street. Saturday night, as every one in the profession knows, is the most tiring night in the week, for apart from there being a matinée that day, there is packing to be done after the evening performance, and one rarely, if ever, leaves the theatre before half-past twelve or one o’clock. On the Saturday night I am about to speak of, Cornelius, who did not appear in the last act, had gone home before me, and on my leaving the theatre an hour or so later, I found the streets in the vicinity of our lodgings silent and deserted. I was hastening along, thinking, I admit, of the good things that awaited us at supper, for Cornelius, who arranged the meals, was an excellent caterer, when, just as I was turning in at our gate, I saw a tall figure come out of the house and approach me with a peculiar, gliding motion. A cold terror at once ran through me, for I instinctively felt that the figure was nothing human. Overcoming, with a desperate effort, a sudden sensation of helplessness, I moved aside, and, as I did so, the figure halted; I then perceived that it was exactly like the yellow phantasm I had seen in Dublin some nine or ten years previously. It remained stationary for, perhaps, forty seconds, when it seemed to dissolve into the mist. I then pushed open the gate and entered the house. I made a note of the vision, and learned some few weeks later that an actor, who was then in the rooms we had occupied, had fallen a victim there to the same malady that had attacked Clifford.
From the numerous cases that have been related to me, as well as from my own experience, I have come to the conclusion that certain species of phantasms prefer to appear to children, and only under exceptional circumstances manifest themselves to adults.
One of these species bears a slight resemblance to Pixies, inasmuch as they are exceedingly diminutive; but there the likeness ends. For whereas Pixies, from most of the statements I have heard regarding them, are an intelligent race of fairies that prefer places remote from the haunts of men, these phantasms do not seem to possess any intelligence or feeling at all, and are frequently to be seen in houses occupied by living people. Their visits, apparently, have no object—they are merely forms consisting of matter without mind. Night after night, when I was a little boy, I used to lie awake watching half a dozen or so of these tiny phantasms moving about the floor or turning round and round on the top of a wardrobe that faced the bed. In appearance they were more or less like men—never women—but always grotesque, with big heads, long beards, and something odd in the shape of their limbs and bodies. Their faces were uniformly white, and utterly devoid of expression. I was never in the least degree afraid of them, but often felt very much annoyed because they did not do anything sensible. On the slightest sound or movement on my part they instantly vanished, and would not appear again till the following evening.
I daresay some writers on Occultism would classify them with Nature Spirits, but I prefer to designate them a species of the genus “
Elemental”—that is to say, a species of the phantasm that has never inhabited any kind of earthly body.
One afternoon in May, many years ago,—I was a very young child at the time,—I happened to be staying with some friends in the country, and on running to the nursery window to look at what I thought was one of the household behaving in a very odd manner in the garden, I perceived to my astonishment the figure of a woman with a long beard, rolling about on the lawn as if in great agony.
There was something so odd, both in her appearance and actions, that I was too fascinated to remove my gaze from her, and in breathless silence watched her slowly rise up and approach the window. I then saw that her face was hardly like that of a human being, but resembled rather some very grotesque kind of animal, and that her fingers, which she kept opening and shutting, were short and webbed. She did not impress me as being either horrible or malignant, and I was noticing, with the keenest interest, the peculiarities of her formation when one of the servants entered the nursery, and she instantly vanished.
How to classify this phenomenon, I must confess I am somewhat puzzled. It does not appear to me to belong altogether to the order of Vagrarian, and yet I know of no other species of phantasm to which it is more nearly allied. This type of ghost, i.e., the Vagrarian, is very often seen by children. It is a species of Elemental, and is in my opinion a survival (or descendant) of the earliest attempts at life on this planet—possibly an experiment in forms of life half physical, half superphysical—prior to the creation and selection of animal and vegetable life as it is known to us.
In addition to the power of materialising and dematerialising at will, Vagrarians can, at times, exercise a certain amount of physical force. I have heard of them, for example, moving furniture, banging on doors and walls, and making all sorts of similar disturbances. I have used the expression, “or descendants,” with regard them because I think it is quite feasible that Vagrarians are mortal, and that they possess some especial means of generating.
