Mystic London; or, Phases of occult life in the metropolisDavies, Charles Maurice
History
Mystic London; or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis
Davies, Charles Maurice
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century; Occultism
But I wish to make this paper again a simple statement of things heard
and seen--especially seen. I flatter myself the title is a nice, weird,
ghostly one, calculated to make people feel uncomfortable about the
small hours of the morning. Should such be the case--as they say in
prefaces--the utmost hopes of the writer will be realized. When last I
communicated my experiences, the ultimate end we had reached was the
appearance of a white counterpart of pretty Miss Blank's face at the
peep-hole of a corner cupboard. There were a good many more or
less--generally less--successful imitations of this performance in
various quarters, and the sensation subsided. Miss B. was still facile
princeps from the fact that she stood full light--I mean her spirit-face
did--whilst all the others leaned to a more or less dim religious kind
of gloom. In a short time, however, "Katie"--as the familiar of Miss B.
was termed--thought she would be able to "materialize" herself so far as
to present the whole form, if we re-arranged the corner cupboard so as
to admit of her doing so. Accordingly we opened the door, and from it
suspended a rug or two opening in the centre, after the fashion of a
Bedouin Arab's tent, formed a semicircle, sat and sang Longfellow's
"Footsteps of Angels." Therein occurs the passage: "Then the forms of
the departed enter at the open door." And, lo and behold, though we had
left Miss B. tied and sealed to her chair, and clad in an ordinary black
dress somewhat voluminous as to the skirts, a tall female figure draped
classically in white, with bare arms and feet, did enter at the open
door, or rather down the centre from between the two rugs, and stood
statue-like before us, spoke a few words, and retired; after which we
entered the Bedouin tent and found pretty Miss B. with her dress as
before, knots and seals secure, and her boots on! This was Form No. 1,
the first I had ever seen. It looked as material as myself; and on a
subsequent occasion--for I have seen it several times--we took four very
good photographic portraits of it by magnesium light. The difficulty I
still felt, with the form as with the faces, was that it seemed so
thoroughly material and flesh-and-blood like. Perhaps, I thought, the
authoress of "The Gates Ajar" is right, and the next condition of things
may be more material than we generally think, even to the extent of
admitting, as she says, pianofortes among its adjuncts. But I was to see
something much more ghostly than this.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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