VAMPIRES, WERE-WOLVES, FOX-WOMEN, ETC.
_Vampires_
According to a work by Jos. Ennemoser, entitled _The Phantom World_,
Hungary was at one time full of vampires. Between the river Theiss and
Transylvania, were (and still are, I believe) a people called Heyducs,
who were much pestered with this particularly noxious kind of phantasm.
About 1732, a Heyduc called Arnauld Paul was crushed to death by a
waggon. Thirty days after his burial a great number of people began to
die, and it was then remembered that Paul had said he was tormented by a
vampire. A consultation was held and it was decided to exhume him. On
digging up his body, it was found to be red all over and literally
bursting with blood, some of which had forced a passage out and wetted
his winding sheet. Moreover, his hair, nails, and beard had grown
considerably. These being sure signs that the corpse was possessed by a
vampire, the local bailie was fetched and the usual proceedings for the
expulsion of the undesirable phantasm began. A stake, sharply pointed at
one end, was handed to the bailie, who, raising it above his head,
drove it with all his might into the heart of the corpse. There then
issued from the body the most fearful screams, whereupon it was at once
thrown into a fire that had been specially prepared for it, and burned
to ashes. But, though this was the end of that particular vampire, it
was by no means the end of the hauntings; for the deaths, far from
decreasing in number, continued in rapid succession, and no less than
seventeen people in the village died within a period of three months.
The question now arose as to which of the other bodies in the cemetery
were "possessed," it being very evident that more than one vampire lay
buried there. Whilst the matter was at the height of discussion, the
solution to the problem was brought about thus. A girl, of the name of
Stanoska, awoke in the middle of the night, uttering the most
heartrending screams, and declaring that the son of a man called Millo
(who had been dead nine weeks) had nearly strangled her. A rush was at
once made to the cemetery, and a general disinterment taking place,
seventeen out of the forty corpses (including that of the son of Millo)
showed unmistakable signs of vampirism. They were all treated according
to the mode described, and their ashes cast into the adjacent river. A
committee of inquiry concluded that the spread of vampirism had been due
to the eating of certain cattle, of which Paul had been the first to
partake. The disturbances ceased with the death of the girl and the
destruction of her body, and the full account of the hauntings, attested
to by officers of the local garrison, the chief surgeons, and most
influential of the inhabitants of the district, was sent to the
Imperial Council of War at Venice, which caused a strict inquiry to be
made into the matter, and were subsequently, according to Ennemoser,
satisfied that all was _bona fide_.
In another work, _A History of Magic_, Ennemoser also refers to a case
in the village of Kisilova, in Hungary, where the body of an old man,
three days after his death, appeared to his son on two consecutive
nights, demanding something to eat, and, being given some meat, ate it
ravenously. The third night the son died, and the succeeding day
witnessed the deaths of some five or six others. The matter was reported
to the Tribunal of Belgrade, which promptly sent two officers to inquire
into the case. On their arrival the old man's grave was opened, and his
body found to be full of blood and natural respiration. A stake was then
driven through its heart, and the hauntings ceased.
