Ghosts I Have Seen, and Other Psychic ExperiencesTweedale, Violet
Religion
Ghosts I Have Seen, and Other Psychic Experiences
Tweedale, Violet
Ghosts; Parapsychology
There are long-drawn-out shadows, which seem to take their rise in the
corners of the room, and creep across the floor. They are not
motionless, but in constant vibration and re-formation, like smoke
drifts. Such shadows are not of a uniform gray, but tinged by dull
colors, dark red, sulphur yellow, muddy brown. In a haunted room there
is always a shadow above one's head. A hovering cloud between the
ceiling and midway to the floor.
Then there are the sensations I feel when entering a haunted room.
Little shivers run through me, and what I take to be nervous excitation
sets all my spine jangling, and the tiny nerve threads quivering. The
sensation of icy cold water trickling down my back is most unpleasant.
At times a profound melancholy falls upon me, often blended with a
poignant compassion for some one, I know not whom. At other times a
sensation of violent repulsion invades my being, which has actually, in
some cases, produced physical sickness. Again, there is the helpless
feeling, and that is the hardest to bear of all such psychic
disturbances. The feeling that something is about to occur in that room
which I will be powerless to ward off.
What can one do when paying a visit if one is ushered into a bedroom by
one's hostess which one instantly knows to be "unhealthful"? I cannot
find a better word to describe many a haunted room. This experience has
several times happened to me, and unless I know my hostess very well, I
am obliged to sleep in this unhealthful atmosphere.
On one occasion I was invited to dine and sleep with some old friends,
who had taken on lease an old castle in the neighborhood of St. Andrews,
where I happened to be staying. They had only been in residence for a
month or two, an old brother and an old sister, whom I had known all my
life.
In spite of this long friendship they were not the sort of people to
whom I could have said, "Would you mind giving me another room? The one
you have selected for me is haunted, and if I remain in it I will have
no sleep. I shall not even dare to try to sleep, but shall have to keep
awake all night to ward off the evil." They would have been both shocked
and indignant at such a suggestion, and probably have concluded that I
had gone stark staring mad.
I had accepted a seat in a carriage belonging to some friends in St.
Andrews, who were also going to the castle to dine, but who were
returning to sleep in their own homes in the town.
It was twilight when we drove up the long avenue, and caught a first
glimpse of the exterior. A typical old Scotch castle, very large, with
high-peaked roofs and pepper-box turrets, and all built of gray stone.
About an hour before dinner I was conducted to my room. My evening dress
was already spread upon the bed, and the housemaid was arranging my
toilet articles on the dressing-table.
"I think you will be comfortable here, my dear," said my kind hostess,
and I thanked her with a sinking heart as she went away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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