It was in Paris, at the Hotel Mandeville, that I met the Baroness Paoli, an almost solitary survivor of the famous Corsican family. I was introduced to her by John Heroncourt, a friend in common, and the introduction was typical of his characteristic unorthodoxy.

"Mr Elliott O'Donnell, the Baroness Paoli. Mr Elliott O'Donnell is a writer on the superphysical. He is unlike the majority of psychical researchers, inasmuch as he has not based his knowledge on hearsay, but has actually seen, heard, and felt occult phenomena, both collectively and individually."

The Baroness smiled.

"Then I am delighted to meet Mr O'Donnell, for I, too, have had experience with the superphysical."

She extended her hand; the introduction was over.

A man in my line of life has to work hard. My motto is promptness. I have no time to waste on superfluity of any kind. I come to the point at once. Consequently, my first remark to the Baroness was direct from the shoulder:

"Your experiences. Please tell them—they will be both interesting and useful."

The Baroness gently clasped her hands—truly psychic hands, with slender fingers and long shapely nails—and, looking at me fixedly, said:

"If you write about it, promise that you will not mention names."

"They shall at all events be unrecognisable," I said. "Please begin."

And without further delay the Baroness commenced her story.

"You must know," she said, "that in my family, as in most historical families—particularly Corsican—there have been many tragedies. In some cases merely orthodox tragedies—a smile, a blow, a groan; in other cases peculiar tragedies—peculiar even in that country and in the grimness of the mediÆval age.

"Since 1316 the headquarters of my branch of the Paolis has been at Sartoris, once the strongest fortified castle in Corsica, but now, alas! almost past repair, in fact little better than a heap of crumbling ruins. As you know, Mr O'Donnell, it takes a vast fortune to keep such a place merely habitable.

"I lived there with my mother until my marriage two years ago, and neither she nor I had ever seen or heard any superphysical manifestations. From time to time some of the servants complained of odd noises, and there was one room which none of them would pass alone even in daylight; but we laughed at their fears, merely attributing them to the superstition which is so common among the Corsican peasants.

"The year after my marriage, my husband, a Mr Vercoe, who was a great friend of ours, and I, accepted my mother's invitation to spend Christmas with her, and we all three travelled together to Sartoris.

"It was an ideal season, and the snow—an exceptional sight in my native town—lay thick in the Castle grounds.

"But to get on with my story—for I see I must not try your patience with unnecessary detail—I must give you a brief description of the bedroom in which my husband and I slept. Like all the rooms in the Castle, it was oak panelled throughout. Floor, ceiling, and walls, all were of oak, and the bed, also of oak, and certainly of no later date than the fourteenth century, was superbly carved, and had been recently valued at £30,000.

"There were two entrances, the one leading into a passage, and the other into a large reception room, formerly a chapel, at the furthest extremity of which was a huge barred and bolted door that had not been opened for more than a hundred years. This door led down a flight of stone steps to a series of ancient dungeons that occupied the space underneath our bedroom and the reception room.

"On Christmas Eve we retired to rest somewhat earlier than usual, and, being tired after a long day's motoring, speedily fell into a deep sleep. We awoke simultaneously, both querying the time and agreeing that it must be about five o'clock.

"Whilst we were talking, we suddenly heard, to our utter astonishment, the sound of footsteps—heavy footsteps—accompanied by a curious clanging sound, immediately beneath us; and, as if by mutual consent, we both held our breath and listened.

"The footsteps moved on, and we presently heard them begin to ascend the stone steps leading to the adjoining room. Up, up, up, they came, until, having reached the summit, they paused. Then we heard the huge, heavy bolts of the fast-closed door shoot back with a sonorous clash. So far I had been rather more puzzled than frightened, and the idea of ghosts had not entered my mind, but when I heard the door—the door which I knew to be so securely fastened from the inside—thus opened, a great fear swept over me, and I prayed Heaven to save us from what might ensue.

"Several people, talking rapidly in gruff voices, now entered the room, and we distinctly heard the jingling of spurs and the rattling of sword scabbards coming to us distinctly through the cracks of the door.

