CHAPTER IV

BULLS, COWS, PIGS, ETC.

From the Hebrides there comes to me a case of the phantasm of a black

bull, that, on certain nights in the year, is heard bellowing inside the

shed where it was killed.

There are many accounts of ghostly cows heard "mooing" in the moors and

bog-lands of Scotland and Ireland respectively, and not a few cases of

whole herds of phantom cattle seen, gliding along, one behind the other,

with silent, noiseless tread. Though I have never had the opportunity of

experimenting with cows to see if they are sensitive to the

superphysical, I see no reason why they should not be, and I feel quite

certain they will participate in "the future life."

Apropos of pigs, Mr. Dyer, in his _Ghost World_, says, "Another form of

spectre animal is the kirk-grim, which is believed to haunt many

churches. Sometimes it is a pig, sometimes a horse, the haunting spectre

being the spirit of an animal buried alive in the churchyard for the

purpose of scaring away the sacrilegious."

Mr. Dyer goes on to say that it was the custom of the old Christian

churches to bury a lamb under the altar; and that if anyone entered a

church out of service time and happened to see a little lamb spring

across the choir and vanish, it was a sure prognostication of the death

of some child; and if this apparition was seen by the grave-digger the

death would take place immediately. Mr. Dyer also tells us that the

Danish kirk-grim was thought to hide itself in the tower of a church in

preference to any other place, and that it was thought to protect the

sacred buildings. According to the same writer, in the streets of

Kroskjoberg, a grave sow, or, as it was called, a "gray-sow," was

frequently seen, and it was said to be the apparition of a sow formerly

buried alive; its appearance foretelling death or calamity.

_Phantasm of a Goat_

Mrs. Crowe, in her _Night Side of Nature_, relates one case of a house

near Philadelphia, U.S.A., that was haunted by a variety of phenomena,

among others that of a spectre resembling a goat.

"Other extraordinary things happened in the house," she writes, "which

had the reputation of being haunted, although the son had not believed

it, and had thereupon not mentioned the report to the father.

"One day the children said they had been running after 'such a queer

thing in the cellar; it was like a goat, and not like a goat, but it

seemed to be like a shadow.'"

This explanation does not appear to be very satisfactory, but as I have

heard of one or two other cases of premises being haunted by what,

undoubtedly, were the phantasms of goats, I think it highly probable it

was the ghost of a goat in this instance, too.

_The Phantom Pigs of the Chiltern Hills_

A good many years ago there was a story current of an extraordinary

haunting by a herd of pigs. The chief authority on the subject was a

farmer, who was an eye-witness of the phenomena. I will call him Mr. B.

Mr. B., as a boy, lived in a small house called the Moat Grange, which

was situated in a very lonely spot near four cross-roads, connecting

four towns.

The house, deriving its name from the fact that a moat surrounded it,

stood near the meeting point of the four roads, which was the site of a

gibbet, the bodies of the criminals being buried in the moat.

Well, the B----s had not been living long on the farm, before they were

awakened one night by hearing the most dreadful noises, partly human and

partly animal, seemingly proceeding from a neighbouring spinney, and on

going to a long front window overlooking the cross-roads, they saw a

number of spotted creatures like pigs, screaming, fighting and tearing

up the soil on the site of the criminals' cemetery.

The sight was so unexpected and alarming that the B----s were appalled,

and Mr. B. was about to strike a light on the tinder-box, when the most

diabolical white face was pressed against the outside of the window-pane

and stared in at them.

This was the climax, the children shrieked with terror, and Mrs. B.,

falling on her knees, began to pray, whereupon the face at the window

vanished, and the herd of pigs, ceasing their disturbance, tore

frantically down one of the high roads, and disappeared from view.

Similar phenomena were seen and heard so frequently afterwards, that the

B----s eventually had to leave the farm, and subsequent enquiries led

to their learning that the place had long borne the reputation of being

haunted, the ghosts being supposed to be the earth-bound spirits of the

executed criminals. Whether this was so or not must, of course, be a

matter of conjecture--the herd of hogs may well have been the phantasms

of actual earth-bound pigs--attracted to the spot by a sort of

fellow-feeling for the criminals, whose gross and carnal natures would

no doubt appeal to them.

A lane in Hertfordshire was--and, perhaps, still is--haunted by the

phantasm of a big white sow which had accidentally been run over and

killed. It was occasionally heard grunting, and had the unpleasant knack

of approaching one noiselessly from the rear, and of making the most

unearthly noise just behind one's back.

_Sheep_

Lambs and sheep, possessing finer natures than goats and pigs, would

appear to be less earth-bound, and, in all probability, only temporarily

haunt the spots that witnessed their usually barbarous ends.

Most slaughter-houses are haunted by them--as, indeed, by many other

animals. A Scottish moor long bore the reputation for being haunted by a

phantom flock of sheep, which were always heard "baaing" plaintively

before a big storm.

It was supposed they were the ghosts of a flock that had perished in

the memorable severe weather of Christmas, 1880. Here is a case that may

be regarded as typical of hauntings by sheep, presumably the earth-bound

spirits of sheep, overwhelmed in some great storm or unexpected

catastrophe.

"_The Spectre Flock of Sheep in Germany_"

"During the seven years' war in Germany," writes Mrs. Crowe, in her

_Night Side of Nature_, "a drover lost his life in a drunken squabble on

the high road.

"For some time there was a sort of rude tombstone, with a cross on it,

to mark the spot where his body was interred, but this has long fallen,

and a milestone now fills its place. Nevertheless, it continues to be

commonly asserted by the country people, and also by various travellers,

that they have been deluded on that spot by seeing, as they imagine,

herds of beasts, which on investigation prove to be merely visionary. Of

course, many people look upon this as a superstition; but a very regular

confirmation of the story occurred in the year 1826, when two gentlemen

and two ladies were passing the spot in a post-carriage. One of these

was a clergyman, and none of them had ever heard of the phenomenon said

to be attached to the place. They had been discussing the prospects of

the minister, who was on his way to a vicarage, to which he had just

been appointed, when they saw a large flock of sheep, which stretched

quite across the road, and was accompanied by a shepherd and a

long-haired black dog. As to meet cattle on that road was nothing

uncommon, and indeed they had met several droves in the course of one

day, no remark was made at the moment, till suddenly each looked at the

other, and said, 'What's become of the sheep?' Quite perplexed at their

sudden disappearance, they called to the postilion to stop, and all got

out, in order to mount the little elevation and look around, but still

unable to discover them, they now bethought themselves of asking the

postilion where they were; when, to their infinite surprise, they

learned that he had not seen them. Upon this, they bade him quicken his

pace, that they might overtake a carriage that had passed them shortly

before, and enquire if that party had seen the sheep; but they had not.

"Four years later a postmaster, named J., was on the same road, driving

a carriage, in which were a clergyman and his wife, when he saw a large

flock of sheep near the same spot. Seeing they were very fine wethers,

and supposing them to have been bought at a sheep-fair that was then

taking place a few miles off, J. drew up his reins and stopped his

horses, turning at the same time to the clergyman to say that he wanted

to enquire the price of the sheep, as he intended going next day to the

fair himself. Whilst the minister was asking him what sheep he meant, J.

got down and found himself in the midst of the animals, the size and

beauty of which astonished him. They passed him at an unusual rate,

whilst he made his way through them to find the shepherd; when, on

getting to the end of the flock, they suddenly disappeared. He then

first learnt that his fellow-travellers had not seen them at all."

So writes Mrs. Crowe, and I quote the case in support of my argument

that sheep, like horses, cats, dogs and all other kinds of animals,

possess spirits, and consequently have a future state of existence.

I have not yet experimented with sheep, goats, or pigs, but I do not

doubt but that they are more or less sensitive to superphysical

influences, and possess the psychic faculty of scenting the

Unknown--though not, perhaps, in so great a degree as any of the other

animals I have enumerated.

PART II

WILD ANIMALS AND THE UNKNOWN

CHAPTER V

WILD ANIMALS AND THE UNKNOWN

_Apes_

The following case of animal hauntings was recorded in automatic

writing:--

"I sank wearily into my easy chair before the fire, which burned with a

fitful and sullen glow in the tiny grate of my one room--bare and

desolate as only the room of an unsuccessful author can be.

"My condition was pitiable. For the past twelve months I had not earned

a cent, and of my small capital there now remained but two pounds to

ward the hound of starvation from my door. In the moonlight I could

perceive all the bareness of the apartment. Would to God Fancy would

ride to me on this moonbeam and give me inspiration! 'Twas indeed

weird--this silver ethereal path connecting the moon with the earth, and

the more I gazed along it, the more I wished to leave my body and escape

to the star-lighted vaults. Certainly, from a conversation I had once

had with a member of the New Occult Society, I believed it possible by

concentrating all the mental activities in one channel, so to overcome

the barriers which prevent the soul visiting scenes of the ethereal

world, as to pass materialized to the spot upon which the ideas are

fixed. But although I had essayed--how many times I do not like to

confess--to gain that amount of concentration necessary for the

separation of the soul from the body, up to the present all my attempts

had been fruitless. Doubtless there had been a something--too minute

even for definition--that had interrupted my self-abstraction--a

something that had wrecked my venture, just when I felt it to be on the

verge of completion. And was it likely that now, when my ideas were

misty and vague, I should be more successful? I wanted to quit the cruel

bonds of nature and be free--free to roam and ramble. But where?

"At length, as I gazed into the moonlight, I lost all cognizance of the

objects around me, and my eyes became fixed on the mountains of the

moon, which I discovered, with a start, were no longer specks. I found,

to my amazement, I had left my body and was careering swiftly through

space--infinite space. The range opened up in front of me, spreading out

far and wide, winding, black and awful--their solemn grandeur lost in

that terrible desolation which makes the moon appear like a hideous

nightmare. I could see with amazing clearness the sides of the

mountains; there were enormous black fissures, some of them hundreds of

feet in width--and the more I gazed the more impressed I grew with the

silence. There was no life. There were no seas, no lakes, no trees, no

grass, no sighing nor moaning of the wind, nothing to remind me of the

earth I now found to my terror I had actually quitted. Everything around

me was black--the sky, the mountains, the vast pits, the dried-up mouths

of which gaped dismally.

"With the movements of a man in a fit, I essayed to hinder the finis of

my mad plunge. I waved my limbs violently, kicking out and shrieking in

the agonies of fear. I cursed and prayed, wept and laughed alternately,

did everything, yet nothing, that could save me from contact with the

lone desert so horribly close. Nearer and nearer I approached, until at

last my feet rested on the hard caked soil. For the first few minutes

after my arrival I was too overwhelmed with fear to do other than remain

stationary. The ground beneath my feet swarmed with myriads of foul and

long-legged insects, things with unwieldy pincers and protruding eyes;

things covered with scaly armour; hybrids of beetles and scorpions. I

have a distinct recollection of one huge-jointed centipede making a

vicious grab at my leg; he failed to make his teeth meet in anything

tangible, and emitting a venomous hiss disappeared in a circular pit.

