At the end of five days a police official came to call upon me, and informed me that my ident.i.ty had been perfectly established by the British Emba.s.sy at Vienna, and that my escort was now withdrawn. He also begged to return my typewriter, rendered utterly useless I discovered, to my great dismay, and the dispatch box arrived intact the next morning.

I have no explanation to offer of the phenomena I have described. They belong to the many unsolved mysteries that constantly surround us. It will be said that my mind was in an excited and abnormal condition owing to my adventures in the Customs House, and that I probably imagined the scene instead of really seeing the creatures I have described.

I agree that probably my mental faculties, for the time being, were possibly abnormal, but I hold that when the consciousness is in an abnormal condition it is naturally much easier to see the abnormal. At ordinary times the veil of the flesh seems denser, and the consciousness much less acute.

The question seems to me to hang more on the query--do such creatures actually exist, than on the argument did I, or did I not see them? There are creatures living in the physical world quite as horrible to look upon as the astral ent.i.ties I saw. The octopus and some apes, for instance. Innumerable people of unimpeachable veracity have testified to seeing grotesque and hideous creatures, which can only be placed in the category of astral denizens, and in that category I place the phenomena I certainly witnessed on two successive nights.

The following story has been given to me by a barrister who kindly allows me to give his name:

E. F. WILLIAMS, B.A.

Trinity College, Cambridge.

"It is clear that Needle Jim was murdered by the proprietor, Corbett of the Tally Ho, and that his wraith haunted the spot. Horses appear to be as sensitive as dogs are to apparitions, and there are several instances on record where horses have been the means of bringing murder to light.

"It is a difficult matter, indeed, to be asked to write a ghost story if you do not believe in ghosts; however, I will endeavor to relate the nearest approach to one which has come within my knowledge.

"The winter of the year 1849 was an exceptionally severe one, very heavy falls of snow and deep drifts in many places, especially in the neighborhood of Worcester, near which the scene of my story lies.

"It was, in those days, the custom of packmen as they were called, to travel around the country with various a.s.sortments of goods--calling at the various farmhouses and cottages offering their wares for sale; some would have cutlery, some laces and ribbons, but the packman with whom we are concerned carried pins, needles, and such like, hailing from Redditch, where they are manufactured. He used to go his round four times a year, and was known by the name of Needle Jim.

"About the beginning of January, in spite of the snow, Jim left Worcester for Upper Onslow, Clayton and Broadway, with a view of going to Cleobury Mortimer, Wyn Forest, and back to Redditch. Apparently he was seen at Onslow and Clayton, but after that, there was no further trace of him.

"Now at the village of Broadway, there is a little cider house called the Tally Ho, and a few cottages. The road is narrow, with three very sharp corners, protected only from a very steep dingle by an ill-kept, low, out-of-repair hedge--very dangerous on a dark night. The old proprietor of the inn, named Corbett, lived there with his old wife, and was in the poorest of circ.u.mstances, the customers at the inn not being very numerous. Nothing more was heard of Needle Jim.

"Now opposite the Tally Ho, on the far bank of the dingle, was a piece of ground facing the south, and old Corbett thought it would make an excellent cherry orchard. So the hitherto impecunious Corbett bought a portion, and when he had bought it he fenced it round, and from the opposite side it looked exactly the shape of a coffin, and the coffin piece it is called to this day.

"At the time of which I am writing, if was permissible after a man had been hung, for his relatives to take the body away home for burial. One day, two men arrived at the Tally Ho, with such a body fastened across the back of a horse; tying up the horse they went into the inn for some refreshment, shortly to be called out by a woman who said the horse, burden and all, had jumped over the hedge into the dingle and was lying at the bottom. They hurried down and there found the horse with his neck broken and his ghastly burden under him. It was a curious fact that after the disappearance of Needle Jim, horses approaching this corner broke into heavy sweats and showed great signs of fear, and a number of people preferred to travel by the longer route, _via_ the Hundred Horse.