Though far fewer in number than they were, and more than ever confined
to certain localities, I am quite sure that vampires are by no means
extinct. Their modes and habits--they are no longer gregarious--have
changed with the modes and habits of their victims, but they are none
the less vampires. Have I seen them? No! but my not having been thus
fortunate, or rather unfortunate, does not make me so discourteous as to
disbelieve those who tell me that they have seen a vampire--that
peculiar, indefinably peculiar shape that, wriggling along the ground
from one tombstone to another, crawls up and over the churchyard wall,
and making for the nearest house, disappears through one of its upper
windows. Indeed, I have no doubt that had I watched that house some few
days afterwards, I should have seen a pale, anæmic looking creature,
with projecting teeth and a thoroughly imbecile expression, come out of
it. I believe a large percentage of idiots and imbecile epileptics owe
their pitiable plight to vampires which, in their infancy, they had the
misfortune to attract. I do not think that, as of old, the vampires come
to their prey installed in stolen bodies, but that they visit people
wholly in spirit form, and, with their superphysical mouths, suck the
brain cells dry of intellect. The baby, who is thus the victim of a
vampire, grows up into something on a far lower scale of intelligence
than dumb animals, more bestial than monkeys, and more dangerous (far
more dangerous, if the public only realised it) than tigers; for,
whereas the tiger is content with one square meal a day, the hunger of
vampirism is never satisfied, and the half-starved, mal-shaped brain
cells, the prey of vampirism, are in a constant state of suction, ever
trying to draw in mental sustenance from the healthy brain cells around
them. Idiots and epileptics are the cephalopoda of the land--only, if
anything, fouler, more voracious, and more insatiable than their aquatic
prototypes. They never ought to be at large. If not destroyed in their
early infancy (which one cannot help thinking would be the most merciful
plan both for the idiot and the community in general), those polyp
brains ought to be kept in some isolated place where they would have
only each other to feed upon. When I see an idiot walking in the
streets, I always take very good care to give him a wide berth, as I
have no desire that the vampire buried in his withered brain cells
should derive any nutrition at my expense. From the fact that some towns
which are close to cromlechs, ancient burial-grounds, woods, or moors
are full of idiots, leads me to suppose that vampires often frequent the
same spots as barrowvians, vagrarians and other types of elementals.
Whilst, on the other hand, since many densely crowded centres have fully
their share of idiots, I am led to believe that vampires are equally
attracted by populous districts, and that, in short, unlike barrowvians
and vagrarians, they can be met with pretty nearly everywhere. And now
for examples.
A man I know, who spends most of his time in Germany, once had a strange
experience when staying in the neighbourhood of the Hartz mountains. One
sultry evening in August he was walking in the country, and noticed a
perambulator with a white figure, which he took to be that of a
remarkably tall nursemaid, bending over it. As he drew nearer, however,
he found that he had been mistaken. The figure was nothing human; it had
no limbs; it was cylindrical. A faint, sickly sound of sucking caused my
friend to start forward with an exclamation of horror, and as he did so,
the phantasm glided away from the perambulator and disappeared among the
trees. The baby, my friend assured me, was a mere bag of bones, with a
ghastly, grinning anæmic face. Again, when touring in Hungary, he had a
similar experience. He was walking down a back street in a large,
thickly populated town, when he beheld a baby lying on the hot and
sticky pavement with a queer-looking object stooping over it. Wondering
what on earth the thing was, he advanced rapidly, and saw, to his
unmitigated horror, that it was a phantasm with a limbless, cylindrical
body, a huge flat, pulpy head, and protruding, luminous lips, which were
tightly glued to the infant's ears; and again my friend heard a faint,
sickly sound of sucking, and a sound more hideously nauseating, he
informed me, could not be imagined. He was too dumbfounded to act; he
could only stare; and the phantasm, after continuing its loathsome
occupation for some seconds, leisurely arose, and moving away with a
gliding motion, vanished in the yard of an adjacent house. The child did
not appear to be human, but a concoction of half a dozen diminutive
bestialities, and as my friend gazed at it, too fascinated for the
moment to tear himself away, it smiled up at him with the hungry,
leering smile of vampirism and idiocy.
So much for vampires in the country and in crowded cities, but, as I
have already remarked, they are ubiquitous. As an illustration, there is
said to be a maritime town in a remote part of England, which, besides
being full of quaintness (of a kind not invariably pleasant) and of foul
smells, is also full of more than half-savage fishermen and idiots;
idiots that often come out at dusk, and greatly alarm strangers by
running after them.
Some years ago, one of these idiots went into a stranger's house, took a
noisy baby out of its cot, and after tubbing it well (which I think
showed that the idiot possessed certain powers of observation), cut off
its head, throwing the offending member into the fire. The parents were
naturally indignant, and so were some of the inhabitants; but the affair
was speedily forgotten, and although the murderer was confined to a
lunatic asylum, nothing was done to rid the town of other idiots who
were, collectively, doing mischief of a nature far more serious than
that of the recently perpetrated murder.
