Nightmare Tales by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky read by Ben Tucker | Full Audio Book

Forward of nightmare Tales by Helena P blavatsky this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org read by Ben Tucker forward the world knows HP latsky chiefly by her encyclopedic knowledge her occult Powers her unique courage

This little book composed of stories thrown off by her in her lighter moments shows her as a vivid graphic writer gifted with brilliant imagination the student will catch glimpses of reality under the Garb of fancy and will know that only the hand of an occultist could

Have added some of the touches to the pictures the nightmare Tales were Rewritten during the last few months of the author’s pain stricken life when tired with the drudgery of the theosophical glossery she who could not be idle turned to this lighter work and found therein amusement and relax ation

Her friends all the world over will welcome this example of gifts used but too rarely amid the strain of weight to your work Annie bassant end of forward section one of nightmare Tales by Helena peep latsky this LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by Ben

Tucker a Bewitched life as narrated by a quill pin part one introduction it was a dark chilly night in September 1884 a heavy Gloom had descended over the streets of a a small town on the rine and was hanging like a black funeral paw over the dull Factory Berg

The greater number of its inhabitants wearied by their Long Day’s Work had hours before retired to stretch their tired Li Limbs and lay their aching heads upon their pillows all was quiet in the large house all was quiet in the deserted streets I too was lying in my

Bed alas not one of rest but of pain and sickness to which I had been confined for some days so still was everything in the house that as Longfellow has it its Stillness seemed almost audible I could plainly hear the murmur of the blood as it rushed through my aching body

Producing that monotonous singing so familiar to one who lends a watchful ear to silence I listened to it until in my nervous imagination it had grown into the sound of a distant cataract the fall of Mighty Waters when suddenly changing its character the ever growing singing merged into other and far more welcome

Sounds it was the low and at first scarce audible Whisper of a human voice it approached and gradually strengthening seemed to speak in my very ear thus sounds of voice speaking AC across a Blue quiescent Lake in one of those wondrously acoustic Gorges of the snowcapped mountains where the air is so

Pure that a word pronounced half a mile off seems almost at the elbow yes it was the voice of one whom to know is to reverence of one to me owing to many mystical associations most dear and holy a voice familiar for long years and ever welcome doubly so in

Hours of mental or physical suffering for it always brings with it a ray of Hope and consolation courage it whispered in gentle mellow tones think of the days passed by you in sweet associations of the great lessons received of Nature’s truths of the many errors of men concerning these truths

And try to add to them the experience of a night in this city Let The Narrative of a strange life that will interest you help to shorten the hours of suffering give your attention look Yonder before you Yonder meant the clear large Windows of an empty house on the other side of the

Narrow Street of the German Town they faced my own in almost a straight line across the street and my bed faed the windows of my sleeping room obedient to the suggestion I directed my gaze toward them and what I saw made me for the time being forget the agony of the pain that

Racked my swollen arm and Rheumatic body over the windows was creeping a Mist a dense heavy Serpentine whitish mist that looked like the huge shadow of a gigantic boa slowly uncoiling its body gradually it disappeared to leave a lustrous light soft and silvery as though the window panes behind reflected

A thousand Moon beams a tropical Starlit Sky first from outside then from within the empty rooms next I saw the Mist elongating itself and throwing as it were a fairy Bridge across the street from the Bewitched Windows to my own balcony nay to my very own own bed as I continued

Gazing the wall and windows and the opposite house itself suddenly vanished the space occupied by the empty rooms had changed into the interior of another smaller room and what I knew to be a Swiss Chalet into a study whose old dark walls were covered from floor to ceiling with

Bookshelves on which were many Antiquated folios as well as works of a more recent date in the center stood a large old-fashioned table littered over with men manuscripts and writing materials before it quillpen in hand sat an old man a grim-looking skeleton-like personage with a face so thin so pale

Yellow and emaciated that the light of the solitary little student lamp was reflected in two shining spots on his high cheekbones as though they were carved out of ivory as I tried to get a better view of him by slowly raising myself upon my pillows the whole Vision

Chalet and study desk books and Scribe seemed to Flicker and move once set in motion they approached nearer and nearer until gliding noiselessly along the fleecy Bridge of clouds across the street they floated through the closed windows into my room and finally seemed to settle beside my

Bed listen to what he thinks and is going to write said in soothing tones the same familiar far off and yet near voice thus you will hear a narrative the telling of which may help to shorten the long Sleepless hours and even make you forget for a while your pain try it

Added using the well-known rosac crucian and cabalistic formula I tried doing as I was bid I centered all my attention on the solitary laborious figure that I saw before me but which did not see me at first the noise of the quill pin with which the old man was writing

Suggested to my mind nothing more than a low whispered murmur of a non-descript nature then gradually my ear caught the indistinct words of a faint and distant voice and I thought the figure before me bending over its manuscript was reading its tale aloud instead of writing it but

I soon found out my error for casting my gaze at the old scribe’s face I saw at a glance that his lips were compressed and motionless and the voice too thin and shrill to be his voice stranger still at every word traced by the feeble aged hand I noticed

A light flashing from under his pen a bright colored spark that became instantaneously a sound or what is the same thing it’s seemed to do so to my inner perceptions it was indeed the small voice of the quill that I heard though scribe and Pen were at the same

Time perchance hundreds of miles away from Germany such things will happen occasionally especially at night beneath whose Starry shade as Byron tells us we learn the language of another world however it may be the words uttered by the quill remained in my memory for days after nor had I any

Great difficulty in retaining them for when I sat down to record the story I found it as usual indelibly impressed on the astral Tablets before my inner eye thus I had but to copy it and so give it as I received it I failed to learn the name of the unknown nocturnal

Writer nevertheless though the reader may prefer to regard the whole story as one made up for the occasion a dream perhaps still its incidents will I hope prove nonetheless interesting one The Stranger story my birthplace is a small Mountain Hamlet a cluster of Swiss Cottages hidden deep in a sunny Nook between two

Tumbl down glaciers and a peak covered with eternal snows there 37 years ago I returned crippled mentally and physically to die if death would only have me the pure invigorating air of my birthplace decided otherwise I am still alive perhaps for the purpose of giving evidence to facts I have kept profoundly

Secret from from All A Tale Of Horror I would rather hide than reveal the reason for this unwillingness on my part is due to my Early Education and to subsequent events that gave the lie to my most cherished prejudices some people might be inclined to regard these events as providential I

However believe in no Providence and yet am unable to attribute them to Mere chance I connect them as the ceaseless evolution of Effects engendered by certain direct causes with one one primary and fundamental cause from which ensued all that followed a feeble old man am I now yet physical weakness has

In no way impaired my mental faculties I remember the smallest details of that terrible cause which engendered such fatal results it is these which furnish me with an additional proof of the actual existence of one whom I Fain would regard oh that I could do so as a

Creature born of my fancy the evanescent production of a feverish horid dream oh that terrible mild and all forgiving that saintly and respected being it was that Paragon of all the virtues who embittered my whole existence it is he who pushing me violently out of the monotonous but

Secure groove of daily life was the first to force upon me the certitude of Life Hereafter thus adding an additional horror to one already great enough with a View to a clearer comprehension of the situation I must interrupt these Recollections with a few words about myself oh how if I could would I

