The Elliott O’Donnell Supernatural Megapack

by Elliott O'Donnell

  According to the Book of Days, ii. p. 433, there is a widespread belief in most parts of England in a spectral dog, “large, shaggy, and black,” but not confined to any one particular species. This phantasm is believed to haunt localities that have witnessed crimes, and also to foretell catastrophes. The Lancashire people, according to Harland and Wilkinson in their Lancashire Folk-lore, call it the “stuker” and “trash”: the latter name being given it on account of its heavy, slopping walk; and the former appellation from its curious screech, which is a sure indication of some approaching death or calamity. To the peasantry of Norfolk and Cambridgeshire it is known as “the shuck,” an apparition that haunts churchyards and other lonely places. In the Isle of Man a similar kind of phantasm, called “the Mauthe dog,” was said to walk Peel Castle; whilst many of the Welsh lanes—particularly that leading from Mowsiad to Lisworney Crossways—are, according to Wirt Sikes’ British Goblins, haunted by the gwyllgi, a big black dog of the most terrifying aspect.

  Cases of hauntings by packs of spectral hounds have from time to time been reported from all parts of the United Kingdom; but mostly from Northumberland, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cumberland, Wales, Devon, and Cornwall. In the northern districts they are designated “Gabriel’s hounds”; in Devon, “the Wisk, Yesk, or Heath hounds”; in Wales, “the Cwn Annwn or Cwn y Wybr” (see Dyer’s Ghost World); and in Cornwall, “the devil and his dandy dogs.” My own experiences fully coincide with the traditional belief that the dog is a very common form of spirit phenomena; but I can only repeat (the same remark applying to other animal manifestations), that it is impossible to decide with any degree of certainty to what category of phantasms, in addition to the general order of occult bestialities, the dog belongs. It seems quite permissible to think that the spirits of ladies, with an absorbing mania for canine pets, should be eventually earth-bound in the form of dogs—a fate which many of the fair sex have assured me would be “absolutely divine,” and far preferable to the orthodox heaven.

  I cannot see why the shape of a dog should be appropriated by the less desirable denizens of the occult world. But, that it is so, there is no room to doubt, as the following illustration shows. As soon as the trial of the infamous slaughterer X—— was over, and the verdict of death generally known, a deep sigh of relief was heaved by the whole of civilisation—saving, of course, those pseudo-humanitarians who always pity murderers and women-beaters, and who, if the law was at all sensible and just, should be hanged with their bestial protégés. From all classes of men, I repeat, with the exception of those pernicious cranks, were heard the ejaculations: “Well! he’s settled. What a good thing! I am glad! The world will be well rid of him!”

  Then I smiled. The world well rid of him! Would it be rid of him? Not if I knew anything about occult phenomena. Indeed, the career on earth for such an epicure in murder as X—— had only just begun; in fact, it could hardly be said to begin till physical dissolution. The last drop—that six feet or so plunge between grim scaffolding—might in the case of some criminals, mere tyros at the trade, terminate for good their connection with this material plane; but not, decidedly not, in the case of this bosom comrade of vice elementals.

  From both a psychological and superphysical point of view the case had interested me from the first. I had been anxious to see the man, for I felt sure, even if he did not display any of the ordinary physiognomical danger signals observable in many bestial criminals, there would nevertheless be a something about or around him, that would immediately warn as keen a student of the occult as myself of his close association with the lowest order of phantasms. I was not, however, permitted an interview, and so had to base my deductions upon the descriptions of him given me, first hand, by two experts in psychology, and upon photographs. In the latter I recognised—though not with the readiness I should have done in the photo’s living prototype—the presence of the unknown brain, the grey, silent, stealthy, ever-watchful, ever-lurking occult brain. As I gazed at his picture, as in a crystal, it faded away, and I saw the material man sitting alone in his study before a glowing fire. From out of him there crept a shadow, the shadow of something big, bloated, and crawling. I could distinguish nothing further. On reaching the door it paused, and I felt it was eyeing him—or rather his material body—anxiously. Perhaps it feared lest some other shadow, equally baleful, equally sly and subtle, would usurp its home. Its hesitation was, however, but momentary, and, passing through the door, it glided across the dimly lighted hall and out into the freedom of the open air. Picture succeeding picture with great rapidity, I followed it as it curled and fawned over the tombstones in more than one churchyard; moved with a peculiar waddling motion through foul alleys, halting wherever the garbage lay thickest, rubbed itself caressingly on the gory floors of slaughter-houses, and finally entered a dark, empty house in a road that, if not the Euston Road, was a road in every way resembling it.