The wild and rugged coast upon which the town is situated was formerly
the hunting-ground of wreckers, and I fear the present breed of
fishermen, in spite of their hypocritical pretensions to religion, prove
only too plainly by their abominable cruelty to birds and inhospitable
treatment of strangers, that they are in reality no better than their
forbears. This inherited strain of cruelty in the fishermen would alone
account for the presence of vampires and every other kind of vicious
elemental; but the town has still another attraction--namely, a
prehistoric burial-ground, on a wide expanse of thinly populated
moorland--in its rear.
_À propos_ of vampires, my friend Mrs South writes to me as follows (I
quote her letter _ad verbum_): "The other night, I was dining with a
very old friend of mine whom I had not seen for years, and, during a
pause in the conversation, he suddenly said, 'Do you believe in
vampires?' I wondered for a moment if he had gone mad, and I think, in
my matter-of-fact way, I blurted out something of the sort; but I saw in
a moment, from the expression in his eyes, that he had something to
tell me, and that he was not at all in the mood to be laughed at or
misunderstood, 'Tell me,' I said, 'I am listening.' 'Well,' he replied,
'I had an extraordinary experience a few months ago, and not a word of
it have I breathed to any living soul. But sometimes the horror of it so
overpowers me that I feel I must share my secret with someone; and
you--well, you and I have always been such pals.' I answered nothing,
but gently pressed his hand.
"After lighting a cigarette, he commenced his story, which I will give
you as nearly as possible in his own words:--
"'It is about six months ago since I returned from my travels. Up to
that time I had been away from England for nearly three years, as you
know. About a couple of nights after my return, I was dining at my Club,
when someone tapped me on the shoulder, and turning round, I saw my old
friend S----.
"'As I had no idea he was in London, you may imagine my delight. He
joined me at dinner and we went over old times together. He asked me if
I had heard anything of our mutual friend G----, to whom we were both
very much attached. I said I had had a few lines from him about six
months previously, announcing his marriage, but that I had never heard
from him nor seen him since. He had settled, I believe, in the heart of
the country. S---- then told me that he had not seen G---- since his
engagement, neither had he heard from him; in fact he had written to him
once or twice, but his letters had received no answer. There were
whispered rumours that he was looking ill and unhappy. Hearing this, I
got G----'s address from S----, and made up my mind I would run down and
see him as soon as I could get away from town.
"'About a week afterwards I found myself, after driving an interminable
distance, so it seemed to me, through Devonshire lanes, stopping outside
a beautiful house which appeared to be entirely isolated from any other
dwelling.
"'A few more minutes and I was standing before a blazing log fire in a
fine old hall, eagerly awaiting the welcome I knew my old friend would
give me. I did not anticipate long; in less time than it takes to tell
G---- appeared, and with slow, painfully slow steps, crossed the hall to
greet me. He was wasted to a shadow, and I felt a lump rise in my throat
as I thought of the splendid, athletic boy I used to know. He made no
excuse for his wife, who did not accompany him; and though I was
naturally anxious to see her, I was glad that Jack and I were alone. We
chatted together utterly regardless of the time, and it was not until
the first gong had sounded that I thought of dressing for dinner. After
performing a somewhat hurried toilette, I was hastening downstairs, when
I suddenly became conscious that I was being watched. I looked all round
and could see no one. I then heard a low, musical laugh just above my
head, and looking up, I saw a figure leaning over the banisters. The
beauty of the face dazzled me for a moment, and the loveliness of the
eyes, which looked into mine and seemed to shine a red gold, held me
spellbound. Presently a voice, every whit as lovely as the face, said:
"So you are Jack's chum?" The most beautiful woman I have ever seen then
came slowly down the stairs, and slipping her arm through mine, led me
to the dining-room. As her hand rested on my coat-sleeve, I remember
noticing that the fingers were long, and thin, and pointed, and the
nails so polished that they almost shone red. Indeed, I could not help
feeling somewhat puzzled by the fact that everything about her shone red
with the exception of her skin, which, with an equal brilliancy, shone
white. At dinner she was lively, but she ate and drank very sparingly,
and as though food was loathsome to her.