Obliterate that hated self born in Switzerland of French parents who centered the whole world wisdom in the literary Trinity of voler JJ rouso and d halbach and educated in a German University I grew up a thorough materialist a confirmed atheist I could never have even pictured to myself any

Beings least of all a being above or even outside visible nature as distinguished from her hence I regarded everything that could not be brought under the strictest analysis of the physical senses as a mere Chimera a soul I argued even supposing man has one must be material according to origin’s

Definition in quorus the epithet he gave to his God signifies a substance only more subtle than that of physical bodies of which at best we can form no definite idea how then can that of which our senses cannot enable us to obtain any clear knowledge how can that make itself

Visible or produce any tangible manifestations accordingly I received the tales of nent spiritualism with a feeling of utter contempt and regarded the overtures made by certain priests with derision often akin to anger and indeed the latter feeling has never entirely abandoned me Pascal in the eth act of his thoughts confesses to

A most complete incertitude upon the existence of God throughout my life I too professed a complete certitude as to the non-existence of any such extra Cosmic being and repeated with that great thinker the memorable words in which he tells us I have examined if this God of whom all the world speaks

Might not have left some marks of himself I look everywhere and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity nature offers me nothing that may not be a matter of doubt and inquietude nor have I found to this day anything that might unsettle me in precisely similar and even stronger

Feelings I’ve never believed nor shall I ever believe in a Supreme Being but at the potentialities of man proclaimed far and wide in the East Powers so developed in some persons as to make them virtually Gods at them I laugh no more my whole broken life is a protest

Against such negation I believe in such phenomena and I curse them whenever they come and by whatsoever means generated on the death of my parents owing to an unfortunate lawsuit I lost the greater part of my fortune and resolved for the sake of those I loved

Best rather than for my own to make another for myself my elder sister whom I adored had married a poor man I accepted the offer of a rich Hamburg firm and sailed for Japan as its Junior partner for several years my business went on successfully I got into the

Confidence of many influential Japanese through whose protection I was enable to travel and transact business in many localities which in those days especially were not easily accessible to foreigners indifferent to every religion I became interested in the philosophy of Buddhism the only religious system I thought worthy of being called

Philosophical thus in my moments of leisure I visited the most remarkable temples of Japan the most important and curious of the 96 Buddhist monasteries of Kyoto I have examined in turn deuts with its gigantic Bell zonin and arino yaso Kai misu higi Hong voni and many other famous temp

Several years passed away and during that whole period I was not cured of my skepticism nor did I ever contemplate having my opinions on this subject altered I derided the pretentions of the Japanese bondas and Aesthetics as I add those of Christian priests and European spiritualists I could not believe in the

Acquisition of powers unknown to and never studied by men of science hence I scoffed at all such ideas the superstitious and atrabilious Buddhist teaching us to shun the pleasures of life to put to Route one’s passions to render oneself insensible alike to happiness and suffering in order to acquire such chimerical Powers seemed

Supremely ridiculous in my eyes on a day forever memorable to me a fatal day I made the acquaintance of a venerable and learned bonds a Japanese priest named tamura hayeri I met him at the foot of the golden Quan on and from that moment he became my best and most trusted

Friend not withstanding my great and genuine regard for him however whenever a good opportunity was offered I never failed to mock his religious convictions thereby very often hurting his feelings but my old friend was as Meek and forgiving as any true Buddhists heart might desire he never resented my

Impatient sarcasms even when they were to say the least of equivocal propriety and generally limited his replies to the wait and see kind of protest nor could he be brought to seriously believe in the sincerity of my denial of the existence of any God or Gods the full

Meaning of the terms atheism and skepticism was beyond the comprehension of his otherwise extremely intellectual and acute mind like certain reverential Christians he seemed incapable of realizing that any man of sense should prefer the wise conclusions arrived at by philosophy and modern science to a ridiculous belief in an invisible world

Full of gods and Spirits gens and demons man is a spiritual being he insisted who returns to earth more than once and is rewarded or punished in the between times the proposition that man is nothing else but a heap of organized dust was beyond him like Jeremy Coler he

Refused to admit that he was no better than a stalking machine a speaking head without a soul in it whose thoughts are all bound by the laws of motion for he argued if my actions were as you say prescribed beforehand and I had no more Liberty or free will to change the

Course of my action than the running Waters of the river Yonder then the Glorious doctrine of karma of Merit and de Merit would be a foolishness indeed thus the whole of my hyper metaphysical friends ontology rested on the shaky super structure of metam psychosis of a fancied just law of

Retribution and other such equally absurd dreams we cannot said he paradoxically one day hope to live Hereafter in the full enjoyment of our Consciousness unless we have built for it beforehand a firm and solid foundation of spirituality nay laugh not friend of no faith he meekly pleaded but rather think

And reflect on this one who has never taught himself to live in spirit during his conscious and responsible life on Earth can hardly hope to enjoy a sentient existence after death when deprived of his body he is limited to that Spirit alone what can you mean by life in

Spirit I inquired life on a spiritual plane that which the Buddhists call toshita davala Paradise man can create such a blissful existence for himself between two births by the gradual transference onto that plane of all the faculties which during his sojourn on Earth manifest through his organic body

And as you call it animal brain how absurd and how can man do this contemplation and a strong desire to assimilate the Blessed Gods will enable him to do so and if man refuses this intellectual occupation by which you mean I suppose the fixing of the eyes on the tip of his

Nose What Becomes of him after the death of his body was my mocking question he will be dealt with according to the prevailing state of his consciousness of which there are many grades at best immediate rebirth at worst the state of adishi a mental hell yet one need not be

An aesthetic to assimilate spiritual life which will extend to the Hereafter all that is required is to try and approach Spirit how so even when disbelieving in it I rejoined even so one may disbelieve and yet haror in one’s nature room for doubt however small that room may be and

Thus try one day were it but for one moment to open the door of the inner Temple and this will prove sufficient for the purpose you are very decidedly poetical and paradoxical de boot Reverend sir will you kindly explain to me a little more of the mystery there is none still

I am willing suppose for a moment that some unknown Temple to which you have never been before and the existence of which you think you have reasons to deny is the spiritual plane of which I am speaking so someone takes you by the hand and leads you toward its entrance

Curiosity makes you open its door and look Within by the simple act by entering it for one second you have established an everlasting connection between your Consciousness and the temple you cannot deny its existence any longer nor obliterate the fact of your having entered it and according to the

Character and the variety of your work within its holy precincts so will you live in after your Consciousness is severed from its dwelling of Flesh what do you mean and what is my afterdeath Consciousness if such a thing exists to do with the temple it has everything to do with it

Solemnly rejoined the old man there can be no self-consciousness after death outside the Temple of spirit that which you will have done within its plain will alone survive all the rest is false and an illusion it is doomed to perish in the ocean of Maya amused at the idea of

Living outside one’s body I urged on my old friend to tell me more mistaking my meaning the venerable man willingly consented Tamora hyeri belonged to the Great temple of zonin a Buddhist Monastery famous not only in all Japan but also throughout Tibet and China no other is so venerated in Kyoto its monks

Belong to the sect of zenodo and are considered as the most learned among the many aidite fraternities they are moreover closely connected and allied with the yamabushi the Aesthetics or Hermits who follow the doctrines of La no wonder that at the slightest provocation on my part the priest flew

