SYLVAN HORRORS
I believe trees have spirits; I believe everything that grows has a
spirit, and that such spirits never die, but passing into another state,
a state of film and shadow, live on for ever. The phantasms of vegetable
life are everywhere, though discernible only to the few of us. Often as
I ramble through thoroughfares, crowded with pedestrians and vehicles,
and impregnated with steam and smoke and all the impurities arising from
over-congested humanity, I have suddenly smelt a different atmosphere,
the cold atmosphere of superphysical forest land. I have come to a halt,
and leaning in some doorway, gazed in awestruck wonder at the nodding
foliage of a leviathan lepidodendron, the phantasm of one of those
mammoth lycopods that flourished in the Carboniferous period. I have
watched it swaying its shadowy arms backwards and forwards as if keeping
time to some ghostly music, and the breeze it has thus created has
rustled through my hair, while the sweet scent of its resin has
pleasantly tickled my nostrils. I have seen, too, suddenly open before
me, dark, gloomy aisles, lined with stupendous pines and carpeted with
long, luxuriant grass, gigantic ferns, and other monstrous primeval
flora, of a nomenclature wholly unknown to me; I have watched in chilled
fascination the black trunks twist and bend and contort, as if under the
influence of an uncontrollable fit of laughter, or at the bidding of
some psychic cyclone. I have at times stayed my steps when in the throes
of the city-pavements; shops and people have been obliterated, and their
places taken by occult foliage; immense fungi have blocked out the sun's
rays, and under the shelter of their slimy, glistening heads, I have
been thrilled to see the wriggling, gliding forms of countless smaller
saprophytes. I have felt the cold touch of loathsome toadstools and
sniffed the hot, dry dust of the full, ripe puff-ball. On the Thames
Embankment, up Chelsea way, I have at twilight beheld wonderful
metamorphoses. In company with the shadows of natural objects of the
landscape, have silently sprung up giant reeds and bullrushes. I have
felt their icy coldness as, blowing hither and thither in the delirium
of their free, untrammelled existence, they have swished across my face.
Visions, truly visions, the exquisite fantasies of a vivid imagination.
So says the sage. I do not think so; I dispute him _in toto_. These
objects I have seen have not been illusions; else, why have I not
imagined other things; why, for example, have I not seen rocks walking
about and tables coming in at my door? If these phantasms were but
tricks of the imagination, then imagination would stop at nothing. But
they are not imagination, neither are they the idle fancies of an
over-active brain. They are objective--just as much objective as are the
smells of recognised physical objects, that those, with keenly sensitive
olfactory organs, can detect, and those, with a less sensitive sense of
smell, cannot detect; those, with acute hearing, can hear, and those
with less acute hearing cannot hear. And yet, people are slow to believe
that the seeing of the occult is as much a faculty as is the scenting of
smells or the hearing of noises.
I have heard it said that, deep down in coal mines, certain of the
workers have seen wondrous sights; that when they have been alone in a
drift, they have heard the blowing of the wind and the rustling of
leaves, and suddenly found themselves penned in on all sides by the
naked trunks of enormous primitive trees, lepidodendrons, sigillarias,
ferns, and other plants, that have shone out with phosphorescent
grandeur amid the inky blackness of the subterranean ether. Around the
feet of the spellbound watchers have sprung up rank blades of
Brobdingnagian grass and creepers, out of which have crept, with lurid
eyes, prodigious millipedes, cockroaches, white ants, myriapods and
scorpions, whilst added to the moaning and sighing of the trees has been
the humming of stone-flies, dragon-flies, and locusts. Galleries and
shafts have echoed and re-echoed with these noises of the old world,
which yet lives, and will continue to live, maybe, to the end of time.
But are the physical trees, the trees that we can all see budding and
sprouting in our gardens to-day--are they ever cognisant of the presence
of the occult? Can they, like certain--not all--dogs and horses and
other animals, detect the proximity of the unknown? Do they tremble and
shake with fear at the sight of some psychic vegetation, or are they
utterly devoid of any such faculty? Can they see, hear, or smell? Have
they any senses at all? And, if they have one sense, have they not
others? Aye, there is food for reflection.
Personally, I believe trees have senses--not, of course, in such a high
state of development as those of animal life; but, nevertheless, senses.