"Some years ago some alterations were being made to the front of an old hotel in a little country town about five miles from the scenes depicted above, and on raising the large flagstone of the bottom step, there was discovered the skeleton of a man with his skull smashed. The old folks declared it must be the body of the missing packman; anyhow, after the discovery, the spirit or ghost seems to have departed from the precincts of the Tally Ho.

"Now I am not a believer in ghosts or their allies, but when I was a small boy I went on my pony accompanied by two servants, who were taking a parcel to a house next door to the Tally Ho, and whilst they were inside the house, all at once the pony snorted and started full gallop for home as hard as he could go; we parted company going down a steep hill, and I have often thought it was a good thing for me we did, for if he had bolted into his stable (which he did do) I should probably have had my head smashed, as the doorway was very low.

"Still, I do not believe in ghosts, I think it is more convenient not to!"

CHAPTER XVII

ACROSS THE THRESHOLD

Once upon a time I had an interesting experience showing how often one may be in the presence of the disembodied without being in the least aware of the fact.

It was a bright, cold day in October, with a biting wind and brilliant sunshine. About midday I was walking up a long avenue leading to a great house. On either side of me, for a mile or so, lay flat, open gra.s.s country, pasturages full of grazing cattle. The trees bordering the avenue stood at about thirty feet apart; they were gigantic beeches of considerable age. Their silvery trunks of wide girth were smooth and straight, and in no way impeded the view on all sides. The avenue was wide and straight and bordered by gra.s.s out of which the trees sprang.

As I turned in at the lodge gate I noticed, without any particular interest, a woman walking in front of me, but in a very few moments I began to pay more attention to her obvious peculiarities. She was about twenty-five to thirty feet ahead of me, moving in the same direction, and the view I had of her back began to puzzle me. On that decidedly chilly morning she wore a white muslin dress, a material never used out of doors even in summer in that northern clime. Over her shoulders floated something mauve and flimsy, and on her head was what looked like an old-fashioned poke-bonnet.

Her back looked young, and yet she was a creature of a bygone century, and knowing every one within a twenty-mile radius of where I walked I speculated as to who she could possibly be.

Perhaps what puzzled me most was how she had managed to avoid the attention of the village children, who would at once have been alive to the novelty of her whole appearance. I looked forward to hearing all about her at the big house, and as seemed highly probable, meeting her face to face and obtaining an introduction to her.

Then it suddenly occurred to me to overtake her and pa.s.s her; we were both walking very slowly. I at once quickened my steps, but somehow I never seemed to gain on her. Even this did not rouse in me the faintest suspicion of being in the presence of a disembodied soul, it merely sharpened my curiosity and urged me to greater efforts.

I moved from the road to the gra.s.s which I calculated would deaden the sound of my footsteps, then I began to run.

Still no success! The lady never turned her head to right or left, but was clearly aware of my pursuit, for apparently without the least effort she kept her distance from me.

At the moment when I was feeling rather baffled and very much puzzled I caught sight of my friend, N., in the distance coming to meet me. "Ah!"

I thought, as I at once slowed down to draw breath, "she will have to pa.s.s her and she'll tell me what her face is like."

I kept eyes and attention closely fixed on the two figures as they drew nearer and nearer to one another. Now the stranger appeared to be exactly at an equal distance between us, when, lo! she simply vanished as utterly and entirely as the electric light one switches off in a room. One second there she was, perfectly and clearly visible, the next second, there she was not. I looked foolishly around, though I knew that neither to right or left was there any hiding-place, moreover my eyes had been fully upon her when she vanished, flicked out--

How well I remember N. running up to me and without any greeting, we both simultaneously burst out--

"Did you see her?"

N. told me that the inside of the poke-bonnet was empty. The lady had no face.

Of course we gazed around and searched behind the boles of the trees, but we were both aware how foolish any such proceeding was, for we had both been staring hard at her when she disappeared.

