OBSESSION, POSSESSION
_Clocks, Chests and Mummies_
As I have already remarked, spirit or unknown brains are frequently
present at births. The brains of infants are very susceptible to
impressions, and, in them, the thought-germs of the occult brains find
snug billets. As time goes on, these germs develop and become generally
known as "tastes," "cranks," and "manias."
It is an error to think that men of genius are especially prone to
manias. On the contrary, the occult brains have the greatest difficulty
in selecting thought-germs sufficiently subtle to lodge in the
brain-cells of a child of genius. Practically, any germ of carnal
thought will be sure of reception in the protoplasmic brain-cells of a
child, who is destined to become a doctor, solicitor, soldier,
shopkeeper, labourer, or worker in any ordinary occupation; but the
thought-germ that will find entrance to the brain-cells of a future
painter, writer, actor, or musician, must represent some propensity of a
more or less extraordinary nature.
We all harbour these occult missiles, we are all to a certain extent
mad: the proud mamma who puts her only son into the Church or makes a
lawyer of him, and placidly watches him develop a scarlet face, double
chin, and prodigious paunch, would flounce out a hundred and one
indignant denials if anyone suggested he had a mania, but it would be
true; gluttony would be his mania, and one every whit as prohibitive to
his chances of reaching the spiritual plane, as drink, or sexual
passion. Love of eating is, indeed, quite the commonest form of
obsession, and one that develops soonest. Nine out of ten
children--particularly present-day children, whose doting parents
encourage their every desire--are fonder of cramming their bellies than
of playing cricket or skipping; games soon weary them, but buns and
chocolates never. The truth is, buns and chocolate have obsessed them.
They think of them all day, and dream of them all night. It is buns and
chocolates! wherever and whenever they turn or look--buns and
chocolates! This greed soon develops, as the occult brain intended it
should; enforced physical labour, or athletics, or even sedentary work
may dwarf its growth for a time, but at middle and old age it comes on
again, and the buns and chocolates are become so many coursed luncheons
and dinners. Their world is one of menus, nothing but menus; their only
mental exertion the study of menus, and I have no doubt that "tuck"
shops and restaurants are besieged by the ever-hungry spirit of the
earth-bound glutton. Though the drink-germ is usually developed later
(and its later growth is invariably accelerated with seas of alcohol),
it not infrequently feeds its initial growth with copious streams of
ginger beer and lemon kali.
Manual labourers--_i.e._ navvies, coal-heavers, miners, etc.--are
naturally more or less brutal. Their brain-cells at birth offered so
little resistance to the evil occult influences that they received, in
full, all the lower germs of thought inoculated by the occult brains.
Drink, gluttony, cruelty, all came to their infant cerebrums
cotemporaneously. The cruelty germ develops first, and cats, dogs,
donkeys, smaller brothers, and even babies are made to feel the superior
physical strength of the early wearer of hobnails. He is obsessed with a
mania for hurting something, and with his strongly innate instinct of
self-preservation, invariably chooses something that cannot harm him.
Daily he looks around for fresh victims, and finally decides that the
weedy offspring of the hated superior classes are the easiest prey. In
company with others of his species, he annihilates the boy in Etons on
his way to and from school, and the after recollections of the
weakling's bloody nose and teardrops are as nectar to him. The cruelty
germ develops apace. The bloody noses of the well-dressed classes are
his mania now. He sees them at every turn and even dreams of them. He
grows to manhood, and either digs in the road or plies the pick and
shovel underground. The mechanical, monotonous exercise and the
sordidness of his home surroundings foster the germ, and his leisure
moments are occupied with the memory of those glorious times when he was
hitting out at someone, and he feels he would give anything just to
have one more blow. Curse the police! If it were not for them he could
indulge his hobby to the utmost. But the stalwart, officious man in blue
is ever on the scene, and the thrashing of a puny cleric or sawbones is
scarcely compensation for a month's hard labour. Yet his mania must be
satisfied somehow--it worries him to pieces. He must either smash
someone's nose or go mad; there is no alternative, and he chooses the
former. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals prevents
him skinning a cat; the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Children will be down on him at once if he strikes a child, and so he
has no other resource left but his wife--he can knock out all her teeth,
bash in her ribs, and jump on her head to his heart's content. She will
never dare prosecute him, and, if she does, some Humanitarian Society
will be sure to see that he is not legally punished. He thus finds safe
scope for the indulgence of his crank, and when there is nothing left of
his own wife, he turns his unattractive and pusillanimous attentions to
someone else's.