They are generally to be met within lonely places—country lanes and spinneys, empty houses, isolated barns, and on moors, commons, and hill-tops. In appearance they are caricatures of man and beast—sometimes compounds of both—and would seem to possess a great diversity of form. I have, for example, had them described to me as tall, thin figures with tiny, rotund, or flat, rectangular, or wholly animal heads, and again as short, squat figures with a similar variety of heads. They are probably the most terrifying of all apparitions, as, apart from the grotesqueness of their bodies, the expression in their eyes is invariably diabolical; they seem, indeed, to be animated with an intense, an absolutely unlimited, animosity to every form of earthly life. Why, I cannot, of course, say, unless it is that they are jealous of both man and beast, whom they might possibly regard as the usurpers of a sphere which was at one time strictly confined to themselves. My first experience of this kind of phantasm occurred when I was a boy. I was staying with some friends in a large old country house in the Midlands, and being, even at that early age, fond of adventure, I frequently used to wander off alone in order to explore the adjacent neighbourhood. On one of these peregrinations I arrived at a farm which, for some reason or other, happened just then to be untenanted. Delighted at the prospect of examining the empty buildings, I scaled a gate, and, crossing a paved yard, entered a large barn. The sight of one or two rats scurrying away at my approach made me wish I had my friend’s terrier with me, and I was turning to look for a stone or some missile to throw at them, when a noise in the far corner of the building attracted my attention. It was now twilight, and the only windows in the place being small, dirty, and high from the ground, the further extremities of the barn were bathed in gloom, and in a gloom that made me feel nervous. Following the direction of the sound, I looked and saw to my inconceivable horror a tall, luminous something with a white rectangular head, crouching on the floor. As its long, glittering, evil eyes met mine it sprang up (I then perceived that it was fully seven feet high and perfectly nude), and, with its spidery arms poised high in the air, darted forward. Shrieking at the top of my voice, I flew, and my wild cries for help being overheard by some of my friends, who chanced to be returning home that way, they at once came to my assistance. I shall never forget their faces, for I am sure my cries frightened them almost as much as the apparition had frightened me. To assure me it must have been my imagination, they searched the building, and, of course, saw nothing, as the phantasm had, doubtless, dematerialised. I made enquiries, however, on the quiet about the farm, and learned that it had always borne the reputation for being haunted, and that it was on that account that it was then untenanted. Needless to say, I never ventured there again alone!
When I was in Dublin in 1892, I stayed for a while at a boarding-house in Leeson Street. The house, which was large and gloomy, impressed me from the very first with a sense of loneliness, and I intuitively felt that all its denizens were not of flesh and blood. I occupied a bedroom on the first floor, on which at the time of my visit there were only two other people, both of whom slept in rooms opposite to mine, on the other side of the landing. The shape of my room was rendered somewhat peculiar owing to the deep window recess on the one side, and the still deeper alcove, in which my bed stood, on the other. In the twilight, whilst the former of these recesses was filled with the weirdest shadows imaginable, the latter was so bathed in gloom as to be hardly discernible at all. The furniture, which reflected the past glories of the proprietress, who, like so many people in that position in Dublin, belonged to an at one time wealthy family of landed proprietors, consisted of a massive mahogany four-poster, handsomely carved and draped in faded yellow tapestry, a huge, mahogany wardrobe, an ottoman, covered with tapestry, adorned at irregular intervals with the most grotesque arabesque figures; a bog-oak chest, richly carved and always kept locked; two antique, big, oaken chairs, and several rather damaged and painfully modern cane-bottomed ones; a threadbare carpet that might have been a Brussels, and just the necessary amount of ordinary bedroom articles, several of which were very much the worse for wear.
