How is it that one can "feel" a room is haunted? What is it that gives one the strong impression that there is something unpleasant about a certain room, a something that sets it apart, as a place to be avoided?

The mind operates with the senses. It receives impressions through the air as sound, or through the ether as sight, and so forth. Through the various senses we catch the vibrations of consciousness belonging to our environment, near or far. Psychically developed persons possess an increase of sensibility which enables them to see, hear, and feel more acutely than most people. Wherever some great mental disturbance has taken place, wherever overwhelming sorrow, hatred, pain, terror, or any kind of violent passion has been felt, an impression of a very marked character has been imprinted on the astral light. So strong is this impression that often persons possessing but the first glimmer of the psychic faculty are deeply impressed by it. But a slight temporary increase of sensibility would enable them to visualize the whole scene. That such impressions should be imprinted on the astral light is no more wonderful than ordinary photography, or the impression of the human voice upon the cylinders of a gramophone.

To me, a haunted room is always full of shadows. That is how I see it. That is one of several ways by which I distinguish it from other rooms. Other people do not always see these shadows, and the room may actually be flooded with sunshine when I enter it for the first time. This makes no difference to what I see. The shadows are there, despite the sunshine.

There are long-drawn-out shadows, which seem to take their rise in the corners of the room, and creep across the floor. They are not motionless, but in constant vibration and re-formation, like smoke drifts. Such shadows are not of a uniform gray, but tinged by dull colors, dark red, sulphur yellow, muddy brown. In a haunted room there is always a shadow above one's head. A hovering cloud between the ceiling and midway to the floor.

Then there are the sensations I feel when entering a haunted room. Little shivers run through me, and what I take to be nervous excitation sets all my spine jangling, and the tiny nerve threads quivering. The sensation of icy cold water trickling down my back is most unpleasant.

At times a profound melancholy falls upon me, often blended with a poignant compassion for some one, I know not whom. At other times a sensation of violent repulsion invades my being, which has actually, in some cases, produced physical sickness. Again, there is the helpless feeling, and that is the hardest to bear of all such psychic disturbances. The feeling that something is about to occur in that room which I will be powerless to ward off.

What can one do when paying a visit if one is ushered into a bedroom by one's hostess which one instantly knows to be "unhealthful"? I cannot find a better word to describe many a haunted room. This experience has several times happened to me, and unless I know my hostess very well, I am obliged to sleep in this unhealthful atmosphere.

On one occasion I was invited to dine and sleep with some old friends, who had taken on lease an old castle in the neighborhood of St. Andrews, where I happened to be staying. They had only been in residence for a month or two, an old brother and an old sister, whom I had known all my life.

In spite of this long friendship they were not the sort of people to whom I could have said, "Would you mind giving me another room? The one you have selected for me is haunted, and if I remain in it I will have no sleep. I shall not even dare to try to sleep, but shall have to keep awake all night to ward off the evil." They would have been both shocked and indignant at such a suggestion, and probably have concluded that I had gone stark staring mad.

I had accepted a seat in a carriage belonging to some friends in St. Andrews, who were also going to the castle to dine, but who were returning to sleep in their own homes in the town.

It was twilight when we drove up the long avenue, and caught a first glimpse of the exterior. A typical old Scotch castle, very large, with high-peaked roofs and pepper-box turrets, and all built of gray stone.

About an hour before dinner I was conducted to my room. My evening dress was already spread upon the bed, and the housemaid was arranging my toilet articles on the dressing-table.

"I think you will be comfortable here, my dear," said my kind hostess, and I thanked her with a sinking heart as she went away.

As the housemaid prepared to follow her I said, "Am I the only person sleeping on this floor?"

She answered, "You are the only one in this wing, miss."

"It is a very large house, I suppose?"

"Twenty-six bedrooms," answered the housemaid, "but we've shut up most of them. This one has such a good view that Miss Young thought it ought to be used." With that she went away, and I looked round.

Six lighted candles and a big wood fire seemed only to accentuate the profound gloom and depression of the large, irregular room. The very first thing I did was to throw a towel over the face of the mirror on the dressing-table. Then I investigated every nook and corner.