But occult thought-germs of this elementary type only thrive where the
infant's spiritual or unknown brain is wholly undeveloped. Where the
spiritual or unknown brain of an infant is partially developed, the
germ-thought to be lodged in it (especially if it be a germ-thought of
cruelty) must be of a more subtle and refined nature.
I have traced the growth of cruelty obsession in children one would not
suspect of any great tendency to animalism. A refined love of making
others suffer has led them to vent inquisitionary tortures on insects,
and the mania for pulling off the legs of flies and roasting beetles
under spyglasses has been gradually extended to drowning mice in cages
and seeing pigs killed. Time develops the germ; the cruel boy becomes
the callous doctor or "sharp-practising" attorney, and the cruel girl
becomes the cruel mother and often the frail divorcée. Drink and cards
are an obsession with some; cruelty is just as much a matter of
obsession with others. But the ingenuity of the occult brain rises to
higher things; it rises to the subtlest form of invention when dealing
with the artistic and literary temperament. I have been intimately
acquainted with authors--well-known in the popular sense of the
word--who have been obsessed in the oddest and often most painful ways.
The constant going back to turn door-handles, the sitting in grotesque
and untoward positions, the fondness for fingering any smooth and shiny
objects, such as mother-of-pearl, develop into manias for change--change
of scenery, of occupation, of affections, of people--change that
inevitably necessitates misery; for breaking--breaking promises,
contracts, family ties, furniture--but breaking, always breaking; for
sensuality--sensuality sometimes venial, but often of the most gross and
unpardonable nature.
I knew a musician who was obsessed in a peculiarly loathsome manner. Few
knew of his misfortune, and none abominated it more than himself. He
sang divinely, had the most charming personality, was all that could be
desired as a husband and father, and yet was, in secret, a monomaniac of
the most degrading and unusual order. In the daytime, when all was
bright and cheerful, his mania was forgotten; but the moment twilight
came, and he saw the shadows of night stealing stealthily towards him,
his craze returned, and, if alone, he would steal surreptitiously out of
the house and, with the utmost perseverance, seek an opportunity of
carrying into effect his bestial practices. I have known him tie himself
to the table, surround himself with Bibles, and resort to every
imaginable device to divert his mind from his passion, but all to no
purpose; the knowledge that outside all was darkness and shadows proved
irresistible. With a beating heart he put on his coat and hat, and,
furtively opening the door, slunk out to gratify his hateful lust.
Heaven knows! he went through hell.
I once watched a woman obsessed with an unnatural and wholly monstrous
mania for her dog. She took it with her wherever she went, to the
theatre, the shops, church, in railway carriages, on board ship. She
dressed it in the richest silks and furs, decorated it with bangles,
presented it with a watch, hugged, kissed, and fondled it, took it to
bed with her, dreamed of it. When it died, she went into heavy mourning
for it, and in an incredibly short space of time pined away. I saw her a
few days before her death, and I was shocked; her gestures, mannerisms,
and expression had become absolutely canine, and when she smiled--smiled
in a forced and unnatural manner--I could have sworn I saw Launcelot,
her pet!
There was also a man, a brilliant writer, who from a boy had been
obsessed with a craze for all sorts of glossy things, more especially
buttons. The mania grew; he spent all his time running after girls who
were manicured, or who wore shining buttons, and, when he married, he
besought his wife to sew buttons on every article of her apparel. In the
end, he is said to have swallowed a button, merely to enjoy the
sensation of its smooth surface on the coats of his stomach.
This somewhat exaggerated instance of obsession serves to show that, no
matter how extraordinary the thought-germ, it may enter one's mind and
finally become a passion.
That the majority of people are obsessed, though in a varying degree, is
a generally accepted fact; but that furniture can be possessed by occult
brains, though not a generally accepted fact, is, I believe, equally
true.