Into the highest metaphysics hoping thereby to cure me of my infidelity no use repeating here the long rig rooll of the most hopelessly involved and incomprehensible of all doctrines according to his ideas we have to train ourselves for the spirituality in another world as for gymnastics carrying on the analogy between the

Temple and the spiritual plane he tried to illustrate his idea he had himself worked in the temple of spirit 2third of his life and given several hours daily to contemplation thus he knew that after he had laid aside his mortal casket a mere illusion he explained he would in his

Spiritual consciousness live over again every feeling of ennobling joy and divine Bliss he had ever had or ought to have had only 100 fold intensified his work on the spirit plane had been considerable he said and he hoped therefore that the wages of the laborer would prove proportionate but

Suppose the laborer as in the example you have just brought forward in my case should have no more than opened the temple door out of mirror curiosity had only peeped into the sanctuary never to set his foot therein again what then then he answered you would have only

This short minute to record in your future self-consciousness and no more our life Hereafter records and repeats but the Impressions and feelings we have had in our spiritual experiences and nothing else thus If instead of reverence at the moment of entering the Abode of spirit you had been harboring

In your heart anger jealousy or grief then your future spiritual life would be a sad one in truth there would be nothing to record save the opening of a door in a fit of bad temper how then could it be repeated I insisted highly amused what do you suppose I

Would be doing before incarnating again in that case he said speaking slowly and weighing every word in that case you would have I fear only to open and shut the temple door over and over again during a period which however short would seem to you an eternity this kind of afterdeath

Occupation appeared to me at that time so grotesque in its Sublime absurdity that I was seized with an almost inextinguishable fit of laughter my venerable friend looked considerably dismayed at such a result of his metaphysical instruction he had evidently not expected such hilarity however he said nothing but only sighed

And gazed at me with increased benevolence and pity shining in his small black eyes pray excuse my laughter I apologized but really now you cannot seriously mean to tell me that the spiritual State you Advocate and so firmly believe in consists only in aping certain things we do in life nay nay not

Aping but only intensifying their repetition filling the gaps that were unjustly left unfilled during life in the fruition of our acts and deeds and of everything performed on the spiritual plane of the one real State what I said was an illustration and no doubt for you who seem entirely ignorant of the

Mysteries of Soul Vision not a very intelligible one it is myself who Am to be blamed what I sought to impress upon you was that as the spiritual state of our Consciousness liberated from its body is but the fruition of every spiritual act performed during life

Where an act had been Barren there could be no results expected save the repetition of that act itself this is all I pray you may be spared such fruitless deeds and finally made to see certain truths and passing through the usual Japanese courtesies of taking leave the Excellent Man

Departed alas alas had I but known at the time what I have learned since how little would I have laughed and how much more would I have learned but as the matter stood the more personal affection and respect I felt for him the less could I become reconciled to his wild

Ideas about an afterlife and especially as to the acquisition by some men of Supernatural Powers I felt particularly disgusted with his reverence for the yamabushi the allies of every Buddhist sect in the land their claims to the miraculous were simply odious to my Notions to hear every I knew at

Kyoto even to my own partner the shest of all the businessmen I’d come across in the East mentioning these followers of laay with downcast eyes reverentially folded hands and affirmations of their possessing great and wonderful gifts was more than I was prepared to patiently tolerate in those days and who were they

After all these great magicians with their ridiculous pretensions to Super mundane knowledge these holy Beggars who as I then thought purposely dwell in the recesses of unfrequented mountains and on unapproachable craggy Steeps so as the better to afford no chance to curious Intruders of finding them out

And watching them in their own dens simply impudent fortune tellers Japanese gypsies who sell charms and talismans and know better in answer to those who sought to assure me that though the yamabushi lead a mysterious life admitting none of the profane to their secrets they still do except pupils

However difficult it is for one to become their disciple and that thus they have living witnesses to the great Purity and sanctity of their lives in answer to such affirmations I oppose the strongest negation and stood firmly by it I insulted both Masters and pupils classing them under the same category of

Fools when not naves and I went so far as to include in this number the cintos now cism or sinu faith in the gods and in the way to the gods that is belief in the communication between these creatures and Men is a kind of worship of nature Spirits than which nothing can

Be more miserably absurd and by placing the cintos among the fools and naves of other sect I gained many enemies for the CTO kenui spiritual teachers are looked upon as the highest in the upper classes of Society the makado himself being at the head of their hierarchy and the

Members of the sect belonging to the most cultured and educated men in Japan these kuszi of the cinto form no cast or class apart nor do they pass any ordination at any rate unknown to Outsiders and as they claim publicity no special privilege or Powers even their

Dress being in no wise different from that of the Ley but are simply in the world’s opinion professors and students of ult and spiritual science es I very often came in contact with them without in the least suspecting that I was in the presence of such personages two the mysterious

Visitor years passed and as time went by my in eradicable skepticism grew stronger and waxed fiercer every day I’ve have already mentioned an elder and much beloved sister my only surviving relative she had married and had lately gone to live at nurmberg I regard guarded her with feelings more filial

Than fraternal and her children were as dear to me as might have been my own at the time of the great catastrophe that in the course of a few days had made my father lose his large fortune and my mother break her heart she it was that sweet big sister of mine

Who had made herself of her own accord the guardian angel of our ruined family out of her great love for me her younger brother for whom she attempted to replace the professors that could no longer be afforded she had renounced her own happiness she sacrificed herself and the man she loved by indefinitely

Postponing their marriage in order to help our father and chiefly Myself by her undivided devotion and oh how I loved and reverenced her time but strengthening this earliest family affection they who maintained that no atheist as such can be a true friend an affectionate relative or a loyal subject utter whether consciously or

Unconsciously the greatest calumny and lie to say that a materialist grows hard-hearted as he grows older that he cannot love as a Believer does is simply the greatest fallacy there may be such exceptional cases it is true but these are found only occasionally in men who are even

More selfish than they are skeptical or vulgarly worldly but when a man who is kindly disposed in his nature for no selfish motives but because of reason and love of truth becomes what is called called atheistical he is only strengthened in his family affections and in his

Sympathies with his fellow men all his emotions all the Ardent aspirations toward the Unseen and unreachable all the love which he would otherwise have uselessly bestowed on a suppositional heaven and its God become now centered with tenfold Force upon his loved ones and Mankind indeed The Atheist Heart

Alone can know what secret tides of still enjoyment flow when Brothers Love it was such holy fraternal love that led me also to sacrifice my comfort and personal welfare to secure her happiness the Felicity of her who had been more than a mother to me I was a mere youth

When I left home for Hamburg there working with all the desperate earnestness of a man who has but one Noble object in view to relieve suffering and help Those whom he loves I very soon secured the confidence of my employers who raised me in consequence

To the high my post of trust I always enjoyed my first real pleasure and reward in life was to see my sister married to the man she had sacrificed for my sake and to help them in their struggle for existence so purifying and unselfish was this affection of mine for

Her that when it came to be shared among her children instead of losing an intensity by such division it seemed to only grow the stronger born with the potentiality of the warmest family affection in me the devotion for my sister was so great that the thought of

Burning that sacred fire of love before any Idol save that of herself and family never entered my head this was the only church I recognized the only church wherein I woried at the altar of Holy Family affection in fact this large family of 11 persons including her husband was the

Only tie that attached me to Europe twice during a period of 9 years had I crossed the ocean the sole object of seeing and pressing these dear ones to my heart I had no other business in the west and having performed this Pleasant Duty I returned each time to Japan to

