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GHOSTS I HAVE SEEN
AND OTHER PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES
BY
VIOLET TWEEDALE
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1919, by_
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I "SILK DRESS" AND "RUMPUS" 1
II THE GHOST OF BROUGHTON HALL 14
III CURIOUS PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES 33
IV EAST END DAYS AND NIGHTS 48
V THE MAN IN THE MARYLEBONE ROAD 66
VI THE GHOST OF PRINCE CHARLIE 74
VII PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS 91
VIII SOME STRANGE EVENTS 98
IX POMPEY AND THE DUCHESS 114
X THE INVISIBLE HANDS 124
XI DAWNS 133
XII PEACOCK'S FEATHERS--THE SKELETON HAND AT MONTE CARLO 146
XIII I COMMIT MURDER 157
XIV THE ANGEL OF LOURDES 175
XV THE WRAITH OF THE ARMY GENTLEMAN 184
XVI AN AUSTRIAN ADVENTURE 197
XVII ACROSS THE THRESHOLD 211
XVIII HAUNTED ROOMS 221
XIX "THE NEW JEANNE D'ARC" 241
XX HAUNTED HOUSES--"CASTEL A MARE" 251
XXI THE SEQUEL 263
XXII THE HAUNTED LODGE 276
XXIII AURAS 291
XXIV ADIEU 307
GHOSTS I HAVE SEEN
CHAPTER I
"SILK DRESS" AND "RUMPUS"
From the terrible conditions of the present I have turned back to the
past, for a little joy and a great deliverance.
In the present one lives no longer from day to day, but from hour to
hour, and even a fleeting memory of the joys that are no more refreshes
the soul--wearied, and fainting with a pallid anxiety that wraith-like
envelops the whole being in a thrall of sadness.
To-day I heard music which I had known and loved in the happy, careless
long ago, and whilst I was lost in a dream of half-forgotten bliss I
smelt the fragrance of mimosa flower. I cannot describe the sensations
of joy that thrilled through my whole being. An involuntary moving of
the spirit, an emergence into a dream world, described by the Greeks as
"ecstasy." The music fashioned the invisible link, and I was back again
on a hillside where the mimosa grew in native abundance. Now, one thinks
of France only as a hideous battle plain, but memory, the true
dispensator of time, is never bound by years. She keeps ever fresh, in
glowing colors, those ideal moments that gather up the utter joys of
life into one divine sheaf of memory.
It is not only for its great uses that we must have memory, but for its
joys. It rends the gray veil shrouding present existence, and shows us
life as what it really is. A phantasmagoria of wonder, wrapped in
mystery.
The day of miracles is not past, it never will be past, but if you want
miracles you must have the power of seeing them.
I have written in this book of the miracles I have seen. Some of them
any one can see, others are reserved for the delectation of the few.
I have written of strange visitants from other realms, and of that vivid
illumination which at moments lays bare the hidden springs of life, when
the spirit emerges beyond the limit of human thought, and familiar
things, beyond the horizon of life, and touches a sphere beyond
immortality. It is a condition that the grave has nothing to do with, a
beholding beyond the frontiers of the soul.
I have written of the spiritual life, for without this spiritual life a
palace would be no wider than a tomb. The vastness of the spirit world
defies description. It can choose its own pathways, and any one of these
long, long roads leading to the great mysteries.
It is now almost universally acknowledged that psychic experiences, of a
specific nature, occur at certain times to certain people, that are not
explicable by any known science. Generally, they are experiences which
point to the continuity of the human consciousness with a wider
spiritual environment, from which the normal man is shut off.
A few such experiences that have come to me I record.
I hope that I have never tried to convince others of the truth of these
experiences. If I have done so it has been unconsciously done. I am
absolutely persuaded that such phenomena can only become convincing when
personally experienced. Such matters ought not to be accepted on
hearsay. It is mere folly for one woman to attempt to demonstrate to
another the existence of the human soul. The most that A can communicate
to B, of any part of her own experiences, is so much of it as is common
to the experiences of both.
I have proved conclusively to my own consciousness that I am linked up
with a wider consciousness from which, at times, such experiences flow
in.
I know my soul to be in touch with a greater soul, which at moments
enters into communication with me, and opens out a vastness which it is
impossible to translate into words, and which annihilates space and
time.
I have had my vision, and I know. Therefore I am quite unmoved by
criticism or ridicule.
I believe that what has come to me will come to all, and there is no
need to hurry the process. We are simply a tiny part of a whole, which
has neither beginning nor end. We live in a universe which is infinite
in time and space, which has always existed in some form, and will go on
in some form for ever. The discovery of the law of the indestructibility
of matter has proved this beyond a doubt.