"'Soon after dinner I felt so exceedingly tired and sleepy, a most
unusual thing for me, that I found it absolutely impossible to keep
awake, and consequently asked my host and hostess to excuse me. I woke
next morning feeling languid and giddy, and, while shaving, I noticed a
curious red mark at the base of my neck. I imagined I must have cut
myself shaving hurriedly the evening before, and thought nothing more
about it.
"'The following night, after dinner, I experienced the same sensation of
sleepiness, and felt almost as if I had been drugged. It was impossible
for me to keep awake, so I again asked to be excused! On this occasion,
after I had retired, a curious thing happened. I dreamed--or at least I
suppose I dreamed--that I saw my door slowly open, and the figure of a
woman carrying a candle in one hand, and with the other carefully
shading the flame, glide noiselessly into my room. She was clad in a
loose red gown, and a great rope of hair hung over one shoulder. Again
those red-gold eyes looked into mine; again I heard that low musical
laugh; and this time I felt powerless either to speak or to move. She
leaned down, nearer and nearer to me; her eyes gradually assumed a
fiendish and terrible expression; and with a sucking noise, which was
horrible to hear, she fastened her crimson lips to the little wound in
my neck. I remembered nothing more until the morning. The place on my
neck, I thought, looked more inflamed, and as I looked at it, my dream
came vividly back to me and I began to wonder if after all it was only a
dream. I felt frightfully rotten, so rotten that I decided to return to
town that day; and yet I yielded to some strange fascination, and
determined, after all, to stay another night. At dinner I drank
sparingly; and, making the same excuse as on the previous nights, I
retired to bed at an early hour. I lay awake until midnight, waiting for
I know not what; and was just thinking what a mad fool I was, when
suddenly the door gently opened and again I saw Jack's wife. Slowly she
came towards me, gliding as stealthily and noiselessly as a snake. I
waited until she leaned over me, until I felt her breath on my cheek,
and then--then flung my arms round her. I had just time to see the mad
terror in her eyes as she realised I was awake, and the next instant,
like an eel, she had slipped from my grasp, and was gone. I never saw
her again. I left early the next morning, and I shall never forget dear
old Jack's face when I said good-bye to him. It is only a few days since
I heard of his death.'"
_Were-wolves_
Closely allied to the vampire is the were-wolf, which, however, instead
of devouring the intellect of human beings, feeds only on their flesh.
Like the vampire, the were-wolf belongs to the order of elementals; but,
unlike the vampire, it is confined to a very limited sphere--the wilds
of Norway, Sweden, and Russia, and only appears in two guises, that of a
human being in the daytime and a wolf at night. I have closely
questioned many people who have travelled in those regions, but very few
of them--one or two at the most--have actually come in contact with
those to whom the existence of the were-wolf is not a fable but a fact.
One of these travellers, a mere acquaintance whom I met in an hotel in
the Latin Quarter of Paris, assured me that the authenticity of a story
he would tell me, relating to the were-wolf, was, in the neighbourhood
through which he travelled, never for a single moment doubted.
My informant, a highly cultured Russian, spoke English, French, German,
and Italian with as great fluency as I spoke my native tongue, and I
believed him to be perfectly genuine. The incident he told me, to which
unanimous belief was accredited, happened to two young men (whom I will
call Hans and Carl), who were travelling to Nijni Novgorod, a city in
the province of Tobolsk. The route they took was off the beaten track,
and led them through a singularly wild and desolate tract of country.
One evening, when they were trotting mechanically along, their horses
suddenly came to a standstill and appeared to be very much frightened.
They inquired of the driver the reason of such strange behaviour, and he
pointed with his whip to a spot on the ice--they were then crossing a
frozen lake--a few feet ahead of them. They got out of the sleigh, and,
approaching the spot indicated, found the body of a peasant lying on his
back, his throat gnawed away and all his entrails gone. "A wolf without
a doubt," they said, and getting back into the sleigh, they drove on,
taking good care to see that their rifles were ready for instant action.
