The Elliott O’Donnell Supernatural Megapack

by Elliott O'Donnell

  In my study there is a deep recess concealed in the winter-time by heavy curtains drawn across it; and often when I am writing something makes me look up, and a cold horror falls upon me as I perceive the curtains rustle, rustle as though they were laughing, laughing in conjunction with some hidden occult monstrosity; some grey—the bulk of the phantasms that come to me are grey—and glittering monstrosity who was enjoying a rich jest at my expense. Occasionally, to emphasise its presence, this poltergeist has scratched the wall, or thumped, or thrown an invisible missile over my head, or sighed, or groaned, or gurgled, and I have been frightened, horribly, ghastly frightened. Then something has happened—my wife has called out, or someone has rung a bell, or the postman has given one of his whole-hearted smashes with the knocker, and the poltergeist has “cleared off,” and I have not been disturbed by it again for the remainder of the evening.

  I am not the only person whom poltergeists visit. Judging from my correspondence and the accounts I see in the letters of various psychical research magazines, they patronise many people. Their modus operandi, covering a wide range, is always boisterous. Undoubtedly they have been badly brought up—their home influence and their educational training must have been sadly lacking in discipline. Or is it the reverse? Are their crude devices and mad, tomboyish pranks merely reactionary, and the only means they have of finding vent for their naturally high spirits? If so, I devoutly wish they would choose some locality other than my study for their playground. Yet they interest me, and although I quake horribly when they are present, I derive endless amusement at other times, in speculating on their raison d’être, and curious—perhaps complex—constitutions. I do not believe they have ever inhabited any earthly body, either human or animal. I think it likely that they may be survivals of early experiments in animal and vegetable life in this planet, prior to the selection of any definite types; spirits that have never been anything else but spirits, and which have, no doubt, often envied man his carnal body and the possibilities that have been permitted him of eventually reaching a higher spiritual plane. It is envy, perhaps, that has made them mischievous, and generated in them an insatiable thirst to torment and frighten man. Another probable explanation of them is, that they may be inhabitants of one of the other planets that have the power granted, under certain conditions at present unknown to us, of making themselves seen and heard by certain dwellers on the earth; and it is, of course, possible that they are but one of many types of spirits inhabiting a superphysical sphere that encloses or infringes on our own. They may be only another form of life, a form that is neither carnal nor immortal, but which has to depend for its existence on a superphysical food. They may be born in a fashion that, apart from its peculiarity and extravagance, bears some resemblance to the generation of physical animal life; and they may die, too, as man dies, and their death may be but the passing from one stage to another, or it may be for eternity.

  But enough of possibilities, of probable and improbable theories. For the present not only poltergeists but all other phantoms are seen as through a glass darkly, and, pending the discovery of some definite data, we do but flounder in a sea of wide, limitless, and infinite speculation.

  CHAPTER V

  SYLVAN HORRORS

  I believe trees have spirits; I believe everything that grows has a spirit, and that such spirits never die, but passing into another state, a state of film and shadow, live on for ever. The phantasms of vegetable life are everywhere, though discernible only to the few of us. Often as I ramble through thoroughfares, crowded with pedestrians and vehicles, and impregnated with steam and smoke and all the impurities arising from over-congested humanity, I have suddenly smelt a different atmosphere, the cold atmosphere of superphysical forest land. I have come to a halt, and leaning in some doorway, gazed in awestruck wonder at the nodding foliage of a leviathan lepidodendron, the phantasm of one of those mammoth lycopods that flourished in the Carboniferous period. I have watched it swaying its shadowy arms backwards and forwards as if keeping time to some ghostly music, and the breeze it has thus created has rustled through my hair, while the sweet scent of its resin has pleasantly tickled my nostrils. I have seen, too, suddenly open before me, dark, gloomy aisles, lined with stupendous pines and carpeted with long, luxuriant grass, gigantic ferns, and other monstrous primeval flora, of a nomenclature wholly unknown to me; I have watched in chilled fascination the black trunks twist and bend and contort, as if under the influence of an uncontrollable fit of laughter, or at the bidding of some psychic cyclone. I have at times stayed my steps when in the throes of the city-pavements; shops and people have been obliterated, and their places taken by occult foliage; immense fungi have blocked out the sun’s rays, and under the shelter of their slimy, glistening heads, I have been thrilled to see the wriggling, gliding forms of countless smaller saprophytes. I have felt the cold touch of loathsome toadstools and sniffed the hot, dry dust of the full, ripe puff-ball. On the Thames Embankment, up Chelsea way, I have at twilight beheld wonderful metamorphoses. In company with the shadows of natural objects of the landscape, have silently sprung up giant reeds and bullrushes. I have felt their icy coldness as, blowing hither and thither in the delirium of their free, untrammelled existence, they have swished across my face. Visions, truly visions, the exquisite fantasies of a vivid imagination. So says the sage. I do not think so; I dispute him in toto. These objects I have seen have not been illusions; else, why have I not imagined other things; why, for example, have I not seen rocks walking about and tables coming in at my door? If these phantasms were but tricks of the imagination, then imagination would stop at nothing. But they are not imagination, neither are they the idle fancies of an over-active brain. They are objective—just as much objective as are the smells of recognised physical objects, that those, with keenly sensitive olfactory organs, can detect, and those, with a less sensitive sense of smell, cannot detect; those, with acute hearing, can hear, and those with less acute hearing cannot hear. And yet, people are slow to believe that the seeing of the occult is as much a faculty as is the scenting of smells or the hearing of noises.