At some second in time our Universe will be dissolved into new systems,
for the life of a solar system lasts only a second in eternity, but that
need not worry us yet. There is lots of time for man to realize his
soul, and all will doubtless do so at some moment in their many earth
lives.
The classic idea is that the Golden Age lies in the past, but the Stoic
doctrine of recurring cycles in the ages of the world seems to suggest
that the Golden Age may return.
There are people to-day who ask, "Is this the end of the world?"
More probably it is the end of an age. The harvest may be ripe for the
sickle to be thrust in. The opposition of good and evil may have reached
their fullest manifestation. It may be the hour in eternity for a
complete readjustment of the little ant-hills we call great nations.
We know the rise and fall of nations to be an historical fact,
apparently based on an immutable law. This recurring phenomenon cannot
be explained, though there are theories. Possibly the true one may be
found in the failure or compliance to respond to the challenge: "Advance
to a higher spiritual plane or perish." It may be that the right of
continuance depends upon the answer to that challenge.
What brought about the decline of those mighty civilizations whose
monuments of antiquity seem to mock our pride? What insidious disease
brought about the fall of Rome? The beauty and inspiration of Greece was
arrested by some swift decay, and the giant temples and Pyramids of
Egypt, and the Mounds of Mesopotamia, testify to a grandeur far
surpassing ours.
In the world's morning time, before the mists began to clear, we can
trace the rise and fall of a score of mighty Empires. From out their
present tombs of tragic silence arise figures, colossal sculptured
figures, with faces and forms of commanding power. Assyrians, a mighty
race, leaving behind whole libraries of record, chiseled upon
indestructible pages. The lost arts of three thousand years ago.
Earlier still the earth resounded to the thunder of Xenophon's
thousands, and the chariots of Persia sweeping after them. Lying deeper
still in the shroud of antiquity the Pharaohs emerge as mighty
conquerors, and we can dimly discern in the Empire of the Chaldeans the
movement of a gorgeous civilization, and the majestic figures of men
versed in mystic, and, to us, unknown lore. In Italy, memorials of a
refined people, who were precursors of Roman power, have been found,
forms of perfect grace in delicate vases and coins of gold and silver.
The old Etruscan art is traced back to the Assyrians' sculpture. The
snowy crown of ancient Greece budded and bloomed in the mighty halls of
Assyria's splendor, hundreds of years before Christ. No phantom world
could furnish a mightier or more resplendent host.
Reading of those proud and mighty civilizations brings the simple life
of the Nazarene very near to us in years, it also shows us how quickly
great splendors are sanded over by the hands of time. The British Museum
holds the sculptured records of twenty-five hundred years. Whilst the
flames, kindled by the mob of Christian monks, from the great
Alexandrian library rose to Heaven, the temple fronts of the Pharaohs,
the Pyramids, the Sphinx, loomed out of the conflagration. The impotent
torches of the fanatics were powerless against such imperishable
records. What of our records? Will these ancient civilizations be
remembered when the fame of modern nations has vanished utterly? Which
has the best chance of enduring in the future? The paper and pasteboard
of to-day, or the monuments of stone, to which the Monarchs of bygone
Empires entrusted the history of their unsurpassed grandeur?
"If thou hadst known in this thy day, even thou, the things which belong
to thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes."
This is the epitaph written across the tombs of all nations now
crumbling into dust.
"The things which belong to thy peace." The things which never die or
fade, whose continuity is never broken, the Divine seeds that cannot
perish, the things which are immortal. The winged soul in its aeon-long
pilgrimages through eternity to home.
I find it easy to write to-day upon psychic subjects, for everywhere I
discern the dawn of what Conan Doyle, in his deeply interesting book,
calls "The new revelation."
To one who, for the last forty years, has been immersed in all branches
of occult research, the change of view that has come over the world in
four years is very remarkable. Every one is now interested in the human
soul, and all that appertains to it. The speeding up in the number of
psychic experiences coming to light is enormous. So often now I come
across "the last man in the world to see or hear anything" who has just
been accorded a startling experience, and the rank skeptic is becoming a
thing of the past.
Whilst sitting in solitude it is interesting to let one's thoughts slip
back to childhood, and trace the present life in the mirror of the old.
I discover that in the immediate now there is nothing new, but only that
which has its symbol in the old. I seem to get only the much clearer
vision of what once was vague and cloudy, or wholly unconsidered by the
mind of youth.