They had barely gone a mile when the horses again halted, and a second
corpse was discovered, the corpse of a child with its face and thighs
entirely eaten away. Again they drove on, and had progressed a few more
miles when the horses stopped so abruptly that the driver was pitched
bodily out; and before Carl and Hans could dismount, the brutes started
off at a wild gallop. They were eventually got under control, but it was
with the greatest difficulty that they were forced to turn round and go
back, in order to pick up the unfortunate driver. The farther they went,
the more restless they became, and when, at length, they approached the
place where the driver had been thrown, they came to a sudden and
resolute standstill. As no amount of whipping would now make them go on,
Hans got out, and advancing a few steps, espied something lying across
the track some little distance ahead of them. Gun in hand, he advanced
a few more steps, when he suddenly stopped. To his utter amazement he
saw, bending over a body, which he at once identified as that of their
driver, the figure of a woman. She started as he approached, and,
hastily springing up, turned towards him. The strange beauty of her
face, her long, lithe limbs (she stood fully six feet high) and slender
body,--the beauty of the latter enhanced by the white woollen costume in
which she was clad,--had an extraordinary effect upon Hans. Her shining
masses of golden hair, that curled in thick clusters over her forehead
and about her ears; the perfect regularity of her features, and the
lustrous blue of her eyes, enraptured him; whilst the expression both in
her face and figure--in her sparkling eyes and firmly modelled mouth; in
her red lips, and even in her pearly teeth, repulsed and almost
frightened him. He gazed steadily at her, and, as he did so, the hold on
his rifle involuntarily tightened. He then glanced from her face to her
hands, and noticed with a spasm of horror that the tips of her long and
beautifully shaped nails were dripping with blood, and that there was
blood, too, on her knees and feet, blood all over her. He then looked at
the driver and saw the wretched man's clothes had been partially
stripped off, and that there were great gory holes in his throat and
abdomen.
"Oh, I am so glad you have come!" the woman cried, addressing him in a
strangely peculiar voice, that thrilled him to the marrow of his bones.
"It is the wolves. Do come and see what they have done. I saw them, from
a distance, attack this poor man, and leaving my sleigh, for my horses
came to a dead halt, and nothing I could do would induce them to move, I
ran to his assistance. But, alas! I was too late!" Then, looking at her
dress, from which Hans could scarcely remove his eyes, she cried out:
"Ugh! How disgusting--blood! My hands and clothes are covered with it. I
tried to stop the bleeding, but it was no use"; and she proceeded to
wipe her fingers on the snow.
"But why did you venture here alone?" Hans inquired, "and why unarmed?
How foolhardy! The wolves would have made short work of you had you
encountered them!"
"Then you cannot have heard the report of my gun!" the woman cried, in
well-feigned astonishment. "How strange! I fired at the wolves from over
there"; and she pointed with one of her slender, milky-white fingers to
a spot on the ice some fifty yards away. "Fortunately, they all made
off," she continued, "and I hastened hither, dropping my gun that I
might run the faster."
"I can see no gun," Hans exclaimed, shading his eyes with his hand and
staring hard.
The woman laughed. "What a disbelieving Jew it is!" she said. "The gun
is there; I can see it plainly. You must be short-sighted." And then,
straining her eyes on the far distance, she shrieked: "Great Heavens! My
sleigh has gone! Oh! what shall I do? What shall I do?"
Giving way to every gesture of despair, she looked so forlorn and
beautiful that Hans would have been full of pity for her, had not
certain vague suspicions, which he could neither account for nor
overcome, entered his heart. Sorely perplexed, he did not know what to
do, and stood looking at her in critical silence.
"Won't you come with me?" she said, clasping her hands beseechingly.
"Come with me to look for it. The horses may only have strayed a short
distance, and we might overtake them without much difficulty."