There was a powdering closet formed in a pepper-box turret. The carpet of the room stopped short at its door, and inside the boards looked loose and uneven. I fetched a candle and soon discovered that the floorboards lifted up quite easily, and beneath them was a black yawning hole, an oubliette, through which wretched prisoners were cast in days not so long ago.

I replaced the boards, telling myself that in the morning I would have a look at the outside of this black shaft. It probably ended, as most of such places did end in the old Scotch castles, in a big dungeon underground.

Inside my big room there were sloping ceilings, and great beams, and an enormous fireplace had been bricked up to suit more modern requirements. There were two doors, the one I had entered by and another which was locked and keyless. The window, with the view, was hidden by heavy red curtains, and the atmosphere was musty and dank, like that of a vault.

As I stared around me I could not help thinking what an unfortunate thing it is to be born without any imagination. Any one possessed of a spark of that quality would have hesitated before putting a young guest into so gloomy a chamber, the only room occupied in that wing.

"No sleep possible here," I told myself grimly, as I began to dress. Then I set myself to "feel after" what was really wrong with the room. Supposing I did fall asleep, what would happen? Would some one come and try to strangle me in the night? That had actually happened to many people. Would I suddenly awake to the fact that some one unseen was pulling off the bedclothes? That was also a trick common to ghostly visitants.

Gradually I gathered impressions, very unpleasant ones. I became positively certain that I was being watched intently. Some one, present in the room, though unseen by me, was watching my every movement. That some one violently resented my occupation of the room, was intensely hostile, and meant to make things nasty for me later on that night. Wherever I moved I felt that malignant eyes followed me, and I kept glancing over my shoulder at every crack of the furniture, and the scratching of a mouse in the wainscot. It was in the stretches of dead silence that the presence became most imminent, most menacing, and I had a strong instinct to set my back against the wall and face right out into the room.

Again I was confronted by the mirror problem. I had become certain that it must remain covered. If I looked into its surface I knew I would see something horrible. Something kept whispering to me, "Never mind how you look, never mind if your bodice is all awry, or your skirt all askew, or your hair all bulging out on one side. Don't uncover the mirror if you value your sanity. What there is to be seen can only become visible in the mirror. Don't worry after explanations, or why this should or how it could be. Do as I tell you. Keep the mirror covered and when you come up to bed keep your back to the wall."

Dressing was a very rapid process that night, and when completed, so far as circumstances would allow, I found I still had twenty minutes to wait until the dinner gong would ring. I sat down with my back against the wall, and surveyed the depressing apartment with a gloomy anticipation. Where was that stealthy watcher, whose baleful eyes I felt were fixed upon me? I could see nothing. I could only feel acutely that I was not alone, and that I was "in for" an awful night.

Oh! to get away, and leave that malignant unseen watcher in undisputed possession of his dismal abode! I was quite certain of the gender! Then a chance of deliverance flashed over me. I could return after dinner to St. Andrews with the friends who had brought me. But I had accepted the invitation to stay the night. What possible excuse could I make for cutting short my visit? In this case the truth was no use; in fact, worse than useless. Not only would my host and hostess utterly fail to understand what I was talking about, but they would be exceedingly indignant, and look upon me as absolutely insane.

As falsehood had to be resorted to, I surely could invent some plausible excuse that would hurt no one's feelings, but the only excuse I could think of was illness. I must tell my hostess that I feared I was "in for" an illness of some sort, and the wisest thing to do was to drive back to St. Andrews and be laid up in my own bed. The most hospitable person would rather not have a sick guest under her roof. The excuse I proposed to make seemed to me to be the one most likely to be accepted without much fuss.

I did not determine upon this plan without a certain amount of wavering. "After all," I told myself, "it is only for one night, and what can this entity do but give you a very creepy and disturbed night. You will have to sit up against the wall, and defend yourself by the power of the Cross, bidding it begone, in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. This you may have to do many times, but the night won't last forever, and you had best try to make the best of things, and not risk offending old friends."