In a former work, entitled _Some Haunted Houses of England and Wales_,
published by Mr Eveleigh Nash, I described how a bog-oak grandfather's
clock was possessed by a peculiar type of elemental, which I
subsequently classified as a vagrarian, or kind of grotesque spirit that
inhabits wild and lonely places, and, not infrequently, spots where
there are the remains of prehistoric (and even latter-day) man and
beast. In another volume called _The Haunted Houses of London_, I
narrated the haunting of a house in Portman Square by a grandfather's
clock, the spirit in possession causing it to foretell death by
striking certain times; and I have since heard of hauntings by phenomena
of a more or less similar nature.
The following is an example. A very dear friend of mine was taken ill
shortly before Christmas. No one at the time suspected there was
anything serious the matter with her, although her health of late had
been far from good. I happened to be staying in the house just then, and
found, that for some reason or other, I could not sleep. I do not often
suffer from insomnia, so that the occurrence struck me as somewhat
extraordinary. My bedroom opened on to a large, dark landing. In one
corner of it stood a very old grandfather's clock, the ticking of which
I could distinctly hear when the house was quiet. For the first two or
three nights of my visit the clock was as usual, but, the night before
my friend was taken ill, its ticking became strangely irregular. At one
moment it sounded faint, at the next moment, the reverse; now it was
slow, now quick; until at length, in a paroxysm of curiosity and fear, I
cautiously opened my door and peeped out. It was a light night, and the
glass face of the clock flashed back the moonbeams with startling
brilliancy. A grim and subdued hush hung over the staircases and
landings. The ticking was now low; but as I listened intently, it
gradually grew louder and louder, until, to my horror, the colossal
frame swayed violently backwards and forwards. Unable to stand the sight
of it any longer, and fearful of what I might see next, I retreated into
my room, and, carefully locking the door, lit the gas, and got into
bed. At three o'clock the ticking once again became normal. The
following night the same thing occurred, and I discovered that certain
other members of the household had also heard it. My friend rapidly grew
worse, and the irregularities of the clock became more and more
pronounced, more and more disturbing. Then there came a morning, when,
between two and three o'clock, unable to lie in bed and listen to the
ticking any longer, I got up. An irresistible attraction dragged me to
the door. I peeped out, and there, with the moonlight concentrated on
its face as before, swayed the clock, backwards and forwards, backwards
and forwards, slowly and solemnly; and with each movement there issued
from within it a hollow, agonised voice, the counterpart of that of my
sick friend, exclaiming, "Oh dear! Oh dear! It is coming! It is coming!"
I was so fascinated, so frightened, that I could not remove my gaze, but
was constrained to stand still and stare at it; and all the while there
was a dull, mechanical repetition of the words: "Oh dear! Oh dear! It is
coming, it is coming!" Half an hour passed in this manner, and the hands
indicated five minutes to three, when a creak on the staircase made me
look round. My heart turned to ice--there, half-way down the stairs, was
a tall, black figure, its polished ebony skin shining in the moonbeams.
I saw only its body at first, for I was far too surprised even to glance
at its face. As it glided noiselessly towards me, however, obeying an
uncontrollable impulse, I looked. There was no face at all, only two
eyes--two long, oblique, half-open eyes--grey and sinister,
inexpressibly, hellishly sinister--and, as they met my gaze, they smiled
gleefully. They passed on, the door of the clock swung open, and the
figure stepped inside and vanished! I was now able to move, and
re-entering my room, I locked myself in, turned on the gas, and buried
myself under the bedclothes.
I left the house next day, and shortly afterwards received the
melancholy tidings of the death of my dear friend. For the time being,
at least, the clock had been possessed by an elemental spirit of death.
I know an instance, too, in which a long, protracted whine, like the
whine of a dog, proceeded from a grandfather's clock, prior to any
catastrophe in a certain family; another instance, in which loud thumps
were heard in a grandfather's clock before a death; and still another
instance in which a hooded face used occasionally to be seen in lieu of
the clock's face.