Consequently, I think it quite possible that certain of them, like
certain animals, feel the presence of the superphysical. I often stroll
in woods. I do not love solitude; I love the trees, and I do not think
there is anything in nature, apart from man, I love much more. The oak,
the ash, the elm, the poplar, the willow, to me are more than mere
names; they are friends, the friends of my boyhood and manhood;
companions in my lonely rambles and voluntary banishments; guardians of
my siestas; comforters of my tribulations. The gentle fanning of their
branches has eased my pain-racked brow and given me much-needed sleep,
whilst the chlorophyll of their leaves has acted like balm to my
eyelids, inflamed after long hours of study. I have leaned my head
against their trunks, and heard, or fancied I have heard, the fantastic
murmurings of their peaceful minds. This is what happens in the daytime,
when the hot summer sun has turned the meadow-grass a golden brown. But
with the twilight comes the change. Phantom-land awakes, and mingled
with the shadows of the trees and bushes that lazily unroll themselves
from trunk and branches are the darkest of shades, that impart to the
forest an atmosphere of dreary coldness. Usually I hie away with haste
at sunset, but there are occasions when I have dallied longer than I
have intended, and only realised my error when it has been too late. I
have then, controlled by the irresistible fascination of the woods,
waited and watched. I well recollect, for example, being caught in this
way in a Hampshire spinney, at that time one of my most frequented
haunts. The day had been unusually close and stifling, and the heat, in
conjunction with a hard morning's work--for I had written, God only
knows how long, without ceasing,--made me frightfully sleepy, and on
arriving at my favourite spot beneath a lofty pine, I had slept till,
for very shame, my eyelids could keep closed no longer. It was then nine
o'clock, and the metamorphosis of sunset had commenced in solemn
earnest. The evening was charming, ideal of the heart of summer; the air
soft, sweetly scented; the sky unspotted blue. A peaceful hush, broken
only by the chiming of some distant church bells, and the faint, the
very faint barking of dogs, enveloped everything and instilled in me a
false sensation of security. Facing me was a diminutive glade padded
with downy grass, transformed into a pale yellow by the lustrous rays of
the now encrimsoned sun. Fainter and fainter grew the ruddy glow, until
there was nought of it left but a pale pink streak, whose delicate
marginal lines still separated the blue of the sky from the quickly
superseding grey. A barely perceptible mist gradually cloaked the grass,
whilst the gloom amid the foliage on the opposite side of the glade
intensified. There was now no sound of bells, no barking of dogs; and
silence, a silence tinged with the sadness so characteristic of summer
evenings, was everywhere paramount. A sudden rush of icy air made my
teeth chatter. I made an effort to stir, to escape ere the grotesque and
intangible horrors of the wood could catch me. I ignominiously failed;
the soles of my feet froze to the ground. Then I felt the slender,
graceful body of the pine against which I leaned my back, shake and
quiver, and my hand--the hand that rested on its bark--grew damp and
sticky.
I endeavoured to avert my eyes from the open space confronting them. I
failed; and as I gazed, filled with the anticipations of the damned,
there suddenly burst into view, with all the frightful vividness
associated only with the occult, a tall form--armless, legless--fashioned
like the gnarled trunk of a tree--white, startlingly white in places
where the bark had worn away, but on the whole a bright, a luridly
bright, yellow and black. At first I successfully resisted a powerful
impulse to raise my eyes to its face; but as I only too well knew would
be the case, I was obliged to look at last, and, as I anticipated, I
underwent a most violent shock. In lieu of a face I saw a raw and
shining polyp, a mass of waving, tossing, pulpy radicles from whose
centre shone two long, obliquely set, pale eyes, ablaze with devilry and
malice. The thing, after the nature of all terrifying phantasms, was
endowed with hypnotic properties, and directly its eyes rested on me I
became numb; my muscles slept while my faculties remained awake,
acutely awake.