It did seem hard that I dared not tell the truth. Had the entity been in the flesh how easy it would have been. Who has not, at some time or another in her life, found herself unwittingly to be an unwelcome guest, and made to feel "if you don't go away at once you will regret it"? Sometimes one comes across persons who for some private reason dread being overlooked, or who love their hermitage so dearly that they refuse to be amiable, to even the most swiftly passing guest. Old people are often like that, every one knows, or has known, of such people in the flesh. Yet how few believe that such unpleasant traits persist just as strongly after so-called death, as before. What should suddenly change a man's whole disposition the moment he "shuffles off this mortal coil"?

I felt I was now in the presence of one who dreaded being overlooked, and who sought to get rid of me by every device in his power.

Whilst thinking thus my mind was irrevocably made up for me.

My attention was suddenly drawn towards a soft stealthy noise. Padded footsteps. Something had come near, and was creeping warily round in front of me. I felt the eyes upon me. I was being regarded more closely. What was about to follow?

I leapt to my feet, and raising my arm made the sign of the Cross. "I bid you begone, in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."

There was a moment's pause of utter silence. The atmosphere struck suddenly chill as ice. A curious sensation of emptiness crept over the room. I was alone, but for how long would I remain alone?

I hurried downstairs and tried to play my part, and during the course of the evening I told my falsehoods as naturally as I could. At half-past ten I drove off to St. Andrews with a light heart, and an utter indifference to the consequences.

I believe that my falsehoods did not, however, "go down," for I never was asked again to that house.

Perhaps it was as well, for I certainly never would have set foot in it again, and I had sacrificed the truth quite sufficiently upon this one occasion.

I had no difficulty in finding out what sort of reputation the castle bore. Every one agreed that it was haunted. I asked one elderly woman who had lived all her life in St. Andrews, and who knew the whole country intimately, what she thought of S. Castle.

"Horrible, haunted old place. I can't think how the Youngs could have taken it," she replied.

"But what sort of ghosts haunt it?" I asked.

"Old Sir James and his son. They were in league with the Devil, and the son, another James, used to murder people and throw them down into the dungeon. He was beheaded in the reign of Charles the First."

"Have you known any one who has ever seen anything?" I persisted.

"No, but my father remembered as a young man seeing a pile of human bones being removed from the dungeon, and buried in the churchyard. The late people lived to be very old, and always kept Sir James' wing shut up. Now the place has changed hands, and probably the Youngs will never be disturbed. They are installed in the most modern part of the house, and won't need to use the haunted wing."

It must not be supposed that all haunted houses or rooms are unpleasant to live in. People in the flesh are either pleasant or unpleasant, disturbing or tranquil to live with, and so it is with their astral counterparts. When they elect to haunt the scenes of their old activities some ghosts are so inoffensive that they can be lived with under the most tranquil conditions.

One autumn we took a shooting lodge in the far North of Scotland, and though I recognized at once that it was frequented by an entity from the "other side," I experienced no uneasy feelings whatever.

We had not been in residence longer than three hours before this ghost put in an appearance.

We were in a lively confusion of unpacking and settling down. Several large trunks had been carried upstairs, and set down on a wide corridor on to which the bedrooms opened.

I was on my knees unpacking one of those trunks, our dog "Pompey" was seated beside me superintending matters, and my maid was standing at my side waiting to carry various articles into the different rooms. The hour was midday, and the early autumn sunshine flooded the house.

Suddenly "Pompey" growled, and turned towards the staircase, with all his hair bristling. I also looked round and saw a tall, quite ordinary man mounting the staircase.

I thought nothing of this, supposing him to be the factor whom we expected, and I rose to my feet at once. He came on along the corridor straight towards us, and looking directly at us, but when within about ten feet from where we stood he suddenly vanished.

I heard my maid give a sharp exclamation, and at the same instant "Pompey" made a furious dash at the spot, and growling angrily began to pursue something invisible to us, down the stairs.

I followed as quickly as I could. I feared "Pompey" would be lost if he ran out into the deer forest surrounding us on all sides. I caught him at the deer fence, edging the vegetable garden, and induced him with some difficulty to return to the house.

My maid and I compared notes. What I had seen accorded exactly with what she had seen. She soon got over her uncomfortable experience, and though I never saw this entity again, I often felt him near me. He was, however, of so colorless a personality, that he never proved in the least disturbing to any one in the house.