"Whilst I was the victim of this insect's ferocity the horizon had

become darkened by the shadowy outline of an enormous apish form. I

wanted to run away, but could not, and was compelled, sorely against my

will, to witness its approach. Never shall I forget the agonies of doubt

I endured during its advance. No man in a tiger's den, nor deer tied to

a tree awaiting its destroyer, could have suffered more than I did then,

and my terror increased tenfold when I recognized in the

monster--Neppon--a young gorilla that had been under my charge and had

given me no end of trouble when I was head keeper in the Zoological

Gardens at Berne.

"I never hated anything so much as I had hated that baboon. At my hands

it had undergone a thousand subtle torments. I had pinched it, poked it,

pulled its hair, frightened it by putting on masks and making all sorts

of queer noises, and finally I had secretly poisoned it. And now we

stood face to face without any bars between us. Never shall I forget the

look of intense satisfaction in its hideous eyes, as its gaze

encountered mine.

"In that strange forlorn world we faced each other; I, the tyrant once,

now the quarry. In the wildness of its glee it capered about like a mad

thing, executing the most exaggerated antics that augmented my terror.

Every second I anticipated an assault, and the knowledge of my fears

lent additional fierceness to its gambols. A sudden change in my

attitude at length made it cease. The use had returned to my limbs; my

muscles were quivering, and before it could stop me I had fled! The

wildest of chases then ensued. I ran with a speed that would have shamed

a record-beater on earth. With extraordinary nimbleness I vaulted over

titanic boulders of rocks; jumped across dykes of infinite depth,

scurried like lightning over tracts of rough, lacerating ground, and

never for one instant felt like flagging.

"Suddenly, to my horror, I came to an abrupt standstill, and the cry of

some hunted animal burst from my lips. Unwittingly I had run against a

huge wall of granite, and escape was now impossible. Again and again I

clawed the hard rock, until the skin hung in shreds from my fingers, and

the blood pattered on the dark soil, that in all probability had never

tasted moisture before. All this amused my pursuer vastly; it watched

with the leisure of one who knows its fish will be landed in safety, and

there suddenly came to me, through my olfactory nerves, a knowledge that

it was speaking to me in the language of scents--the language I never

understood till now was the language of all animals.

"'Reach, a little higher,' it said; 'there are niches up there, and you

must stretch your limbs. Ha! ha! Do you remember how you used to make me

stretch mine? You do! Well, you needn't shiver. Explain to me how it is

I find you here.'

"'I cannot comprehend,' I gasped with a gesticulation that was

grotesque.

"The great beast laughed in my face. 'How so?' it queried. 'You used to

quibble me upon my dull wits; must I now return the compliment? Ha!

There's blood on your hands. Blood! I will lick it up.' And with a

mocking grin it advanced.

"'Keep off! Keep off!' I shouted. 'My God, will this dream never cease?'

"'The dream, as you call it,' the gorilla jeered, 'has only just begun;

the climax of your horrors has yet to come. If you cannot tell me the

purport of your visit I will tell you mine. Can your lordship spare the

time to listen?'

"I gave no answer. I clutched the wall and uttered incoherent cries like

some frightened madman.

"The gorilla felt the muscles in its hairy fingers, and showed its huge

teeth. I looked eagerly at my enemy.

"'Come, you haven't yet guessed my riddle; you are dull to-night,' it

said lightly. 'That old wine of yours made you sleep too soundly. Don't

let me disturb you. I will explain. This moon is now my home--I share it

with the spirits of all the animals and insects that were once on your

earth. And now that we are free from such as you--free to wander

anywhere we like without fear of being shot, or caught and caged--we are

happy. And what makes us still happier is the knowledge that the

majority of men and women will never have a joyous after-state like

ours. They will be earth-bound in that miserable world of theirs, and

compelled to keep to their old haunts, scaring to death with their ugly

faces all who have the misfortune to see them. There is another fate in

store for you, however. Do you know what it is?'

"It paused. No sound other than that occasioned by his bumping on the

soil broke the impressive hush.

"'Do you know?' it said again. 'Well, I will tell you. I'm going to kill

you right away, so that your spirit--it's all nonsense to talk about

souls, such as you have no soul--will be earth-bound here--here for

ever--and will be a perpetual source of amusement to all of us animal

ghosts.'

"It then began to jabber ferociously, and, crouching down, prepared to

spring.

"'For Heaven's sake,' I shrieked, 'for Heaven's sake.'

"But I might as well have appealed to the wind. It had no sense of

mercy.

"'He, he!' it screamed. 'What a joke--what a splendid joke. Your wit

never seems to degenerate, Hugesson! I'm wondering if you will be as

funny when you're a ghost. Get ready. I'm coming, coming,' and as the

sky deepened to an awe-inspiring black, and the stars grew larger,

brighter, fiercer; and the great lone deserts appealed to me with a

force unequalled before, it sprang through the air.

"A singing in my ears and a great bloody mist rose before my eyes. The

wailing and screeching of a million souls was borne in loud protracted

echoings through the drum of my ears. Men and women with evil faces rose

up from crag and boulder to spit and tear at me. I saw creatures of such

damning ugliness that my soul screamed aloud with terror. And then from

the mountain tops the bolt of heaven was let loose. Every spirit was

swept away like chaff before the burst of wind that, hurling and

shrieking, bore down upon me. I gave myself up for lost. I felt all the

agonies of suffocation, my lungs were torn from my palpitating body; my

legs wrenched round in their sockets; my feet whirled upwards in that

gust of devilish air. All--excruciating, damning pain--and _pro

tempore_--I knew no more."

* * * * *

N.B.--It was subsequently ascertained, by my friend the late Mr. Supton,

that a man named Hugesson, who had been for a short time head keeper at

the Zoological Gardens, had been found dead, in bed, by his landlady,

with a look on his face so awful that she had fled shrieking from the

room. The death was, of course, attributed to syncope, but my

friend--who, by the way, had never heard of Hugesson before he received

the foregoing account through the medium of planchette--told me, and I

agreed with him, that from similar cases that had come within his

experience, it was most probable that Hugesson had in reality projected

himself, and had perished in the manner described.

No more improbable than the above story is that sent me by my old school

friend Martin Tristram, who died last year.

I style it "The Case of Martin Tristram." It is reproduced from a

magazine published some three years ago.

After Martin Tristram once took up spiritualism his visits to me became

most erratic, and I not only never knew when to expect him, but I was

not always sure, when he did come, that it was he.

This sounds extraordinary--to see a man is assuredly to recognize him!

Not always--by no means always!

There are circumstances in which a man loses his identity, when his

"ego" is supplanted by another ego, when he ceases to be himself, and

assumes an individuality which is entirely different from himself.

This is undoubtedly the case in madness, imbecility, epilepsy, so-called

total loss of memory through cerebral injury, hypnotism, sometimes in

projection when the astral body gets detained, and also not infrequently

in investigating peculiar instances of psychic phenomena.

But if the astral body has been evicted from its carnal home, whither

has it gone? and what is the nature of the thing that has taken its

place?

Ah! These are indeed puzzles--puzzles I am devoting a lifetime to solve.

There have been moments when unseen hands have gradually begun to pull

aside the obscuring veil, when the identity of the usurping spirit has

seemed on the verge of being disclosed to me, and I have been about to

be initiated into the greatest and most zealously guarded of all

secrets.

There have been times, I say, when my occult researches have actually

brought me to this climax; but up to the present I have invariably been

disappointed--the curtain has suddenly fallen, the esoteric ego has

shrunk into its shell, and the mystery surrounding it has remained

impenetrable.

This is but one, albeit perhaps the most striking, of the many methods

through which the superphysical endeavours to get in immediate contact

with the physical.

I was unpleasantly reminded of it when Martin Tristram's carnal body

came to visit me one night several years ago. I was aware that it was

not Tristram. His mannerisms were the same, his voice had not altered;

but there was an expression in his eyes that told of a very different

spirit from Martin's dwelling within that body.

The night being cold, he closed the door carefully, and crossing the

room to where I sat by the fire, threw himself in an easy chair, and

gazed meditatively at me.

My rooms in Bloomsbury were not lonely. They had more than their share

of "brawling brats" on either side; there were no gloomy recesses or

ghost-suggestive cupboards, and I never once experienced in them the

slightest apprehension of sudden superphysical manifestations, yet I

cannot help saying that as I met that glance from the pseudo-Tristram's

eyes I felt my flesh begin to creep.

He sat for so long in silence that I began to wonder if he ever meant to

speak.

"The secret of success in seeing certain classes of apparitions," he

said at length, "to a very great extent lies in sympathy. Sympathy! And

now for my story. I will tell it to you in the 'third person.'"

I looked at Tristram's face in dismay. "The third person!"

"Yes, the third person," he gravely rejoined, "and under the

circumstances the only person. You see it is now close on midnight."

I looked at the clock. Great heavens! What he said was correct. A whole

evening had slipped by without my knowledge. He would, of course, have

to stay the night. I suggested it to him.

"My dear fellow," he replied, with an odd smile, "don't worry about me.

I am not dependent on any trains. I shall be home by two o'clock."

I shivered--a draught of cold air had in all probability stolen through

the cracks of the ill-fitting window-frames.

"You have on one of your queer moods, Martin," I expostulated. "To be

home by two o'clock you must fly! But proceed--at all costs, the story."

Tristram raised an eyebrow, a true sign that something of special

interest would follow.

"You know Bruges?" he began.

I nodded.

"Very well, then," he went on. "Exactly a week ago Martin Tristram

arrived there from Antwerp. The hour was late, the weather boisterous,

Tristram was tired, and any lodging was better than none.

"Hailing a four-wheeler, he asked the Jehu to drive him to some decent

hostel where the sheets were clean and the tariff moderate; and the

fellow, gathering up the reins, took him at a snail's pace to a

mediæval-looking tavern in La Rue Croissante. You remember that street?

Perhaps not! It is quite a back street, extremely narrow, very tortuous,

and miserably lighted with a few gas-lamps of the usual antique Belgian

order.

"Tristram was too tired, however, to be fastidious; he felt he could lie

down and go to sleep anywhere, and what scruples he might have had were

entirely dissipated by the appearance of the charming girl who answered

the door.

"It is not expedient to dwell upon her--she plays a very minor part, if,

indeed, any, in the story. Martin Tristram merely thought her pretty,

and that, as I have said, fully reconciled him to taking up his quarters

in the house.