In all these cases, the clocks were undoubtedly temporarily possessed by
the same type of spirit--the type I have classified "Clanogrian" or
Family Ghost--occult phenomena that, having attached themselves in
bygone ages to certain families, sometimes cling to furniture (often not
inappropriately to clocks) that belonged to those families; and, still
clinging, in its various removals, to the piece they have "possessed,"
continue to perform their original grizzly function of foretelling
death.
Of course, these charnel prophets are not the only phantasms that
"possess" furniture. For example, I once heard of a case of
"possession" by a non-prophetic phantasm in connection with a chest--an
antique oak chest which, I believe, claimed to be a native of Limerick.
After experiencing many vicissitudes in its career, the chest fell into
the hands of a Mrs MacNeill, who bought it at a rather exorbitant price
from a second-hand dealer in Cork.
The chest, placed in the dining-room of its new home, was the recipient
of much premature adulation. The awakening came one afternoon soon after
its arrival, when Mrs MacNeill was alone in the dining-room at twilight.
She had spent a very tiring morning shopping in Tralee, her nearest
market-town, and consequently fell asleep in an arm-chair in front of
the fire, directly after luncheon. She awoke with a sensation of extreme
chilliness, and thinking the window could not have been shut properly,
she got up to close it, when her attention was attracted by something
white protruding from under the lid of the chest. She went up to inspect
it, but she recoiled in horror. It was a long finger, with a very
protuberant knuckle-bone, but no sign of a nail. She was so shocked that
for some seconds she could only stand staring at it, mute and helpless;
but the sound of approaching carriage-wheels breaking the spell, she
rushed to the fireplace and pulled the bell vigorously. As she did so,
there came a loud chuckle from the chest, and all the walls of the room
seemed to shake with laughter.
Of course everyone laughed when Mrs MacNeill related what had happened.
The chest was minutely examined, and as it was found to contain nothing
but some mats that had been stored away in it the previous day, the
finger was forthwith declared to have been an optical illusion, and Mrs
MacNeill was, for the time being, ridiculed into believing it was so
herself. For the next two or three days nothing occurred; nothing, in
fact, until one night when Mrs MacNeill and her daughters heard the
queerest of noises downstairs, proceeding apparently from the
dining-room--heavy, flopping footsteps, bumps as if a body was being
dragged backwards and forwards across the floor, crashes as if all the
crockery in the house had been piled in a mass on the floor, loud peals
of malevolent laughter, and then--silence.
The following night, the disturbances being repeated, Mrs MacNeill
summoned up courage to go downstairs and peep into the room. The noises
were still going on when she arrived at the door, but, the moment she
opened it, they ceased and there was nothing to be seen. A day or two
afterwards, when she was again alone in the dining-room and the evening
shadows were beginning to make their appearance, she glanced anxiously
at the chest, and--there was the finger. Losing her self-possession at
once, and yielding to a paroxysm of the wildest, the most ungovernable
terror, she opened her mouth to shriek. Not a sound came; the cry that
had been generated in her lungs died away ere it reached her larynx, and
she relapsed into a kind of cataleptic condition, in which all her
faculties were acutely alert but her limbs and organs of speech palsied.
She expected every instant that the chest-lid would fly open and that
the baleful thing lurking within would spring upon her. The torture she
suffered from such anticipations was little short of hell, and was
rendered all the more maddening by occasional quiverings of the lid,
which brought all her expectations to a climax. Now, now at any rate,
she assured herself, the moment had come when the acme of horrordom
would be bounced upon her and she would either die or go mad. But no;
her agonies were again and again borne anew, and her prognostications
unfulfilled. At last the creakings abruptly ceased--nothing was to be
heard save the shaking of the trees, the distant yelping of a dog, and
the far-away footfall of one of the servants. Having somewhat recovered
from the shock, Mrs MacNeill was busy speculating as to the appearance
of the hidden horror, when she heard a breathing, the subtle, stealthy
breathing of the secreted pouncer. Again she was spellbound. The evening
advanced, and from every nook and cranny of the room, from behind
chairs, sofa, sideboard, and table, from window-sill and curtains, stole
the shadows, all sorts of curious shadows, that brought with them an
atmosphere of the barren, wind-swept cliffs and dark, deserted
mountains, an atmosphere that added fresh terrors to Mrs MacNeill's
already more than distraught mind.
