Part 3

At least three voices were heard--perhaps more. Phenomena were scarce; the gang's powers were still limited, though the horror they inflicted showed that they reached the bounds of some of the victims' strength. Miss Freer not only heard sounds in the house, where she was less exposed than in the glen, but saw apparitions on four occasions.

The visions that can be inflicted telepathically, i.e. hypnotically, seem to be at first limited to two kinds--first, the vision of the person himself: this hallucination has often been effected by honest experimentalists; secondly, and this is rather matter of inference, a rascal who has hypnotised a person may be unable to get rid of the image of his victim, and transfers the ghost that haunts him to another subject.

The portrait of a so-called Nathan Early, at the beginning of Osgood Mason's book, has the eyebrows, eyes, and mouth of a much mesmerised man. The mouth has not become stiffened into a laugh, as he was of a gentle firm disposition, and the hypnotism probably was from a distance.

The possessed hypnotist transferred it to his victim, Mrs. Juliette Burton.

The qualification, "at first," is important; visions are perhaps not easily transferred to a new subject, but the question of what is good policy for the rascals may have to be considered. This may limit the experience of those who have been more seriously victimised than Miss Freer and her garrison were.

The experiments reported in Mr. Podmore's excellent book, though invaluable, are probably not exhaustive.

Colonel Meysey Thompson's Reminiscences relate a wonderful occurrence connected with his father, but it is believed that more striking matters occurred even than this. To return to the haunted house.

The cottage to the east of the glen--Ballechin cottage--(there is no reason for not using the name except that B---- is shorter than Ballechin; indeed the public and the Perthshire police should combine to clear the neighbourhood of the gang who have troubled a charming country house)--was once a place for retreat for nuns. The fact was not known to Miss Freer and her friends until several visions of nuns had been seen in the glen.

The poor religious women, like the priests, must have been a favourite prey of the hypnotists.

The writer believes that the late Cardinal Manning approved of religious ladies residing with their families and carrying on works of charity, a less wretched life than the usual nun's life often unavoidably must be. English Catholics have not been subjected to the terrors of a casa de exercitios such as broke the courage of Mrs. Grahame's spinster friend. It must have been extremely repulsive to the feelings of a man like Bishop Guerrero, and doubtless did not continue to exist long even in remote Chile.

But subdued in spirit as they are, the attacks of hypnotists would be terribly felt by most nuns.

Father H.'s apparition was seen by Miss Langton in a dream or vision. She recognised him when she met him three months later; he may have been shadowed by some of the hypnotists for purposes of information; and the idea that he should be begged to aid in blessing the house and banning the haunters, may have been a thought transferred by a hypnotist to Miss Freer, who is liable to thought transfer, and is a good transferrer herself. Why should not a nun's apparition be transferred as was Father H.'s (to Miss Langton)?

It appears that valiant resistance can inflict this possession upon hypnotists as well as the horrors of a hard and disgusting victory do.

Perhaps the Scin-laeca of Bulwer's "Harold," the apparition of Cerdic, haunted the imaginations of generations of magicians. These were possibly Celts; only one witch-rune on a Saxon sword was found; that was in the Isle of Wight. It was, Professor Stephens said, a solitary instance, as the brave Germans thought magic the art of a coward. The hypnotism from which all the garrison suffered was a slight hypnotism; the eyes remained open and people went about behaving almost normally. Father B. lost his self-control for an instant. Some people would have to be tricked in a complicated way. Thought transfer--audible to the person affected alone, or even inaudible but perceptible like a thought--accounts for the whole of Mrs. Piper's operations; she might have accomplices who would never be seen speaking to her, and who would dictate actions, say, to one of the Pelham or Howard family. These dictated actions, or inchoate plans, would then be reported by Mrs. Piper writing as George Pelham. What Mrs. Piper saw or felt or heard would be--at least at stated times--seen or felt or heard by her fellow conspirators. As in conjuring everything found was placed beforehand in the desired position. Thus facts recounted had been induced. The blackguard who spoke to her as Phinuit was less educated than the one who dictated George Pelham's communications.

Mrs. Piper's education was rather suited to receive the vulgar Phinuit's, than the more refined pseudo Pelham's communications. But the progress from the one stage so revolting to Miss Freer, to the other so delightful, a sign of increased refinement to Mr. Myers, was hardly more a change than the turning on a hot tap after a cold water tap into a basin. The receptacle was the same. But as a strong hypnotist herself, Mrs. Piper could bring off the Sutton matter; she could easily give Mrs. Sutton visual hallucinations. The startling position taken up by Mr. Myers in his article in the National Review, is easily explicable. He and Dr. Hodgson were magnetised by Mrs. Piper, and were like wax in her hands. Eusapia Palladius has the same power.

