« I must inform all and sundry that I am not a
spiritualist, and that I know nothing whatever about spiritualism. I have been
informed by several people that I am what is termed a “sensitive.”
I have never attended a séance or any meeting or gathering of the kind,
nor had I ever read any literature dealing with such subjects as spiritualism
or mysticism or occultism or anything of kindred nature until quite recently,
when my attention was called to the Occult Review, which I found intensely
interesting and illuminating.
As a journalist, and a very busy one, I am, as a rule, so tired when I
go to bed — invariably in the small hours — that I fall asleep almost immediately
and sleep for hours without ever a break. On a never-to-be-forgotten night I
was in my usual state of health, I was untroubled and without a vestige of
care.
I had had my usual supper. I had been in bed a short time and was in
that blissful condition of mind when one is just dozing off. The room was in
total darkness, as I had switched off the electric light and drawn thick, heavy
curtains over the holland blinds that covered the two large windows.
My pet cat invariably sleeps on my bed, and was in its customary place,
curled up on the quilt, fast asleep.
As I lay there, with half-shut eyes, there suddenly appeared at the top
of the wall on the right (the side to which I had turned), a long shaft of
light, of the most beautiful shade of light bright blue. It moved and quivered
along in the direction of the right window, and I watched it with fascinated
gaze.
- “How extraordinary!”
I thought, “I never saw the moonlight come in in this fashion when those thick
curtains were drawn right across, and it is a different blue from moonlight
blue, too, and moves about so oddly . . . what can it be? … but of course it
must be moonlight, and perhaps there are clouds passing over the moon?”
The light — a heavenly forget-me-not sort of blue — the counterpart of
which, however, I have never seen, either before or since, still wavered and
drifted across the room in the same part, near the ceiling, and I stupidly
looked at the top of the door (over which hung a heavy crimson plush portière)
as if a light could have been cast through a solid brick wall!
At last I jumped out of bed, pulled curtains and blind aside and looked
out of the window. Nothing but impenetrable darkness met my astonished gaze. No
moon, not a star, not a ray of light to be seen! Intense blackness and gloom — nothing
more. I could not distinguish the road, or the opposite trees, or, in short,
anything at all. The street lights are put out early in the country, and the
night was of inky blackness.
-
“Could it have been
some one with a lantern, or a searchlight?”
I pondered, still marveling over the occurrence, as I returned to bed. I
was not in the least alarmed, and it had not even occurred to me that there was
anything at all supernatural in connexion with the affair.
As I went on puzzling, or rather, trying to puzzle it out, the cat
suddenly jumped up on the bed, his fur bristling all over his body, his eyes
glaring, and with one bound he leaped to the door; and as he tore frantically
at the plush portière, he emitted the most awful howl or scream that I ever
heard from an animal — in fact, I did not think such a horrid, blood-curdling
sound could have been given.
I think my hair stood on end then, but even after this I did not
entertain the least idea of anything at all supernatural. My idea was that the
cat had suddenly gone mad! As for the blue light, this new and startling
development had quite driven it out of my mind.
Hydrophobia or no hydrophobia, I was so distressed at seeing the poor
animal’s agony of fear that I took it up in my arms and tried to soothe it.
Trembling all over as if with ague, it cowered against me, hiding its head, and
giving evidence of the most fearful state of terror and distress.
I soothed and petted it, and gradually it grew calmer; but to my
astonishment it peered over the side of the bed, glaring fearfully, its eyes
blazing as if on fire, and its fur bristling again as at first. I saw nothing,
but that the cat saw something I am absolutely convinced, and nothing could
shake that conviction.
Feeling safe in my arms, now that the first shock of the horrid sight — whatever
it may have been — was over, poor Fluff craned his neck eagerly and looked down
on the carpet, watching the movements of the (by me) unseen enemy, as it
apparently travelled along the bedside and rounded the end of the bed in front
of the dressing-table.
The “thing” — whatever it may have been — was on the floor, and made no
attempt to get on the bed. Had it approached us, I am certain that Fluff would
have expired at once; but, from the safe shelter of my arms, he watched the
nocturnal visitor, following it with his eyes along the side of the room,
between the bed and a huge mahogany chest of drawers, and round the end of the
bedstead to the left.
It seemed so strange to see the cat craning its head and following with
its gaze some object undiscoverable by myself that I got up, and, leaning over
the brass rail at the end of the bedstead, looked anxiously and intently in the
direction indicated by the cat.
All I saw was the carpet!
But it must be remembered that I saw the blue light when the cat was
asleep. It might be suggested that my fear of the light was communicated to the
cat, but then I had no fear of it, for I deemed it an ordinary (though perhaps
unusually beautiful) shaft of moonlight until I found that there was no moon,
and the night was as dark as Erebus.
One friend suggested that perhaps it was all a dream! Well, I know, and
am prepared to swear, that it was not. If I had been asleep, the mere fact of
getting out of bed, going to the window, drawing the curtains, and switching on
the electric light, would have been sufficient to rouse me; and, again, I am
not, and never have been, subject to delusions of any sort.
As the editor of the Occult Review
knows, I am on the staff of a well- known London weekly paper, of large
circulation, and my pen-name is known all over the world. I am practical,
business-like, and logical — not a dreamer, or a visionary. I may say, too, that
my house is a new one. There has never been the slightest suggestion that it
was haunted. There have been no other manifestations in it either before or
since.
Recent studies of the effects of light upon living things have brought
many new and surprising theories to the front. It is said that we are bathed in
light, visible and invisible, for there is a radiation which has been termed
“black light” which cannot be seen by our eyes, but which may be visible to
eyes differently organized. Professor Jerviss declares that it is possible that
these ghostly sheaths of ours are perceived by certain animals possessing the
power to see in the dark.
Some
time after my own remarkable experience my attention was drawn by a friend (to
whom I had confided the whole matter) to an almost identical experience related
by Mr. Maurice Hewlett to Miss Constance Smedley.
There was the same blue light, wavering and flickering ; there was a pet
animal — a dog, not a cat, in this particular instance — sleeping on the bed; there
was the fearful terror of the animal, its whining and moaning and whimpering,
and, finally, there were ghostly hands seen passing over the dog, as if
stroking it. At length, the whimpers slackened, and, ere long, ceased. The dog
was dead…
In the event of any one scoffing at my own honestly set down experience,
I would ask these questions:
Whence came this mysterious light,
and how could the cat’s extraordinary terror be accounted for?
Suppose, for instance, that my mind might for once have been subject to
such an extraordinary hallucination, or that my eyes might, for once, have
played me false — for we know that there are such things as optical illusions —
it is difficult to believe that the cat should at the same moment suddenly have
experienced the same hallucination, delusion, or illusion — call it what you
will.
Then, too, the cat was obviously terrified to the farthest limit of its
endurance — had I not soothed it, and covered its head, I think it would have
died from its fright — but I was not alarmed in the least. Puzzled I was, most
assuredly, but not alarmed.
Perhaps it was a “cat” phantom, or a “dog” phantom that my poor Fluff
saw — the ghost of some former pet of mine that haunted its erstwhile owner, and
was suddenly seized with an access of jealousy and rage.
It must have been a horrid object, anyway, for Fluff is the quietest,
gentlest cat I have ever known. For a long time we fancied he was dumb, for by
day or by night no sound was ever heard from his “voice-box.” He was fearfully
scalded on one occasion, but even then only gave two small piteous “mious.” On
another occasion he was trapped in a door, in a gale of wind, and gave a small
and almost human cry at the moment he was released, but the howl he emitted
when he saw the ghost — or whatever it was that he did see — was so loud and so
horrible that I shall never forget it, nor the sight he presented after I had
got a light and I saw him tearing at the plush portière in frantic efforts to
escape.
If any one can offer a solution, or even make an attempt at a solution,
I should be both interested and gratified. I have no theories of my own on the
subject, though I have exhausted every possible field of speculation. »
(The Occult Review, November 1910: p.268-272)
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