"He has, as you are doubtless aware, a weakness for vivid colouring, and

her bright yellow hair, carmine lips, and scarlet stockings struck him

impressively as she led the way to his bed-chamber, where she somewhat

reluctantly parted from him with a subtly attractive smile.

"Left to himself, Martin sleepily examined his surroundings. The room,

oak-panelled throughout, was long, low, and gloomy; an enormous,

old-fashioned, empty fireplace occupied the centre of one of the walls;

on the one side of it was an oak settee, on the other an equally

ponderous black oak chest.

"Heavy oaken beams traversed the ceiling, and the sombre, funereal

character of the room was further increased by a colossal and antique

four-poster which, placed in the exact middle of the chamber, faced a

gigantic mirror attached to grotesquely carved and excessively lofty

sable supports.

"Viewed in the feeble, fluctuating candlelight, the latter seemed

endowed with some peculiar and emphatically weird life--their

glistening, polished surfaces threw a dozen and one fantastic but oddly

human shadows on the boards, as at the same time they appeared in

bewildering alternation to increase and diminish in stature.

"Tristram hastily undressed, and stretching himself between the

blankets, prepared to go to sleep. Like yourself, and for a similar

reason, he never sleeps on his left side. Accordingly he occupied the

right portion only of the enormous bed.

"Why he did not fall asleep at once he could not explain; he fancied

that it might be because he was overtired. This undoubtedly had

something to do with it, as also had the remarkable noises--footfalls,

creaks, and sighs--that came from every corner of the apartment the

moment the light was out.

"He listened to these inexplicable sounds with increasing alarm until

the sonorous clock from somewhere outside boomed 'one,' when, quite

unaccountably, he fell asleep, awaking on the stroke of two from a

dreadful nightmare.

"To his intense astonishment and consternation he was no longer alone in

the bed--someone, or something, was lying by his side on the left-hand

side of the bed.

"At first his thoughts reverted to the young lady with the scarlet

stockings; then, a sensation of icy coldness, whilst speedily reassuring

him with regard to her, struck him with the utmost terror. Who or what

could it be?

"For some seconds he lay in breathless silence, too frightened even to

stir, and panic-stricken lest the violent beating of his heart should

arouse the mysterious visitor. But at length, impelled by an

irresistible impulse, he sat up in bed and opened his eyes. The room

was aglow with a phosphorescent light, and in the depths of the

glittering mirror he saw a startling reproduction of the phantasmagoric

four-poster.

"He instinctively felt that there was some extraordinary change in the

supports, and that the suspicions he had at first entertained as to

their semi-human properties had become verified; but, mercifully for his

sanity, he found it impossible to look. His attention was immediately

riveted on the object by his side, which he recognized with a thrill of

surprise was a bronzed and bearded man of rather more than middle age,

who appeared to be buried in the most profound sleep.

"The picture was so vividly portrayed in the glass that Tristram could

see the gentle heaving of the bedclothes each time the sleeper breathed.

"Fascinated beyond measure at such an unlooked-for spectacle, and

desirous of a closer inspection, Tristram, with a supreme effort,

managed to tear away his eyes from the mirror and to glance at the bed,

where, to his unmitigated astonishment, he saw no one.

"Quite unable to know what to make of the phenomenon, he again directed

his gaze to the glass, and there right enough lay the sleeper.

"A cold shudder now ran through Tristram--he could no longer disguise

from himself what he had in reality thought all along, that the room was

haunted!

"The usual symptoms accompanying occult manifestations rapidly made

themselves known. Tristram was constrained to stare at the luminous

glitter before him in helpless expectation; to save his soul he could

neither have stirred nor uttered the faintest ejaculation. He saw in the

mirror the door of the bedroom slowly open, and a hideous, apish face

peep stealthily in, not at him, but at the sleeper.

"Next he watched a figure, brown, hairy and lurid--the figure of some

huge monkey--come crawling into the room on all-fours, and followed each

of its tell-tale movements as, sidling up to its sleeping victim, it

suddenly hurled itself at him, choking him to death with its long

fingers.

"This was the climax--Tristram saw no more. The phosphorescent light

died out, the mirror darkened, and on sinking back on his pillow, he

realized with the wildest delight he was once again alone--his bedfellow

had gone!

"Tristram was so unnerved by all that had happened that he made up his

mind to leave the house at daybreak, a decision which, however, was

altered on the appearance of the sun and the charming little girl in

the red stockings.

"After breakfasting, Tristram strolled about the town, chancing to meet

an old school-fellow, named Heriot, in the Rue de Mermadotte.

"Heriot had only recently come to Bruges; he was dissatisfied with his

lodgings, and readily fell in with Tristram's suggestion that they

should 'dig' together.

"The maid with the yellow hair was more pleasing than ever, Heriot fell

desperately in love with her, and it was close on midnight before he

could be persuaded to bid her good night and accompany Tristram to the

bed-chamber.

"'I wonder why she told me not to sleep on the left side of the bed?' he

said to Martin, as they began to undress.

"Tristram glanced guiltily at the mirror. For reasons of his own he

hadn't as much as hinted to Heriot what he had seen there the previous

night, and he was not at all sure now that it might not have been a

nightmare or an hallucination; anyhow, he would like to put it to the

test before mentioning it to anyone, and Heriot, whom he knew to be a

sceptic with regard to ghosts, was so strong and hale a man physically

that, happen what might, he had no apprehensions whatever concerning

him.

"Regretting that he was obliged to disobey the wishes of a lady, Heriot

declared his preference for the left side of the bed, adding that if the

maiden was so highly enamoured of him, she must put herself to the

inconvenience of a few extra yards. 'Infatuation like hers,' he

maintained, 'should surely overcome all obstacles.'

"Nothing loth, Tristram gave in to him, and before many minutes had

elapsed both men had fallen into a deep sleep.

"On the stroke of two Tristram awoke, perspiring horribly. The room was

once again aglow with a phosphorescent light, and he felt the presence

next to him of something cold and clammy.

"Unable to look elsewhere, he was again compelled to gaze in the mirror,

where he saw, to his consternation and horror, no Heriot, but in his

place the man with the bronzed face and bushy beard.

"He had hardly recovered from the shock occasioned by this discovery

when the door surreptitiously opened, and the figure of the ape glided

noiselessly in.

"Again he was temporarily paralysed, his limbs losing all their power of

action and his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth.

"The movements of the phantasm were entirely repetitionary of the

previous night. Approaching the bed on 'all-fours,' it leapt on its

victim, the tragedy being accompanied this time by the most realistic

chokings and gurgles, to all of which Tristram was obliged to listen in

an agony of doubt and terror. The drama ended, Tristram was overcome by

a sudden fit of drowsiness, and sinking back on to his pillow, slept

till broad daylight.

"Anxious to question Heriot as to whether he, too, had been a witness of

the ghostly transaction he touched him lightly on the shoulder. There

was no reply. He touched him again, and still no answer. He touched him

yet a third time, and as there was still no response, he leaned over his

shoulder and peered into his face.

"Heriot was dead!"

* * * * *

"'This is the fourth death in that bed within the last twelve months

that I can swear to,' the English doctor remarked to Tristram, as they

walked down the street together, 'and always from the same cause,

failure of the heart due to a sudden shock. If you take my advice,

you'll clear out of the place at once.'

"Tristram thought so too, but before he went he had a talk with the

girl in the red stockings.

"'I can't tell you all I know,' she said to him, as he kissed her; 'but

I wouldn't sleep a night in that room for a fortune, though I believe

it's quite safe if you keep on the right side of the bed. I wish your

friend had done so, he was so handsome,' and Tristram, not a little

hurt, let go her hand, and made arrangements for the funeral."

* * * * *

"And is that all?" I asked, as Tristram's material body paused.

"It may be," was the reply, "but that is why I've come to you. Don't be

gulled by Tristram into any investigations in that house. Enthusiasm for

his research work makes him unconsciously callous, and if he once got

you there he might, even against your better judgment, persuade you to

sleep on the left side! Good night!"

I shook hands with him and he departed. The following evening I heard it

all again from Tristram himself--the real Tristram.

Needless to say, his concluding remarks differed essentially. With

unbounded cordiality he urged me to accompany him back again to Bruges,

and I--declined!

* * * * *

He wrote to me afterwards to say that he had discovered the history of

the house--a man, a music-hall artist, answering to the description of

the figure in the bed--had once lived there with a performing ape, an

orang-outang, and happening to annoy the animal one day, the latter had

killed him. The brute was eventually shot!

"This experience of mine," Tristram added, "is of the greatest value,

for it has thoroughly convinced me of one thing at least--and that--that

apes have spirits! And if that be so, so must all other kinds of

animals. Of course they must."

_Phantasms of Cat and Baboon_

A sister of a well-known author tells me there used to be a house called

"The Swallows," standing in two acres of land, close to a village near

Basingstoke.

In 1840 a Mr. Bishop of Tring bought the house, which had long stood

empty, and went to live there in 1841. After being there a fortnight two

servants gave notice to leave, stating that the place was haunted by a

large cat and a big baboon, which they constantly saw stealing down the

staircases and passages. They also testified to hearing sounds as of

somebody being strangled, proceeding from an empty attic near where

they slept, and of the screams and groans of a number of people being

horribly tortured in the cellars just underneath the dairy. On going to

see what was the cause of the disturbances, nothing was ever visible. By

and by other members of the household began to be harassed by similar

manifestations. The news spread through the village, and crowds of

people came to the house with lights and sticks, to see if they could

witness anything.

One night, at about twelve o'clock, when several of the watchers were

stationed on guard in the empty courtyard, they all saw the forms of a

huge cat and a baboon rise from the closed grating of the large cellar

under the old dairy, rush past them, and disappear in a dark angle of

the walls. The same figures were repeatedly seen afterwards by many

other persons. Early in December, 1841, Mr. Bishop, hearing fearful

screams, accompanied by deep and hoarse jabberings, apparently coming

from the top of the house, rushed upstairs, whereupon all was instantly

silent, and he could discover nothing. After that, Mr. Bishop set to

work to get rid of the house, and was fortunate enough to find as a

purchaser a retired colonel, who was soon, however, scared out of it.

This was in 1842; it was soon after pulled down. The ground was used

for the erection of cottages; but the hauntings being transferred to

them, they were speedily vacated, and no one ever daring to inhabit

them, they were eventually demolished, the site on which they stood

being converted into allotments.

