Another case in which there is little or no doubt of the apparition being a Vice Elemental was related to me by Mrs. Bruce, whose husband was recently stationed in India. Her narrative is as follows:—
"We once lived in a bungalow that had been built on the site of a house whose inhabitants had been barbarously murdered by the Sepoys during the Indian Mutiny, and we had not occupied it many days before we were disturbed by hearing a curious, crooning noise coming from various parts of the building. The moment we entered a room, whence the noise seemed to proceed, there was silence, while the instant our backs were turned it recommenced. We never saw anything, however, until one day when my husband, hearing the sounds, hurriedly entered the room in which he fancied he could locate them. He then saw the blurred outlines of something—he could only describe as semi-human—suddenly rise from one of the corners and dart past him. The disturbances were so worrying that we eventually left the house."
In this case the amount of blood spilt on the site of the bungalow would in itself be a sufficient cause for the hauntings, and my only surprise is that it did not attract many more Elementals of this species.
Miss Frances Sinclair had an uncanny experience whilst travelling by rail between Chester and London last autumn.
On entering a tunnel, at about six in the evening, Miss Sinclair was quite positive there was no one in the compartment saving herself and her dog. Judge then her astonishment and dismay, when she suddenly saw, seated opposite her, the huddled-up figure of what she took to be a man with his throat cut! He had two protruding fishy eyes, which met hers in a glassy stare. He was dressed in mustard-coloured clothes, and had a black bag by his side. Miss Sinclair was at once seized with a violent impulse to destroy herself, and whilst her dog was burying its nose in the folds of her dress and exhibiting every indication of terror, Miss Sinclair was doing all she could to prevent herself jumping out of the carriage. Just when she thought she must succumb and was on the verge of opening the door, the tunnel ended, the phantasm vanished, and her longing for self-destruction abruptly ceased. She had never before, she assures me, experienced any such sensations.
Here, of course, it is impossible to say whether what she witnessed was Subjective or Objective, but assuming the latter, then I am inclined to think that the apparition, judging by its appearance and the desires it generated, was a Vice Elemental, and not a Phantasm of the Dead. It need not necessarily have been attached to the compartment in which she happened to see it, but may have haunted the tunnel itself, manifesting itself in various ways.
An author, whom I will designate Mr. Reed, told me a few weeks ago, that he and his brother, on going upstairs one evening, had seen the figure of a man with a cone-shaped head suddenly stalk past them, and, bounding up the stairs, vanish in the gloom. Though naturally very surprised, neither Mr. Reed nor his brother were in the least degree frightened. On the contrary, they were greatly interested, as the phantasm answered so well to their ideas of a bogey! As both brothers saw it, and neither of them were in the least degree nervous, I am inclined to think that this phantom was a Vagrarian, and that its presence in the house was due either to some prehistoric relic that lay buried near at hand, or to the loneliness and isolation of the place.
Mrs. H. Dodd had a strange experience with an Elemental. "Waking up one night many years ago," she tells me, "I saw a tall figure standing by my bedside. It appeared to have a light inside it, and gave the same impression that a hand does when held in front of a candle. I could see the red of the flesh and dark-blue lines of the ribs—dash;the whole was luminous. What the face was like I do not know, as I never got so far, being much too frightened to look. It bent over me, and I hid my head in the bedclothes with fright. When I told my parents about it at breakfast, to my surprise no one laughed at me; why, I do not know, unless the house was haunted and they knew it. My brother said he had seen a tall figure disappear into the wall of his room in the night."
As Mrs. Dodd adds that a near relative of hers died about that time, it is, of course, possible that the phantasm was that of the latter, although from the possibilities of grotesqueness suggested by what she saw of the ghost, as well as from the fact that the house was newly built in a neighbourhood peculiarly favourable to Elementals, I am inclined to assign it to that class of apparitions.
Some months ago I received from the Baroness Von A—— the following account of a haunting experienced by her family:—