Work and toil for them for their sake I remained a bachelor that the wealth I might acquire should go undivided to them alone we had always corresponded as regularly as the long Transit of the then very irregular service of the mailboat would permit but suddenly there

Came a break in my letters from home for nearly a year I received no intelligence and day by day I became more Restless more apprehensive of some great Misfortune vainly I looked for a letter a simple message and my efforts to account for so unusual a silence were

Fruitless friend said to me one day to maheri my only Confidant friend consult a holy yamabushi and you will fill it rest of course the offer was rejected with as much moderation as I could command under the provocation but as steamer after steamer came in without a word of

News I felt a despair which daily increased in depth and fixity this finally degenerated into an irrepressible craving a morbid desire to learn the worst as I then thought I struggled hard with the feeling but it had the best of me only a few months before a complete master of myself I now

Became an abject Slave To Fear a fatalist of the school of de huk I who had always regarded belief in the system of necessity as being the only promoter of philosophical happiness and as having the most advantageous influence over human weaknesses I felt a craving for something akin to fortune telling I gone

So far as to forget the first principle of my Doctrine the only one calculated to calm our sorrows to inspire us with a useful submission namely a rational resignation to the decrees of blind destiny with which foolish sensibility causes us so often to be overwhelmed the doctrine that all is necessary yes

Forgetting this I was drawn into a shameful superstitious longing a stupid disgraceful desire to learn if not Futurity at any rate that which was taking place at the other side of the globe my conduct seemed utterly modified my temperament and aspirations wholly changed and like a weak nervous girl I

Caught myself straining my mind to the very verge of lunacy and an attempt to look as I’d been told one could sometimes do beyond the oceans and learn at last the real cause of this long inexplicable silence one evening at Sunset my old friend the venerable bonds tamura

Appeared on The Veranda of my low wooden house I had not visited him for many days and he had come to know how I was I took the opportunity to once more sneer at one whom in reality I regarded with most affect respect with equivocal taste for which I

Repented almost before the words had been pronounced I inquired of him why he had taken the trouble to walk all that distance when he might have learned anything he liked About Me by simply interrogating a yamabushi he seemed a little hurt at first but after keenly scrutinizing my dejected face he mildly

Remarked that he could only insist upon what he advised before only one of that Holy order could give me consolation in my present state from that instant an insane desire possessed me to challenge him to prove his assertions I defied I said to him any and every one of his alleged

Magicians to tell me the name of the person I was thinking of and what he was doing at that moment he quietly answered that my desire could be easily satisfied there was a yamabushi two doors for me visiting a sento he would fetch him if I

Only said the word I said it and from the moment of its utterance my Doom was sealed how shall I find words to describe the scene that followed 20 minutes after the desire had been so incautiously expressed an old Japanese uncommonly tall and Majestic for one of

That race pale thin and emaciated was standing before me there where I had expected to find survi obsequiousness I only discerned an air of calm and dignified composure the attitude of one who knows his moral superiority and therefore scorns to notice the mistakes of those who fail to

Recognize it to the somewhat irreverent and mocking questions which I put to him one after another with feverish eagerness he made no reply but gazed on me in silence as a physician would look at a Delirious patient from the moment he fixed his eyes on mine I felt or

Shall I say saw as though it were a sharp ray of light a thin silvery thread shoot out from the intensely black and narrow eyes so deeply sunk in the yellow old face it seemed to penetrate into my brain and heart like an arrow and set to

Work to dig out there from every thought and feeling yes I both saw and felt it and very soon the double sensation became intolerable to break the spell I defied him to tell me what he had found in my thoughts calmly came the correct answer extreme anxiety for a female relative

Her husband and children who were inhabiting a house the correct description of which he gave as though he knew it as well as myself I turned a suspicious eye upon my friend the bonds to whose indiscretions I thought I was indebted for for the quick reply remembering however that Tamora could

Know nothing of the appearance of my sister’s house that the Japanese are proverbially truthful and as friends faithful to death I felt ashamed of my suspicion to atone for it before my own conscience I asked the hermit whether he could tell me anything of the present state of that beloved sister of

Mine The Foreigner was the reply would never believe in the words or trust to the knowledge of any person but himself were the yamabushi to tell him the impression would wear out hardly a few hours later and The Inquirer find himself as miserable as before there was

But one means and that was to make the Foreigner myself see with his own eyes and thus learn the truth for himself was The Inquirer ready to be placed by a yamabushi a stranger to him in the required State I had heard in Europe of Mesmerize some nules and Pretenders to

Clairvoyance and having no faith in them I had therefore nothing against the process itself even in the midst of my never ceasing mental Agony I could not help smiling at the ridiculous nature of the operation I was willingly submitting to nevertheless I silently bowed consent three psychic

Magic the old yamabushi lost no time he looked at the Setting Sun and finding probably the Lord Tino da the spirit who darts his Rays propitious for the coming ceremony he speedily drew out a little bundle it contained a small lacquered box a piece of vegetable paper made from

The bark of the mulberry tree and a pen with which he traced upon the paper a few sentences in the niden character A peculiar style of written language used only for religious and mystical purposes having finished he exhibited from under his clothes a small round mirror of Steel of extraordinary

Brilliancy and placing it before my eyes asked me to look into it I had not only heard heard before of these mirrors which are frequently used in the temples but I had often seen them it is claimed that under the direction and will of instructed priests there appeared in

Them the D zin the great spirits who notified the inquiring devotees of their fate I first imagined that his intention was to evoke such a spirit who would answer my queries what happened however was something of quite a different character no sooner had I not without a last pay of mental

Squeamishness produced by a deep sense of my own absurd position touched the mirror that I suddenly felt a strange sensation in the arm of the hand that held it for a brief moment I forgot to sit in the seat of the scorner and failed to look at the matter from a

Ludicrous point of view was it fear that suddenly clutched my brain for an instant paralyzing its activity that fear when the heart longs to know what it is death to hear no for I still have had Consciousness enough left to go on persuading myself that nothing would

Come out of an experiment in the nature of which no sane man could ever believe what was it then that crept across my brain like a living thing of ice producing therein a sensation of horror and then clutched at my heart as if a deadly serpent had fastened its fangs into

It with a convulsive jerk of the hand I dropped the I blush to write the adjective magic mirror and could not force myself to pick it up from the set he on which I was reclining for one short moment there was a terrible struggle between some undefined and to

Me utterly inexplicable longing to look into the depths of the polished surface of the mirror and my pride the ferocity of which nothing seemed capable of taming it was finally so tamed however its Revolt being conquered by its own defiant intensity there was an opened novel

Lying on a lacquered table near the CTI and as my eyes happened to fall upon its pages I read the words the veil which covers Futurity is woven by the hand of Mercy this was enough that same Pride which had hitherto held me back from what I regarded as a degrading

Superstitious experiment caused me to challenge my fate I picked up The ominously Shining disc and prepared to look into it while I was examining the mirror the yamabushi hastily spoke a few words to the bonds tamura at which I threw a furtive and suspicious glance at both I

Was wrong once more the holy man desires me to put you a question and give you at the same time a warning remarked the Vons if you are willing to see for yourself now you will have under the penalty of seeing forever in the Hereafter all that is taking place at