There was a bygone tragedy connected with that part of the avenue, but on discussing the matter with the owner of the great house we all had to come reluctantly to the conclusion that the woman we had seen had no connection with that story. A former Lady Dalrymple had been murdered by one of her servants in the avenue about a hundred years previously, but the portraits of the deceased and the lady we had seen bore not the smallest resemblance. It was said that "Lady Dalrymple walked"--a tall, ma.s.sive figure clad in a dark, heavy cloak sprinkled with snow. She had been done to death one January night in a snowstorm which had hidden her remains for several days.

The apparition we had seen was that of a very slender girl or young woman. The interesting fact that I wish to emphasize is that had this young drama in muslin turned aside, slipped through the light fence, and struck off across the fields it would never have occurred to either N. or me that she was not physical. We would have speculated as to who she was, but out of common civility we would not have followed her. We would have made casual inquiries as to who she was, simply out of curiosity aroused by her peculiar attire, and then the trifling incident would have been forgotten.

That sudden vanishing has rooted the experience firmly in my mind, and I have long since become convinced that the little story I have just told is an extremely common one. I believe such disembodied spirits are constantly with us, and that many of us see them, pa.s.s them in the streets, stand beside them in crowds, and accept them perfectly naturally as physical ent.i.ties in no way different from what we are ourselves.

Many people believe that our faculties have a limit beyond which we cannot go, but this is certainly not so, as it is now proved that some people have the X-ray sight by nature and can see far more than others.

This faculty has nothing to do with keenness of sight, it is a question of sight which is able to respond to different series of vibrations.

Undoubtedly there are many ent.i.ties about us who do not reflect rays of light that we can see, yet who may reflect those other rays of rates of vibration which can be photographed.

It is extremely difficult for the average person to grasp the reality of that which we cannot see with our physical eyes, and to realize how very partial our sight is, yet science continually demonstrates to us worlds of teeming life of whose very existence we should be ignorant so far as our senses are concerned.

What ought clearly to be grasped is the fact that we are not separated from the so-called dead, save by the limitation of our consciences. We have not lost those gone before, we have only lost the power to see them, and very occasionally that power is restored to us, by what means we know not. All visible things are the result of invisible causes, and doubtless those denizens of the subtler worlds come amongst us with a distinct purpose in view. Sometimes that purpose can be traced to remorse, revenge, a quest, a strong attraction to the scene of a crime, but in many other cases no object can be discerned.

The condition of the observer is constantly found to be absolutely normal. The mental conditions of both myself and N. were, as far as we could tell, quite normal. Our mental activity was no greater, no more vivid or more accurate than usual, yet we both saw an object that was beyond normal sense and rational vision.

The fact that so often there is no connecting link between the apparition and his or her surroundings induces me to believe that we are everywhere surrounded by the denizens of the other world, and on rare occasions we catch a glimpse of them.

Here is another utterly trivial story which emphasizes the above suggestion.

I was lunching with my husband in a house built within the last fifty years. The only former occupants were known to us. We were discussing a letter I had that morning received and I said: "I'll go and fetch it for you to read." I rose and left the dining-room, and pushed open the half-closed door of the adjoining drawing-room.

What was my astonishment to behold standing in the middle of the floor a tall, dark man, a total stranger. He stood exactly between the door and a large bow window, through which poured a flood of sunshine, and I paused involuntarily and stared at him. Not that there was anything the least peculiar about him, and, indeed, his air of great respectability instantly banished the flashing thought of "Burglar."

The stranger returned my stare with perfect composure, and in a second or two during which we regarded each other I had time to observe his appearance. He was well dressed, all in black, with a modern, black broadcloth frockcoat b.u.t.toned close. He was very tall and strongly built, his face was sallow and heavy featured, and he wore a short, black beard. I bowed and addressed him:

"I'm sorry! I didn't know any one was waiting. Do you wish to see me or my husband?" I said politely.