As she spoke thus, her piercing, earnest gaze thrilled him to the very
soul, and his heart rose in rebellion against his reason. He had seen
many fair women, but assuredly none as fair as this one. What eyes! What
hair! What a complexion! What limbs! It seemed to him that she was not
like ordinary women, that she was not of the same flesh and blood as any
of the women he had ever met, and that she was in reality something far
superior; something generated by the primitive glamour of the starry
night, of the great, sparkling, ice-covered lake, and the lone,
snow-capped peaks beyond. And all the while he was thinking thus, and
unconsciously coming under the spell of her weird beauty, the woman
continued to gaze entreatingly at him from under the long lashes which
swept her cheeks. At last he could refuse her no longer--he would have
gone to hell with her had she asked it--and shouting to Carl to remain
where he was, he bade her lead the way. Setting off with long, quick
strides that made Hans wonder anew, she soon put a considerable distance
between herself and companion, and Carl. Hans now perceived a change;
the sky grew dark, the clouds heavy, and the farther they went, the more
perceptible this change became. The brightness and sense of joy in the
air vanished, and, with its dissipation, came a chill and melancholy
wind that rose from the bosom of the lake and swept all around them,
moaning and sighing like a legion of lost souls.
But Hans, who came of a military stock, feared little, and, with his
beautiful guide beside him, would cheerfully have faced a thousand
devils. He had no eyes for anything save her, no thought of anything but
her, and when she sidled up to him, playfully fingering his gun, he
allowed her to take it from him and do what she liked with it. Indeed,
he was so absorbed in the contemplation of her marvellous beauty, that
he did not perceive her deftly unload his rifle and throw it from her on
the ice; nor did he take any other notice than to think it a very
pretty, playful trick when she laughingly caught his two hands, and
bound them securely together behind his back. He was still drinking in
the wondrous beauty of her eyes, when she suddenly slipped one of her
pretty, shapely feet between his, and with a quick, subtle movement,
tripped him and threw him to the ground. There was a dull crash, and,
amid the hundred and one sounds that echoed and re-echoed through his
head as it came in contact with the ice, he seemed to hear the far-off
patter of horses' hoofs. Then something deliciously soft and cool
touched his throat, and opening his eyes, he found his beautiful
companion bending over him and undoing the folds of his woollen
neckerchief with her shapely fingers. For such an experience he would
fall and faint till further orders. He sought her eyes, and all but
fainted again--the expression in them appalled him. They were no longer
those of a woman but a devil, a horrible, sordid devil that hungered not
merely for his soul, but for his flesh and blood. Then, in a second, he
understood it all--she was a were-wolf, one of those ghastly creatures
he had hitherto scoffingly attributed to the idle superstitions of the
peasants. It was she who had mutilated the bodies they had passed on the
road; it was she who had killed and half-eaten their driver; it was
she--but he could think no more, it was all too horrible, and the
revulsion of his feelings towards her clogged his brain. He longed to
grapple with her, strangle her, and he could do nothing. The bare touch
of those fingers--those cool, white, tapering fingers, with their long,
shining filbert nails, all ready and eager to tear and rend his flesh to
pieces--had taken all the life from his limbs, and he could only gaze
feebly at her and damn her from the very bottom of his soul. One by one,
more swiftly now, she unfastened the buttons of his coat and vest and
then, baring her cruel teeth with a soft gurgle of excitement, and a
smack of her red glistening lips, she prepared to eat him. Strangely
enough, he experienced no pain as her nails sank into the flesh of his
throat and chest and clawed it asunder. He was numb, numb with the
numbness produced by hypnotism or paralysis--only some of his faculties
were awake, vividly, startlingly awake. He was abruptly roused from this
state by the dull crack of a rifle, and an agonising, blood-curdling
scream, after which he knew no more till he found himself sitting
upright on the ice, gulping down brandy, his throat a mass of bandages,
and Carl kneeling beside him.
"Where is she?" he asked, and Carl pointed to an object on the ice. It
was the body of a huge white wolf, with half its head blown away.