  I have heard it said that, deep down in coal mines, certain of the workers have seen wondrous sights; that when they have been alone in a drift, they have heard the blowing of the wind and the rustling of leaves, and suddenly found themselves penned in on all sides by the naked trunks of enormous primitive trees, lepidodendrons, sigillarias, ferns, and other plants, that have shone out with phosphorescent grandeur amid the inky blackness of the subterranean ether. Around the feet of the spellbound watchers have sprung up rank blades of Brobdingnagian grass and creepers, out of which have crept, with lurid eyes, prodigious millipedes, cockroaches, white ants, myriapods and scorpions, whilst added to the moaning and sighing of the trees has been the humming of stone-flies, dragon-flies, and locusts. Galleries and shafts have echoed and re-echoed with these noises of the old world, which yet lives, and will continue to live, maybe, to the end of time.

  But are the physical trees, the trees that we can all see budding and sprouting in our gardens to-day—are they ever cognisant of the presence of the occult? Can they, like certain—not all—dogs and horses and other animals, detect the proximity of the unknown? Do they tremble and shake with fear at the sight of some psychic vegetation, or are they utterly devoid of any such faculty? Can they see, hear, or smell? Have they any senses at all? And, if they have one sense, have they not others? Aye, there is food for reflection.

  Personally, I believe trees have senses—not, of course, in such a high state of development as those of animal life; but, nevertheless, senses. Consequently, I think it quite possible that certain of them, like certain animals, feel the presence of the superphysical. I often stroll in woods. I do not love solitude; I love the trees, and I do not think there is anything in nature, apart from man, I love much more. The oak, the ash, the elm, the poplar, the willow, to me are more than mere names; they are friends, the fr
iends of my boyhood and manhood; companions in my lonely rambles and voluntary banishments; guardians of my siestas; comforters of my tribulations. The gentle fanning of their branches has eased my pain-racked brow and given me much-needed sleep, whilst the chlorophyll of their leaves has acted like balm to my eyelids, inflamed after long hours of study. I have leaned my head against their trunks, and heard, or fancied I have heard, the fantastic murmurings of their peaceful minds. This is what happens in the daytime, when the hot summer sun has turned the meadow-grass a golden brown. But with the twilight comes the change. Phantom-land awakes, and mingled with the shadows of the trees and bushes that lazily unroll themselves from trunk and branches are the darkest of shades, that impart to the forest an atmosphere of dreary coldness. Usually I hie away with haste at sunset, but there are occasions when I have dallied longer than I have intended, and only realised my error when it has been too late. I have then, controlled by the irresistible fascination of the woods, waited and watched. I well recollect, for example, being caught in this way in a Hampshire spinney, at that time one of my most frequented haunts. The day had been unusually close and stifling, and the heat, in conjunction with a hard morning’s work—for I had written, God only knows how long, without ceasing,—made me frightfully sleepy, and on arriving at my favourite spot beneath a lofty pine, I had slept till, for very shame, my eyelids could keep closed no longer. It was then nine o’clock, and the metamorphosis of sunset had commenced in solemn earnest. The evening was charming, ideal of the heart of summer; the air soft, sweetly scented; the sky unspotted blue. A peaceful hush, broken only by the chiming of some distant church bells, and the faint, the very faint barking of dogs, enveloped everything and instilled in me a false sensation of security. Facing me was a diminutive glade padded with downy grass, transformed into a pale yellow by the lustrous rays of the now encrimsoned sun. Fainter and fainter grew the ruddy glow, until there was nought of it left but a pale pink streak, whose delicate marginal lines still separated the blue of the sky from the quickly superseding grey. A barely perceptible mist gradually cloaked the grass, whilst the gloom amid the foliage on the opposite side of the glade intensified. There was now no sound of bells, no barking of dogs; and silence, a silence tinged with the sadness so characteristic of summer evenings, was everywhere paramount. A sudden rush of icy air made my teeth chatter. I made an effort to stir, to escape ere the grotesque and intangible horrors of the wood could catch me. I ignominiously failed; the soles of my feet froze to the ground. Then I felt the slender, graceful body of the pine against which I leaned my back, shake and quiver, and my hand—the hand that rested on its bark—grew damp and sticky.

