Summoning all my courage I sat up and switched on the light. What I saw must read like pure nonsense to the majority, but nevertheless I mean to record facts as they happened to me.
About a dozen small forms, half-man, half-animal, were playing leap-frog round the room. They were about three feet in height, some slightly smaller, and though their bodies, legs and feet were human, their heads resembled apes.
I forgot all about being afraid, they were so amazingly grotesque, and they were so thoroughly happy. One would go down on all fours, and the creatures immediately behind him would leap his back, and so on down the chain, and all the while they kept up that shrill, high-pitched note of intense enjoyment.
I have come to the conclusion that it was the light that finally put an end to their revels. They took no heed of me, but gradually their energies flagged, they faded and became blurred in outline; one by one they simply went out like sparks until not one was left.
Though I occupied that room for a month I was never disturbed again. Perfect quiet reigned for the rest of my stay.
At the end of five days a police official came to call upon me, and informed me that my identity had been perfectly established by the British Embassy at Vienna, and that my escort was now withdrawn. He also begged to return my typewriter, rendered utterly useless I discovered, to my great dismay, and the dispatch box arrived intact the next morning.
I have no explanation to offer of the phenomena I have described. They belong to the many unsolved mysteries that constantly surround us. It will be said that my mind was in an excited and abnormal condition owing to my adventures in the Customs House, and that I probably imagined the scene instead of really seeing the creatures I have described.
I agree that probably my mental faculties, for the time being, were possibly abnormal, but I hold that when the consciousness is in an abnormal condition it is naturally much easier to see the abnormal. At ordinary times the veil of the flesh seems denser, and the consciousness much less acute.
The question seems to me to hang more on the query—do such creatures actually exist, than on the argument did I, or did I not see them? There are creatures living in the physical world quite as horrible to look upon as the astral entities I saw. The octopus and some apes, for instance. Innumerable people of unimpeachable veracity have testified to seeing grotesque and hideous creatures, which can only be placed in the category of astral denizens, and in that category I place the phenomena I certainly witnessed on two successive nights.
The following story has been given to me by a barrister who kindly allows me to give his name: