The following case has been under
my observation for about ten years. A
lady of my acquaintance appears to have an attending “spirit,” occasionally
manifesting itself in the shape of a dwarf, who seems to love to amuse himself
by almost daily playing harmless tricks, such as causing things to disappear from
places in which they have been deposited and where they are again to be found
afterwards, displacing furniture and fetching small articles which may be wanted.
On three occasions to my certain
knowledge a broken golden watch-chain which was left on the table at bedtime
was found mended in the morning, without anybody having entered the room. On
two such occasions the chain was mended to perfection; the third time the work
was badly done and had to be done over by a goldsmith.
It would be impossible to
describe all the tricks performed by this dwarf; but the following history of
the case may be of interest to the reader.
The said lady is of a noble
family, well known in Germany, and in possession of a family record dating back
several centuries. It is stated therein that to one of her ancestors, a lady of
high estate, there appeared one evening a little dwarf and begged her to go
with him, to render a certain service to his wife.
This she did, and as a reward the
dwarf emptied his apron, in which he carried what appeared to be shavings, into
a comer of the room near the chimney, telling the lady that she would find it
to be gold. Of this gold he advised her to cause to be made one golden fish, a golden
spinning-wheel, and a certain number of gold coins.
Sure enough, in the morning the
lady found these supposed shavings to be gold of the purest kind and she acted
according to the directions received. The dwarf moreover said, that as long as
these treasures would remain in possession of her family, all would be well and
prosper; but if they were to become separated, misfortune would follow.
This actually came out as
predicted. For centuries the fish, the spinning-wheel and the coins remained in
the family; but after awhile they were distributed among some of the members, and
not long afterwards their goods and castles were taken by the King of Denmark,
and one misfortune followed after another.
The articles made of the gold
furnished by the dwarf, however, are said to be still in existence: the fish in
a museum at Dunkirk, the spinning-wheel in a museum at Copenhagen, and the gold
coins in a castle in Schleswig Holstein, which still belongs to the family.
I should be glad if some of the
readers at Dunkirk and Copenhagen would investigate the matter, so as to verify
these statements if possible. I have no other explanations for these facts
except the existence of the elemental spirits of earth, called “Gnomes,” which
are described by Theophrastus Paracelsus and others, and of which I have made
mention in my book “Among the Gnomes of the Untersberg."
(The Occult Review, April 1907, p.200-201)
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