  I endeavoured to avert my eyes from the open space confronting them. I failed; and as I gazed, filled with the anticipations of the damned, there suddenly burst into view, with all the frightful vividness associated only with the occult, a tall form—armless, legless—fashioned like the gnarled trunk of a tree—white, startlingly white in places where the bark had worn away, but on the whole a bright, a luridly bright, yellow and black. At first I successfully resisted a powerful impulse to raise my eyes to its face; but as I only too well knew would be the case, I was obliged to look at last, and, as I anticipated, I underwent a most violent shock. In lieu of a face I saw a raw and shining polyp, a mass of waving, tossing, pulpy radicles from whose centre shone two long, obliquely set, pale eyes, ablaze with devilry and malice. The thing, after the nature of all terrifying phantasms, was endowed with hypnotic properties, and directly its eyes rested on me I became numb; my muscles slept while my faculties remained awake, acutely awake.

  Inch by inch the thing approached me; its stealthy, gliding motion reminding me of a tiger subtly and relentlessly stalking its prey. It came up to me, and the catalepsy which had held me rigidly upright departed. I fell on the ground for protection, and, as the great unknown curved its ghastly figure over me and touched my throat and forehead with its fulsome tentacles, I was overcome with nervous tremors; a deadly pain griped my entrails, and, convulsed with agony, I rolled over on my face, furiously clawing the bracken. In this condition I continued for probably one or even two minutes, though to me it seemed very much longer. My sufferings terminated with the loud report of firearms, and slowly picking myself up, I found that the apparition had vanished, and that standing some twenty or so paces from me was a boy with a gun. I recognised him at once as the son of my neighbour, the village schoolmaster; but not wishing to tarry there any longer, I hurriedly wished him good night, and leaving the copse a great deal more quickly than I had entered it, I hastened home.

  What had I seen? A phantasm of some dead tree? some peculiar species of spirit (I have elsewhere termed a vagrarian), attracted thither by the loneliness of the locality? some vicious, evil phantasm? or a vice-elemental, whose presence there would be due to some particularly wicked crime or series of crimes perpetrated on or near the spot? I cannot say. It might well have been either one of them, or something quite different. I am quite sure, however, that most woods are haunted, and that he who sees spirit phenomena can be pretty certain of seeing them there. Again and again, as I have been passing after nightfall, through tree-girt glen, forest, or avenue, I have seen all sorts of curious forms and shapes move noiselessly from tree to tree. Hooded figures, with death’s-heads, have glided surreptitiously through moon-kissed spaces; icy hands have touched me on the shoulders; whilst, pacing alongside me, I have oft-times heard footsteps, light and heavy, though I have seen nothing.

  Miss Frances Sinclair tells me that, once, when walking along a country lane, she espied some odd-looking object lying on the ground at the foot of a tree. She approached it, and found to her horror it was a human finger swimming in a pool of blood. She turned round to attract the attention of her friends, and when she looked again the finger had vanished. On this very spot, she was subsequently informed, the murder of a child had taken place.