  The atmosphere of the place was so suggestive of murder that my soul sickened within me; and so much so, in fact, that when I saw several grisly forms gliding down the gloomy staircases and along the sombre, narrow passages, where X——’s immaterial personality was halting, apparently to greet it, I could look no longer, but shut my eyes. For some seconds I kept them closed, and, on re-opening them, found the tableau had changed—the material body before the fire was re-animated, and in the depths of the bleared, protruding eyes I saw the creeping, crawling, waddling, enigmatical shadow vibrating with murder. Again the scene changed, and I saw the physical man standing in the middle of a bedroom, listening—listening with blanched face and slightly open mouth, a steely glimmer of the superphysical, of the malignant, devilish superphysical, in his dilated pupils. What he is anticipating I cannot say, I dare not think—unless—unless the repetition of a scream; and it comes—I cannot hear it, but I can feel it, feel the reverberation through the crime-kissed walls and vicious, tainted atmosphere.

  Something is at the door—it presses against it; I can catch a glimpse of its head, its face; my blood freezes—it is horrible. It enters the room, grey and silent—it lays one hand on the man’s sleeve and drags him forward. He ascends to the room above, and, with all the brutality of those accustomed to the dead and dying, drags the—— But I will not go on. The grey unknown, the occult something, sternly issues its directions, and the merely physical obeys them. It is all over; the plot of the vice elementals has triumphed, and as they gleefully step away, one by one, patting their material comrade on the shoulder, the darkness, the hellish darkness of that infamous night lightens, and in through the windows steal the cold grey beams of early morning. I am assured; I have had enough; I pitch the photograph into the grate. The evening comes—the evening after the execution. A feeling of the greatest, the most unenviable curiosity urges me to go, to see if what I surmise, will actually happen. I leave Gipsy Hill by an early afternoon train, I spend a few hours at a literary club, I dine at a quiet—an eminently quiet—restaurant in Oxford Street, and at eleven o’clock I am standing near a spot which I believe—I have no positive proof—I merely believe, was frequented by X——. It is more than twelve hours since he was executed; will anything—will the shape, the personality, I anticipate—come? The night air grows colder; I shrink deeper and deeper into the folds of my overcoat, and wish—devoutly wish—myself back again by my fireside.

  The minutes glide by slowly. The streets are very silent now. With the exception of an occasional toot-toot from a taxi and the shrill whistle of a goods train, no other sounds are to be heard. It is the hour when nearly all material London sleeps and the streets are monopolised by shadows, interspersed with something rather more substantial—namely, policemen. A few yards away from me there slips by a man in a blue serge suit; and then, tip-toeing surreptitiously behind him, with one hand in his trousers-pocket and the other carrying a suspicious-looking black bag, comes a white-faced young man, dressed in shabby imitation of a West End swell; an ill-fitting froc
k-coat, which, even in the uncertain flicker of the gas-lamps, pronounces itself to be ready made, and the typical shopwalker’s silk hat worn slightly on one side. Whether this night bird goes through life on tiptoe, as many people do, or whether he only adopts that fashion on this particular occasion, is a conundrum, not without interest to students of character to whom a man’s walk denotes much.

  For a long time the street is deserted, and then a bedraggled figure in a shawl, with a big paper parcel under her arm, shuffles noiselessly by and disappears down an adjacent turning. Then there is another long interval, interrupted by a pretentious clock sonorously sounding two. A feeling of drowsiness creeps over me; my eyelids droop. I begin to lose cognisance of my surroundings and to imagine myself in some far-away place, when I am recalled sharply to myself by an intensely cold current of air. Intuitively I recognise the superphysical; it is the same species of cold which invariably heralds its approach. I have been right in my surmises after all; this spot is destined to be haunted. My eyes are wide enough open now, and every nerve in my body tingles with the keenest expectation. Something is coming, and, if that something is not the phantasm of him whom I believe is earthbound, whose phantasm is it? There is a slight noise of scratching from somewhere close beside me. It might have been the wind rustling the leaves against the masonry, or it might have been—I look round and see nothing. The sound is repeated and with the same result—Nothing! A third time I heard it, and then from the dark road on one side of me there waddles—I recognise the waddling at once—a shadow that, gradually becoming a little more distinct, develops into the rather blurry form of a dog—a gaunt, hungry-looking mongrel. In a few seconds it stops short and looks at me with big swollen eyes that glitter with a something that is not actually bestial or savage, something strange yet not altogether strange, something enigmatic yet not entirely enigmatic. I am nonplussed; it was, and yet it was not, what I expected. With restless, ambling steps it slinks past me, disappearing through the closed gate by my side. Then satisfied, yet vaguely puzzled, I come away, wondering, wondering—wondering why on earth dogs should thus be desecrated.

