Ghosts I Have Seen, and Other Psychic Experiences

by Violet Tweedale

I was soon fast asleep, but was awakened again by some noise in the room. I lay still for a little, listening intently, all the unpleasant incidents of the past day rushing back upon me. The noise was not continuous, but now and again came the sound of something soft, dragging about the floor. The room was fairly light, with the glow of a waning moon, and I judged the hour to be between two and three o'clock.

At last I determined to ascertain what produced this curious sound. I had an electric light over my bed, and I sat up and suddenly switched it on.

Then I realized with horror that I was in the presence of something I had never encountered before, but had often read and heard of. An elemental of a malignant type, and of grotesque form.

Just for an instant I saw nothing but what looked like an enormous pillow, but suddenly out of this grayish-green pillow emerged a head of frog-like shape, and two bright yellow eyes were fixed on mine. I suppose I was too terrified even to remember what my sensations were. A sort of paralysis of fear and horror held me spellbound. There it squatted, thrusting out its misshapen head, its yellow eyes regarding me fixedly. I have no idea how long it remained there, or how long we continued to gaze at one another, but I gradually became aware that it was receding from view. It grew smaller and smaller, and dimmer and more indistinct, till at length it vanished altogether.

Elliott O'Donnell mentions in one of his books having seen such creatures, and of having had a number of such cases reported to him, but generally as the forerunners of illness. To such phantasms he has given the name of "Morbas," and he believes that certain apparitions are symbolical of certain diseases "if not the actual creators of the bacilli from which these diseases arise." This seems to me to be a reasonable explanation of such phenomena, but in my case there was no disease in question. I was perfectly well at the time, and remained so. It is possible, however, that a sick person might have occupied my room the night before. One never knows in hotels, and I had not then read O'Donnell's explanation and made no inquiries. Many of the experiences related in his deeply interesting books are no doubt regarded as fiction, but I know that they are cases common to very many psychics.

For some time I lay awake, fearful of a recurrence of the horrible phenomenon, but gradually sleep overcame me, and I did not wake again till seven o'clock on a lovely summer morning.

That day I took two long walks, closely followed by my escort. They walked immediately behind me, and often we stopped to converse, or to sit down to rest and smoke a cigarette together. They told me all their family history, and about their wives and children, and really they made themselves as agreeable as they possibly could. In the afternoon we climbed up the mountains to one of the many cafés, and had chocolate and cakes, which they thoroughly enjoyed. When I finally went back to the hotel for the night they complained of being tired, and hoped I would not walk so far on the morrow. Their idea of enjoyment was the usual foreign custom of taking a seat outside a street café, and sitting there hour after hour idly watching the passers-by, smoking endless cigarettes and drinking beer.

That night I prepared myself for a recurrence of the abnormal phenomenon I had witnessed, and gathered up all my courage, and decided to attack it with the Sacred command. For a long time I lay awake, but nothing happened, and finally I fell asleep.

I awoke to pandemonium. My room was in a hub-bub of high-pitched noise. Screams of glee and frolic, shouts of thin laughter, and pattering feet with little thuds interspersed. The sounds were all pitched in an unknown key. They can best be described as ordinary sounds intensely rarefied, and pitched in so high a treble that they had run out of the scale altogether.

It was a much darker night, and very hot. Thunder clouds hung over the town, and now and again there was a gleam of lightning and a mutter of distant thunder. I peeped over the edge of the bed, but could see nothing. The noises continued with unabated merriment. A hundred creatures of sorts apparently were playing round me.