Mrs. Cayley, however, was not wise. Laughing at the Indian's credulity, she immediately saddled her horse, and riding to the tree, compelled the reluctant and terrified animal to pass under its branches. Just as it did so, Mrs. Cayley felt an icy current of air pass right through her, and, glancing down, saw, to her horror, a misty something crouching against the trunk of the tree and peering up at her. She couldn't tell what it was, its shape being altogether too indistinct, but from the fact that it impressed her with sensations of the utmost terror and loathing, she realised that it was something both diabolical and malignant. At this moment her horse shied, and she knew nothing more till she found herself with a sprained ankle, lying on the ground close to the tree. Her terror was then so great that, without daring to look round, she rolled over and over till she had got from under cover of the branches, when, despite the pain caused by her injury, she got up and hobbled home.
That evening a very near relative of hers was accidentally shot, and within the week her favourite brother died from the effects of sunstroke!
The ghost in this case was either a Vice Elemental attracted to the tree by some tragedy once enacted there, or a phantasm of the malignant order of Clanogrian.
Hauntings of a similar nature are not uncommon in Ireland.
According to certain North American Indian tribes, trees have spirits of their own, which resemble beautiful women, whilst in Greece certain trees are haunted by "Stichios" (see Superstitions of Modern Greece, by M. Le Baron d'Estournelles), a malignant kind of Vagrarian or Clanogrian that wreaks vengeance on anyone or anything venturing to sleep beneath the branches.
In Australia, too, the Bushmen often shun trees, declaring them to be haunted by demons that whistle in the branches. Whether this is true or not, many trees are haunted, and the phantasm that most commonly haunts them is undoubtedly the sub-human and sub-animal type of Vice Elemental—such as was seen by Mrs. Cayley on the day her relative was accidentally shot and shortly before her brother succumbed to sunstroke.
TELEPATHY.
The transference of thought from one mind to another without any other medium than air is an established fact—such communications are of daily occurrence. At present, however, the communications usually take place without any conscious endeavour on the part of the transmitter, or knowledge of actual reception on the part of the receiver.
For example, a certain Mr. Philpotts, with whom I am acquainted, when on a visit to London, was wishing very earnestly one morning that his wife, whom he had left at home, would go into his study and write a letter in reply to one which he had forgotten to answer. On his return home next day, he found to his astonishment that at the very time he had been thinking of the letter, his wife had actually gone into the study and penned it. Up to that moment, she had had no intention of going into the study, and no idea that any letter there needed an answer.
Instances like this are numerous. The questions now arise as to whether it is possible for the transmitter of the thoughts to raise in the recipient's mind visions which might be thought to be objective, and that if such a process should be possible, if it would not account for many of the so-called superphysical phenomena?