Whatever distance and that against your will or inclination to submit to a regular course of purification after you have learned what you want through the mirror what is this course and what have I to promise I asked asked defiantly it is for your own good you must promise him to submit to the

Process lest for the rest of his life he should have to hold himself responsible before his own conscience for having made an irresponsible Seer of you will you do so friend there will be time enough to think of it if I see anything I sneeringly replied adding under my

Breath something I doubt a good deal so far well you are warned friend the consequences will now remain with yourself I glanced at the clock and made a gesture of impatience which was remarked and understood by the yamabushi it was just 7 minutes after 5 Define well in your mind what you

Would see and learn said The Conjurer placing the mirror and paper in my hands and instructing me how to use them his instructions were received by me with more impatience than gratitude and for one short instant I hesitated again nevertheless I replied while fixing the mirror I desire but one thing to learn

The reason or reasons why my sister has so suddenly ceased writing to me had I pronounced these words in reality and in the hearing of the two witnesses or had I only thought them to this day I cannot decide the point I now remember but one thing distinctly while

I sat gazing in the mirror the yamabushi kept gazing at me but whether this process lasted half a second or 3 hours I’ve never since been able to settle in my mind with any degree of satisfaction I can recall every detail of the scene up to that moment when I

Took up the mirror with the left hand holding the paper inscribed with the Mystic characters between the thumb and finger of the right when all of a sudden I seemed to quite lose consciousness of the surrounding objects the passage from the active waking state to one that I could compare

With nothing I had ever experienced before was so rapid that while my eyes had had ceased to perceive external objects and had completely lost sight of the bonds the yamabushi and even of my room I could never the less distinctly see the hole of my head and my back as I

Sat leaning forward with the mirror in my hand then came a strong sensation of an involuntary Rush forward of snapping off so to say from my place I had almost said from my body and then while every one of my other senses had become totally paralyzed my eyes as I thought

Unexpectedly caught a clearer and far more Vivid Glimpse than they had ever had in reality of my sister’s new house at nurmberg which I had never visited and knew only from a sketch and other scenery with which I had never been very familiar together with this and while

Feeling in my brain what seemed like flashes of a departing Consciousness dying persons must feel so no doubt the very last vague thought so weak as to have been hardly perceptible was that I must look very very ridiculous this feeling for such it was rather than a thought was interrupted suddenly

Extinguished so to say by a clear mental Vision I cannot characterize it otherwise of myself of that which I regarded as and knew to be my body lying with ashy cheeks on the seti dead to all intents and purposes but still staring with the cold and glassy eyes of a corpse into the

Mirror bending over it with his two emaciated hands cut the air in every direction over its white face stood the tall figure of the yamabushi for whom I felt at that instant an inextinguishable murderous hatred as I was going and thought to pounce upon the vile

Charlatan my corpse the two old men the room itself and every object in it trembled and danced in a reddish glowing light and seemed to flow rapidly away from me a few more grotesque distorted Shadows before my sight and when with at last a feeling of Terror and a supreme

Effort to realize who then was I now since I was not that corpse a great veil of Darkness fell over me like a funeral Paul and every thought in me was dead end of section one section two of nightmare Tales by Helena P blavatsky this LibriVox recording is in

The public domain read by Ben Tucker a Bewitched life part two four a vision of horror how strange where was I now it was evident to me that I had once more returned to my senses for there I was vividly realizing that I was rapidly moving forward while experiencing a

Queer strange sensation as though I were swimming without impulse or effort on my part and in total darkness the idea that first presented itself to me was that of a long Subterranean passage of water of Earth and of stifling air though bodily I had no perception no sensation of the

Presence or contact of any of these I try to utter a few words to repeat my last sentence I desire but one thing to learn the reason or reasons why my sister has so suddenly ceased writing to me but the only words I heard out of the

21 were the two to learn and these instead of their coming out of my own larynx came back to me in my own voice but entirely outside myself near but not in me in short they were pronounced by my voice not by my lips one more rapid involuntary motion

One more plunge into the Samaran darkness of a to me unknown element and I I saw myself standing actually standing underground as it seemed I was compactly and thickly surrounded on all sides above and below right and left with Earth and in the mold and yet it weighed not and seemed quite immaterial

And transparent to my senses I did not realize for one second the utter absurdity nay impossibility of that seeming Fact one second more one short instant and I perceived D oh inexpressible horror when I think of it now for then although I perceived realized and recorded facts and events

Far more clearly than ever I had done before I did not seem to be touched in any other way by what I saw Yes I perceived a coffin at my feet it was a plain unpretentious shell made of deal the last couch of the popper in which not withstanding its closed lid I

Plainly saw a hideous grinning skull a man’s skeleton mutilated and broken in many of its parts as though it had been taken out of some hidden chamber of the defunct Inquisition where it had been subjected to torture who can it be I thought at this moment I heard again

Proceeding from afar the same voice my voice the reason or reasons why it said as though these words were the broken continuation of the same sentence of which it had just repeated the two words to learn it sounded near and yet as from some incalculable distance giving me

Then the idea that the long Subterranean Journey the subsequent mental Reflections and discoveries had occupied no time had been performed during the short almost instantaneous interval between the first and the middle words of the sentence begun at any rate if not actually pronounced by myself in the

Room at Kyoto in which it was now finishing in interrupted broken phrases like a faithful echo of my own words and voice forth with the Hideous mingled remains began assuming a form and to me but too familiar appearance the broken parts joined together one to the other the bones

Became covered once more with flesh and I recognized in these disfigured remains with some surprise but not a trace of feeling at the sight my sister’s dead husband my own brother-in-law whom I had for her sake loved so truly how was it how did he come to die

Such a terrible death I asked myself to put oneself a query seemed in the state in which I was to instantly Solve IT hardly had I asked myself the question when as if in a panorama I saw the retrospect Ive picture of poor Carl’s death in all its horrid vividness and

With every thrilling detail everyone of which however left me then entirely and brutally indifferent here he is the dear old fellow full of life and joy at the prospect of more lucrative employment from his principal examining and trying in a wood sawing Factory a monster steam engine just arrived from America he

Bends over to examine more closely an inner arrangement to tighten a screw his clothes are caught by the teeth of the revolving wheel in full motion and suddenly he is dragged down doubled up and his limbs half severed torn off before the Workman unacquainted with the

Mechanism can stop it he is taken out or what remains of him dead mangled a thing of horror an unrecognizable mass of palpitating Flesh and Blood I follow the remains wheeled as an unrecognizable Heap to the hospital here the brutally given order that the messengers of death

Should stop on their way at the house of the Widow and orphans I follow them and find the unconscious family quietly assembled together I see my sister the dear and beloved and remain indifferent at the sight only feeling highly interested in the coming scene my heart my feelings

Even my personality seem to have disappeared to have been left behind to belong to somebody else there I stand and witness her unprepared reception of the ghastly news I realized clearly without one moment’s hesitation or mistake the effect of the shock upon her I perceive clearly following in recording to the minutest

Detail her Sensations and the inner process that takes place in her I watch and remember Miss ing not one single point as the corpse is brought into the house for identification I hear the long agonizing cry my own name pronounced and the dull thud of the living body falling

Upon the remains of the Dead one I follow with curiosity the sudden thrill and the instantaneous perturbation in her brain that follow it and watch with attention the worm like precipitate and immensely intensified emotion of the tubular fibers the instantaneous change of color in the calic extremity of the nervous system