"I was so paralysed with fear that I could do nothing. I could neither speak nor move, and my very soul was concentrated in one great, sickly dread, one awful anticipation that the intruders would burst into our room, and, before our very eyes, perform unthinkable horrors.

"To my immeasurable relief, however, this did not happen. The footsteps, as far as I could judge, advanced into the middle of the room—there was a ghastly suggestion of a scuffle, of a smothered cry, a gurgle; and the mailed feet then retired whence they had come, dragging with them some heavy load which bumped, bumped, bumped down the stairs and into the cellar. Then a brief silence followed, abruptly broken by the sound of a girlish voice, which, though beautifully tintinnabulous, was unearthly, and full of suggestions so sinister and blood-curdling, that the fetters which had hitherto held me tongue-tied snapped asunder, and I was able to give vent to my terror in words. The instant I did so the singing ceased, all was still, and not another sound disturbed us till morning.

"We got up as soon as we dared and found the door at the head of the dungeon steps barred and bolted as usual, while the heavy and antique furniture in the apartment showed no sign of having been disturbed.

"On the following night my husband sat up in the room adjoining our bedroom, to see if there would be a repetition of what had taken place the night before, but nothing occurred, and we never heard the noises again.

"That is one experience. The other, though not our own, was almost coincidental, and happened to our engineer friend, Mr Vercoe. When we told him about the noises we had heard, he roared with laughter.

"'Well,' he said, 'I always understood you Corsicans were superstitious, but this beats everything. The regulation stereotype ghost in armour and clanking chains, eh! Do you know what the sounds were, Baroness? Rats!' and he smiled odiously.

"Then a sudden idea flashed across me. 'Look here, Mr Vercoe,' I exclaimed, 'there is one room in our Castle I defy even you—sceptic as you are—to sleep in. It is the Barceleri Chamber, called after my ancestor, Barceleri Paoli. He visited China in the fifteenth century, bringing back with him a number of Chinese curiosities, and a Buddha which I shrewdly suspect he had stolen from a Canton temple. The room is much the same as when my ancestor occupied it, for no one has slept in it since. Moreover, the servants declare that the noises they so frequently hear come from it. But, of course, you won't mind spending a night in it?'

"Mr Vercoe laughed. 'He, he, he! Only too delighted. Give me a bottle of your most excellent vintage, and I defy any ghost that was ever created!'

"He was as good as his word, Mr O'Donnell, and though he had advised the contrary, we—that is to say, my mother, my husband, our two old servants and I—sat up in one of the rooms close at hand.

"Eleven, twelve, one, two, and three o'clock struck, and we were beginning to wish we had taken his advice and gone to bed, when we heard the most appalling, agonising, soul-rending screams for help. We rushed out, and, as we did so, the door of Mr Vercoe's room flew open and something—something white and glistening—bounded into the candle-light.

"We were so shocked, so absolutely petrified with terror, that it was a second or so before we realised that it was Mr Vercoe—not the Mr Vercoe we knew, but an entirely different Mr Vercoe—a Mr Vercoe without a stitch of clothing, and with a face metamorphosed into a lurid, solid block of horror, overspreading which was a suspicion of something—something too dreadful to name, but which we could have sworn was utterly at variance with his nature. Close at his heels was the blurred outline of something small and unquestionably horrid. I cannot define it. I dare not attempt to diagnose the sensations it produced. Apart from a deadly, nauseating fear, they were mercifully novel.

"Dashing past us, Mr Vercoe literally hurled himself along the corridor, and with almost superhuman strides, disappeared downstairs. A moment later, and the clashing of the hall door told us he was in the open air. A breathless silence fell on us, and for some seconds we were all too frightened to move. My husband was the first to pull himself together.

"'Come along!' he cried, gripping one of the trembling servants by the arm. 'Come along instantly! We must keep him in sight at all costs,' and, bidding me remain where I was, he raced downstairs.

"After a long search he eventually discovered Mr Vercoe lying at full length on the grass—insensible.