Inch by inch the thing approached me; its stealthy, gliding motion
reminding me of a tiger subtly and relentlessly stalking its prey. It
came up to me, and the catalepsy which had held me rigidly upright
departed. I fell on the ground for protection, and, as the great unknown
curved its ghastly figure over me and touched my throat and forehead
with its fulsome tentacles, I was overcome with nervous tremors; a
deadly pain griped my entrails, and, convulsed with agony, I rolled over
on my face, furiously clawing the bracken. In this condition I continued
for probably one or even two minutes, though to me it seemed very much
longer. My sufferings terminated with the loud report of firearms, and
slowly picking myself up, I found that the apparition had vanished, and
that standing some twenty or so paces from me was a boy with a gun. I
recognised him at once as the son of my neighbour, the village
schoolmaster; but not wishing to tarry there any longer, I hurriedly
wished him good night, and leaving the copse a great deal more quickly
than I had entered it, I hastened home.
What had I seen? A phantasm of some dead tree? some peculiar species of
spirit (I have elsewhere termed a vagrarian), attracted thither by the
loneliness of the locality? some vicious, evil phantasm? or a
vice-elemental, whose presence there would be due to some particularly
wicked crime or series of crimes perpetrated on or near the spot? I
cannot say. It might well have been either one of them, or something
quite different. I am quite sure, however, that most woods are haunted,
and that he who sees spirit phenomena can be pretty certain of seeing
them there. Again and again, as I have been passing after nightfall,
through tree-girt glen, forest, or avenue, I have seen all sorts of
curious forms and shapes move noiselessly from tree to tree. Hooded
figures, with death's-heads, have glided surreptitiously through
moon-kissed spaces; icy hands have touched me on the shoulders; whilst,
pacing alongside me, I have oft-times heard footsteps, light and heavy,
though I have seen nothing.
Miss Frances Sinclair tells me that, once, when walking along a country
lane, she espied some odd-looking object lying on the ground at the foot
of a tree. She approached it, and found to her horror it was a human
finger swimming in a pool of blood. She turned round to attract the
attention of her friends, and when she looked again the finger had
vanished. On this very spot, she was subsequently informed, the murder
of a child had taken place.
Trees are, I believe, frequently haunted by spirits that suggest crime.
I have no doubt that numbers of people have hanged themselves on the
same tree in just the same way as countless people have committed
suicide by jumping over certain bridges. Why? For the very simple reason
that hovering about these bridges are influences antagonistic to the
human race, spirits whose chief and fiendish delight is to breathe
thoughts of self-destruction into the brains of passers-by. I once heard
of a man, medically pronounced sane, who frequently complained that he
was tormented by a voice whispering in his ear, "Shoot yourself! Shoot
yourself!"--advice which he eventually found himself bound to follow.
And of a man, likewise stated to be sane, who journeyed a considerable
distance to jump over a notorious bridge because he was for ever being
haunted by the phantasm of a weirdly beautiful woman who told him to do
so. If bridges have their attendant sinister spirits, so undoubtedly
have trees--spirits ever anxious to entice within the magnetic circle of
their baleful influence anyone of the human race.
Many tales of trees being haunted in this way have come to me from India
and the East. I quoted one in my _Ghostly Phenomena_, and the following
was told me by a lady whom I met recently, when on a visit to my wife's
relations in the Midlands.
"I was riding with my husband along a very lonely mountain road in
Assam," my informant began, "when I suddenly discovered I had lost my
silk scarf, which happened to be a rather costly one. I had a pretty
shrewd idea whereabouts I might have dropped it, and, on mentioning the
fact to my husband, he at once turned and rode back to look for it.
Being armed, I did not feel at all nervous at being left alone,
especially as there had been no cases, for many years, of assault on a
European in our district; but, seeing a big mango tree standing quite by
itself a few yards from the road, I turned my horse's head with the
intention of riding up to it and picking some of its fruit. To my great
annoyance, however, the beast refused to go; moreover, although at all
times most docile, it now reared, and kicked, and showed unmistakable
signs of fright.
"I speedily came to the conclusion that my horse was aware of the
presence of something--probably a wild beast--I could not see myself,
and I at once dismounted, and tethering the shivering animal to a
boulder, advanced cautiously, revolver in hand, to the tree. At every
step I took, I expected the spring of a panther or some other beast of
prey; but, being afraid of nothing but a tiger--and there were none,
thank God! in that immediate neighbourhood--I went boldly on. On nearing
the tree, I noticed that the soil under the branches was singularly
dark, as if scorched and blackened by a fire, and that the atmosphere
around it had suddenly grown very cold and dreary. To my disappointment
there was no fruit, and I was coming away in disgust, when I caught
sight of a queer-looking thing just over my head and half-hidden by the
foliage. I parted the leaves asunder with my whip and looked up at it.