The fibrous nervous matter passing from white to bright red and then to a dark red bluish Hue I noticed the sudden flask of a phosphorus like brilliant Radiance its trimmer and its sudden Extinction followed by Darkness complete darkness in the region of memory as the radiance comparable in its form only to

A human shape oozes out suddenly from the top of the head expands loses its form and scatters and I say to myself this is insanity lifelong incurable Insanity for the principle of intelligence is not paralyzed or extinguished temporarily but has just deserted the Tabernacle forever ejected

From it by the terrible force of the sudden blow the link between the animal in the Divine Essence is broken and as the unfamiliar term divine is mentally uttered my thought laughs suddenly I hear again my far off yet near voice pronouncing emphatically and close by me the words why my sister

Had so suddenly ceased writing and before the two final words to me have completed the sentence I see a long series of sad events immediately following the catastrophy I behold the mother now a helpless graveling idiot in The Lunatic Asylum and attached to the City Hospital the seven younger children admitted into

A refuge for poppers finally I see the two Elder a boy of 15 and a girl a year younger my favorites both taken by strangers into their service a captain of a sailing vessel carries away my nephew an old Jewish adopts the tender girl I see the events with all their

Horrors and thrilling details and record each to the smallest detail with the utmost coolness for markw when I use such Expressions as Horrors Etc they are to be understood as an afterthought during the whole time of the events described I experienced no sensation of either pain or pity my feelings seemed to be

Paralyzed as well as my external senses it was only after coming back that I realized my irretrievable losses to their full extent much of that which I had so vehemently denied in those days owing to s personal experience I have to admit now had I been told by anyone at that

Time that man could act and think and feel irrespective of his brain and senses nay that by some mysterious and to this day for me incomprehensible power he could be transported mentally thousands of miles away from his body there to witness not only present but also past events and remember these by

Storing them in his memory I would have proclaimed that man a Madman alas I can do so no longer for I’ve become myself that mad man 10 20 40 a 100 times during the course of this wretched life of mine have I experienced and lived over such moments of existence outside of my

Body a cursed to be that hour when this terrible power was first awakened in me I have not even the consolation left of attributing such glimpses of events at a distance to Insanity Mad Men Rave and see that which exists not in the realm they belong to my Visions have proved invariably

Correct but to my Narrative of Woe I had hardly had time to see my unfortunate young niece in her new israelitish home when I felt a shock of the same nature as the one that had sent me swimming through the bowels of the earth as I had

Thought I opened my eyes in my own room and the first thing I fixed upon by accident was the clock the hands of the dial showed 7 minutes and a half 5 I thus passed through those most terrible experiences which it takes me hours to narrate in precisely half a minute of

Time but this too was an afterthought for one brief instant I recollected nothing of what I had seen the interval between the time I had glanced at the clock when taking the mirror from from the yamabushi hand and the Second Glance seemed to me merged into one I was just

Opening my lips to hurry on the yamabushi with his experiment when the full remembrance of what I had just seen flashed lightning like into my brain uttering a cry of horror and despair I felt as though the whole creation were crushing me under its weight for one moment I remained speechless the picture

Of human ruin amid a world of death and desolation my heart sank down down in anguish my Doom was closed and a hopeless Gloom seemed to settle over the rest of my life forever five return of doubts then came a reaction as sudden as my grief itself a doubt arose in my mind

Which forth with grew into a fierce desire of denying the truth of what I had seen a stubborn resolution of treating the whole thing as an empty meaningless dream the effect of my overstrained mind took possession of me yes it was but a lying Vision an idiotic cheating of my

Own senses suggesting pictures of death and misery which had been evoked by weeks of incertitude and mental depression how could I see all that that I’ve seen in less than half a minute I exclaimed the theory of Dreams the rapidity with which the material changes on which our ideas and vision depend are

Excited in the hemispherical ganglia is sufficient to account for the long series of events I have seemed to experience and dream alone can the relations of space and time be so completely annihilated the yamabushi is for nothing in this disagreeable nightmare he is only reaping that which has been sown by

Myself and by using some infernal drug of which his tribe have the secret he has contrived to make me lose Consciousness for a few seconds and see that Vision as lying as it is horrid of a all such thoughts I believe them not in a few days there will be a steamer

Sailing for Europe I shall leave tomorrow this disjointed monologue was pronounced by me aloud regardless of the presence of my respected friend the bonds tamura and the yamabushi the latter was standing before me in the same position as when he placed the mirror in my hands and kept looking at

Me calmly I should perhaps say looking through me and in dignified silence the bonds whose kind countenance was beaming with sympathy approached me as he would a sick child and gently laying his hand on mine and with tears in his eyes said friend you must not leave this city

Before you have been completely purified of your contact with the lower D Jin spirits who had to be used to guide your inexperienced soul to the places it craved to see the entrance to your inner self must be closed against their dangerous intrusion lose no time therefore my son and allow the holy

Master Yonder to purify you at at once but nothing can be more deaf than anger once aroused the sap of Reason could no longer quench the fire of passion and at that moment I was not fit to listen to his friendly voice his is a face I can never recall

To my memory without genuine feeling his a name I will ever pronounce with a sigh of emotion but at that ever Memorial hour when my passions were inflamed to white heat I felt almost a hatred for the kind good old man I could not forgive him his interference in the

Present event hence for all answer therefore he received from me a Stern rebuke a violent protest on my part against the idea that I could ever regard the vision I had had and any other light save that of an empty dream and as yamabushi as anything better than an

Impostor I will leave tomorrow had I to forfeit my whole Fortune as a penalty I exclaimed pale with rage and despair you will repent it the whole of your life if you do so before the holy man has shut every entrance in you against Intruders ever on the watch and

Ready to enter the open door was the answer the DI jins will have the best of you I interrupted him with a brutal laugh and a still more brutally phrased inquiry about the fees I was expecting to give the yamabushi for his experiment with me he needs no reward was the reply

The order he belongs to is the richest in the world since its adherence need nothing for they are above all terrestrial and venal desires insult him not the good man who came to help you out of pure sympathy for your suffering and to relieve you of mental

Agony but I would listen to no words of reason and wisdom the spirit of rebellion and pride had taken possession of me and made me disregard every feeling of personal friendship or even of simple propriety lucky for me on turning around to order the medicant monk out of my

Presence I found he had gone I had not seen him move and attributed his stealthy departure to fear at having been detected and understood fool blind conceited idiot that I was why did I fail to recognize the yamabushi power and that the Peace of my whole life was departing with him

Him from that moment forever but I did so fail even the fell demon of my long fears uncertainty was now entirely overpowered by that fiend skepticism the silliest of all a dull morbid unbelief a stubborn denial of the evidence of my own senses and a determined will to regard the whole

Vision as a fancy of my overwrought mind had taken firm hold of me my mind I argued what is it shall I believe with the superstitious and the weak that this production of phosphorus and gray matter is indeed the Superior part of me that it can act and see independently of my

Physical senses never as well believe in the planetary intelligences of the astrologer as in the Dig zins of my credulous though well-meaning friend the priest as well confess one’s belief in Jupiter and Saul Saturn and Mercury and that these worthies guide their spheres and concern themselves with Mortals as