"For some weeks our friend's condition was critical—on the top of a violent shock to the system, sufficient in itself to endanger life, he had taken a severe chill, which resulted in double pneumonia. However, thanks to a bull-dog constitution, typically English, he recovered, and we then begged him to give us an account of all that had happened.

"'I cannot!' he said. 'My one desire is to forget everything that happened on that awful night.'

"He was obdurate, and our curiosity was, therefore, doomed to remain unsatisfied. Both my husband and I, however, felt quite sure that the image of Buddha was at the bottom of the mischief, and, as there chanced just then to be an English doctor staying at a neighbouring chateau, who was on his way to China, we entrusted the image to him, on the understanding that he would place it in a Buddhist temple. He deceived us, and, returning almost immediately to England, took the image with him. We subsequently learned that within three months this man was divorced, that he murdered a woman in Clapham Rise, and, in order to escape arrest, poisoned himself.

"The image then found its way to a pawnbroker's establishment in Houndsditch, which shortly afterwards was burned to the ground. Where it is now, I cannot definitely say, but I have been told that an image of Buddha is the sole occupant of an empty house in the Shepherd's Bush Road—a house that is now deemed haunted. These are the experiences I wanted to tell you, Mr O'Donnell. What do you think of them?"

"I think," I said, "they are of absorbing interest. Can you see any association in the two hauntings—any possible connection between what you heard and what Mr Vercoe saw?"

A look of perplexity crossed the Baroness's face. "I hardly know," she said. "What is your opinion on that point?"

"That they are distinct—absolutely distinct. The phenomena you heard are periodical re-enactions, (either by the earth-bound spirits of the actual victim and perpetrators, or by impersonating phantoms), of a crime once committed within the Castle walls. A girl was obviously murdered in the chapel and her coffin dragged into the dungeons, where, no doubt, her remains are to be found. I presume it was her spirit you heard tintinnabulating. Very possibly, if her skeleton were unearthed and re-interred in an orthodox fashion, the hauntings would cease.

"Now, with regard to your friend's experience. The blurred figure you saw pursuing the engineer was not the image of Buddha—it was one of Mr Vercoe's many personalities, extracted from him by the image of Buddha. We are all, as you are aware, complex creatures, all composed of diverse selves, each self possessing a specific shape and individuality. The more animal of these separate selves, the higher spiritual forces attaching themselves to certain localities and symbols have the power of drawing out of us, and eventually destroying. The higher spiritual forces, however, do not associate themselves with all crucifixes and Buddhas, but only with those moulded by true believers. For instance, a Buddha fashioned for mere gain, and by a person who was not a genuine follower of the prophet, would have no power of attraction.

"I have proved all this, experimentally, times without number.

"Mr Vercoe must have had—as indeed many of us have—vices, in all probability, little suspected. The close proximity of the Buddha acted on them, and they began to leave his body and form a shape of their own. Had he allowed them to do so, all might have gone well; they would have been effectually overcome by the higher spiritual forces attached to the Buddha. But as soon as he saw a figure beginning to form—and no doubt it was very dreadful—he lost his head. His shrieks interrupted the work, the power of the Buddha was, pro tempus, at an end, and the extracted personality commenced at once to re-enter Vercoe. Rushing at him with that end in view, it so terrified him that he fled from the room, and it was at that stage that you appeared upon the scene. What followed is, of course, pure conjecture on my part, but I fear, I greatly fear, that by the time Mr Vercoe became unconscious the mischief was done, and the latter's evil personality had once again united with his other personalities."

"And what would be the after-effect, Mr O'Donnell?" the Baroness inquired anxiously.

"I fear a serious one," I replied evasively. "In the case of the doctor you mentioned, who committed murder, an evil ego had doubtless been expelled, and, receiving a rebuff, had reunited, for after a reunion the evil personality usually receives a new impetus and grows with amazing rapidity. Have you heard from Mr Vercoe lately?"

The Baroness shook her head. "Not for several months."

"You will let me know when you do?"

She nodded.

A week later she wrote to me from Rome.

