The Elliott O’Donnell Supernatural Megapack

by Elliott O'Donnell

  Garth constantly saw the phantasm of the man in various parts of the building. Sometimes she would meet him face to face on a staircase, sometimes he would creep stealthily after her, down one of the numerous, gloomy corridors. Indeed, she never seemed to be free from him, and, in the end, her nerves became so upset that, although the situation was an excellent one, she was obliged to relinquish it. When in the orchard, Garth, on several occasions, heard the sound of galloping horses and saw the misty figures of two people engaged in earnest conversation. On approaching them, however, they invariably melted into fine air. Miss Vincent enquired into the case, and, eventually, got into communication with other people who had witnessed the same phenomena.

  I think it is highly probable that the apparition of the old man, at any rate, was a phantasm of the dead, that is to say, the earth-bound spirit of the murderer; for despite the tendency there is nowadays for pseudo-humanitarians to sympathise with the perpetrators of revolting and cruel murders, it is very certain that the Higher Occult Powers hold no such erroneously lenient views, and that he who spills human blood is bound by that blood to the earth. Hence murderers—or at least such murderers as are not genuinely repentent—are chained for an unlimited time to the scenes of their crimes, which they are compelled willy-nilly to re-enact nightly.

  Another case of haunting by the phantasm of a murderer, or murderers, was told me by Miss Dalrymple, aunt of the famous singer, T.C. Dalrymple. Her experiences began the night of her arrival at “The Lichens,” the house her nephew was then renting, near Felixstowe.

  On retiring to rest she found the servants had made a very big fire in her room, and growing somewhat apprehensive about it, she got out of bed and took some of it off. Then, thinking that her alarm was rather foolish, and that, as there was a proportionately large fender, no danger could possibly arise, she put the coal on again and got back into bed. A few minutes afterwards the room was pervaded with a current of icy cold air, that blew over the bed and rustled through her hair. The next instant, she felt a cold, heavy hand laid on one of her shoulders, and she was steadily and mercilessly pressed down and down. Her terror was now so intense that she could neither move nor articulate a sound, and she could almost hear the violent palpitation of her heart. After what seemed to her an eternity, but which was, in all probability, only a few seconds, the hand was removed, and Miss Dalrymple then heard seven loud thumps on the table at the foot of the bed, after which there was silence, and the manifestations ceased. Miss Dalrymple, however, was too upset to sleep, and lay awake all night in a great agony of mind, lest there should be any further disturbances. When the maid brought her some tea in the morning, the latter immediately exclaimed, “Oh, madam, how dreadfully ill you look!” to which Miss Dalrymple replied, “Yes! I have been feeling very ill, but do not, on any account, tell your master or mistress, as it will only worry them.”

  Miss Dalrymple then took one of the older servants into confidence, and asked her if the house was haunted.

  “Well, madam,” was the reluctant response, “people do say that there is a house in this village that is haunted by the ghost of a murdered lady, but I am not quite sure which house it is”—an answer which implied much.

  Miss Dalrymple did not have any further experiences there herself, but some time afterwards one of her great-nieces remarked to her, “Did you know, auntie, ‘The Lichens’ was haunted?” and went on to say that on one occasion, when going upstairs, she had seen the figure of a woman in a grey dress bending over the basin in the bath-room as if engaged in rinsing her hands. Thinking it was the head nurse, she was going on her way unconcernedly when she saw the nurse coming towards her from quite a different part of the house. Greatly astonished, she at once made enquiries, in reply to which the nurse assured her that she had not been in the bath-room for at least an hour. The figure in grey was repeatedly seen, always in or near the bath-room, and always appearing as if rinsing her hands. Once, too, when one of the children was alone in a downstairs room that opened on to the lawn, a hideous, trampish old man, carrying a sack, approached the window, and, after peeping in at the child with an evil smile, placed his fingers knowingly alongside his nose and glided noiselessly away into the shrubbery. The child ran out at once and asked the gardener to look for the man, but despite a vigorous search, no such person could be found.

  Another inmate of the house, on going one day to her bedroom, heard something behind her, and, turning round, perceived, to her unmitigated horror, the luminous trunk of a man, which had apparently been dismembered. The body, which was bobbing up and down in mid-air, approached her rapidly, and, moving aside to let it pass, she saw it vanish through the door of the room Mrs. Dalrymple had occupied. After this ghastly manifestation, T.C. Dalrymple, Esq., fearing, for the sake of his family, to remain any longer in such a place, left “The Lichens,” part of which has since been pulled down and rebuilt. Miss Dalrymple’s heart has never been sound since she felt the ghostly hand on her shoulder, the horror of which phenomenon, as any of her friends can testify, turned her hair white.