To give one serious thought to the Airy non- entities supposed to have guided my soul in its unpleasant dream I loathe and laugh at the Absurd idea I regard it as a personal insult to the intellect and rational reasoning powers of a man to speak of invisible creatures subjective intelligences and all that

Kind of insane Superstition in short I begged my friend the bonds to spare me his protests and thus the unpleasantness of breaking with him forever thus I raved and argued before the venerable Japanese gentleman doing all in my power to leave on his mind the indelible conviction of my having gone suddenly

Mad but his admirable forbearance proved more than equal to my idiotic passion and he implored me once more for the sake of my whole future to submit to certain necessary purificatory rights never far rather dwell in air rarified to nothing by the air pump of wholesome

Unbelief than in the dim fog of silly Superstition I argued paraphrasing rork remark I will not believe I repeated but as I can no longer bear such uncertainty about my sister and her family I will return by the first steamer to Europe this final determination upset my old acquaintance altogether his Earnest

Prayer not to depart heart before I had seen the yamabushi once more receive no attention from me friend of a foreign land he cried I pray that you may not repent of your unbelief and rashness may the Holy One quanan the goddess of Mercy protect you from the zins for since you

Refused to submit to the process of purification at the hands of the Holy yamabushi he is powerless to defend you from the evil influences evoked by your unbelief and Defiance of Truth but let me at this parting hour I beseech you let me an older gentleman

Who wishes you well warn you once more and persuade you of things you are still ignorant of may I speak go on and have your say was the ungracious ascent but let me warn you in my turn that nothing you can say can make of me a believer in your disgraceful

Superstitions this was added with a cruel feeling of pleasure in bestowing one more needless insult but the Excellent Man disregarded this new sneer as he had all others never shall I forget the solemn earnestness of his parting words the pitying remorseful look on his face when

He found that it was indeed all to no purpose that by his kindly meant interference he had only led me to my destruction lend me your ear good sir for the last time he began learn that unless the holy and venerable man who to relieve your distress Open Your Soul

Vision is permitted to complete his work your future life will indeed be little worth living he has to safeguard you against involuntary repetitions of visions of the same character unless you consent to it of your own free will however you will have to be left in the

Power of forces which will harass and persecute you to the verge of insanity know that the development of long Vision or clairvoyant which is accomplished at will only by those For Whom the Mother of Mercy the great quanan has no secrets must in the case of the beginner be pursued with the

Help of the air jins Elemental Spirits whose nature is soulless and hence Wicked know also that while the arahat the destroyer of the enemy who has subjected and made of these creatures his servants has nothing to fear he who has no power over them becomes their

Slave nay laugh not in your great pride and ignorance but listen further during the time of the vision and while the inner perceptions are directed toward the events they seek the D jins have the sear when like yourself he is an inexperienced Tyro entirely in its power

And for the time being that sear is no longer himself he partakes of the nature of his guide the DI gin which directs his inner sight keeps his soul endurance vile making of him while the state lasts a creature like itself bereft of his Divine Light man is but a soulless being

Hence during the time of such connection he will feel no human emotions neither pity nor fear love nor Mercy hold I involuntarily exclaimed as the words vividly brought back to my recollection the indifference with which I had witnessed my sister’s Despair and sudden loss of Reason in my

Hallucination hold but no it is still worse madness in me to heed or find any sense in your ridiculous Tale But if you knew it to be so dangerous why have advised the experiment at all I added mockingly it had to last but a few seconds and no evil could have resulted

From it had you kept your promise to submit to purification was the sad and humble reply I wish you well my friend and my heart was nigh breaking to see you suffering day by day the experiment is harmless when directed by one who knows and becomes dangerous only when

The final precaution is neglected it is the master of Visions he who has opened an entrance into your soul who has to close it by using the Seal of purification against any further and deliberate Ingress of the master of Visions for sooth I cried brutally interrupting him say rather the master of

Imposture the look of Sorrow on his kind old face was so intense and painful to behold that I perceived I had gone too far but it was too late farewell then said the old bonds rising and after performing the usual ceremonies of politeness Tamora left the house in dignified

Silence six I depart but not alone several days later I sailed but during my stay I saw my venerable friend the bonds no more evidently on that last and to me for ever memorable evening he had been seriously offended with my more than irreverent my downright insulting

Remark about one whom he so justly respected I felt sorry for him but the wheel of passion and pride was too incessantly at work to permit me to feel a single moment of remorse what was it that made me so relish the pleasure of Wrath that when for one instant I

Happened to lose sight of my supposed grievance toward the yamabushi I forth with lashed myself back into a kind of artificial Fury against him he had only accomplished what he had been expected to do and what he had tacitly promised not only so but it was I myself who had

Deprived him of the possibility of doing more even for my own protection if I might believe the bonds a man whom I knew to be thoroughly honorable and reliable was it regret at having been forced by my pride to refuse the proferred precaution or was it the fear

Of remorse that made me Rake together and my heart during those evil hours the smallest details of the supposed insult to that same suicidal Pride remorse as an old poet has aptly remarked is like the heart in which it grows if proud and gloomy it is a poison tree that pierced

To the utmost weeps only Tears of Blood perchance it was the indefinite fear of something of that sort which caused me to remain so obdurate and led me to excuse Under The Plea of terrible provocation even the unprovoked insults that I had heaped upon the head of my

Kind and all forgiving friend the priest however it was now too late in the day to recall the words of offense I had uttered and all I could do was to promise myself the satisfaction of writing him a friendly letter as soon as I reached home fool blind fool elated

With insolent self-conceit that I was so sure did I feel that my vision was due merely to some trick of the yamabushi that I actually gloated over my coming Triumph in writing to the bonds that I had been right in answering his sad words of parting with an incredulous

Smile as my sister and family were all in good health happy I had not been at sea for a week before I had caused to remember his words of warning from the day of my experience with the magic mirror I perceived a great change in my whole

State and I attributed it at first to the mental depression I had struggled against for so many months during the day I very often found myself absent from the surrounding scenes losing sight for several minutes of things and persons my nights were Disturbed my dreams oppressive and at times horrible

Good sailor I certainly was and besides the weather was unusually fine the ocean as smooth as a pond not withstanding this I often felt a strange giddiness and the familiar faces of my fellow passengers assumed at such times the most grotesque appearances thus a young German I used

To know well was was once suddenly transformed before my eyes into his old father whom we had laid in the little burial place of the European Colony some 3 years before we were talking on deck of the defunct and of a certain business arrangement of his when Max Groner head

Appeared to me as though it were covered with a strange film a thick grayish Mist surrounded him and gradually condensing around and upon his healthy countenance settled suddenly into the Grim old head I had myself seen covered with six feet of soil on another occasion as the captain was talking of a

Melee Thief whom he had helped to secure and Lodge in jail I saw near him the yellow villainous face of a man answering to his description I kept silent about such hallucinations but as they became more and more frequent I felt very much Disturbed though still attributing them

To natural causes such as I had read about in medical books one night I was abruptly awakened by a long and Loud Cry of distress it was a woman’s voice plaintiff like that of a child full of Terror and of helpless despair I awoke with a start to

Find myself on land in a strange room a young girl almost a child was desperately struggling against a powerful middle-aged man who had surprised her in her own room and during her sleep behind the closed and locked door I saw listening an old woman whose face not withstanding the fish expression