There were many theories as to the history of "The Swallows"; one being

that a highwayman, known as Steeplechase Jock, the son of a Scottish

chieftain, had once plied his trade there and murdered many people,

whose bodies were supposed to be buried somewhere on or near the

premises. He was said to have had a terrible though decidedly unorthodox

ending--falling into a vat of boiling tar, a raving madman. But what

were the phantasms of the ape and cat? Were they the earth-bound spirits

of the highwayman and his horse, or simply the spirits of two animals?

Though either theory is possible, I am inclined to favour the former.

_Psychic Bears_

Edmund Lenthal Swifte, appointed in 1814 Keeper of the Crown Jewels in

the Tower of London, refers in an article in _Notes and Queries_, 1860,

to various unaccountable phenomena happening in the Tower during his

residence there. He says that one night in the Jewel Office, one of the

sentries was alarmed by a figure like a huge bear issuing from

underneath the Jewel Room door. He thrust at it with his bayonet, which,

going right through it, stuck in the doorway, whereupon he dropped in a

fit, and was carried senseless to the guard-room. When on the morrow Mr.

Swifte saw the soldier in the guard-room, his fellow-sentinel was also

there, and the latter testified to having seen his comrade, before the

alarm, quiet and active, and in full possession of his faculties. He was

now, so Mr. Swifte added, changed almost beyond recognition, and died

the following day.

Mr. George Offer, in referring to this incident, alludes to queer noises

having been heard at the time the figure appeared. Presuming that the

sentinel was not the victim of an hallucination, the question arises as

to the kind of spirit that he saw. The bear, judging by cases that have

been told me, is by no means an uncommon occult phenomenon. The

difficulty is how to classify it, since, upon no question appertaining

to the psychic, can one dogmatize. To quote from a clever poem that

appeared in the January number of the _Occult Review_, to pretend one

knows anything definite about the immaterial world is all "swank". At

the most we--Parsons, Priests, Theosophists, Christian Scientists,

Psychical Research Professors,--at the most can only speculate.

Nothing--nothing whatsoever, beyond the bare fact that there are

phenomena, unaccountable by physical laws, has as yet been discovered.

All the time and energy and space that have been devoted by scientists

to the investigation of spiritualism and to making tests in automatic

writing are, in my opinion--and, I believe, I speak for the man in the

street--hopelessly futile. No one, who has ever really experienced

spontaneous ghostly manifestations, could for one moment believe in the

genuineness of the phenomena produced at séances. They have never

deceived me, and I am of the opinion spirits cannot be convoked to

order, either through a so-called medium falling into a so-called

trance, through table-turning, automatic writing, or anything else. If a

spirit comes, it will come either voluntarily, or in obedience to some

Unknown Power--and certainly neither to satisfy the curiosity of a crowd

of sensation-loving men and women, nor to be analysed by some cold,

calculating, presumptuous Professor of Physics whose proper sphere is

the laboratory.

But to proceed. The phenomenon of the big bear, provided again it was

really objective, may have been the phantasm of some prehistoric

creature whose bones lie interred beneath the Tower; for we know the

Valley of the Thames was infested with giant reptiles and quadrupeds of

all kinds (I incline to this theory); or it may have been a

Vice-Elemental, or--the phantasm of a human being who lived a purely

animal life, and whose spirit would naturally take the form most closely

resembling it.

* * * * *

Judging by the number of experiences related to me, hauntings by phantom

hares and rabbits would appear to be far from uncommon. There is this

difference, however, between the hauntings by the two species of

animal--phantom hares usually portend death or some grave catastrophe,

either to the witness himself, or to someone immediately associated with

him; whereas phantom rabbits are seldom prophetic, and may generally be

looked upon merely as the earth-bound spirits of some poor rabbits that

have met with untimely ends.

_Hauntings by a White Rabbit_

Mr. W.T. Stead, in his _Real Ghost Stories_, gives an account of the

hauntings by a phantom rabbit in a house in ---- Road. He does not,

however, mention any locality. After describing several of the phenomena

which disturbed various occupants of the place, he goes on to say, in

the language of Mrs. A., who narrates the incident:--

"A dog which lay on the rug also heard the sounds, for he pricked up his

ears and barked. Without a moment's delay she flew to the door, calling

the dog to follow her, intending as she did so to open the hall door and

call for assistance, but the dog, though an excellent house dog,

crouched at her feet and whined, but would not follow her up the stairs,

so she carried him up in her arms, and reaching the door, called for

assistance; when, however, the dining-room doors were opened, the rooms

were in perfect quiet and destitute of any signs of life."

The behaviour of the dog here accords exactly with the behaviour of dogs

I have had in haunted houses, and substantiates my theory that dogs are

excellent psychic barometers.

"After the family had been in the house a few weeks, a white rabbit made

its appearance. This uncanny animal would suddenly appear in a room in

which members of the family were seated, and after gliding round and

slipping under chairs and tables, would disappear through a brick wall

as easily as through an open door."

This is the invariable trick of ghosts; they seldom, however, open

doors. Mrs. A. adds:--

"Some years have now elapsed since the incident I have now related took

place, and again, in response to orders given by the enterprising

landlord of the property, long-closed doors and windows have been thrown

open, and painters and paperhangers have brought their skill to bear

upon gruesome rooms and halls; the house is once more inhabited, this

time by a widow lady and some grown-up sons. These tenants come from a

distance, and are entirely strangers both to the neighbourhood and the

former history of the house, but, to use her own words, the mistress

'cannot understand what ails the house,' her sons insist on sleeping

together in one room, and the quiet of the house is constantly being

broken by the erratic appearances of a large white rabbit, which the

inmates are frequently engaged chasing, but are never able to find."

Mr. Stead offers no explanation. I can see no other conclusion, however,

than that this ghost was the actual phantasm of some rabbit that had

been done to death in the house, probably by the boy whose apparition

was among the other manifestations seen there.

_John Wesley's Ghost_

In his article "More Glimpses of the Unseen" (_Occult Review_, October,

1906), Mr. Reginald B. Span writes:--

"During the extraordinary manifestations which occurred in the house of

John Wesley at Epworth, the phantom forms of two animals appeared, one

being a large white rabbit, and the other an animal like a badger, which

used to appear in the bedrooms and run about and then disappear, whilst

the various bangings and rappings were at their loudest."

This is the only case I have ever come across of the ghost of a badger.

I think it must be unique. Mr. Span adds: "Many strange and inexplicable

things occurred in that house which were not due to any natural cause or

reason. I remember that loud rappings used to sound round my room at

nights, even when I had a light burning. I was often awakened by

rappings on the floor of my bedroom, which would then sound on the walls

and furniture, and were heard by others occupying rooms some distance

off." This, again, is most interesting, as ghosts seldom visit lighted

rooms. Mr. Span continues:--

"It was in the afternoon in broad daylight when my brother saw this

mysterious animal.

"He was in the drawing-room alone, and as he was standing at one side of

the room looking at a picture on the walls, he heard a noise behind him,

and found, on looking round, that a sofa which generally lay against

one of the walls had been lifted by some unknown power into the middle

of the room, at the same time he saw an animal like a rabbit run from

under the sofa across the room and disappear into the wall. He searched

everywhere for the animal, which could not have escaped from the room,

as the doors and window were closed, but was unable to find any sign of

one or any hole whereby one might have passed out."

_The Psychic Faculty in Hares and Rabbits_

Hares and rabbits are very susceptible to the superphysical, the

presence of which they scent in the same manner as do horses and dogs.

I have known them to evince the greatest symptoms of terror when brought

into a haunted house.

CHAPTER VI

INHABITANTS OF THE JUNGLE

_Elephants, Lions, Tigers, etc._

Elephants undoubtedly possess the faculty of scenting spirits in a very

marked degree. It is most difficult to get an elephant to pass a spot

where any phantasm is known to appear. The big beast at once comes to a

halt, trembles, trumpets, and turning round, can only be urged forward

by the gentlest coaxing.

Jungles are full of the ghosts of slain men and animals, and afford more

variety in hauntings than any other localities. The spirits of such

cruel creatures as lions, tigers, leopards, are very much earth-bound,

and may be seen or heard night after night haunting the sites of their

former depredations.

The following case of a tiger ghost was narrated to me years ago by a

gentleman whom I will style Mr. De Silva, P.W.D. I published his account

in a popular weekly journal, as follows:--

_The White Tiger_

"Tap! tap! tap. Someone was coming behind me. I halted, and in the

brilliant moonlight saw a figure hobbling along--first one thin leg,

then the other, always with the same measured stride--accompanied with

the same tapping of the stick. I had no wish for his company, though the

road was lonely, and I feared the presence of tigers, so I hurried on,

and the faster I went, the nearer he seemed to come. Tap! tap! tap! The

man was blind and a leper, and so repulsively ugly that the niggers on

the settlement regarded him with superstitious awe. I had a horror of

tigers, but of lepers even greater. And I loved my wife with no ordinary

love. So I hurried on, and he followed quickly after me.

"The night was brilliant, even more so, I thought, than was ordinary,

and the very brilliancy made me fear, for my shadow, the shadow of the

trees, shadows for which I had no name, flickered across the road, were

lost to sight to return again, and the jungle was getting nearer. The

open country on either side ceased, one by one tall blades of jungle

grass shook their heads in the gentle breeze, and the silence of the

darkness beyond began to make itself felt. A night bird whizzed past me,

croaking out a dismal incantation from its black throat; something at

which I did not care to look clattered from under a stone I loosened

with my foot, and sped into the shade, and I hastened on.

"Tap! tap! tap! Faster and faster, and faster came the blind man. I

could smell the oil on his body, hear his breathing.

"'Whoever you are, sahib, stop!'

"There was fear in his voice as he whined out these words, a fear which

increased my own; but I pretended not to hear, and pressed on faster.

"The darkness grew; high over my head at either side of the road waved

the grass, rustling to and fro, and singing to sleep the insects

nestling on its green stalks with its old-time song of the jungle.

"The grass ahead of me slowly parted; my heart beat quicker, the tapping

behind me ceased--it was only some small animal. What was it? A small

hyaena? No. A jackal, a lame jackal, and it looked at me from out of

eyes that for some reason or other made me shiver. I did not know what

there was about the jackal that was different from what I had seen in

any other jackal, but there was a something. And as I looked at it in

awe, it vanished--melted into thin air.

"The moment after a second jackal appeared just where the other one had

been standing, but there was nothing remarkable about this one, and on

my bending down, pretending to look for a stone to throw at it, it slunk

back silently and stealthily whence it had come, and I hurried on

faster than ever, knowing a tiger was near at hand.

"Tap! tap! tap! I blessed the presence of the blind man.

"'For God's sake, sahib, stop! For the love of Allah, sahib, stop!' (You

know how they talk, O'Donnell.) 'The jackals, did you see them? I knew

them by their smell, the smell of the living and of the dead. Walk with

me, sahib, for Allah's sake.'