"Isn't it terrible?" she began, "Mr Vercoe committed suicide on Wednesday—the Birmingham papers—he was a Birmingham man—are full of it!"

The Barrowvian

The description of an adventure Mr Trobas, a friend of mine, had with a barrowvian in Brittany (and which I omitted to relate when referring to barrowvians), I now append as nearly as possible in his own words:—

"Night! A sky partially concealed from view by dark, fantastically shaped clouds, that, crawling along with a slow, stealthy motion, periodically obscure the moon. The crest of a hill covered with short-clipped grass, much worn away in places, and in the centre a Druidical circle broken and incomplete; a few of the stones are erect, the rest either lie at full length on the sward, close to the mystic ring, or at some considerable distance from it. Here and there are distinct evidences of recent digging, and at the base of one of the horizontal stones is an excavation of no little depth.

"A sudden, but only temporary clearance of the sky reveals the surrounding landscape; the rugged mountain side, flecked with gleaming granite boulders and bordered with sturdy hedges (a mixture of mud and bracken), and beyond them the meadows, traversed by sinuous streams whose scintillating surfaces sparkle like diamonds in the silvery moonlight. At rare intervals the scene is variegated, and nature interrupted, by a mill or a cottage,—toy-like when viewed from such an altitude,—and then the sweep of meadowland continues, undulating gently till it finds repose at the foot of some distant ridge of cone-shaped mountains. Over everything there is a hush, awe-inspiring in its intensity. Not the cry of a bird, not the howl of a dog, not the rustle of a leaf; there is nothing, nothing but the silence of the most profound sleep. In these remote rural districts man retires to rest early, the physical world accompanying him; and all nature dreams simultaneously.

"It was shortly after the commencement of this period of universal slumber, one night in April, that I toiled laboriously to the summit of the hill in question, and, spreading a rug on one of the fallen stones, converted it into a seat. Naturally I had not climbed this steep ascent without a purpose. The reason was this—at eight-thirty that morning I received a telegram from a friend at Armennes, near Carnac, which ran thus: 'Am in great difficulty—Ghosts—Come.—Krantz.'

"Of course Krantz is not the real name of my friend, but it is one that answers the purpose admirably in telegrams and on post-cards; and of course he well knew what he was about when he said 'Come.' Not only I but everyone has confidence in Krantz, and I was absolutely certain that when he demanded my presence, the money I should spend on the journey would not be spent in vain.

"Apart from psychical investigation, I study every phase of human nature, and am at present, among other things, engaged on a work of criminology based on impressions derived from face-to-face communication with notorious criminals.

"The morning I received Krantz's summons was the morning I had set aside for a special study of S—— M——, whose case has recently commanded so much public attention; but the moment I read the wire, I changed my plans, without either hesitation or compunction. Krantz was Krantz, and his dictum could not be disobeyed.

"Tearing down la rue Saint Denis, and narrowly avoiding collision with a lady who lives in la rue Saint FranÇois, and will persist in wearing hats and heels that outrage alike every sense of decency and good form, I hustled into the station, and, rushing down the steps, just succeeded in catching the Carnac train. After a journey which, for slowness, most assuredly holds the record, I arrived, boiling over with indignation, at Armennes, where Krantz met me. After luncheon he led the way to his study, and, as soon as the servant who handed us coffee had left the room, began his explanation of the telegram.