  Contrary to what one would imagine to be the case from the close association of cats with witches and magic, phantasms in a feline form are comparatively rare, and their appearance is seldom, if ever, as repulsive as that of the occult dog. I have seen phantasm cats several times, but, though they have been abnormally large and alarming, only once—and I am anxious to forget that time—were they anything like as offensive as many of the ghostly dogs that have manifested themselves to me. In my Haunted Houses of England and Wales I have given an instance of dual haunting, in which one of the phenomena was a big black cat with a fiendish expression in its eyes, but otherwise normal; and, à propos of cats, there now comes back to me a story I was once told in the Far West—the Golden State of California. I was on my way back to England, after a short but somewhat bitter absence, and I was staying for the night at a small hotel in San Francisco. The man who related the anecdote was an Australian, born and bred, on his way home to his native land after many years’ sojourn in Texas. I was sitting on the sofa in the smoke-room reading, when he threw himself down in a chair opposite me and we gradually got into conversation. It was late when we began talking, and the other visitors, one by one, yawned, rose, and withdrew to their bedrooms, until we found ourselves alone—absolutely alone. The night was unusually dark and silent.

  Leaning over the little tile-covered table at which we sat, the stranger suddenly said: “Do you see anything by me? Look hard.” Much surprised at his request, for I confess that up to then I had taken him for a very ordinary kind of person, I looked, and, to my infinite astonishment and awe, saw, floating in mid-air, about two yards from him, and on a level with his chair, the shadowy outlines of what looked like an enormous cat—a cat with very little hair and unpleasant eyes—decidedly unpleasant eyes. My flesh crawled!

  “Well?” said the stranger—who, by-the-by, had called himself Gallaher,—in very anxious tones, “Well—you don’t seem in a hurry, nor yet particularly pleased—what is it?”

  “A cat!” I gasped. “A cat—and a cat in mid-air!”

  The stranger swore. “Damn it!” he cried, dashing his fist on the table with such force that the match-box flew a dozen or so feet up the room—“Cuss! the infernal thing! I guessed it was near me, I could feel its icy breath!” He glanced sharply round as he spoke, and hurled his tobacco pouch at the shape. It passed right through it and fell with a soft squash on the ground. Gallaher picked it up with an oath. “I will tell you the history of that cat,” he went on, as he resumed his seat, “and a d——d queer history it is.”

  Pouring himself out a bumper of whisky and refilling his pipe, he cleared his throat and began: “As a boy I always hated cats—God knows why—but the sight of a cat made me sick. I could not stand their soft, sleek fur; nor their silly, senseless faces; nor their smell—the smell of their skins, which most people don’t seem able to detect. I could, however; I could recognise that d——d scent a mile off, and could always tell, without seeing it, when there was a cat in the house. If any of the boys at school wanted to play me a trick they let loose half a dozen mangy tabbies in our yard, or sent me a hideous ‘Tom’ trussed up like a fowl in a hamper, or made cats’ noises in the dead of night under my window. Everyone in the village, from the baker to the bone-setter, knew of my hatred of cats, and, consequently, I had many enemies—chiefly amongst the old ladies. I must tell you, however, much as I loathed and abominated cats, I never killed one. I threw stones and sticks at them; I emptied jugs, and cans, and many pails of water on them; I pelted them with turnips; I hurled cushions, bolsters, pillows, anything I could first lay my hands on, at them; and”—here he cast a furtive look at the shadow—“I have pinched and trodden on their tails; but I have never killed one. When I grew up, my attitude towards them remained the same, and wherever I went I won the reputation for being the inveterate, the most poignantly inveterate, enemy of cats.

  “When I was about twenty-five, I settled in a part of Texas where there were no cats. It was on a ranch in the upper valley of the Colorado. I was cattle ranching, and having had a pretty shrewd knowledge of the business before I left home, I soon made headway, and—between ourselves, mate, for there are mighty ‘tough uns’ in these town hotels—a good pile of dollars. I never had any of the adventures that befall most men out West, never but once, and I am coming to that right away.