  Trees are, I believe, frequently haunted by spirits that suggest crime. I have no doubt that numbers of people have hanged themselves on the same tree in just the same way as countless people have committed suicide by jumping over certain bridges. Why? For the very simple reason that hovering about these bridges are influences antagonistic to the human race, spirits whose chief and fiendish delight is to breathe thoughts of self-destruction into the brains of passers-by. I once heard of a man, medically pronounced sane, who frequently complained that he was tormented by a voice whispering in his ear, “Shoot yourself! Shoot yourself!”—advice which he eventually found himself bound to follow. And of a man, likewise stated to be sane, who journeyed a considerable distance to jump over a notorious bridge because he was for ever being haunted by the phantasm of a weirdly beautiful woman who told him to do so. If bridges have their attendant sinister spirits, so undoubtedly have trees—spirits ever anxious to entice within the magnetic circle of their baleful influence anyone of the human race.

  Many tales of trees being haunted in this way have come to me from India and the East. I quoted one in my Ghostly Phenomena, and the following was told me by a lady whom I met recently, when on a visit to my wife’s relations in the Midlands.

  “I was riding with my husband along a very lonely mountain road in Assam,” my informant began, “when I suddenly discovered I had lost my silk scarf, which happened to be a rather costly one. I had a pretty shrewd idea whereabouts I might have dropped it, and, on mentioning the fact to my husband, he at once turned and rode back to look for it. Being armed, I did not feel at all nervous at being left alone, especially as there had been no cases, for many years, of assault on a European in our district; but, seeing a big mango tree standing quite by itself a few yards from the road, I turned my horse’s head with the intention of riding up to it and picking some of its fruit. To my great annoyance, however, the beast refused to go; moreover, although at all times most docile, it now reared, and kicked, and showed unmistakable signs of fright.

  “I
speedily came to the conclusion that my horse was aware of the presence of something—probably a wild beast—I could not see myself, and I at once dismounted, and tethering the shivering animal to a boulder, advanced cautiously, revolver in hand, to the tree. At every step I took, I expected the spring of a panther or some other beast of prey; but, being afraid of nothing but a tiger—and there were none, thank God! in that immediate neighbourhood—I went boldly on. On nearing the tree, I noticed that the soil under the branches was singularly dark, as if scorched and blackened by a fire, and that the atmosphere around it had suddenly grown very cold and dreary. To my disappointment there was no fruit, and I was coming away in disgust, when I caught sight of a queer-looking thing just over my head and half-hidden by the foliage. I parted the leaves asunder with my whip and looked up at it. My blood froze.

  “The thing was nothing human. It had a long, grey, nude body, shaped like that of a man, only with abnormally long arms and legs, and very long and crooked fingers. Its head was flat and rectangular, without any features saving a pair of long and heavy lidded, light eyes, that were fixed on mine with an expression of hellish glee. For some seconds I was too appalled even to think, and then the most mad desire to kill myself surged through me. I raised my revolver, and was in the act of placing it to my forehead, when a loud shout from behind startled me. It was my husband. He had found my scarf, and, hurrying back, had arrived just in time to see me raise the revolver—strange to relate—at him! In a few words I explained to him what had happened, and we examined the tree together. But there were no signs of the terrifying phenomenon—it had completely vanished. Though my husband declared that I must have been dreaming, I noticed he looked singularly grave, and, on our return home, he begged me never to go near the tree again. I asked him if he had had any idea it was haunted, and he said: ‘No! but I know there are such trees. Ask Dingan.’ Dingan was one of our native servants—the one we respected most, as he had been with my husband for nearly twelve years—ever since, in fact, he had settled in Assam. ‘The mango tree, mem-sahib!’ Dingan exclaimed, when I approached him on the subject, ‘the mango tree on the Yuka Road, just before you get to the bridge over the river? I know it well. We call it “the devil tree,” mem-sahib. No other tree will grow near it. There is a spirit peculiar to certain trees that lives in its branches, and persuades anyone who ventures within a few feet of it, either to kill themselves, or to kill other people. I have seen three men from this village alone, hanging to its accursed branches; they were left there till the ropes rotted and the jackals bore them off to the jungles. Three suicides have I seen, and three murders—two were women, strangers in these parts, and they were both lying within the shadow of the mango’s trunk, with the backs of their heads broken in like eggs! It is a thrice-accursed tree, mem-sahib.’ Needless to say, I agreed with Dingan, and in future gave the mango a wide berth.”