At the time of which I write the Astral Plane was not so generally recognized as an actual residential quarter as it is now. In these days a halfway house for the soul was not considered necessary for Protestants. They either went direct to heaven or hell, according to their manner of life on earth. The Catholics alone had their Purgatory, to which the departed souls repaired, there to slough off the passions of earth and fit themselves for higher realms.

Purgatory and the Astral Plane mean the same thing now to the vast majority of thinkers. A halfway house for the soul. A condition of consciousness interpenetrating this earth, which may actually be visited under certain conditions by those still possessing a physical body, an abode so contiguous to this world as to make the words of the Poet literally true—

"All houses wherein men have lived and died are haunted houses."

In these days I used to get severely chaffed on the subject of the Astral Plane. Frivolous young things would say to me, "Hello! been on the Astral Plane lately?"

One day I was undergoing a certain amount of good-natured chaff from a number of young people at Dunrobin Castle. I defended my beliefs vigorously, and at last the present Lady Londonderry, then Miss Chaplin, the Duke's niece, challenged me to pick out the haunted room in the Castle.

I had never at that time been in any part of the building save in one bedroom, and the public rooms. I at once took up the challenge, and the Duke remarked that I had my work cut out for me, as several of the rooms had a reputation for being haunted.

I replied that I would undertake to pick out a room where life was still actively carried on by those who had suffered something terrible on that spot in the past, and who were now denizens of the Astral Plane.

A small crowd of us then started, led by Miss Chaplin, and we went from room to room. She opened the door and remained with the others on the threshold. I walked into each room alone and gathered impressions.

In several of the rooms I felt the presence of astral entities, but nothing of a strong or unpleasant nature. At last we came to a room occupied by a maid, sitting alone, sewing, and I felt instantly that my quest was at an end.

There was a sharp atmosphere of anguish that was quite unmistakable; some ghastly tragedy had taken place within those four walls, but I said nothing before the sewing woman. I felt drawn towards the window, the trouble was centered there. If I remember rightly, the room was high up, and overlooking, not the sea, but a paved courtyard.

I walked back to the others with my finger on my lip, and Miss Chaplin closed the door behind me.

"We need not go any further; that is the haunted room," I said, in a low voice that could not reach the woman inside.

"You're right. You've found it," was the answer.

I heard the story when we went downstairs, but I can only recollect that it had to do with a Lady Sutherland, who had been brutally flung out of the window.

I will now relate a curious incident of haunting by elementals, and it will be seen that such hauntings may quite easily appear to the ordinary observer as an abnormal occurrence to which no clue can be given.

What is an elemental? It is only when the mystic has advanced in her studies that she discovers how manifold evolution is, and how small a part humanity really fills in the economy of nature.

When the microscope is used myriads of germs of life, unsuspected by us, are revealed; even so the invisible planes connected with this earth contain myriads of forms of life, of whose existence most of us are unconscious. When we read of a "good or bad elemental" it must always be either an artificial entity, or one of the many varieties of nature spirits that is meant. I will deal now with a case of the artificial variety.

Such elementals are formed out of the elemental essence lying behind the mineral kingdom. It is the monadic essence, or material used in creation, or it may be called the outpouring of Divine force into matter. This elemental essence is marvelously sensitive to human thought, however fleeting. It responds instantly to the vibrations set up consciously or unconsciously by human will or desire. The influence of thought can mold a living force, good or evil, into an existence, evanescent or lasting. Such shapes possess a certain appropriateness to the character of the desire which calls them into existence, though they generally possess distortions, either unpleasant or terrifying.

Persons who play with, or use for some malign purpose, Black Magic, generally have a swarm of such semi-intelligent entities surrounding them, and professional Black Magicians can call artificial elementals of great power into existence, and use them for their fell designs.

As a rule, however, the enormous inchoate mass of entities, known as elementals, are beings of human thought creation, created in no malicious spirit, but more often the result of curiosity, and tampering with a very dangerous power, as yet little understood. The amateur magician on passing over to the other side by no means loses his taste for the grotesque and abnormal, and often continues to play pranks on those left behind, by means of the dangerous powers he has acquired whilst on earth.

