Seen and UnseenBates, E. Katherine (Emily Katherine)
Religion
Seen and Unseen
Bates, E. Katherine (Emily Katherine)
Bates, E. Katherine (Emily Katherine); Parapsychology; Psychics -- Biography; Spiritualism
When morning came I was only too thankful to get up, and when my friend
arrived on her bicycle about noon, and asked me how I had slept in the
strange house, I was forced to confess that my night had been much
troubled by dreams about an old friend, of whom she had never heard,
by-the-by.
"Oh, well, we all dream about old friends sometimes," she said, "but I'm
afraid in this case your dreams were not pleasant; you look tired out!
Anyway, it is a mercy that it was not F----'s!"
And so with a joke the matter dropped.
But the following night the trouble was renewed. Even then I did not in
any way connect it with the room in which I was sleeping, and I said
nothing next day to my friend on the subject.
But the _third_ night matters had gone beyond a joke. The influence was
stronger than ever, the gibes and reproaches more accentuated, and, in
addition to these, there was on my side the exasperation engendered by
three sleepless nights.
Instead of feeling depressed--as on the two previous occasions--the
"worm turned" at last!
I spoke out loud in my vexation, as though the man himself were there
listening to me.
"Well," I said, "I have no unkindly feeling towards _you_ of any kind.
If you have nothing better to do than to come worrying me and keeping me
awake in this way, it just shows how wise I was _not_ to marry you! You
have nothing to do with my life now. And YOU CAN GO."
"Standing up" in this way to the ghost of the living had a most
excellent effect, upon my mind at anyrate. I felt intensely relieved,
and soon fell into a long and dreamless sleep.
This last experience first suggested the idea that this old friend _must
have some special connection with that house_. In the morning I
confessed to my friend that my second night had been as disturbed as the
first, and the last the worst of all, adding: "That man is simply
haunting the place. I am determined to try and find out if he ever
lodged here."
This was by no means easy, as it turned out. His College career was
already buried in the snows of some twenty-five years. Moreover, when I
questioned the young daughter of our landlady as to how long her parents
had lived in the house, she said at once: "Just seventeen years, ma'am.
Father and mother came here the year I was born."
This did not help me much. I asked who had rented the house previously.
Referring this question to her mother, she told me it had been taken
from some people who had left Cambridge, and "_Mother thought they were
both dead now_."
This was a second _cul-de-sac_ for me!
But I was determined to go on with my investigations, simply grounded
upon the strong conviction that such repeated experiences _must_ have
some foundation in fact.
The girl saw I looked disappointed. "Did you want to know about anyone
who lived here long ago?" she ventured timidly.
"Yes; I wanted to find out whether an old friend of mine ever lodged
here; he belonged to Peterhouse," was my answer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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