  “I had been selling some hundred head of cattle and about the same number of hogs, at a town some twenty or so miles from my ranch, and feeling I would like a bit of excitement, after so many months of monotony—the monotony of the desert life—I turned into the theatre—a wooden shanty—where a company of touring players, mostly Yankees, were performing. Sitting next to me was a fellow who speedily got into conversation with me and assured me he was an Australian. I did not believe him, for he had not the cut of an Australian,—until he mentioned one or two of the streets I knew in Adelaide, and that settled me. We drank to each other’s health straight away, and he invited me to supper at his hotel. I accepted; and as soon as the performance was over, and we had exchanged greetings with some half-dozen of the performers, in whisky, he slipped his arm through mine and we strolled off together. Of course it was very foolish of me, seeing that I had a belt full of money; but then I had not had an outing for a long time, and I thirsted for adventure as I thirsted for whisky, and God alone knows how much of that I had already drunk. We arrived at the hotel. It was a poor-looking place in a sinister neighbourhood, abounding with evil-eyed Dagos and cut-throats of all kinds. Still I was young and strong, and well armed, for I never left home in those days without a six-shooter. My companion escorted me into a low room in the rear of the premises, smelling villainously of foul tobacco and equally foul alcohol. Some half-cooked slices of bacon and suspicious-looking fried eggs were placed before us, which, with huge hunks of bread
and a bottle of very much belabelled—too much belabelled—Highland whisky, completed the repast. But it was too unsavoury even for my companion, whose hungry eyes and lantern jaws proclaimed he had a ravenous appetite. However, he ate the bacon and I the bread; the eggs we emptied into a flower-pot. The supper—the supper of which he had led me to think so much—over, we filled our glasses, or at least he poured out for both, for his hands were steadier—even in my condition of semi-intoxication I noticed they were steadier—than mine. Then he brought me a cigar and took me to his bedroom, a bare, grimy apartment overhead. There was no furniture, saving a bed showing unmistakable signs that someone had been lying on it in dirty boots, a small rectangular deal table, and one chair.

  “In a stupefied condition I was hesitating which of the alternatives to choose—the chair or the table, for, oddly enough, I never thought of the bed, when my host settled the question by leading me forcibly forward and flinging me down on the mattress. He then took a wooden wedge out of his pocket, and, going to the door, thrust it in the crack, giving the handle a violent tug to see whether the door stood the test. ‘There now, mate,’ he said with a grin—a grin that seemed to suggest something my tipsy brain could not grasp, ‘I have just shut us in snug and secure so that we can chat away without fear of interruption. Let us drink to a comfortable night’s sleep. You will sleep sound enough here, I can tell you!’ He handed me a glass as he spoke. ‘Drink!’ he said with a leer. ‘You are not half an Australian if you cannot hold that! See!’ and pouring himself out a tumbler of spirits and water he was about to gulp it down, when I uttered an ejaculation of horror. The light from the single gas jet over his head, falling on his face as he lifted it up to drink the whisky, revealed in his wide open, protruding pupils, the reflection of a cat—I can swear it was a cat. Instantly my intoxication evaporated and I scented danger. How was it I had not noticed before that the man was a typical ruffian—a regular street-corner loiterer, waiting, hawklike, to pounce upon and fleece the first well-to-do looking stranger he saw. Of course I saw it all now like a flash of lightning: he had seen me about the town during the earlier part of the day, had found out I was there on business, that I was an Australian, and one or two other things—it is surprising how soon one’s affairs get mooted in a small town,—and guessing I had the receipts of my sales on my person, had decided to rob me. Accordingly, with this end in view, he had followed me into the theatre, and, securing the seat next me, had broken the ice by pretending he was an Australian. He had then plied me with drink and brought me, already more than half drunk, to this cut-throat den. And I owed the discovery to a cat! My first thought was to feel for my revolver. I did, and found it was—gone. My hopes sank to zero; for though I might have been more than a match for the wiry framed stranger had we both been unarmed, I had not the slightest chance with him were he armed, as he undoubtedly was, with my revolver as well as his own. Though it takes some time to explain this, it all passed through my mind in a few seconds—before he had finished drinking. ‘Now, mate!’ he said, putting down his glass, the first whole glass even of whisky and water he had taken that night, ‘that’s my share, now for yours.’