Mr. Algernon Blackwood has cleverly used this idea of the astral body assuming cat-shape, and a wound inflicted on the animal reproducing itself on the physical counterpart, by means of the so-called phenomenon of repercussion.
In "The Empty Sleeve,"[127] the violinist Hyman "believed that there was some fluid portion of a man's personality which could be projected to a distance, and even semimaterialised there. The 'astral body,' he called it, or some such foolishness, claiming that it could appear in various forms, according to the character of its owner's desire, even in animal forms."
Billy Gilmer described to his brother what he saw when the violinist was playing. "The music seemed to issue from himself rather than from the shining bit of wood under his chin, when—I noticed something coming over me that was"—he hesitated, searching for words—"that wasn't all due to the music."...
"You mean Hyman looked queer?"
Billy nodded his head without turning.
"Changed there before my very eyes"—he whispered it—"turned animal——"
"Animal!" John felt his hair rising.
"That's the only way I can put it. His face and hands and body turned otherwise than usual. I lost the sound of his feet. When the bow-hand or the fingers on the strings passed into the light, they were"—he uttered a soft, shuddering little laugh—"furry, oddly divided, the fingers massed together. And he paced stealthily. I thought every instant the fiddle would drop with a crash and he would spring at me across the room."
Some weeks later John Gilmer is awakened by a noise in the flat, and seizing a Turkish sword from the wall where it hung he entered the sitting-room where he saw a moving figure.
"Clutching his Turkish sword tightly he drew back with the utmost caution against the wall and watched, for the singular impression came to him that the movement was not that of a human being crouching, but rather of something that pertained to the animal world. He remembered, flash-like, the movements of reptiles, the stealth of the larger felines, the undulating glide of great snakes. For the moment, however, it did not move, and they faced one another.