  As to the cause of the hauntings, that must be entirely a matter of conjecture, since, with regard to the former history of the house, nothing definite is known. A very vague rumour is current that many years ago it was the rendezvous of all manner of rips and roués, and, strange though it may seem, the fact that the phantasm of the woman, seen there, was wearing a modern costume, does not preclude the idea that the said phantasm belonged to a bygone period. Such an anachronism is by no means uncommon in cases of haunting, but it renders the task of theorising on ghostly phenomena all the more difficult.

  It may be asked with regard to this case—had the phantasm of the woman any connection with that of the tramp, the mutilated body and the hand; and my answer to that question is, that all four phenomena were, in all probability, closely allied with one another. Very possibly an old man had been murdered there by his paramour, who, after cutting up his body, had bribed a tramp to dispose of it, in which case the house would, of course, be haunted by the earth-bound spirits of both the victim and agents of the crime. But it is quite possible, supposing the phenomena are genuine phantasms of the dead, that the tragedy did not take place in that house at all, but was enacted in some far-away spot, one or more of the principals being in some way connected with “The Lichens.” However, as I have already said, it is one of those cases that must, by reason of the uncertain history of the house, always remain a mystery.

  A haunting of a similar nature occurred quite recently at a house near Leeds. The place, which had stood empty for a very long while, was eventually taken on a lease by my informants, Mr. and Mrs. Urquhart. Neither of the latter had had any previous experience with the superphysical, at which both were more or less inclined to scoff. One evening, shortly after their arrival, Mrs. Urquhart was alone in the study, and, looking up from her needlework, saw what at first sight appeared to be a luminous disc—but which speedily developed into a head—emerge from the wall opposite, and, bobbing up and down in mid-air, slowly approach her. It was a woman’s head, the woman having obviously been decapitated, the expression in the wide open staring eyes showing every indication of a cruel ending. The hair was long and matted, the skin startlingly white. Mrs. Urquhart was at first far too terrified to move or utter a sound, but as the ghastly object floated right up to her, the revulsion she experienced was so great that the spell of her inertness was broken and she fled from the room.

  When she told her husband what had occurred, he exclaimed laughingly, “Why, my dear, I never knew you had such a vivid imagination! You will soon be asking me to believe in hobgoblins and pixies.” Whereupon Mrs. Urquhart bit her lips and was silent.

  However, after dinner Mrs. Urquhart, hearing a great commotion in the study, ran to see what was happening, and discovered her husband and his friend, looking ghastly white, thrashing the air with walking-sticks. Catching sight of her, they both cri
ed out, “We’ve seen the head—the beastly thing came out of the wall, as you described, and floated towards us!”

  On hearing this, Mrs. Urquhart recoiled in horror, nor could she be persuaded ever again to enter the room. Her husband, whom the experience had effectually cured of scepticism, at once fell in with her proposal that they should immediately quit the house, and soon after their removal they learned that the place had been pulled down. From the fact, revealed by subsequent enquiries, that some years previously an old woman had been murdered there, it is quite evident to my mind that what the Urquharts and their friend saw was both objective and superphysical; but whether the apparition was a phantasm of the dead, or an impersonating elemental, can only be decided by an adequate knowledge of the character of the murdered person in whose likeness the phenomenon appeared.

  Hauntings of a very disturbing nature go on (or, at least, did so a short while ago) at a house in Rugeley, where dreadful groans are frequently heard proceeding from a room on the ground floor. My informant, however, would not say whether or not the house was the one in which the notorious Palmer poisoned his victims; but here again it seems more than probable, that the sounds are due to the presence of an Elemental attached to the spot by the sacrifice of human blood.

  I am hoping, at no great future date, to make a series of investigations in houses that have been the scenes of unsolved mysteries, since I believe it quite possible that I should experience such superphysical demonstrations as would give me the direct clue to the identity of the perpetrators of the crimes.

  VISIONS AND DREAMS.

  The Baroness Von A——, in a recent letter to me, says:—“I wonder if it would interest you to hear of a rather strange occurrence that once befell my husband. He was staying in town at the time, and was asked to tea at the house of some friends of ours in Westminster. The name of the friends is Howard, and their house, which is very old, is in one of the old squares behind the Abbey. My husband, an absolute sceptic himself, knew that the Howards were interested in Psychical Research, but had never heard of any legend in connection with their house. One evening, after tea, which took place in a back room, my husband, more in a teasing spirit than anything else, suddenly exclaimed, ‘Look here! Shall I tell you what I can see in this room?’ (He is most insistent that at the time he spoke he saw nothing, but was preparing to make the whole thing up, and meant to tell the Howards so afterwards.) ‘I seem to be standing in a small garden. It is a dark night, and I see two men, dressed in the fashion of Charles II.’s time, just finishing digging a small grave, near the edge of which another man is standing holding in one hand a lantern of antique design. The two men have finished, the third waves his lantern slowly, and the door of the house which faces me (I feel it is this house, albeit somewhat different, though how I cannot say) opens, and out of it comes a fourth man, also dressed according to the Charles II. period, though in a very much richer costume. There is an expression of diabolical satisfaction in his eyes as they dwell on the face of the child he is carrying in his arms, and which, to my horror, I see has been murdered. The villain approaches the grave, into which he ruthlessly drops the body, and the diggers at once cover it with shovels full of earth. That is all I can see.’

