Byways of Ghost-Land

by Elliott O'Donnell

so each immaterial inhabitant has its representative phantasm. Thus each representative phantasm, on the dissolution of the material brain, would be either earth-bound or promoted to the higher spiritual plane. Hence, one human being may be represented by a score of phantasms, and it is quite possible for a house to be haunted by many totally different phenomena of the same person. I know, for instance, of a house being subjected to the hauntings of a dog, a sensual-looking priest, the bloated shape of an indescribable something, and a ferocious-visaged sailor. It had had, prior to my investigation, only one tenant, a notorious rake and glutton; no priest or sailor had ever been known to enter the house; and so I concluded the many apparitions were but phantasms of the same person—phantasms of his several, separate, and distinct personalities. He had brutal tendencies, sacerdotal (not spiritual) tendencies, gluttonous, and nautical tendencies, and his whole character being dominated by carnal cravings, on the dissolution of his material body each separate tendency would remain earth-bound, represented by the phantasm most closely resembling it. I believe this theory may explain many dual hauntings, and it holds good with regard to the case I have quoted, the case of the apparition with the pig's head. The ghost need not necessarily have been the spirit of a dead woman in toto, but merely the phantasm of one of her grosser personalities; her more spiritual personalities, represented by other phantasms, having migrated to the higher plane. Let me take, as another example, the case which I personally

investigated, and which interested me deeply. The house was then haunted (and, as far as I know to the contrary, is still haunted) by a blurred figure, suggestive of something hardly human and extremely nasty, that bounded up the stairs two steps at a time; by a big, malignant eye—only an eye—that appeared in one of the top rooms; and by a phantasm resembling a lady in distinctly modern costume. The house is old, and as, according to tradition, some crime was committed within its walls many years ago, the case may really be an instance of separate hauntings—the bounding figure and the eye (the latter either belonging to the figure or to another phantasm) being the phantasms of the principal, or principals, in the ancient tragedy; the lady, either the phantasm of someone who died there comparatively recently, or of someone still alive, who consciously, or unconsciously, projects her superphysical ego to that spot. On the other hand, the three different phenomena might be three different phantasms of one person, that person being either alive or dead—for one can unquestionably, at times, project phantasms of one's various personalities before physical dissolution. The question of occult phenomena, one may thus see, is far more complex than it would appear to be at first sight, and naturally so,—the whole of nature being complex from start to finish. Just as minerals are not composed of one atom but of countless atoms, so the human brain is not constituted of one cell but of many; and as with the material cerebrum, so with the immaterial—hence the complexity. With regard to the phenomena of superphysical bestialities

such as dogs, bears, etc., it is almost impossible to say whether the phantasm would be that of a dead person, or rather that representing one of some dead person's several personalities—the phantasm of a genuine animal, of a vagrarian, or of some other type of elemental.

One can only surmise the identity of such phantasms, after becoming acquainted with the history of the locality in which such manifestations appear. The case to which I referred in my previous works, Some Haunted Houses of England and Wales, and Ghostly Phenomena, namely, that of the apparition of a nude man being seen outside an unused burial-ground in Guilsborough, Northamptonshire, furnishes a good example of alternatives. Near to the spot, at least within two or three hundred yards of it, was a barrow, close to which a sacrificial stone had been unearthed; consequently the phantasm may have been a barrowvian; and again, as the locality is much wooded and but thinly populated, it may have been a vagrarian; and again, the burial-ground being in such close proximity, the apparition may well have been the phantasm of one of the various personalities of a human being interred there.

One night, as I was sitting reading alone in an isolated cottage on the Wicklow hills, I was half-startled out of my senses by hearing a loud, menacing cry, half-human and half-animal, and apparently in mid-air, directly over my head. I looked up, and to my horror saw suspended, a few feet above me, the face of a Dalmatian dog—of a long since dead Dalmatian dog, with glassy, expressionless eyes,

and yellow, gaping jaws. The phenomenon did not last more than half a minute, and with its abrupt disappearance came a repetition of the cry. What was it? I questioned the owner of the cottage, and she informed me she had always had the sensation something uncanny walked the place at night, but had never seen anything. "One of my children did, though," she added; "Mike—he was drowned at sea twelve months ago. Before he became a sailor he lived with me here, and often used to see a dog—a big, spotted cratur, like what we called a plum-pudding dog. It was a nasty, unwholesome-looking thing, he used to tell me, and would run round and round his room—the room where you sleep—at night. Though a bold enough lad as a rule, the thing always scared him; and he used to come and tell me about it, with a face as white as linen—'Mother!' he would say, 'I saw the spotted cratur again in the night, and I couldn't get as much as a wink of sleep.' He would sometimes throw a boot at it, and always with the same result—the boot would go right through it." She then told me that a former tenant of the house, who had borne an evil reputation in the village—the peasants unanimously declaring she was a witch—had died, so it was said, in my room. "But, of course," she added, "it wasn't her ghost that Mike saw." Here I disagreed with her. However, if she could not come to any conclusion, neither could I; for though, of course, the dog may have been the earth-bound spirit of some particularly carnal-minded occupant of the cottage—or, in

other words, a phantasm representing one of that carnal-minded person's several personalities,—it may have been the phantasm of a vagrarian, of a barrowvian, or, of some other kind of elemental, attracted to the spot by its extreme loneliness, and the presence there, unsuspected by man, of some ancient remains, either human or animal. Occult dogs are very often of a luminous, semi-transparent bluish-grey—a bluish-grey that is common to many other kinds of superphysical phenomena, but which I have never seen in the physical world.

I have heard of several houses in Westmoreland and Devon, always in the vicinity of ancient burial-places, being haunted by blue dogs, and sometimes by blue dogs without heads. Indeed, headless apparitions of all sorts are by no means uncommon. A lady, who is well known to me, had a very unpleasant experience in a house in Norfolk, where she was awakened one night by a scratching on her window-pane, which was some distance from the ground, and, on getting out of bed to see what was there, perceived the huge form of a shaggy dog, without a head, pressed against the glass.

Fortunately for my informant, the manifestation was brief. The height of the window from the ground quite precluded the possibility of the apparition being any natural dog, and my friend was subsequently informed that what she had seen was one of the many headless phantasms that haunted the house. Of course, it does not follow that because one does not actually see a head, a head is not objectively there—it may be very much there, only not materialised. A story of one of

these seemingly headless apparitions was once told me by a Mrs Forbes du Barry whom I met at Lady D.'s house in Eaton Square. I remember the at-home to which I refer, particularly well, as the entertainment on that occasion was entirely entrusted to Miss Lilian North, who as a reciter and raconteur is, in my opinion, as far superior to any other reciter and raconteur as the stars are superior to the earth. Those who have not heard her stories, have not listened to her eloquent voice—that appeals not merely to the heart, but to the soul—are to be pitied. But there—I am digressing. Let me proceed. It was, I repeat, on the soul-inspiring occasion above mentioned that I was introduced to Mrs Forbes du Barry, who must be held responsible for the following story.