My blood froze.
"The thing was nothing human. It had a long, grey, nude body, shaped
like that of a man, only with abnormally long arms and legs, and very
long and crooked fingers. Its head was flat and rectangular, without any
features saving a pair of long and heavy lidded, light eyes, that were
fixed on mine with an expression of hellish glee. For some seconds I was
too appalled even to think, and then the most mad desire to kill myself
surged through me. I raised my revolver, and was in the act of placing
it to my forehead, when a loud shout from behind startled me. It was my
husband. He had found my scarf, and, hurrying back, had arrived just in
time to see me raise the revolver--strange to relate--at him! In a few
words I explained to him what had happened, and we examined the tree
together. But there were no signs of the terrifying phenomenon--it had
completely vanished. Though my husband declared that I must have been
dreaming, I noticed he looked singularly grave, and, on our return home,
he begged me never to go near the tree again. I asked him if he had had
any idea it was haunted, and he said: 'No! but I know there are such
trees. Ask Dingan.' Dingan was one of our native servants--the one we
respected most, as he had been with my husband for nearly twelve
years--ever since, in fact, he had settled in Assam. 'The mango tree,
mem-sahib!' Dingan exclaimed, when I approached him on the subject, 'the
mango tree on the Yuka Road, just before you get to the bridge over the
river? I know it well. We call it "the devil tree," mem-sahib. No other
tree will grow near it. There is a spirit peculiar to certain trees that
lives in its branches, and persuades anyone who ventures within a few
feet of it, either to kill themselves, or to kill other people. I have
seen three men from this village alone, hanging to its accursed
branches; they were left there till the ropes rotted and the jackals
bore them off to the jungles. Three suicides have I seen, and three
murders--two were women, strangers in these parts, and they were both
lying within the shadow of the mango's trunk, with the backs of their
heads broken in like eggs! It is a thrice-accursed tree, mem-sahib.'
Needless to say, I agreed with Dingan, and in future gave the mango a
wide berth."
Vagrarians, tree devils (a type of vice elemental), and phantasms of
dead trees are some of the occult horrors that haunt woods, and, in
fact, the whole country-side! Added to these, there are the fauns and
satyrs, those queer creatures, undoubtedly vagrarians, half-man and
half-goat, that are accredited by the ancients with much merry-making,
and grievous to add, much lasciviousness. Of these spirits there is
mention in Scripture, namely, Isaiah xiii. 21, where we read: "And their
houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls shall dwell there,
and satyrs shall dance there"; and in Baddeley's _Historical
Meditations_, published about the beginning of the seventeenth century,
there is a description by Plutarch, of a satyr captured by Sulla, when
the latter was on his way from Dyrrachium to Brundisium. The creature,
which appears to have been very material, was found asleep in a park
near Apollonia. On being led into the presence of Sulla, it commenced
speaking in a harsh voice that was an odd mixture of the neighing of a
horse and the crying of a goat. As neither Sulla nor any of his
followers could understand in the slightest degree what the monstrosity
meant, they let it go, nor is there any further reference to it.
Now, granted that this account is not "faked," and that such a beast
actually did exist, it would naturally suggest to one that vagrarians,
pixies, and other grotesque forms of phantasms are, after all, only the
spirits of similar types of material life, and that, in all
probability, the earth, contemporary with prehistoric, and even
later-day man, fairly swarmed with such creatures. However, this, like
everything else connected with these early times, is merely a matter of
speculation. Another explanatory theory is, that possibly superphysical
phenomena were much more common formerly than now, and that the various
types of sub-human and sub-animal apparitions (which were then
constantly seen by the many, but which are now only visible to the few)
have been handed down to us in the likeness of satyrs and fauns. Anyhow,
I think they may be rightly classified in the category of vagrarians.