It is a sad declension in an eminent classic, that he, whose reference to the primitive heathen Ulysses torturing the shade of his own mother is rather revolting than elevating, should be full of wonder and delight at it.

After all Ulysses was the worthy ancestor of many a pirate hanged at Malta, more ferocious enemies of man than the Red Indian. Some somnambulists should be perhaps protected from exploitation. Mrs. Piper's trance is presumably feigned, as trances can easily be.

To return to Haunted Houses. In a haunted house case, a story suggested by some chronological connection, or the nature of the apparition, is attached to the phenomena. No doubt, in these days where the individuals who perceive the phenomena have a wider experience, such a variety of persons appear that the ghostly appearance loses its individuality if not its authenticity. Mr. Podmore discusses such cases. In Mr. Podmore's book when Poltergeists, Cock-lore ghost affairs, are discussed, it appears that genuine hallucinations may be associated with fraudulent physical phenomena.

These are, it may be positively stated, hypnotic hallucinations. The two together in some cases, as in the one already mentioned of "Alice," amount to a very good ghost story, the blood on the floor alone excepted. Alice's home was a terrace house in a town. The House at B---- was very large and somewhat lonely.

It is, however, less than 200 yards from a road along the Tay, that river running parallel to its front to the southward of it.

Rights of way from the north-west pass north of the house, and there were some empty lodges there; these might afford shelter to the persons of strong hypnotic power who chose to play the ghost. The continuity of the noises at night would be thus facilitated. The house belonged to the grand-nephew of a retired Indian major. It is apparently suggested that the major's relations with a young housekeeper were suspicious. The two and a native Indian servant are buried in the kirkyard at L----; presumably Logierait.

The haunted house is, as was said, at Ballechin in Perthshire; and it may be noted that to Perthshire Esdaile, the famous Calcutta hypnotist and physician, retired; but that he was unable to effect with the Perthshire people the marvellous cures he had brought about in India. Perhaps the Indian servant may have attracted the attention of some base imitator of the honourable Esdaile. It may be noted that an officer of rank, whose family were friends and not very distant neighbours in the south of England of the late Rev. Lord Sydney Godolphin Osborne, experienced some singular phenomena. Lord Sydney was a great hypnotist, and cured, or believed he cured, many cases of epilepsy. The officer in question suffered at times from a tickling in his face, which annoyed him very much; it seemed to be more on the cheeks than in the corners behind the nostrils.

The connection with hypnotism is seen in the next case. A much younger man, a captain in the Indian army, who had attended many spiritist seances, suffered much the same sort of tickling annoyance. Both were perfectly sane, and were doubtless persecuted. They were intelligent, capable people. A friend informs the writer that when some years ago he visited a fortune-teller of the Mrs. Piper class in London, he had a cold trickling up his feet, doubtless from hypnotism, to help thought reading.

The tickling of the face is the result of a more or less vain attempt to reach the ear or eye. It will be felt by people driving whose ear and eye would otherwise be affected. People sleeping in an exposed place may suffer more, as the fixed recumbent position makes them obnoxious to attack, as was previously remarked. The hyperaesthesia spreads in a slight degree round the eye.

The nature of the eye is hardly understood yet; it is quite possible that subconscious pictures pass before us like a cinematograph, enforcing or enforced by our thoughts. It has been remarked that thought is a species of self-hypnotism. Hypnotism may only make these pictures more distinct and modify them by degrees. In the attempt to inflict a picture on the eye, only the dark image of it may be seen. The writer believes that this means failure to affect the mind. Binet and Féré mention the dark after-shadow.

The extremest direct effect of hypnotism upon the eye, mechanically speaking, is doubtless scarcely more than the shock of thistledown wafted against it by a gentle breeze. It appears to affect the corners of the eye; the electric film is perhaps divided by the approach over the skin to another and damper tissue. But hyperaesthesia sometimes spreads to the upper cheek.

Madame de Maceine saw Rubinstein's hallucinatory picture with the corner of her eye. A shock even as slight as a bit of thistledown blown against the cornea might be ill--timed at a street-crossing. Mr. S. of B---- was run over in the streets of London and killed. He had been previously hypnotically affected, for he heard quantities of raps; these were no friendly signs of spirits, but the affection of his early hypnotists practising against him.

A double image is seen, the eye being curiously affected, when for instance the knobs of a chest of drawers appeared through the apparition.