The room was now full of occult possibilities, drawn from all quarters,
and doubtless attracted thither by the chest, which acted as a physical
magnet. It grew late; still no one came to her rescue; and still more
shadows, and more, and more, and more, until the room was full of them.
She actually saw them gliding towards the house, in shoals, across the
moon-kissed lawn and carriage-drive. Shadows of all sorts--some,
unmistakable phantasms of the dead, with skinless faces and glassy eyes,
their bodies either wrapped in shrouds covered with the black slime of
bogs or dripping with water; some, whole and lank and bony; some with an
arm or leg missing; some with no limbs or body, only heads--shrunken,
bloodless heads with wide-open, staring eyes--yellow, ichorous
eyes--gleaming, devilish eyes. Elementals of all sorts--some, tall and
thin, with rotund heads and meaningless features; some, with
rectangular, fleshy heads; some, with animal heads. On they came in
countless legions, on, on, and on, one after another, each vying with
the other in ghastly horridness.
The series of terrific shocks Mrs MacNeill experienced during the
advance of this long and seemingly interminable procession of every
conceivable ghoulish abortion, at length wore her out. The pulsations of
her naturally strong heart temporarily failed, and, as her pent-up
feelings found vent in one gasping scream for help, she fell insensible
to the ground.
That very night the chest was ruthlessly cremated, and Mrs MacNeill's
dining-room ceased to be a meeting-place for spooks.
Whenever I see an old chest now, I always view it with
suspicion--especially if it should happen to be a bog-oak chest. The
fact is, the latter is more likely than not to be "possessed" by
elementals, which need scarcely be a matter of surprise when one
remembers that bogs--particularly Irish bogs--have been haunted, from
time immemorial, by the most uncouth and fantastic type of spirits.
But mummies, mummies even more often than clocks and chests, are
"possessed" by denizens of the occult world. Of course, everyone has
heard of the "unlucky" mummy, the painted case of which, only, is in the
Oriental department of the British Museum, and the story connected with
it is so well known that it would be superfluous to expatiate on it
here. I will therefore pass on to instances of other mummies "possessed"
in a more or less similar manner.
During one of my sojourns in Paris, I met a Frenchman who, he informed
me, had just returned from the East. I asked him if he had brought back
any curios, such as vases, funeral urns, weapons, or amulets. "Yes,
lots," he replied, "two cases full. But no mummies! Mon Dieu! No
mummies! You ask me why? Ah! Therein hangs a tale. If you will have
patience, I will tell it you."
The following is the gist of his narrative:--
"Some seasons ago I travelled up the Nile as far as Assiut, and when
there, managed to pay a brief visit to the grand ruins of Thebes. Among
the various treasures I brought away with me, of no great archæological
value, was a mummy. I found it lying in an enormous lidless sarcophagus,
close to a mutilated statue of Anubis. On my return to Assiut, I had the
mummy placed in my tent, and thought no more of it till something awoke
me with a startling suddenness in the night. Then, obeying a peculiar
impulse, I turned over on my side and looked in the direction of my
treasure.
"The nights in the Soudan at this time of year are brilliant; one can
even see to read, and every object in the desert is almost as clearly
visible as by day. But I was quite startled by the whiteness of the glow
that rested on the mummy, the face of which was immediately opposite
mine. The remains--those of Met-Om-Karema, lady of the College of the
god Amen-ra--were swathed in bandages, some of which had worn away in
parts or become loose; and the figure, plainly discernible, was that of
a shapely woman with elegant bust, well-formed limbs, rounded arms and
small hands. The thumbs were slender, and the fingers, each of which
were separately bandaged, long and tapering. The neck was full, the
cranium rather long, the nose aquiline, the chin firm. Imitation eyes,
brows, and lips were painted on the wrappings, and the effect thus
produced, and in the phosphorescent glare of the moonbeams, was very
weird. I was quite alone in the tent, the only other European, who had
accompanied me to Assiut, having stayed in the town by preference, and
my servants being encamped at some hundred or so yards from me on the
ground.