"'As you know, Trobas,' he observed, 'it's not all bliss to be a landlord. Up to the present I have been singularly fortunate, inasmuch as I have never experienced any difficulty in getting tenants for my houses. Now, however, there has been a sudden and most alarming change, and I have just received no less than a dozen notices from tenants desirous of giving up their habitations at once. Here they are!' And he handed me a bundle of letters, for the most part written in the scrawling hand of the illiterate. 'If you look,' he went on, 'you will see that none of them give any reason for leaving. It is merely—"We CANNOT POSSIBLY stay here any longer," or "We MUST give up possession IMMEDIATELY," which they have done, and in every instance before the quarter was up. Being naturally greatly astonished and perturbed, I made careful inquiries, and, at length—for the North Country rustic is most reticent and difficult to "draw"—succeeded in extracting from three of them the reason for the general exodus. The houses are all HAUNTED! There was nothing amiss with them, they informed me, till about three weeks ago, when they all heard all sorts of alarming noises—crashes as if every atom of crockery they possessed was being broken; bangs on the panels of doors; hideous groans; diabolical laughs; and blood-curdling screams. Nor was that all; some of them vowed they had seen things—horrible hairy hands, with claw-like nails and knotted joints, that came out of dark corners and grabbed at them; naked feet with enormous filthy toes; and faces—HORRIBLE faces that peeped at them over the banisters or through the windows; and sooner than stand any more of it—sooner than have their wives and bairns frightened out of their senses, they would sacrifice a quarter's rent and go. "We are sorry, Mr Krantz," they said in conclusion, "for you have been a most considerate landlord, but stay we cannot."' Here my friend paused.

"'And have you no explanation of these hauntings?' I asked.

"Krantz shook his head. 'No!' he said, 'the whole thing is a most profound mystery to me. At first I attributed it to practical jokers, people dressed up; but a couple of nights' vigil in the haunted district soon dissipated that theory.'

"'You say district,' I remarked. 'Are the houses close together—in the same road or valley?'

"'In a valley,' Krantz responded—'the Valley of Dolmen. It is ten miles from here.'

"'Dolmen!' I murmured, 'why Dolmen?'

"'Because,' Krantz explained, 'in the centre of the valley is a hill, on the top of which is a Druids' circle.'

"'How far are the houses off the hill?' I queried.

"'Various distances,' Krantz replied; 'one or two very close to the base of it, and others further away.'

"'But within a radius of a few miles?'

"Krantz nodded. 'Oh yes,' he answered. 'The valley itself is small. I intend taking you there to-night. I thought we would watch outside one of the houses.'

"'If you don't mind,' I said, 'I would rather not. Anyway not to-night. Tell me how to get there and I will go alone.'

"Krantz smiled. 'You are a strange creature, Trobas,' he said, 'the strangest in the world. I sometimes wonder if you are an elemental. At all events, you occupy a category all to yourself. Of course go alone, if you would rather. I shall be far happier here, and if you can find a satisfactory solution to the mystery and put an end to the hauntings, I shall be eternally grateful. When will you start, and what will you take with you?'

"'If that clock of yours is right, Krantz,' I exclaimed, pointing to a gun-metal timepiece on the mantelshelf, 'in half an hour. As the night promises to be cold, let me have some strong brandy-and-water, a dozen oatmeal biscuits, a thick rug, and a lantern. Nothing else!'

"Krantz carried out my instructions to the letter. His motor took me to Dolmen Valley, and at eight o'clock I began the ascent of the hill. On reaching the summit, I uttered an exclamation. 'Someone has been excavating, and quite recently!'

"It was precisely what I had anticipated. Some weeks previously, a member of the Lyons literary club, to which I belong, had informed me that a party of geologist friends of his had been visiting the cromlechs of Brittany, and had committed the most barbarous depredations there. Hence, the moment Krantz mentioned the 'Druidical circle,' I associated the spot with the visit of the geologists; and knowing only too well that disturbances of ancient burial grounds almost always lead to occult manifestations, I decided to view the place at once.

"That I had not erred in my associations was now only too apparent. Abominable depredations HAD been committed,—doubtless, by the people to whom I have alluded—and, unless I was grossly mistaken, herein lay the clue to the hauntings.

"The air being icy, I had to wrap both my rug and my overcoat tightly round me to prevent myself from freezing, and every now and then I got up and stamped my feet violently on the hard ground to restore the circulation.

"So far there had been nothing in the atmosphere to warn me of the presence of the superphysical, but, precisely at eleven o'clock, I detected the sudden amalgamation, with the ether, of that enigmatical, indefinable SOMETHING, to which I have so frequently alluded in my past adventures. And now began that period of suspense which 'takes it out of me' even more than the encounter with the phenomenon itself. Over and over again I asked myself the hackneyed, but none the less thrilling question, 'What form will it take? Will it be simply a phantasm of a dead Celt, or some peculiarly grotesque and awful elemental[1] attracted to the spot by human remains?'