I never liked the room, for, apart from its habitual darkness—a darkness that seemed to me to be quite independent of the daylight—there was in it an atmosphere of intense oppression, an oppression that seemed to arise solely and wholly from an evil influence. Night after night my sleep was disturbed by the most harrowing dreams, from which I invariably awoke with a start to find my heart beating violently, and my body bathed in perspiration. Those sort of dreams were quite unusual to me; indeed, I had seldom had them since I was a child; they certainly could not be in any way accounted for by my state of health, which was quite normal, nor by my food, which was of the simplest and most digestive nature. Though ashamed to admit it, I at last grew to dread going to bed on account of those dreams, and I accordingly requested the proprietress of the establishment to give me another room. This she somewhat reluctantly promised to do the following day. Overjoyed at the prospect of so speedy a deliverance from a room I so cordially feared and detested, I went to bed that night with a comparatively light heart, assuring myself gleefully that it would be the last time I should sleep there. I can remember even now my thoughts as I undressed. What an inadequate light my candle gave as I placed it on the chimney-piece, and watched its feeble, flickering flame vainly trying to dissipate the heavy folds of darkness that seemed to roll in on me from the surrounding nooks and crannies with unprecedented intensity! How unusually bright the surface of the mirror looked, and with what remarkable clearness it reflected the bog-oak chest! The bog-oak chest! I could not remove my eyes from it, and as I stared at its image in the glass, I saw to my horror the long-locked, heavy cover slowly begin to rise. Gradually, very gradually, it opened, until I fancied I could detect something grey and evil peering out at me. My terror was now so great that I dare not turn round to look at the actual chest, but was compelled by an irresistible fascination to keep my attention riveted on the mirr
or, upon the surface of which there suddenly fell a dark and fantastically shaped shadow that, apparently proceeding from the chest, moved stealthily towards my bed, and disappeared in the innermost recesses of the dimly-lighted alcove. I was so unnerved by this incident that it was only after a series of severe mental efforts that I could persuade myself to make a thorough examination of the room, and so satisfy myself that what I had seen was in all probability the result of my imagination. With timid footsteps I first of all approached the chest—it was still locked. I then advanced more complacently to the bed, and, falling on my hands and knees, peered under it—there was nothing to be seen! Endeavouring to persuade myself now that there were absolutely no grounds for fear, and that mere shadows—for whichever way I turned, the room was full of them—could do me no harm, I undressed, and, blowing out the candle, got into bed. Having spent the day fishing off the Mugglestone Rocks, near Dalkey (in company with two of my fellow students at the Queen’s Service Academy), I felt healthily tired, and, after a few preliminary turns and twists to get into a comfortable position, was soon fast asleep. I awoke with a violent start, just as the clock on the landing outside solemnly struck two. The house was wrapped in complete silence, and, beyond a few occasional creakings on the stairs and in—so I fancied—the recess of the window, I could hear nothing. The sky, which had been covered with a thick coating of grey mist all the day, had cleared, and a silvery stream of moonlight, pouring in through the open window, flooded that side of the room on which stood the bog-oak chest. Again my eyes involuntarily wandered to the mirror, which was exactly opposite to where I lay, and again, with even greater horror than before, I watched the lid of the chest slowly begin to rise. Wider and wider it opened, until, with a faint click, it fell back on its hinges and struck the wall. I then saw a tall, grey shape climb out of it, and, with a snake-like movement of its long limbs, advance silently towards me. Though it was in the full glare of the moonbeams, I cannot say definitely what it was like, saving that it impressed me with a strong sense of its utter grotesqueness, a grotesqueness that at once pronounced it a Vagrarian. Paralysed with terror, and unable to move or utter a sound, I was constrained to sit bolt upright and await its approach. Though I could see no distinct eyes, I felt they were there, and that they were fixed on me all the time with insatiable glee and malice. Nearer and nearer it drew, until, gliding round the foot of the bed, it passed along by me, accompanied by a current of icy cold air that made every tooth in my head chatter. I then became conscious of some powerful magnetic force drawing me backwards, and as I sank gasping and panting on the pillow, a hideous, nude form rose quivering over me, and I lost consciousness. When I regained my senses the greyness of dawn was struggling for mastery with the moonbeams, and the Vagrarian had gone. That night, as I passed the door of the now vacated room on the way to my new and somewhat brighter quarters, I heard a soft chuckle proceeding, as I felt certain, from the bog-oak chest—but I did not stop to investigate.
The Elliott O’Donnell Supernatural Megapack Page 41