In that garden of memory I can set old happenings in a new light, and
measure my slow footprints in the age-long journey behind me. Two facts
emerge from out such musings. Firstly, the journey of my soul takes a
spiral path, which at intervals brings me face to face with the old
things that I have learned to modernize by dressing in fresh thought
forms, as new perceptions are won. Perceptions prophetic of the greater
capacity for attainment when the Divine Power is permitted to unfold
itself without let or hindrance.
Secondly, the further on the soul journeys the more solitary the road
becomes. One by one the old companion pilgrims drop away. Perhaps it is
that on that long, lone trail the traveler must be free.
Very early in my life came the consciousness that everywhere about me,
in the infinitely above, in the infinitely below, permeating heart, mind
and soul, is life--endless, eternal.
On this shoreless ocean of existence, without form or name, the soul is
afloat. Birth and death are the tides, the ebb and flow of the ocean of
life. The human soul is but a ripple on the sea of existence, and
phenomenal life is but a flash in the eternity of eternities. All the
teeming lives of effort around us, all the travail and suffering to
which humanity is destined, are ordained for the great purpose of soul
evolution. God sets the balance at every grave. That which distinguishes
every man is the vast dower of our nature, eventually the same to all,
the passing incidents of station, fortune, talent, are mere surface
varieties.
I find in my mind the existence of something illimitably beyond mind,
doubtless a common experience. I do not know what that something is, but
it is very real, and it invariably shows me how cribbed, cabined and
confined this life really is. I cannot even tell what it is that
confines me. I only know that there is a limitless world full of
infinite possibilities all around me. I seem always to have known this,
but I cannot grasp it. True, at rare intervals, I catch a glimpse
through a rift in the clouds, then they close again.
At such moments I experience an ecstasy of heart sweet happiness, so
marvelously sweet, so pure, so near Divine with its deep wordless
thoughts of infinite beauty. Such regions are not so much impenetrable
as ineffable. They are glimpses gained at some great altitude, from
which I can look down on the mortal pageant and behold mysteries in
which I take no part, but by which I am encircled, as an island, by
infinity. Such are luminous and splendid moments, when the soul beholds
the world in its real mystic beauty. It is the hour of transfiguration,
in which the veil drops from the heart and the film from the eyes, so
that we see life as God means it to be.
Often, as a mere child, when lying awake in those nights, whose
stillness have a quality of awe, the silence would be broken by weird,
barbaric songs which wafted a sense of old, wild adventurous life, and
in a curious quality of mystery I saw violet mountains sleeping in
sunlight, above a sea of amethyst. Childish visions, but sacred nights.
Very many years passed before I understood them.
On hot velvety nights in June a curious scent of smoke would come to me,
the measured hollow beating of bells, and a tremulous far-away piping.
Years after, I stood alone one evening on the slopes of Etna, amid the
pale asphodels and the desolation of tumbling lava fields, and I heard
the pipes of Pan, the reed pipe of the herd boy, and linked the past
with the present. Again, passing through a region where the smoke rose
from the charcoal burners' fires the scent of an ancient memory came
vaporing up, the unfamiliar scent that puzzled my childhood, and I was
away in a flash, to wait for the soul to free herself and return from
the world's edge.
I had to journey further east before I heard again at dawn the ring of
camel bells as a caravan broke camp, and then I understood the visions
of my youth, as I listened to the measured hollow beating, and watched a
strange medley of eastern traffic trail away across the desert.
Sometimes, when the nursery clock seemed to tick more loudly than usual,
I saw a gigantic water-wheel, and behind it massive rocks with the hewn
tombs of ancient kings, and beyond them lay distant glamorous mountains,
white sails creeping amid warm purple isles, set in a gulf of turquoise.
Sometimes I have dreamed holy things, and waked to find myself over-awed
by the sublimity of the vision and the glory of the Universe.
So many of those childish visions I have identified in later life, but
there is one which eludes me. It is a great white road leading to the
farther east, and I see it drenched in white sunlight. Tinkling mule
trains pass along it, and I know now it is in some way connected with
Ida that saw ancient Troy, and the Capital of Pontus, the seat of
Mithridates' Court, and the Empire of Trebizond. Some day, who knows, I
may walk upon it.
Looking back I can recollect nothing psychic happening to me before the
age of six. I can fix that date upon which I became actually aware of
the other world. It all happened through "Silk dress" and "Rumpus."
I slept in a bed in one corner, and my younger brother slept in another
corner. The room was large, and at the top of a modern, quite ordinary,
town house. Two flights of stairs ran down to the ground floor. "Silk
dress" was something we were extremely interested in, but I cannot
recollect that we were ever in the least afraid.
When we first became aware of "silk dress" I do not know, but in looking
back across those many years I think that in the beginning we must have
accepted "it" as something or somebody "real." Only after several
experiences did it dawn upon us that "it" was not real. By then we had
passed beyond the stage when we might have felt fear. After we had gone
to bed we were left quite alone in the dark, and the nurses went down to
supper. The younger children slept in another room. It was during such
periods of silence that "silk dress" began its ascent.
Just as we were dropping off to sleep one of us would murmur drowsily,
"Here comes silk dress." Then we lay quite still, very wide awake again
and listened intently.
From far down on the ground floor we heard footsteps quietly and
methodically ascending, and the rustle of a silk dress. We could hear
quite distinctly when "it" arrived at the first floor, which was
occupied by our parents, then "it" passed on to the next flight of
stairs leading to our floor.
The sound of footsteps and the rustle of the silk dress became more and
more clearly audible as "it" drew ever nearer. We could tell the second
at which "it" passed from the last step on to the corridor which led
past our half-open door. Then there was a thrilling moment or two, when
the tip-tap of shoes, and the swish of silk on the linoleum was quite
loud, but the footsteps never halted. They always swept past the
half-closed door, and went on into a small room beyond, which was used
for storing boxes. Then dead silence fell again.
In those days we never heard the word "ghost" mentioned, yet I cannot
recollect thinking of "silk dress" as anything but a visitor from the
other world. We talked of "it" freely in the household, but probably
because we expressed no fear, no one seemed in the least interested. On
wakeful nights we occupied ourselves in waiting for "it," and on wet
nights we could not hear "it" clearly because the rain pattered so
loudly on a large skylight outside our door. What interested us
enormously was the fact that we never heard "it" descend again. How "it"
got down in order to mount once more was a great puzzle.
"Rumpus" was quite another matter, quite another order of manifestation.
"Rumpus" always began when we were sound asleep, and "Rumpus" always
wide awakened us. "They" came at longer intervals, about every ten days,
whilst "it" came on most nights. During the summer mornings in the
North, when one could often read a book in the light of a one a. m.
dawn, "they" were very interesting, because when "their" hour, five a.
m., arrived the room was flooded with sunshine. In winter mornings, when
the room was in black darkness, we were merely bored, and cross at being
roused, and we simply lay still and endured "them" till they had quite
finished. But in the summer mornings we always sat up in bed and
intently watched something we never saw.
When "Rumpus" roused us brusquely from our slumbers it was by means of a
demoniac pandemonium. The room was in possession of "them," and "they"
crashed, and banged, and tossed about the furniture in the most reckless
fashion. Crash went the wardrobe, bang went one chair after another,
hurtling across the room. Crash went wardrobe back into its place again,
clang went the fire-irons. Rushing collisions, and rappings on the
window-panes, thuds on the floor, rattlings and clatterings of crockery,
jingling of brass, creakings and groanings of expostulation from the old
sofa, clanking of the fireguard, a veritable tornado of noise, enough
surely to awaken the dead, yet out of the living it only awakened--us.
No one else in the house ever heard it, and our vivid descriptions were,
perhaps, naturally attributed to nightmare.
We, of course, knew that it was nothing of the sort. We were, indeed,
very wide awake during the ten to fifteen minutes the pandemonium
continued, and our eyes were kept darting from side to side following
the track of the noises, as they grew in volume and intensity. Creak,
groan, crash! No mistaking the spot where that deafening sound came
from. That was the old mahogany wardrobe being hurled face downwards on
the floor, but whilst our eyes were riveted on its statuesque and utter
immobility jingle, clank, from the fender, where the fire-irons
commenced to jig. A wildly confused uproar over all the room, then boom,
thud, beneath us, and our beds shivered convulsively, and sent thrills
of wild excitement coursing through our nerves.
Suddenly the tumult would cease. The mystery lay in the fact that we
never saw anything move, though we distinctly heard everything moving,
and could feel our beds reel beneath us.
I have no explanations to offer of those happenings. They are very
clearly fixed in my objective memory, and when we were both grown up,
and had finally left that house my brother used often to say to me, "Do
you remember 'Silk Dress' and 'Rumpus'?"
Such recollections crowd back upon me now, with many other images of
childhood. No sooner do I recollect one than another emerges like a
shining cloud from below the horizon. Where have they been lying hidden
during all those flying years? They have dwelt deep down in the eternal
memory, the heart of God which beats in all humanity. Within that heart
are stored aeonic treasures. They lie ever in wait to be bidden arise and
cross the threshold.