"Presently, O'Donnell, I heard a heavier rustling in the grass than the

wind makes; a rustling that kept pace with me and went along by my side,

never halting, but faster and faster, and faster.

"A short distance ahead of me was a patch of bright light, where the

cross-roads met. A few yards more and the jungle grass would end.

"I thought of this, O'Donnell--the beggar might not know the road so

well as I. He had no wife, no child; he was a leper, only a leper--and

my teeth chattered.

"Here the Colonel paused and wiped his forehead.

"I slackened my speed, the rustling by my side slowing down, and the

tapping grew faster. I was close to the whitened road.

"'Sahib, the blessing of Allah be on you for stopping. Sahib, let me

walk by your side.'

"(To the end of my days, O'Donnell, I shall never forgive myself, and

yet I want you to understand it was for my wife--and child.) I slunk

into the shade. Two steps more and the tapping would pass me. The stick

struck the ground within one inch of my foot; my heart almost ceased to

beat; I gazed in fascination at the spot in the jungle opposite. The

heavy rustling had stopped; only the gentle sighing of the wind went on.

The two steps were taken, the blind man paused on the cross-roads. He

was ghastly in the moonlight. I shuddered. His eyes peered enquiringly

round on all sides; he was looking for me; he had lost his way; he

feared the tiger.

"Suddenly something huge shot like an arrow from the darkness opposite

me. I bowed my head, O'Donnell, and muttered a prayer, for I thought my

end had come.

"A terrible scream rang out in the clear night air. I was saved.

"'Allah curse you and yours, sahib.'

"I opened my eyes; an enormous tiger was bending over the leper,

searching for the most convenient spot in his body to afford a tight

grip.

"The man's sightless eyes were turned towards the moon, his teeth shone

white and even; with the striped horror purring in his face, he thought

of vengeance on me.

"I dared not move. I could not pass, O'Donnell. I had no gun. The big

brute found a nice place to catch hold. It opened its mouth so that I

could see its glistening teeth. It looked down at its paws, where the

cruel claws glittered, and they seemed to afford it keen

satisfaction--it was a tigress and vain--then it lowered its head, and

the leper shrieked. I watched it pick him up as if he were one of its

cubs; saw the blood trickle down its soft white throat into the dusty

road, and then it trotted gracefully away, and was lost in the darkness

of the jungle. There was a deathlike silence after this. I waited a few

minutes, and then I got up.

"I had only a short distance to go, and I no longer feared the presence

of man-eaters--there was not likely to be another. Hours afterwards,

O'Donnell, when I lay in my hammock as safe as a fortress, I fancied I

heard the dead man's cry, fancied I heard his curse. No one was more

devoted to a wife than I was to mine. Ours had been purely a love match,

and it was against my wish that she had accompanied me to such an

out-of-the-way place as Seconee. I told her about my adventure,

suppressing the leper's curse; and I was glad I did so, as she was

greatly distressed.

"'Thank goodness you escaped, Charlie,' she said. 'I am so sorry for the

poor leper. I suppose you couldn't have helped him.'

"'I might have fetched my rifle,' I replied, 'and tried to rescue him,

of course. But I fear it wouldn't have been of much avail, as he would

have been badly mauled by then.'

"My wife sighed. 'Ah, well,' she said, 'love is selfish! It makes one

forget others. Still, I wouldn't have it otherwise.'

"'I wish this railway job here was over,' I murmured, sitting with my

elbows on my knees and looking over the flat ground, sun-baked and

barren, away towards the dark jungles and the still darker mountains

towering above them; and as I gazed a shadow seemed to blur my vision

and a voice to whisper in my ears, 'Beware of my curse.'

"I took Cushai, one of the native servants, into confidence.

"'Now, Cushai,' I said, 'you know all the superstitions of the

country--the evil eye and the rest of them. Tell me, what can the dying

curse of a leper do?'

"Cushai turned pale under his skin.

"'Not of Nahra!' he stuttered, swinging the knife with which he had been

cutting maize in his hand, 'not of Nahra, the leper of Futtebah. Sahib,

if you were cursed by him, beware. He was learned in the black arts; he

could heal ulcers by repeating a prayer, he could bring on fever.'

"At this, O'Donnell, I turned cold. I had lived long in India. I had

seen their so-called juggling, had experienced also strange cases of

telepathy, and knew quite sufficient of their intimacy with the

supernatural elements to be afraid.

"'You must keep the young sahib safe,' Cushai said, 'and the white lady.

I wish it hadn't been Nahra.'

"I took his advice. My boy, Eric, was more closely supervised than ever,

and as to my wife, I begged and entreated her not to move from the house

until the tiger was dead, and I searched for it everywhere.

"The dry season passed, the wet came, and my work still kept me in

Seconee. At times there came to us rumours of the man-eater--of another

victim--but it never visited our bungalow, where the bright rifle leaned

against the wall waiting for it.

"I certainly did meet with slight misfortunes, which the more timid

might have put down to the working of the curse.

"My little finger was squashed in the laying down of a rail, and Eric

had several bouts of sickness.

"It was nearly a year after the leper's death that alarming rumours of a

man-eater having been at work again were spread about us. Several

niggers were carried off or badly bitten, and the wounded showed

symptoms of the loathsome disease so well known and feared by us

all--leprosy.

"I knew from that it must be the same tiger.

"'The tiger is near,' someone would cry out, and a stampede among the

native workmen would ensue.

"'Why the white tiger?' I asked Cushai.

"'Because, sahib,' he replied, 'the leprosy has made it so! Tigers, like

men, and all other animals, go white even to their hair. I have not told

them the story, sahib; they only know it must have caught the leprosy.

To them Nahra is still living.'

"Then, O'Donnell, when I thought of what was at stake, and of all the

hideous possibilities the presence of this brute created, I took my

rifle and went out to search for it. In the evenings, when the dark

clouds from the mountains descended and the wind hissed through the

jungle grass, I plodded along with no other companion than my Winchester

repeater--searching, always searching for the damned tiger. I found it,

O'Donnell, came upon it just as it was in the midst of a meal--dining

off a native--and I shot it twice before it recovered from its

astonishment at seeing me. The second shot took effect--I can swear to

that, for I took particular note of the red splash of blood on its

forehead where the bullet entered, and I went right up to it to make

sure. As God is above us, no animal was more dead.

"'The curse won't come now, Cushai,' I said, laughing. 'I've killed the

white tiger.'

"'Killed the white tiger, sahib! Allah bless you for that!' Cushai

replied.

"'But don't laugh too soon. Nahra was a clever man, wonderfully clever;

he did not speak empty words,' and as his eyes wandered to the dark

hills again I fancied a shadow darted along the sky, and the curse came

back to my ears.

"I was superintending the line one afternoon; the backs of the niggers

were bending double under the burden of the great iron rods when I heard

a terrible cry.

"'The white tiger! the white tiger!' Rods fell with a crash, spades

followed suit, a chorus of shrieks filled the air, and legs scampered

off in all directions. I was fifty yards from my rifle, and a huge

creature was slowly approaching between it and me.

"I could hardly believe my eyes--the white tiger, the tiger I knew I had

killed! Here it was! Here before me! The same in every detail, and yet

in some strange, indefinable manner not the same. On it came, a huge

patch of luminous white, noiselessly, stealthily--the mark of the bullet

plainly visible on its big, flat forehead. Step by step it approached

me, its paws no longer with the colouring of health, but dull and worn.

And as it came, the cold shadow of desolation seemed to fall around it.

Nothing stirred; there was no noise whatever, not even the sound of its

feet crushing the loosened soil. On, on, on nearer, nearer and nearer.

"Shunned by all, avoided by its fellow-creatures of the jungle, a blight

to all and everything, it drew in a line with me. Not once did its eyes

meet mine, O'Donnell; not once did it glare at the natives who were

hiding on the banks of the cutting; but it stole silently on its way

with a something in its movements that left no doubt but that it was

engaged in no casual venture. I remembered, O'Donnell, that my wife had

promised to come with Eric to meet me along the cutting, as she was sure

no tiger would be there. I ran as fast as I could, and yet somehow my

feet seemed weighted down. I cursed my folly for not forbidding my wife

to come.

"It was uphill till I got to the bend, and it might have been a

mountain, it seemed so steep. I knew if the thing I had seen met them a

little farther on, they would be cornered, as the cutting narrowed very

much, leaving not more than twenty yards, and that was a generous

estimate. At last, after what seemed an eternity, I reached the summit

of the slope; the tiger was a mere speck along the line. I rushed after

it as fast as I could go, stumbling, half falling, pulling myself

together, and tearing on, and the faster I went the quicker moved the

great white figure. A feeling of despair seized me; all my fondness for

my wife became intensified tenfold, and was revealed to me then in its

true nature; she was the one great tie that made life dear to me. Even

my love for Eric paled away before the blinding affection I bore her. I

tore madly on, shouting at the same time, anything to make the white

tiger aware of my presence, to keep it from seeing her. Another bend in

the road hid it from view. The same hideous fears gripped me hard and

fast, as I strained every muscle in the mad pursuit. At last I ran round

the curve, and saw before me the tableau I had dreaded. The tiger was

crouching, ready to spring on the group of three--Eva, Eric and the

ayah. They were paralysed with fear, and stood on the rails staring at

it, unable to move or utter a sound. I well understood their feelings,

and knew they were labouring in their minds as to whether the thing that

confronted them was a creature of flesh and blood, or what it was. They

could not take their eyes off it, and, as a consequence, did not see me.

The white tiger now went through a series of actions, so lifelike that I

could not but believe it was real, and that I had been deceived in

thinking I had killed it. Its haunches quivered, it got ready to spring,

and my rifle flew to my shoulder. I saw it mark Eric, and read the

increased agony in my wife's eyes. The critical moment came. Another

second, and the thing, be it material or supernatural, would jump. I

must fire at all costs. If mortal, I must kill it, if ghostly, the noise

of my rifle might dematerialize it. And, as God is my judge, O'Donnell,

at that moment I had not the least idea which of it was--tiger or

phantom. It sprang--my brain reeled--my fingers grew numb, and as my

wife suddenly bounded forward, the shadowy form of Nahra seemed to rise

from the ground and mock me. With a supreme effort I jerked my finger

back and fired. Bang! The sound of the explosion acted like a

safety-valve to the pent-up feelings of all, and there was a chorus of

shrieks. I rushed forward--the ayah lay on the ground, face downward and

motionless. My wife had hold of Eric, who was shaking all over. Of the

tiger there were no signs. It had completely vanished.

"'Thank God,' I exclaimed, kissing my wife feverishly. 'Thank God! It

was only a ghost! but it was very alarming, wasn't it?'