"An explosive bullet," Carl said grimly. "I thought I would make certain
of the beast, even at the risk of hurting you; and, mein Gott! it was a
near shave! You have lost some of your hair, but nothing more. When I
saw you go away with the woman, I guessed something was up. I did not
like the look of her at all; she was a giantess, taller than any woman I
have ever seen; and the way she had you in tow made me decidedly
uncomfortable. Consequently, I followed you at a distance, and when I
saw her trip you, I lashed up our horses and came to your rescue as fast
as I could. Unfortunately, I had to dismount when I was still some
distance off, as no amount of lashing would induce the horses to
approach you nearer, and after arriving within range, it took me some
seconds to get my rifle ready and select the best position for a shot.
But, thank God! I was just in time, and, beyond a few scratches, you are
all right. Shall we leave the beast here or take it with us?"
"We will do neither," Hans said, with a shudder, whilst a new and sad
expression stole into his eyes. "I cannot forget it was once a woman!
and, my God! what a woman! We will bury her here in the ice."
The story here terminated, and from the fact that I have heard other
stories of a similar nature, I am led to believe that there is in this
one some substratum of truth. Were-wolves are not, of course, always
prepossessing; they vary considerably. Moreover, they are not restricted
to one sex, but are just as likely to be met with in the guise of boys
and men as of girls and women.
_Fox-women_
Very different from this were-wolf, though also belonging to the great
family of elementals, are the fox-women of Japan and China, about which
much has been written, but about which, apparently, very little is
known.
In China the fox was (and in remote parts still is) believed to attain
the age of eight hundred or a thousand years. At fifty it can assume the
form of a woman, and at one hundred that of a young and lovely girl,
called Kao-Sai, or "Our Lady." On reaching the thousand years' limit, it
goes to Paradise without physical dissolution. I have questioned many
Chinese concerning these fox-women, but have never been able to get any
very definite information. One Chinaman, however, assured me that his
brother had actually seen the transmigration from fox to woman take
place. The man's name I have forgotten, but I will call him Ching Kang.
Well, Ching Kang was one day threading his way through a lovely valley
of the Tapa-ling mountains, when he came upon a silver (_i.e._ white)
fox crouching on the bank of a stream in such a peculiar attitude that
Ching Kang's attention was at once arrested. Thinking that the animal
was ill, and delighted at the prospect of lending it aid, for silver
foxes are regarded as of good omen in China, Ching Kang approached it,
and was about to examine it carefully, when to his astonishment he found
he could not move--he was hypnotised. But although his limbs were
paralysed, his faculties were wonderfully active, and his heart almost
ceased beating when he saw the fox slowly begin to get bigger and
bigger, until at last its head was on a level with his own. There was
then a loud crash, its skin burst asunder, and there stepped out of it
the form of a girl of such entrancing beauty that Ching Kang thought he
must be in Heaven. She was fairer than most Chinese women; her eyes were
blue instead of brown, and her shapely hands and feet were of milky
whiteness. She was gaily dressed in blue silk, with earrings and
bracelets of blue stone, and carried in one of her hands a blue fan.
With a wave of her slender palms she released Ching Kang from his spell,
and, bidding him follow her, plunged into a thick clump of bushes. Madly
infatuated, Ching Kang needed no second bidding, but, keeping close to
her heels, stolidly pushed his way through barricades of brambles that,
whilst yielding to her touch, closed on him and beat him on the face and
body so unmercifully that in a very short time he was barely
recognisable, being literally bathed in blood. However, despite his
wounds increasing and multiplying with every step he took, and naturally
causing him the most excruciating agony, Ching Kang never, for one
instant, thought of turning back; he always kept within touching
distance of the blue form in front of him. But at last human nature
could stand it no longer; his strength gave way, and as with a mad
shriek of despair he implored her to stop, his senses left him and he
fell in a heap to the ground. When he recovered he was lying alone,
quite alone in the middle of the road, exactly opposite the spot where
he had first seen the fox, and by his side was a fan, a blue fan.
Picking it up sadly, he placed it near his heart (where it remained to
the very day of his death), and with one last lingering look at the bank
of the stream, he continued his solitary journey.
This was Ching Kang's story. His brother did not think he ever met the
fox-woman again. He believed Ching Kang was still searching for her when
he died.