I was visiting some old friends in the South of England. Some years before they had succeeded to a fine inheritance, and it was the first time that I had stayed with them in that house. I did not experience any uncomfortable sensations in the bedroom appointed to me. It was early summer-time when there is but a short spell of darkness, and I was on such intimate terms with my hostess, herself a psychic, that I had only to say I disliked the atmosphere of my bedroom, to have it changed.

The former mistress of the house had been a very remarkable woman whom I had known intimately. She was brilliantly clever and accomplished, and charming to talk to, but unfortunately she took a vivid interest in occultism of the wrong sort—in Black Magic. Anything to do with spells, witchcraft, elementals, incantations, attracted her enormously, and she had a very considerable knowledge of the subject. I have no doubt she could have worked a great deal of mischief had she been so inclined, but luckily her designs were more impish than malign.

I often warned her that there was undoubted danger in such researches, and that she was certain to attract about her elementals of a most undesirable kind, but my warnings went unheeded, and to the time of her death her interest in the dark subject never flagged.

She had not died in the house I had come to stay in, but it occurred to me as I dressed for dinner that I was in her old bedroom.

This suggestion came to me suddenly, and to the accompaniment of a sound. A sound more felt than heard, a sound known to the spirit rather than to the ear; a tiptoe silence hovering on the brink of sound's threshold.

My surroundings gave a very pleasant impression. A glorious sunset was flooding the west. My room was full of golden light, and the window was flung wide to the warm summer air. There was nothing to be recorded either ghostly or uncanny, yet something was present which made me uncomfortable. Strange thoughts, bizarre fancies, found lodgment in my mind, and I stood rigid, listening intently. The room was full of secrets. They seemed suddenly to creep forth and whisper together.

There it was again! that soft echo of a sound which was like no other sound. An eerie, uncanny sensation crept down my spine, a strange, undefinable feeling of uncertainty, not yet amounting to fear. I moved towards the corner of the room, whence the sound proceeded, and as I approached, out of that corner dropped down a huge gray moth, a second dropped down after it, and both lay with outstretched wings on the white coverlet of the bed.

Now I have always had a peculiar antipathy to moths, the big furry sort. I can handle a spider, and bear with a black beetle, but with big woolly moths I cannot live happily. I saw one once under a microscope, and it was covered with horrid looking parasites. I am aware that other creatures are similarly afflicted, but this microscopic vision accentuated my horror of all big moths. They seem to me repulsive, sinister, and uncanny creatures. The curious thing is that though I dislike them they adore me, and I always know that if there is one in my parish it will find me out.

On this occasion I felt a very natural desire to laugh at myself. Of course, the creatures had at once discovered me, and this was all that had resulted from my uncomfortable sensations. A feeling of scorn swept over me. Two moths had rustled softly. Could anything be more banal, more commonplace? I flung a towel over them, and finished dressing. Then I rang for the housemaid.

When she came I told her she must accomplish the destruction of the occupants of my bed. I could see no moths flying about outside, but nevertheless the window must be kept closed till I opened it again in the dark, before getting into bed.

She told me that she was always particular to close the windows before bringing in a light, as the bats were a nuisance. I assured her that I had no objection to a room full of bats, but I could not sleep in a room full of moths. She promised to look about the room whilst it was still light, and destroy any she found. I closed the window myself and went down to dinner.

We were but three women present; my hostess, myself, and a friend of ours, and we spent a delightful evening together talking of old times.

That night, before beginning to undress, I blew out my candle, and throwing up the window I stood looking forth upon enchantment. It was still light, with a luster that filled all space, and it seemed wicked to shut out such beauty. Westward the stars were pale, but southward one great dull red star shone low down on the horizon. The owls were haunting the gardens with their banshee notes. It was a night for the revelation of the fairy folk, elves and pixies, fauns and dryads, elfins, nymphs and satyrs. A night when she tells her secrets to her lovers in the psalmody of nature, when the spirits of earth, fire, air, and water utter softly to human souls, if they will but incline the ear to hearken to the message.

