Miss Rolands, a friend of mine, who is an artist, gives me an experience that once happened to her.
"I am afraid I will tell this story very badly," she begins, "but I will do my little best. I remember it all so well, though I was little more than a child at the time. I lived with my grandparents, aunts, and sister in an old house in Birkenhead. The house was a very high one. It had both attics and cellars, and in one of the attics there was a bloodstain, due, so I was told, to a murder of a particularly horrible nature, that had once been perpetrated there, and on account of which the house was reputed to be haunted. Rumour said that in bygone days the house had been inhabited by priests, and that it was one of them who had been killed, his body being taken away in a barrel! In spite, however, of the bloodstain and the grim tales in connection with it, my sisters and I, at the commencement of our tenancy of the house, used to play in the attic, and nothing happened. But at last there came a night when we awoke to the fact that there was a ghastly amount of truth in what we had heard. Some time after we had all gone to bed, we were all aroused (even my practical old grandfather) by three loud knocks on one of the doors which each of us fancied was our own. Then there was silence, and then, from the very top of the house where the attic was situated, a barrel was rolled down the stairs!—bump! bump! bump! When it reached each separate landing, there was a short interval as if the barrel was settling itself before beginning its next journey, and then again, bump! bump! fainter and fainter, until it reached the cellar, when the sounds ceased.
When this stage was reached, we used to light tapers and all look out of our respective doors with white scared faces and hair that literally felt as if it were standing on end, and then, after a few seconds of breathless silence we flew with one accord to one room, where we remained, packed like herrings, till the morning.
This strange, mysterious occurrence happened at least three times to my knowledge, and I can vouch for its absolute truth, as can my aunts and sister, and as could my grandparents, if they were alive.
Without any accurate details with regard to the murder, it is impossible to say definitely to what class of phantasms this haunting was due. One might attribute it entirely to the work of Impersonating Elementals, entirely to phantasms of the Dead, or to both Impersonating Elementals and Phantasms of the Dead.
I have recently been seeking for information concerning Pixies, and as the result of my enquiries have received replies from several people (whose social position and consequent sense of honour are a guarantee of their veracity) declaring they have seen this species of Elemental.
One of my informants, Miss White, who lives in West Cornwall, tells me that on one occasion, when she was crossing some very lonely fields, almost within sight of Castle-on-Dinas, she suddenly saw a number of little people rise from among the boulders of granite on the top of a hill facing her; they were all armed with spears and engaged in a kind of mimic battle, but, on Miss White approaching them, they instantly vanished, nor did she ever see them again.
I can quite imagine that the hill, where Miss White alleges she saw these little phantasms, is haunted, as the whole of that neighbourhood (with which I have been acquainted for some years) is most suggestive of every kind of Elemental. There are, for example, on Castle-on-Dinas, the remains of an ancient Celtic village, and I have no doubt the locality has experienced many violent deaths, and that many prehistoric people lie buried there.
Another of my correspondents, Mrs. Bellew, says:—"In the winter of 1888-89 I was suffering from delicate lungs, and was advised to have a fire in my bedroom night and morning. One night, between eleven and twelve, I was awakened suddenly by a coal falling into the fender, and heard a small voice, resembling the squeaking of a mouse, say, 'We did that! you didn't know it,' then there followed shrill laughter. I sat up in bed so as to command a view of the fireplace, and saw sitting on a live coal two little beings about six inches high, with human faces and limbs and white skins.
"Quite naturally I answered, 'I knew perfectly well it was you.' At the sound of my voice they vanished at once, and I, only then, realised how strange an experience I had had. The whole incident only occupied a minute or two."