"Minute after minute passed, and nothing happened. It is curious, how at night, especially when the moon is visible, the landscape seems to undergo a complete metamorphosis. Objects not merely increase in size, but vary in shape, and become possessed of an animation suggestive of all sorts of lurking, secretive possibilities. It was so now. The boulders in front and around me, presented the appearance of grotesque beasts, whose hidden eyes I could feel following my every movement with sly interest. The one solitary fir adorning the plateau was a tree no longer but an ogre, pro tempus, concealing the grim terrors of its spectral body beneath its tightly folded limbs. The stones of the circle opposite were ghoulish, hump-backed things that crouched and squatted in all kinds of fantastic attitudes and tried to read my thoughts. The shadows, too, that, swarming from the silent tarns and meadows, ascended with noiseless footsteps the rugged sides of the hill, and, taking cover of even the smallest obstacles, stalked me with unremitting persistency, were no mere common shadows, but intangible, pulpy things that breathed the spirit of the Great Unknown. Yet nothing specified came to frighten me. The stillness was so emphatic that each time I moved, the creaking of my clothes and limbs created echoes. I yawned, and from on all sides of me came a dozen other yawns. I sighed, and the very earth beneath me swayed with exaggerated sympathy.

"The silence irritated me. I grew angry; I coughed, laughed, whistled; and from afar off, from the distant lees, and streams, and spinneys, came a repetition of the noises.

"Then the blackest of clouds creeping slowly over the moor crushed the sheen out of the valley and smothered everything in sable darkness. The silence of death supervened, and my anger turned to fear. Around me there was now—NOTHING—only a void. Black ether and space! Space! a sanctuary from fear, and yet composed of fear itself. It was the space, the nameless, bottomless SOMETHING spreading limitless all around me, that, filling me with vague apprehensions, confused me with its terrors. What was it? Whence came it? I threw out my arms and Something, Something which I intuitively knew to be there, but which I cannot explain, receded. I drew them in again, and the same SOMETHING instantly oppressed me with its close—its very close proximity.

"I gasped for breath and tried to move my arms again—I could not. A sudden rigor held me spellbound, and fixed my eyes on the darkness directly ahead of me. Then, from somewhere in my rear, came a laugh—hoarse, malignant, and bestial, and I was conscious that the SOMETHING had materialised and was creeping stealthily towards me. Nearer, nearer and nearer it came, and all the time I wondered what, WHAT in the name of God it was like! My anticipations became unbearable, the pulsations of my heart and the feverish throbbing of my temples warning me that, if the climax were postponed much longer, I should either die where I sat, or go mad. That I did neither, was due to a divine inspiration which made me suddenly think of a device that I had once seen on a Druidical stone in Brittany—the sun, a hand with the index and little fingers pointing downwards, and a sprig of mistletoe. The instant I saw them in my mind's eye, the cords that held me paralytic slackened.

"I sprang up, and there, within a yard of where I had sat, was a figure—the luminous nude figure of a creature, half man and half ape. Standing some six feet high, it had a clumsy, thick-set body, covered in places with coarse, bristly hair, arms of abnormal length and girth, legs swelling with huge muscles and much bowed, and a very large and long dark head. The face was DREADFUL!—it was the face of something long since dead; and out of the mass of peeling, yellow skin and mouldering tissues gleamed two lurid and wholly malevolent eyes. Our glances met, and, as they did so, a smile of hellish glee suffused its countenance. Then, crouching down in cat-like fashion on its disgusting hands, it made ready to spring. Again the device of the sun and mistletoe arose before me. My fingers instinctively closed on my pocket flashlight. I pressed the button and, as the brilliant, white ray shot forth, the satanical object before me VANISHED. Then I turned tail, and never ceased running till I had arrived at the spot on the high-road where Krantz's motor awaited me.

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