If I want a definition of God I shall go, not to the bell and the book, but to a starlit, fragrant garden, where I can look long and deep into the passion of Creation's eyes. I will be as the old gray poet who wrote—

Across the hushed magic came silver sweet the strokes of eleven from the village church, and the spell was broken. I closed the window, lit my candles, and prepared for bed.

Just before extinguishing my lights, and re-opening the window, I carried a candle to the side of the bed with a box of matches. What was my horror on discovering that the turned-down bed and both pillows were liberally strewn with enormous gray moths. The sight was extraordinary, I literally could not believe my eyes. I stood there staring, and mechanically counting them. Twenty—thirty. I turned back to the dressing-table with the candle still in my hand. What was I to do? If I had the courage to destroy them, what sort of condition would the bed be in after?

I am writing of actual facts, and without the least exaggeration. The smallest of those moths must have been quite an inch long in their fat gray bodies, and quite three inches long across the wings. I thought I knew most moths by sight and name, but I had never seen any like these before. What depressed me most was the fact that moths are attracted by candle-light. I had been burning four candles for quite twenty minutes, and not a moth had forsaken the bed for the flame. I was positively certain that they had not flown in whilst I stood in the dark of the open window. They were far too big and numerous to have escaped observation. What was I to do? I could not use that bed, and I now felt a strong repulsion for the room. I regretted deeply that the household must all be in bed, because I knew that no description I could give would convey anything like actuality, and the truth was certain to appear wild exaggeration.

I made up my mind at once. I knew there were several unoccupied rooms on either side of me, and taking my lighted candle I placed it, still lit, in a basin on the marble-topped washstand. It should remain lit all night, and in the morning I would come to search for victims. The other candles I extinguished, all but one to take with me, and leaving the window still shut I softly left the room. I entered the next bedroom and approached the bed. Of course, there were no sheets, but the white dust sheet covering the blankets was spotless—there was not a moth to be seen anywhere. Blowing out my candle I opened the window, and getting into bed between the blankets I was soon fast asleep.

I awakened to glorious sunshine, and looked at my wrist watch, which I had placed beside my bed. Six o'clock and a lovely warm summer morning.

I jumped out of bed, full of curiosity regarding my visitors of over-night, and returned to my own room. Not a trace of a moth to be seen anywhere. The candle had burnt itself out, no singed wings or blackened bodies lay near. The window was shut. I threw it wide, and then I went round the room shaking curtains, looking behind pictures, and climbing on a chair I examined the top of the wardrobe. Not the faintest signs of the great gray drove of the night before. Where could they all have vanished to?

I gave it up, and got into my own bed, to await the advent of my early tea. I hated having to tell the housemaid that I had been driven into another room, but I knew she would find out the fact for herself. She was obviously incredulous, and assured me she had thoroughly searched the room, and seen but two winged creatures; those she had removed from the bed. I had seen for myself when coming to bed that the window had remained shut. She had often seen one or two brown moths in the rooms at night, but she owned that never before had she seen huge gray ones.

The matter was left at that, and during the day I told my hostess of my adventure, and she at once ordered the room I had slept in to be prepared for me, in case I might encounter the same difficulties again. I dressed for dinner in the moth-room, without catching sight of one. When bedtime came we three women all entered the room together.

On approaching the bed, and looking down on it, no one spoke for a moment. Then my fellow guest exclaimed:

"Well, I must say that if I had not seen this with my own eyes I never would have believed it."

The bed was liberally sprinkled with large gray moths.

My hostess shivered. "Come away, and let us shut the door. It's too horrible," she said.

During the remainder of my visit I was perfectly comfortable in my new room, and the curious fact must be stated that after I had left the moth-room the moths forsook it too. I could discern a pitying incredulity in the housemaid's attitude towards me afterwards. She had seen but two, and she did not believe in the drove.

My hostess and friend who had witnessed the phenomenon at once agreed that there was something more in it than an entomological curiosity. I would have given much for the opinion of a naturalist. What, I wonder, would he have made of that fat, gray flock sprinkling the bed? What species of moth would he have declared them to be?

I have searched in many books since and never found anything the least resembling them, and I retain my original, firm belief that they were nothing more or less than a flock of elementals, sent forth as a practical joke by a practiced magician on the other side.