  “To my husband’s astonishment the Howards were wildly excited, and told him that the legend connected with the house (and which they believed was only known to one or two people besides themselves) tallied detail for detail with the vision he had just witnessed. It was quite in vain that he protested he had seen nothing at all, but had invented the story just to ‘have them on’—they would not believe him. It appears that in the time of Charles II., another house had occupied the site of the present one, though the garden was practically the same. A child had been murdered there for its inheritance, and had been buried in the garden where its bones had been subsequently found, after which the house had been pulled down and the present one built. I am sure my husband honestly thought he was inventing the vision. Could it have been a case of suggestion?”

  Yes, I am inclined to believe it was a case of suggestion, but of suggestion due to some superphysical objective presence that actually put the words of the story into the mouth of the narrator. I do not think the story was a chance invention, a mere coincidence, any more than I think the suggestion was telepathic.

  My next case deals with a dream, a lady, of the name of Carmichael, had whilst staying in an old house in the Punjab. She dreamed she was awakened by a lovely Hindoo lady, who came to her bedside, and by signs implored her to follow her. This Mrs. Carmichael at once did, and the Hindoo led her down winding passages and through numerous rooms, until they at length arrived in a courtyard with a well at the far end of it. The Hindoo silently and mournfully approached the well, and, pointing down it, wrung her hands and disappeared.

  Mrs. Carmichael then woke to find herself bathed in perspiration; and the dream made such an impression on her that when she went to stay with some friends the next day, she told them about it. To her astonishment they were intensely excited. “Why!” they exclaimed, “we know the place well, and you have described exactly the winding passages in that part of the house that has never been used since a Hindoo lady was murdered there for her jewels some years ago. Neither the murderer nor his booty was ever found.”

  It was now Mrs. Carmichael’s turn to be amazed, and she readily agreed to go with them to the house to see if she could find the well she had seen in her vision. Accordingly they all set out, and, on reaching the house, appointed Mrs. Carmichael as guide. Without any hesitation she at once made for the disused wing, and, leading the party through the rooms and down the passages she had seen in her dream, eventually brought them to the well in the courtyard. The well was then dug, and at the bottom lay a number of valuable diamond and pearl necklaces, rings and ear-rings! No body, however, was found, but when Mrs. Carmichael slept in the house again she dreamed no more of the Hindoo lady.

  I unhesitatingly vouch for the truth of this story. The question now arises—to what cause could the vision be attributed? Was it due to a telepathic communication from some living brain acquainted with the story, or did Mrs. Carmichael’s superphysical body leave her material body and visit the scene she witnessed, or was it all suggested to her by some objective superphysical presence, presumably that of an impersonating and benevolently disposed Elemental? I am inclined to think the last theory the most feasible.

  An account of another interesting dream has been sent me by Miss Featherstone, several of whose other psychic experiences I have already related. “In a dream,” she says, “which occurred twenty-three years ago, I thought I was very much upset and worried, and was running up and down passages which I had never seen before, looking for something (I am not sure that I knew in my dream what I was looking for), and being unable to find it, I exclaimed, ‘Oh! I do wish Arthur was here!’ I woke up saying this. Some months afterwards I was staying with a cousin in Worcestershire, when she had an epileptic fit. All the servants were out excepting two young girls. The doctor came and ordered brandy, and I could not find the key of the cellar anywhere. I had never explored the downstairs of my cousin’s house before, and as I raced down a long succession of passages in my search for the cellar key, I instantly recognised and identified the passages with those I had seen in my dream. Moreover, to make the resemblance still more striking, my cousin Arthur, who alone knew where the key was kept, was away, and I kept saying to myself, ‘I would give anything if only Arthur were here!’ Later in the day he returned with the key in his pocket.”

  In this instance I think the superphysical body of Miss Featherstone, under the guidance of an Elemental, separated itself from her material body whilst the latter was asleep, and visited the actual spot where the incident of the key took place. As to why the Elemental should then have initiated Miss Featherstone into the trivial details only of an incident of the future, it is impossible to explain. One can only surm
ise that the act was an inconsequent one on the part of the Elemental, or that it would have revealed more to her had not some unexpected interruption recalled Miss Featherstone’s superphysical self.

  PART III

  CHAPTER V.

  THE HAUNTINGS OF THE OLD SYDERSTERNE PARSONAGE (1833), NEAR FAKENHAM, AND A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE IN SYDENHAM.

  Some weeks ago the Rev. Henry Hacon, M.A., of Searly Vicarage, North Kelsey Moor, wrote to me, very kindly enclosing the following interesting letter which his father, many years ago, had received from the Rev. John Stewart, M.A., at that time Rector of Sydersterne, near Fakenham.