"'Alarming!' my wife gasped, 'it was awful! I quite thought it was real!

so did Eric, and so did ---- '--then her eyes fell on the ayah, and she

gave a great start. 'Charlie!' she cried, 'for mercy's sake look at her!

I dare not! Is she all right?'

"I turned the ayah over--she was dead! Fright had killed her!

"I then told my wife of the curse of Nahra, and of the phantom I thought

I had seen of him, when the white tiger was springing. When I had

finished, my wife hid her face in my shoulder.

"'Charlie!' she said, 'I did something awful. I saw what I then took to

be the real white tiger single out Eric, and in my anxiety to save him

from the brute, I pushed the ayah in front of him. And the thing sprang

on her instead. It was nothing short of murder! And yet--well, there

were extenuating circumstances, weren't there?'

"'Of course there were,' I said--for I verily believed, O'Donnell, fear

had, for the time being, turned her brain.

"On our way home she suddenly called my attention to Eric.

"'Charlie,' she cried, 'what's that mark on his cheek? He's hurt!'

"I looked--and my heart turned sick within me. On the boy's cheek was a

faint red scratch, just as might have been caused by a slight, very

slight contact with some animal's claw.

"'Sahib!' Cushai whispered to me, when he saw it and heard of our

adventure. 'Sahib! Beware! Nahra was a clever man. He must have used the

spirit of the white tiger as his tool. Let the medicine man examine the

scar.'

"I did so. I took Eric to a Dr. Nicholson, who lived close by.

"He looked at the wound curiously for a few moments, and then said to

me--he was renowned for his plain speaking--'Mr. De Silva, there's no

use beating about the bush, and prolonging the agony unnecessarily for

you and your wife. The boy's got leprosy--God alone knows how! At the

most he may live six weeks.'

"The shock, of course, was terrible. Eric had to be isolated from

everyone--even from those who loved him best--and died within a month.

"'Sahib, I knew!' Cushai said to me the day of the funeral, 'I knew some

disaster would befall you. Nahra was a wonderful man, and his curse had

to be fulfilled. You may rest assured, however, nothing further will

befall you, for I saw Nahra in a vision this morning, and he told me

both his and the white tiger's spirit were now on friendly terms, and

would trouble you no more.'

"My wife and I left the place at once, and for a long time I lived in a

hell of suspense lest she should develop the infernal disease. By a

merciful providence, however, she did no such thing, but, on the

contrary, picked up in health in the most marvellous fashion; indeed,

she only told me yesterday, she felt better than she had done for years.

I've told you the story, O'Donnell--and it is true in every

detail--because it goes a long way to substantiate your theory that

animals, as well as human beings, have a future life."

"I am absolutely sure they have!" I replied.

_Jungle Animals and Psychic Faculties_

It is, of course, impossible to say whether animals of the jungle

possess psychic faculties, without putting them to the test, and this,

for obvious reasons, is extremely difficult. But since I have found that

such properties are possessed--in varying degree--by all animals I have

tested, it seems only too probable that bears and tigers, and all beasts

of prey, are similarly endowed.

It would be interesting to experiment with a beast of prey in a haunted

locality; to observe to what extent it would be aware of the advent of

the Unknown, and to note its behaviour in the actual presence of the

phenomena.

PART III

BIRDS AND THE UNKNOWN

CHAPTER VII

BIRDS AND THE UNKNOWN

As Edgar Allan Poe has suggested in his immortal poem of "The Raven,"

there is a strong link between certain species of birds and the Unknown.

We all know that vultures, kites and crows scent dead bodies from a

great way off, but we don't all know that these and other kinds of birds

possess, in addition, the psychic property of scenting the advent not

only of the phantom of death, but of many, if not, indeed, all other

spirits. Within my knowledge there have been cases when, before a death

in the house, ravens, jackdaws, canaries, magpies, and even parrots,

have shown unmistakable signs of uneasiness and distress. The raven has

croaked in a high-pitched, abnormal key; the jackdaw and canary have

become silent and dejected, from time to time shivering; the magpie even

has feigned death; the parrot has shrieked incessantly. Owls, too, are

sure predictors of death, and may be heard hooting in the most doleful

manner outside the house of anyone doomed to die shortly.

In an article entitled "Psychic Records," the editor of the _Occult

Review_ (in the August number, 1905) supplies the following anecdotes of

ghosts of birds furnished him by his correspondents.

"In the autumn of 1877 my husband was lying seriously ill with rheumatic

fever, and I had sat up several nights. At last the doctors insisted on

my going to bed; and very unwillingly I retired to a spare room. While

undressing I was surprised to see a very large white bird come from the

fireplace, make a hovering circle round me, and finally go to the top of

a large double chest of drawers. I was too tired to trouble about it,

and thought I would let it remain until morning. The next morning I said

to the housemaid:

"'There was a large bird in the spare room last night, which flew to the

top of the drawers. See that it is put out.'

"The nurse, who was present, said:

"'Oh, dear, ma'am, I am afraid that is an omen, and means the master

won't live,' and she was confirmed in her opinion by the maid saying she

had searched, and there was no trace of any bird.

"I was quite angry, as my husband was decidedly better, had slept

through the night, and we thought the crisis had passed. I went to his

bedside and found him quietly sleeping, but he never woke, and in about

an hour passed quietly away.

"I thought no more of the bird, fancying I must have been mistaken from

being overtired.

"Some months after my husband's death my youngest little one was born;

he lived for twelve months, and then had an attack of bronchitis. He

slept in a cot in my room, and I was undressing one night, when this

same large white bird came from his cot, floated round me, and

disappeared in the fireplace. At the time I did not for a moment think

of it as anything but a strange coincidence, and in no way connected it

with baby's illness.

"The next morning I was sitting by the drawing-room fire with baby on my

lap. The doctor came in, looked at him, sounded his chest, and

pronounced him much better. As he was a friend of the family, he sat

down on the other side of the fireplace and was chatting in an ordinary

way, when he suddenly jumped up with an exclamation, 'Why, what does

this mean?' and took the child from my arms quite dead!

"For two years we saw nothing more of the white bird, and we had moved

to another place.

"One day I was in my room, and my two little girls, aged six and eight,

were standing at the window watching a kitten in the garden, when

suddenly the youngest cried out:

"'Oh, mamma! Look at that great white bird,' putting her hands as if to

catch it, exactly in the way it flies round one.

"I saw nothing, and the elder child said, 'Don't be silly, Jessie; there

is no bird.'

"'But there is,' said the child. 'Don't you see? There, look! There it

is!'

"I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes past three.

"Two days after we received the news that a niece of mine had died at

twenty minutes past three. The children had never known anything of the

former appearances, as we had never talked about it before them. We have

seen nothing since of the bird, but have for some years had no death in

the family."

So runs the article in the _Occult Review_, and I can corroborate it

with similar experiences that have happened to my friends and to me.

Some years ago, for instance, a great friend of my wife's died, and on

the day of the funeral a large bird tried to fly in at the window of the

room where the corpse lay; while, shortly afterwards, an exactly similar

bird visited the window of my wife's and my room in a house, several

hundreds of miles away. If it was only a coincidence, it was a very

extraordinary one.

Then again, this spring, just before the death of one of my wife's

relatives, a large bird flew violently against the window-pane behind

which my wife was sitting--an incident that had never happened to her in

that house before.

Undoubtedly, spirits in the guise of birds--most probably they are the

phantasms of birds that have actually once lived on the material

plane--are the messengers of death.

_A Case of Bird haunting in East Russia_

Some years ago the neighbourhood of Orskaia, in East Russia, was roused

by an affair of a very remarkable nature. The body of a handsome young

peasant woman, called Marthe Popenkoff, was found in a lonely part of

the road, between Orskaia and Orenburg, with the skin of her face and

body shockingly torn and lacerated, but without there being any wounds

deep enough to cause her death, which the doctor attributed to syncope.

The people of Orskaia, not satisfied with this verdict, declared Marthe

had been murdered, and made such a loud clamour that the editor of the

local paper at last voiced their sentiments in the _East Russia

Chronicle_. It was then that M. Durant, a smart young French engineer,

temporarily residing in those parts, became interested in the case, and

decided to investigate it thoroughly. With this end in view he wrote to

his friend M. Hersant--a keen student of the Occult--in Saratova, to

join him, and three days after the despatch of his letter met the latter

at the Orskaia railway station. M. Durant retailed the case as they

drove to his house.

"It is a remarkable affair, in every way," he said. "The woman was

leading a perfectly respectable married life; she was hard-working and

industrious, and beyond the fact that she was over-indulgent to her

children, does not seem to have had any serious faults. As far as I can

ascertain she had no enemies."

"Nor secret lovers?" M. Hersant asked.

"No; she was quite straight."

"And you feel sure she was murdered?"

"I do. Public opinion so strongly favours that view."

"Did you see the marks on the woman?"

"I did, and could make nothing of them. After supper I will take you to

see her, in the morgue."

"What--she is still unburied?"

"Yes--but there is nothing unusual about that. In these parts bodies

are often kept for ten days--sometimes even longer."

M. Durant was as good as his word; after they had partaken of a somewhat

hasty meal, they set out to the morgue, where they made a careful

inspection of the poor woman's remains.

M. Hersant examined the marks on the woman's body very closely with his

magnifying-glass.

"Ah!" he suddenly exclaimed, bending down and almost touching the corpse

with his nose, "Ah!"

"Have you made a discovery?" M. Durant enquired.

"I prefer not to say at present," M. Hersant replied. "I should like to

see the spot where this body was found--now."

"We will go there at once," M. Durant rejoined.

The scene of the tragedy was the Orenburg road, at the foot of two

little hills; and on either side were the sloping fields, yellow with

the nodding corn.

"That is the exact place where she lay," M. Durant said, indicating with

his finger a dark patch on a little wooden bridge spanning a stream,

within a stone's throw of a tumbledown mill-house, all overgrown with

ivy and lichens. M. Hersant looked round and sniffed the air with his

nostrils.

"There is an air of loneliness about this spot," he remarked, "that in

itself suggests crime. If this were an ordinary murder, one could well

imagine the assassin was aided in his diabolical work by the

configuration of the land which, shelving as it does, slips down into

the narrow valley, so as to preclude any possibility of escape on the

part of the victim. The place seems especially designed by Providence as

a death-trap. Let us have a look at the interior of this building."

"The police have searched it thoroughly," M. Durant said.

"I've no doubt," M. Hersant replied drily. "No one knows better than I

what the thoroughness of the police means."

They entered the premises cautiously, since the roof was in a rickety

condition, and any slight concussion might dislodge an avalanche of

stones and plaster. While M. Durant stood glancing round him rather

impatiently, M. Hersant made a careful scrutiny of the walls.