"Sound travels far in the desert, but the silence now was absolute, and
although I listened attentively, I could not detect the slightest
noise--man, beast, and insect were abnormally still. There was something
in the air, too, that struck me as unusual; an odd, clammy coldness that
reminded me at once of the catacombs in Paris. I had hardly, however,
conceived the resemblance, when a sob--low, gentle, but very
distinct--sent a thrill of terror through me. It was ridiculous, absurd!
It could not be, and I fought against the idea as to whence the sound
had proceeded, as something too utterly fantastic, too utterly
impossible! I tried to occupy my mind with other thoughts--the
frivolities of Cairo, the casinos of Nice; but all to no purpose; and
soon on my eager, throbbing ear there again fell that sound, that low
and gentle sob. My hair stood on end; this time there was no doubt, no
possible manner of doubt--the mummy lived! I looked at it aghast. I
strained my vision to detect any movement in its limbs, but none was
perceptible. Yet the noise had come from it, it had breathed--breathed--
and even as I hissed the word unconsciously through my clenched lips,
the bosom of the mummy rose and fell.
"A frightful terror seized me. I tried to shriek to my servants; I could
not ejaculate a syllable. I tried to close my eyelids, but they were
held open as in a vice. Again there came a sob that was immediately
succeeded by a sigh; and a tremor ran through the figure from head to
foot. One of its hands then began to move, the fingers clutched the air
convulsively, then grew rigid, then curled slowly into the palms, then
suddenly straightened. The bandages concealing them from view then fell
off, and to my agonised sight were disclosed objects that struck me as
strangely familiar. There is something about fingers, a marked
individuality, I never forget. No two persons' hands are alike. And in
these fingers, in their excessive whiteness, round knuckles, and blue
veins, in their tapering formation and perfect filbert nails, I read a
likeness whose prototype, struggle how I would, I could not recall.
Gradually the hand moved upwards, and, reaching the throat, the fingers
set to work, at once, to remove the wrappings. My terror was now
sublime! I dare not imagine, I dare not for one instant think, what I
should see! And there was no getting away from it; I could not stir an
inch, not the fraction of an inch, and the ghastly revelation would take
place within a yard of my face.
"One by one the bandages came off. A glimmer of skin, pallid as marble;
the beginning of the nose, the whole nose; the upper lip, exquisitely,
delicately cut; the teeth, white and even on the whole, but here and
there a shining gold filling; the under-lip, soft and gentle; a mouth I
knew, but--God!--where? In my dreams, in the wild fantasies that had
oft-times visited my pillow at night--in delirium, in reality, where?
Mon Dieu! WHERE?
"The uncasing continued. The chin came next, a chin that was purely
feminine, purely classical; then the upper part of the head--the hair
long, black, luxuriant--the forehead low and white--the brows black,
finely pencilled; and, last of all, the eyes!--and as they met my
frenzied gaze and smiled, smiled right down into the depths of my livid
soul, I recognised them--they were the eyes of my mother, my mother who
had died in my boyhood! Seized with a madness that knew no bounds, I
sprang to my feet. The figure rose and confronted me. I flung open my
arms to embrace her, the woman of all women in the world I loved best,
the only woman I had loved. Shrinking from my touch, she cowered against
the side of the tent. I fell on my knees before her and kissed--what?
Not the feet of my mother, but that of the long unburied dead. Sick with
repulsion and fear I looked up, and there, bending over and peering into
my eyes was the face, the fleshless, mouldering face of a foul and
barely recognisable corpse! With a shriek of horror I rolled backwards,
and, springing to my feet, prepared to fly. I glanced at the mummy. It
was lying on the ground, stiff and still, every bandage in its place;
whilst standing over it, a look of fiendish glee in its light, doglike
eyes, was the figure of Anubis, lurid and menacing.
"The voices of my servants, assuring me they were coming, broke the
silence, and in an instant the apparition vanished.
"I had had enough of the tent, however, at least for that night, and,
seeking refuge in the town, I whiled away the hours till morning with a
fragrant cigar and novel. Directly I had breakfasted, I took the mummy
back to Thebes and left it there. No, thank you, Mr O'Donnell, I collect
many kinds of curios, but--no more mummies!"