My voice awoke him from the creeping paralysis of terror that was mastering him, and raising the scroll of the ritual he recovered himself by an effort of will, and uttered the words of the spell of release. A swirl of icy cold wind seemed to sweep about us, and I stabbed at the invisible grasp that seemed to be plucking at my garments. Two of the candles went out and the windows rattled violently in their frames. Then with frightening suddenness the manifestations ceased. The boy was gasping for breath once more and the terror had passed. Not until the last of the valedictory phrases of the ritual had been said did either of us dare leave our stations. Then both of us, shocked and terrified by what we had seen, went over to the boy Walther. He was deeply entranced yet, breathing heavily; the colour had not yet ebbed from his face and on his brow were beads and runnels of perspiration. Bentlemeyer made a few passes, breathed on his eyelids, and brought him round. But there on his uncollared neck was the dark, bruised imprint of strangling fingers. * * * * * This experience was phenomenal. We examined the room carefully afterwards and came to the conclusion that the couch on which Walther was lying projected at one corner over the circuit of the diagram that should have protected it. The identity of the spirit we could not determine. Whether it was really the spirit of the executioner or torturer, whether it was merely an impersonation by a demon elemental, or what particular denizen of the realm of evil it was that came to the summons and the blood bowl I cannot say. I learnt later that Bentlemeyer was, despite his learning and his professional standing, a man of notoriously evil and depraved life. There is no doubt that our experiences that evening thoroughly startled him. A brother student of proven reliability told me later that Bentlemeyer had assured him that he could and did evoke evil spirits, and evoke them to execute malicious tricks upon his confrères in the professional world. In this connection it is interesting to note that when looking through his cabinet of magical instruments I saw two small nude waxen models, male and female. I asked at the time the purpose of these and he explained that they were used by him in a hypnotic experiment with Walther. This was the phenomenon known as externalization of sensibility. Under hypnosis Walther’s feeling of sensation could be transferred by the operator to any object, such as a glass of water or a waxen doll. A pin-prick on the surface of the water would be felt by him as an acute pricking sensation all over the body. When the doll was used, pain was felt by Walther in the precise place where the doll was pricked.[32]