The association of spirits with trees is pretty nearly universal. In the
fairy tales of youth we have frequent allusions to them. In the
Caucasus, where the population is not of Slavonic origin, we have
innumerable stories of sacred trees, and in each of these stones the
main idea is the same--namely, that a human life is dependent on the
existence of a tree. In Slavonic mythology, plants as well as trees are
magnets for spirits, and in the sweet-scented pinewoods, in the dark,
lonely pinewoods, dwell "psipolnitza," or female goblins, who plague the
harvesters; and "lieshi," or forest male demons, closely allied to
satyrs. In Iceland there was a pretty superstition to the effect that,
when an innocent person was put to death, a sorb or mountain ash would
spring over their grave. In Teutonic mythology the sorb is supposed to
take the form of a lily or white rose, and, on the chairs of those about
to die, one or other of these flowers is placed by unseen hands. White
lilies, too, are emblematic of innocence, and have a knack of
mysteriously shooting up on the graves of those who have been unjustly
executed. Surely this would be the work of a spirit, as, also, would be
the action of the Eglantine, which is so charmingly illustrated in the
touching story of Tristram and Yseult. Tradition says that from the
grave of Tristram there sprang an eglantine which twined about the
statue of the lovely Yseult, and, despite the fact of its being thrice
cut down, grew again, ever embracing the same fair image. Among the
North American Indians there was, and maybe still is, a general belief
that the spirits of those who died, naturally reverted to trees--to the
great pines of the mountain forests--where they dwelt for ever amid the
branches. The Indians believed also that the spirits of certain trees
walked at night in the guise of beautiful women. Lucky Indians! Would
that my experience of the forest phantasms had been half so entrancing.
The modern Greeks, Australian bushmen, and natives of the East Indies,
like myself, only see the ugly side of the superphysical, for the
spirits that haunt their vegetation are irredeemably ugly, horribly
terrifying, and fiendishly vindictive.
The idea that the dead often passed into trees is well illustrated in
the classics. For example, Æneas, in his wanderings, strikes a tree, and
is half-frightened out of his wits by a great spurt of blood. A hollow
voice, typical of phantasms and apparently proceeding from somewhere
within the trunk, then begs him to desist, going on to explain that the
tree is not an ordinary tree but the metamorphosed soul of an unlucky
wight called Polydorus, (he must have been unlucky, if only to have had
such a name). Needless to say, Æneas, who was strictly a gentleman in
spite of his aristocratic pretensions, at once dropped his axe and
showed his sympathy for the poor tree-bound spirit in an abundant flow
of tears, which must have satisfied, even, Polydorus. There is a very
similar story in Swedish folk-lore. A voice in a tree addressed a man,
who was about to cut it down, with these words, "Friend, hew me not!"
But the man on this occasion was not a gentleman, and, instead of
complying with the modest request, only plied his axe the more heartily.
To his horror--a just punishment for his barbarity--there was a most
frightful groan of agony, and out from the hole he had made in the
trunk, rushed a fountain of blood, real human blood. What happened then
I cannot say, but I imagine that the woodcutter, stricken with remorse,
whipped up his bandana from the ground, and did all that lay in his
power--though he had not had the advantages of lessons in first aid--to
stop the bleeding. One cannot help being amused at these marvellous
stories, but, after all, they are not very much more wonderful than many
of one's own ghostly experiences. At any rate, they serve to illustrate
how widespread and venerable is the belief that trees--trees, perhaps,
in particular--are closely associated with the occult.
Pixies! What are pixies? That they are not the dear, delightful, quaint
little people Shakespeare so inimitably portrays in the _Midsummer
Night's Dream_, is, I fear, only too readily acknowledged. I am told
that they may be seen even now, and I know those who say that they have
seen them, but that they are the mere shadows of those dainty creatures
that used to gambol in the moonshine and help the poor and weary in
their household work. The present-day pixies, whom I am loath to imagine
are the descendants of the old-world pixies--though, of course, on the
other hand, they may be merely degenerates, a much more pleasant
alternative--are I think still to be occasionally encountered in lonely,
isolated districts; such, for instance, as the mountains in the West of
Ireland, the Hebrides, and other more or less desolate islands, and on
one or two of the Cornish hills and moors.
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 glassy. 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 shivering. 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 God--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
Lincolnshire, '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
clusters 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
rehearses it; it was one of the most frightful, blood-curdling, hellish
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 associated with the
spiritual, and made use of symbolically, as the tree of life. An
illustration, 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 Assyrians regarded these two
trees as susceptible only to good psychic influences, they figure so
frequently in illustrations 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 sunshine, 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
bestial--such, for example, as huge, blue, or spotted dogs, shaggy
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.