BYWAYS OF GHOST-LAND BYWAYS OF GHOST-LAND BY ELLIOTT O'DONNELL AUTHOR OF "SOME HAUNTED HOUSES OF ENGLAND AND WALES," "HAUNTED HOUSES OF LONDON," "GHOSTLY PHENOMENA," "DREAMS AND THEIR MEANINGS," "SCOTTISH GHOST TALES," "TRUE GHOST TALES," ETC., ETC. WILLIAM RIDER AND SON, LIMITED 164 Aldersgate St., London, E.C. 1911 CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE 1. THE UNKNOWN BRAIN 1 2. THE OCCULT IN SHADOWS 21 3. OBSESSION, POSSESSION 28 4. OCCULT HOOLIGANS 47 5. SYLVAN HORRORS 56 6. COMPLEX HAUNTINGS AND OCCULT BESTIALITIES 80 7. VAMPIRES, WERE-WOLVES, FOX-WOMEN, ETC. 110 8. DEATH-WARNINGS AND FAMILY GHOSTS 132 9. SUPERSTITIONS AND FORTUNES 153 10. THE HAND OF GLORY; THE BLOODY HAND OF ULSTER; THE SEVENTH SON; BIRTH-MARKS; NATURE'S DEVIL SIGNALS; PRE-EXISTENCE; THE FUTURE; PROJECTION; TELEPATHY; ETC. 176 11. OCCULT INHABITANTS OF THE SEA AND RIVERS 198 12. BUDDHAS AND BOGGLE CHAIRS 210 INDEX 244 BYWAYS OF GHOST-LAND CHAPTER I THE UNKNOWN BRAIN Whether all that constitutes man's spiritual nature, that is to say, ALL his mind, is inseparably amalgamated with the whitish mass of soft matter enclosed in his cranium and called his brain, is a question that must, one supposes, be ever open to debate. One knows that this whitish substance is the centre of the nervous system and the seat of consciousness and volition, and, from the constant study of character by type or by phrenology, one may even go on to deduce with reason that in this protoplasmic substance--in each of the numerous cells into which it is divided and subdivided--are located the human faculties. Hence, it would seem that one may rationally conclude, that all man's vital force, all that comprises his mind--_i.e._ the power in him that conceives, remembers, reasons, wills--is so wrapped up in the actual matter of his cerebrum as to be incapable of existing apart from it; and that as a natural sequence thereto, on the dissolution of the brain, the mind and everything pertaining to the mind dies with it--there is no future life because there is nothing left to survive.