"Humph," he said at last. "As you so rightly observed, Henri, this is a

remarkable case. I have finished my investigation for to-night. Let us

be going home. To-morrow I should like to visit Marthe's home."

This conversation took place shortly before midnight; some six hours

later all Orskaia was ringing with the news that Marthe Popenkoff's

three children had all been found dead in their beds, their faces and

bodies lacerated in exactly the same manner as their mother's. There

seemed to be no doubt now that Marthe had been murdered, and the

populace cried shame on the police; for the assassin was still at large.

They agreed that the murderer could be no other than Peter Popenkoff,

and the editor of the local paper repeating these statements, Peter

Popenkoff was duly charged with the crimes, and arrested. He was

pronounced guilty by all excepting M. Hersant; and of course M. Hersant

thought him guilty, too; only he liked to think differently from anyone

else.

"I don't want to commit myself," was all they could get out of him. "I

may have something to say later on."

M. Durant laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

"It, undoubtedly, is Peter Popenkoff," he observed. "I had an idea that

he was the culprit all along."

But a day or two later, Peter Popenkoff was found dead in prison with

the skin on his face and hands all torn to shreds.

"There! Didn't we say so?" cried the inconsequent mob. "Peter Popenkoff

was innocent. One of the police themselves is the murderer."

"Come, you must acknowledge that we are on the right track now--it is

one of the police," M. Durant said to his friend.

But M. Hersant only shook his head.

"I acknowledge nothing of the sort," he said. "Come with me to the

mill-house to-night, and I will then tell you what I think."

To this proposition M. Durant willingly agreed, and, accompanied by his

friend and the village priest, set off. On their arrival, M. Hersant

produced a big compass, and on the earth floor of the mill-house drew a

large circle, in which he made with white chalk various signs and

symbols. He then sat in the middle of it, and bade his two companions

stand in the doorway and watch. The night grew darker and darker, and

presently into the air stole a something that all three men at once

realized was supernatural. M. Hersant coughed nervously, the priest

crossed himself, and M. Durant called out, "This is getting ridiculous.

These mediæval proceedings are too absurd. Let us go home." The next

moment, from the far distance, a church clock began to strike. It was

midnight, and an impressive silence fell on the trio. Then there came a

noise like the flutterings of wings, a loud, blood-curdling scream, half

human and half animal, and a huge black owl, whirling down from the roof

of the building, perched in the circle directly in front of M. Hersant.

"Pray, Father! Pray quickly," M. Hersant whispered. "Pray for the dead,

and sprinkle the circle with holy water."

The priest, as well as his trembling limbs would allow, obeyed;

whereupon the bird instantly vanished.

"For Heaven's sake," M. Durant gasped, "tell us what it all means."

"Only this," M. Hersant said solemnly, "the phantasm we saw caused the

death of the Popenkoff family. It is the spirit of an owl that the

children, encouraged by their parents, killed in a most cruel manner. As

soon as I examined Marthe's body, I perceived the mutilations were due

to a bird; and when I visited this mill on the eve of my arrival, I knew

that a bird had once lived here; that it had been captured with lime and

murdered, and that it haunted the place."

"How could you know that?" the priest exclaimed in astonishment.

"I am clairvoyant. I saw the bird's ghost as it appeared to us just now.

Afterwards I enquired of the Popenkoffs' neighbours, and the information

I gathered fully confirmed my suspicions--that the unfortunate bird had

been put to death in a most barbarous manner. The deaths of the three

children laid to rest any doubt I may have had with regard to the

superphysical playing a part in the death of Marthe. Then when her

better-half had been served likewise, I was certain that all five

pseudo-murders were wholly and solely acts of retribution, and that they

were perpetrated--I am inclined to think involuntarily--by the spirit of

the owl itself. Accordingly, I decided to hold a séance here--here in

its old haunt, and if possible to put an end to the earth-bound

condition and wanderings of the soul of the unhappy bird. Thanks to

Father Mickledoff we have done so, and there will be no more so-called

murders near Orskaia."

_Hauntings by the Phantasms of Birds_

One of the most curious cases of hauntings by the phantasms of birds

happened towards the end of the eighteenth century in a church not

twenty miles from London. The sexton started the rumours, declaring that

he had heard strange noises, apparently proceeding from certain vaults

containing the tombs of two old and distinguished families. The noises,

which generally occurred on Friday nights, most often took the form of

mockings, suggesting to some of the listeners--the enaction of a murder,

and to others merely the flapping of wings.

The case soon attracted considerable attention, people flocking to the

church from all over the country-side, and it was not long before

certain persons came forward and declared they had ascertained the cause

of the disturbance. The churchwarden, sexton, and his wife and others

all swore to seeing a huge crow pecking and clawing at the coffins in

the vaults, and flying about the chancel of the church, and perching on

the communion rails. When they tried to seize it, it immediately

vanished.

An old lady, who came of a family of well-to-do yeomen, and who lived

near the church about that time, said that the people in the town had

for many years been convinced the church there was haunted by the

phantom of a bird, which they believed to be the earth-bound soul of a

murderer, who, owing to his wealth, was interred in the churchyard,

instead of being buried at the cross-roads with the customary wooden

stake driven through the middle of his body. This belief of the yokels

received some corroboration from a neighbouring squire, who said he had

seen the phantasm, and was quite positive it was the earth-bound soul of

a criminal whose family history was known to him, and whose remains lay

in the churchyard.

This is all the information that I have been able to gather on the

subject, but it is enough to, at least, suggest the church was, at one

time, haunted by the phantom of a bird, but whether the earth-bound soul

of a murderer taking that guise, or the spirit of an actual dead bird,

it is impossible to say.

_The Ghost of an Evil Bird_

Henry Spicer, in his _Strange Things Amongst Us_, tells the story of a

Captain Morgan, an honourable and vivacious gentleman, who, arriving in

London in 18--, puts up for the night in a large, old-fashioned hotel.

The room in which he slept was full of heavy, antique furniture,

reminiscent of the days of King George I, one of the worst periods in

modern English history for crime. Despite, however, his grimly

suggestive surroundings, Captain Morgan quickly got into bed and was

soon asleep. He was abruptly awakened by the sound of flapping, and, on

looking up, he saw a huge black bird with outstretched wings and fiery

red eyes perched on the rail at the foot of the four-poster bed.

The creature flew at him and endeavoured to peck his eyes. Captain

Morgan resisted, and after a desperate struggle succeeded in driving it

to a sofa in the corner of the room, where it settled down and regarded

him with great fear in its eyes. Determined to destroy it, he flung

himself on the top of it, when, to his surprise and terror, it

immediately crumbled into nothingness. He left the house early next

morning, convinced that what he had seen was a ghost, but Mr. Spicer

offers no explanation as to how one should classify the phenomenon.

It may have been the earth-bound spirit of the criminal or viciously

inclined person who had once lived there, or it may have been the

phantom of an actual bird. Either alternative is feasible.

I have heard there is an old house near Poole, in Dorset, and another in

Essex, which were formerly haunted by spectral birds, and that as late

as 1860 the phantasm of a bird, many times the size of a raven, was so

frequently seen by the inmates of a house in Dean Street, Soho, that

they eventually grew quite accustomed to it. But bird hauntings are not

confined to houses, and are far more often to be met with out of doors;

indeed there are very few woods, and moors, and commons that are not

subjected to them. I have constantly seen the spirits of all manner of

birds in the parks in Dublin and London. Greenwich Park, in particular,

is full of them.

_Addendum to Birds and the Unknown_

Though their unlovely aspect and solitary mode of life may in some

measure account for the prejudice and suspicion with which the owl,

crow, raven, and one or two other birds have always been regarded, there

are undoubtedly other and more subtle reasons for their unpopularity.

The ancients without exception credited these birds with psychic

properties.

"Ignarres bubo dirum mortalibus omen," said Ovid; whilst speaking of the

fatal prognostications of the crow Virgil wrote:

"Saepe sinistra cava praedixit ab ilice cornix."

A number of crows are stated to have fluttered about Cicero's head on

the day he was murdered.

Pliny says, "These birds, crows and rooks, all of them keep much

prattling, and are full of chat, which most men take for an unlucky sign

and presage of ill-fortune."

Ramesay, in his work _Elminthologia_ (1688), writes:

"If a crow fly over the house and croak thrice, how do they fear they,

or someone else in the family, shall die."

The bittern is also a bird of ill omen. Alluding to this bird, Bishop

Hall once said:

"If a bittern flies over this man's head by night, he will make his

will"; whilst Sir Humphry Davy wrote:

"I know a man of very high dignity who was exceedingly moved by omens,

and who never went out shooting without a bittern's claw fastened to his

button-hole by a riband, which he thought ensured him 'good luck.'"

Ravens and swallows both, at times, prognosticate death. In Lloyd's

_Stratagems of Jerusalem_ (1602) he says:

"By swallows lighting upon Pirrhus' tents, and lighting upon the mast of

Mar. Antonius' ship, sailing after Cleopatra to Egypt, the soothsayers

did prognosticate that Pirrhus should be slaine at Argos in Greece, and

Mar. Antonius in Egypt."

He alludes to swallows following Cyrus from Persia to Scythia, from

which the "wise men" foretold his death. Ravens followed Alexander the

Great from India to Babylon, which was regarded by all who saw them as a

fatal sign.

"'Tis not for nought that the raven sings now on my left and, croaking,

has once scraped the earth with his feet," wrote Plautus.

Other references to the same bird are as follows:

"The raven himself is hoarse

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

Under my battlements."--(_Macbeth._)

"It comes o'er my memory

As doth the raven o'er the infected house,

Boding to all."--(_Othello._)

"That tolls

The sick man's passport in her hollow beak,

And in the shadow of the silent night

Doth shake contagion from her sable wings."

(_Jew of Malta._)

"Is it not ominous in all countries where crows

and ravens croak upon trees?"--(_Hudibras._)

"The boding raven on her cottage sat,

And with hoarse croakings warned us of our fate."

(_The Dirge._)

"In Cornwall," writes Mr. Hunt, in his work on popular beliefs, etc., of

the West of England, "it is believed that the croaking of a raven over

the house bodes evil to some of the family. The following incident,

given to me by a really intelligent man, illustrates the feeling:

"'One day our family were much annoyed by the continual croaking of a

raven over the house. Some of us believed it to be a token; others

derided the idea. But one good lady, our next-door neighbour, said:

"'"Just mark the day, and see if something does not come of it."

"'The day and hour were carefully noted. Months passed away, and

unbelievers were loud in their boastings and enquiries after the token.

The fifth month arrived, and with it a black-edged letter from

Australia, announcing the death of one of the members of the family in

that country. On comparing the dates of the death and the raven's croak,

they were found to have occurred on the same day.'"

In an old number of _Notes and Queries_ a correspondent relates that in

Somersetshire the appearance of a single jackdaw is regarded as a sure

prognostication of evil. He goes on to add that the men employed in the

quarries in the Avon Gorge, Clifton, Bristol, had more than once noticed

a jackdaw perched on the chain that spanned the river, prior to some

catastrophe among them.

Dead magpies were once hung over the doorways of haunted houses to keep

away ghosts; it being almost universally believed that all phantasms

shared the same dread of this bird. Ghosts of magpies themselves are,

however, far from uncommon; on Dartmoor and Exmoor, for example, I have

seen several of them, generally in the immediate vicinity of bogs or

deep holes.

Witches were much attached to this bird, and were said to often assume

its shape after death.

"Magpies," says Mr. William Jones, in his _Credulities, Past and

Present_, "are mysterious everywhere. A lady living near Carlstad, in

Sweden, grievously offended a farm woman who came into the court of her

house asking for food. The woman was told 'to take that magpie hanging

upon the wall and eat it.' She took the bird and disappeared, with an

evil glance at the lady, who had been so ill-advised as to insult a

Finn, whose magical powers, it is well known, far exceed those of the

gipsies." (Other authorities corroborate this statement; and I have

heard it said that the Finns can surpass even the famous tricks of the

Indians.) Mr. Jones, in the same story, says: "Presently the number

increased, and the lady, who at first had been amused, became troubled,

and tried to drive them away by various devices. All was to no purpose.

She could not move without a large company of magpies; and they became

at length so daring as to hop on her shoulder." (This reads like

hallucination. However, as I have heard of similar cases, in which there

has been no doubt as to the objectivity of the phenomena, I see no

reason why these magpies should not have been objective too.) "Then she

took to her bed in a room with closed shutters, although even this was

not an effectual protection, for the magpies kept tapping at the

shutters day and night." Mr. Jones adds: "The lady's death is not

recorded; but it is fully expected that, die when she may, all the

magpies of Wermland will be present at her funeral."

There is a house in Great Russell Street, W.C., where the hauntings take

the form of a magpie that taps at one of the windows every morning

between two and three, and then appears inside the room, perched on what

looks like a huge alpine stick, suspended horizontally in the air, about

seven feet from the floor. The moment a sound is made the apparition

vanishes. It is thought to be the spirit of a magpie that was done to

death in a very cruel manner in that room many years ago. There is a

story current to the effect that a lady, when visiting the British

Museum one day, happened to pass some slighting remark about one of the

Egyptian mummy cases (not the notorious one), and that on quitting the

building she felt a sharp peck on her neck. She put up her hand to the

injured part, and felt the distinct impression of a bird's claw on it.

She could see nothing, however. That night--and for every succeeding

night for six weeks--she was awakened at two o'clock by the phantom of

an enormous magpie that fluttered over the bed, and was clearly visible

to herself and her sister. The phenomenon worried her so that she became

ill, and was eventually ordered abroad. She went to Cairo and enjoyed a

brief respite; the hauntings, however, began again, and this time became

so persistent that she at last lost her reason, and had to be brought

home and confined in a private asylum, where she shortly afterwards

died. Though I cannot vouch for the truth of this story, I do think it

is somewhat risky to make fun of certain of the Egyptian relics in the

Museum. They may be haunted by something infinitely more alarming than

the ghosts of magpies. There are many sayings respecting the magpie as a

harbinger of ill luck. In Lancashire, for example, there is this rhyme:

"One for anger, two for mirth,

Three for a wedding, four for a birth,

Five for rich, six for poor,

Seven for a witch, I dare tell you no more."

From further north comes this couplet:

"Magpie, magpie, chatter and flee,

Turn up thy tail, and good luck fall me."

Rooks, again, are very psychic birds; they always leave their haunts

near an old house shortly before a death takes place in it, because

their highly developed psychic faculty of scent enables them to detect

the advent of the phantom of death, of which they have the greatest

horror. A rook is of great service, when investigating haunted houses,

as it nearly always gives warning of the appearance of the Unknown by

violent flappings of the wings, loud croaking, and other unmistakable

symptoms of terror.

Owls, though no less sensitive to superphysical influence, are not

scared by it; they and bats, alone among the many kinds of animals I

have tested, take up their abode in haunted localities, and with the

utmost sang-froid appear to enjoy the presence of the Unknown, even in

its most terrifying form.

The owl has been associated with the darker side of the Unknown longer

than any other bird.

"Solaque, culminibus ferali carmine bubo. Saepe queri et longas in

fletum ducere voces," writes Virgil.

Pliny, in describing this bird, says, "bubo funebris et maxime

abominatus"; whilst Chaucer writes: "The owl eke that of death the bode

ybringeth."

In the Arundel family a white owl is said to be a sure indication of

death.

That Shakespeare attached no little importance to the fatal crying of

the bird may be gathered from the scene in _Macbeth_, when the murderer

asks:

"Didst thou not hear a noise?" and Lady Macbeth answers:

"I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry"; and the scene in _Richard

III_, where Richard interrupts a messenger of evil news with the words:

"Out on ye, owls! Nothing but songs of death?"

Gray speaks of "moping" owls; Chatterton exclaims, "Harke! the dethe

owle loude dothe synge"; whilst Hogarth introduces the same bird in the

murder scene of his _Four Stages of Cruelty_.

Nor is the belief in the sinister prophetic properties of the owl

confined to the white races; we find it everywhere--among the Red

Indians. West Africans, Siamese, and Aborigines of Australia.

In Cornwall, and in other corners of the country, the crowing of a cock

at midnight was formerly regarded as indicating the passage of death

over the house; also if a cock crew at a certain hour for two or three

nights in succession, it was thought to be a sure sign of early death to

some member of the household. In _Notes and Queries_ a correspondent

remarks that crowing hens are not uncommon, that their crow is very

similar to the crow of a very young cock, and must be taken as a certain

presagement of some dire calamity.

It was generally held that in all haunted localities the ghosts would at

once vanish--not to appear again till the following night--at the first

crowing of the cock after midnight. I believe there is a certain amount

of truth in this--at all events cocks, as I myself have proved, are

invariably sensitive to the presence of the superphysical.

The whistler is also a very psychic bird. Spenser, in his _Faerie

Queene_ (Book II, canto xii, st. 31), alludes to it thus:--

"The whistler shrill, that whoso hears doth die";

whilst Sir Walter Scott refers to it in a similar sense in his _Lady of

the Lake_.

The yellow-hammer was formerly the object of much persecution, since it

was believed that it received three drops of the devil's blood on its

feather every May morning, and never appeared without presaging ill

luck. Parrots do not appear to be very susceptible to the influence of

the Unknown, and indicate little or no dread of superphysical

demonstrations.

Doves, wrens, and robins are birds of good omen, and the many

superstitions regarding them are all associated with good luck. Doves, I

have found in particular, are very safe psychic barometers in haunted

houses.

It is almost universally held to be unlucky to kill a robin. A

correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ (Fourth Series, vol. viii, p. 505)

remarks:

"I took the following down from the mouth of a young miner:

"'My father killed a robin and had terrible bad luck after it. He had at

that time a pig which was ready for pipping; she had a litter of seven,

and they all died. When the pig was killed the two hams went bad;

presently three of the family had a fever, and my father himself died of

it. The neighbours said it was all through killing the robin.'"

George Smith, in his _Six Pastorals_ (1770), says:

"I found a robin's nest within our shed,

And in the barn a wren has young ones bred;

I never take away their nest, nor try

To catch the old ones, lest a friend should die.

Dick took a wren's nest from the cottage side,

And ere a twelvemonth pass'd his mother dy'd!"

In Yorkshire it was once firmly believed that if a robin were killed,

the cows belonging to the family of the destroyer of the bird would,

for some time, only give bloody milk. At one time--and, perhaps, even

now--the robin and wren, out of sheer pity, used to cover the bodies of

those that died in the woods with leaves.

Webster, in his _Tragedy of Vittoria Corombona_ (1612), refers to this

touching habit of these birds thus:

"Call for the robin redbreast and the wren,

Since o'er the shady groves they hover,

And with leaves and flowers do cover

The friendless bodies of unburied men."

Not so harmless is the stormy petrel, whose advent is looked upon by

sailors as a sure sign of an impending storm, accompanied by much loss

of life.

The vulture and eagle, obviously on account of their ferocious

dispositions, often remain earth-bound after death, and usually select

as their haunts, spots little frequented by man. From what I have heard

they are by far the most malignant of all bird ghosts, and have even

been known to inflict physical injury on those who have had the

misfortune to pass the night within their allotted precincts.

CHAPTER VIII

A BRIEF RETROSPECT

If I have failed to convince my readers as to the reality of a future

existence for all species of mammalia, I trust I have at least suggested

to them the idea of probability in such a theory; for did the belief

that all animals possess imperishable spirits similar to mankind only

become general, I feel quite sure that a marked improvement in our

treatment of all the so-called "brute" creation--and God alone knows how

much such an improvement is needed--would speedily result. It is still

only the comparative few who are kind to animals--the majority are

either wholly indifferent or absolutely cruel. But if children were made

to realize that even insects have spirits, they, at least, let us hope,

would cease to take delight in pulling off the wings and legs of flies.

Man has hitherto entertained the ridiculously unjustifiable idea that

all the animal and insect world has been created solely for his benefit,

to be killed or to be kept alive entirely at his discretion. Such an

absurd and presumptuous belief ought to be exploded once and for all.

The animal world, so all sane people must agree, was undoubtedly created

to lead the same, free, untrammelled life as does man himself. Man--save

in cunning--is nothing superior either to the dog, horse, or other

mammalia; indeed, he is not infrequently so inferior that one cannot

help thinking that possibly the higher spiritual planes are not for him

at all, but for those who--misnamed the lower creation--have surpassed

man in spirituality. Let those who doubt this study the superphysical

all around them. Let them carefully watch animals, and observe their

propensities, their psychic faculties of scent, sight, and hearing. They

can easily test them in any house or locality which has a

well-established reputation for being haunted. They will then see how

close a relationship there really is between the animal and

superphysical worlds. And if they want further proof,--proof of a more

material nature,--let them search around for some spot stated to be

haunted by a ghostly phenomenon in the form of a dog, horse, cat, or

other animal,--and investigate there themselves.

Such investigations have convinced me, and surely, by using these same

methods with patience and perseverance, other people might also be

convinced. At all events, let them try. For, a conviction like mine--a

conviction that an eternity exists for our canine pets and dumb

friends--is certainly worth a lot of striving after. At least so I

think.

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