Upon it seemed familiar to me and I immediately recognized it it was the face of the Jewish who had adopted my niece in the dream I had had at Kyoto she had received gold to pay for her share in the foul crime and was now keeping her part of the

Covenant but who was the victim oh horror unutterable unspeakable horror when I realized the situation after coming back to my normal State I found it was my own child nie but as in my first Vision I felt in me nothing of the nature of that despair born of affection that fills one’s heart

At the sight of a wrong done to or a misfortune befalling those one loves nothing but a manly indignation in the presence of suffering inflicted upon the weak and the helpless I rushed of course to her rescue and seized the want and brutal Beast by the neck I fastened upon

Him with powerful grasp but the man heeded it not he seemed not even to feel my hand the coward seeing himself resisted by the girl lifted his powerful arm and the thick fist coming down like a heavy Hammer upon the sunny locks fell the child to the

Ground it was with a loud Cry of the indignation of a stranger not with that of a tigress defending her cub that I sprang upon the lwd Beast and sought to throttle him I then remarked for the first time that a shadow myself I was grasping but another

Shadow my loud shrieks and imprecations had awakened the whole steamer they were attributed to a a nightmare I did not seek to take anyone into my confidence but from that day forward my life became a long series of mental tortures I could hardly shut my eyes without becoming witness of some

Horrible deed some scene of misery death or crime whether past present or even future as I ascertained later on it was as though some mocking fiend had taken upon himself the task of making me go through the vision of everything that was beastial malignant and hopeless in this world of misery

No radiant vision of beauty or virtue ever lit with the faintest ray these pictures of awe and wretchedness that I seemed doomed to witness scenes of wickedness of murder of treachery and of lust fell dismally upon my sight and I was brought face to face with the viest

Results of man’s passions the most terrible outcome of his material Earthly cravings and the bonds foreseen indeed the dreary results when he spoke of D Jin to whom I left an Ingress a door open to me nonsense there must be some physiological abnormal change in me once

At nurburg when I have ascertained how false was the direction taken by my fears I dare not hope for no Misfortune at all these meaningless Visions will disappear as they came the very fact that my fancy follows but One Direction that of pictures of misery of human passions in their worst material shape

Is a proof to me of of their unreality if as you say man consists of one substance matter the object of the physical senses and if perception with its modes is only the result of the organization of the brain then should we be naturally attracted but to the

Material the Earthly I thought I heard the familiar voice of the bonds interrupting my Reflections and repeating an often used argument of his and his discussions with me there are two ples of Visions before men I again heard him say the plane of undying love and spiritual aspirations the afflux

From the Eternal Light and the plain of restless everchanging matter the light in which the misguided dig jins bathed seven eternity in a short dream in those days I could hardly bring myself to realize even for a moment the absurdity of a belief in any kind of

Spirits whether good or bad I know understood if I did not believe what was meant by the term though I still persisted in hoping that it would finally prove some physical derangement or nervous hallucination to fortify my unbelief the more I tried to bring back to my memory

All the arguments used against faith and such superstitions that I had ever read or heard I recalled the biting sarcasms of vol the calm reasoning of Hume and I repeated to myself ad nauseum the words of rouso who said that Superstition the disturber of society could never be too

Strongly attacked why should the site the fantasmagoria rather I argued of that which we know in a waking sense to be false come to affect us at all why should names whose sense we see not Fray us with things that be not one day the old Captain was narrating to us the various

Superstitions to which Sailors were addicted A pompous English missionary remarked that Fielding had declared long ago that Superstition renders man a fool after which he hesitated for an instant and abruptly stopped I had not taken any part in the general conversation but no sooner had the Reverend speaker relieved himself of the

Quotation than I saw in that Halo of vibrating light which I now noticed almost constantly over every human head on the steamer the words of fielding’s next proposition and skepticism makes him mad I had heard and read of the claims of those who pretended to see ership that they often see the thoughts

Of people traced in the aura of those present whatever Aura May mean with others I had now a personal experience of the truth of the claim and felt sufficiently disgusted with the discovery I a clairvoyant a new horror added to my life an absurd and ridiculous gift

Developed which I shall have to conceal from all feeling ashamed of it as if it were a case of leprosy at this moment my hatred to the yamabushi and even to my venerable old friend the bonds knew no bounds the former had evidently by his manipulations over me while I was lying

Unconscious touched some unknown physiological spring in my brain and by loosening it had called forth A Faculty generally hidden in the human Constitution and it was the Japanese priest who had introduced the wretch into my house but my anger and my curses were alike useless and could be of no

Avail moreover we were already in European Waters and in a few more days we should be at Hamburg then would my doubts and fears be set at rest and I should find to my intense relief that although Clairvoyance as regards the reading of human thoughts on the spot

May have some truth in it the discernment of such events at a distance as I had dreamed of was an impossibility for human faculties not withstanding all my reasoning however my heart was sick with fear and full of the blackest presentment I felt that my Doom was closing I suffered terribly my nervous

And mental prostration becoming intensified day by day the night before we entered Port I had a dream I fancied I was dead my body lay cold and stiff in its last sleep whilst its dying Consciousness which still regarded itself as I realizing the event Was preparing to meet in a few seconds its

Own Extinction it had been always my belief that as the brain preserved heat longer than any of the other organs and was the last to cease its activity the thought in it survived bodily death by several minutes therefore I was not in the least surprised to find in my dream that while

The frame had already crossed that awful Gulf no mortal ever repass its Consciousness was still in the gray Twilight the first Shadows of the great mystery thus my thought wrapped as I believed in the remnants of its now fast retiring Vitality was watching with the intense and eager curiosity the

Approaches of its own dissolution I.E of its Annihilation I was hastening to record my last Impressions lest the dark mantle of Eternal Oblivion should envelop me before I had time to feel and enjoy the great the Supreme Triumph of learning that my lifelong convictions were true that death is a complete and absolute

Sensation of conscious being everything around me was getting darker with every moment huge gray Shadows were moving before my vision slowly at first then with accelerated motion until until they commenced whirling around with an almost vertiginous rapidity then as though that motion had taken place only for purposes

Of Brewing Darkness the object once reached it slackened its speed and as the darkness became gradually transformed into intense Blackness it ceased altogether there was nothing now within my immediate perceptions but that fathomless black space as dark as pitch to me it appeared as Limitless and as silent

As the shoreless ocean of Eternity upon which time the progyny of man’s brain is forever gliding but which it can never cross dream is defined by KO as but the image of our hopes and fears having never feared death when awake I felt in this dream of mine calm and Serene at

The idea of my Speedy end in truth I felt rather relieved at the thought probably owing to my recent mental suffering that the end of all of doubt of fear for those I loved of suffering and of every anxiety was close at hand the constant anguish that had been

Gnawing ceaselessly at my heavy aching heart for many a long and weary month had now become unbearable and if as senica thinks death is but the ceasing to be what we were before it was better that I should die the body is dead I it’s Consciousness

That which is All That Remains of me now for a few moments longer and preparing to follow mental perceptions will get weaker more dim and hazy with every second of time until the longed for Oblivion envelops me completely in its cold shroud sweet as the magic Hand of Death

The great world comforter profound and dreamless as sleep in its unyielding arms yay verily it is a welcome guest a calm and peaceful Haven amidst the Roaring Billows of the ocean of Life whose Breakers lash in vain the rockbound shores of death happy the lonely bark that drifts

Into the Still Waters of its black Gulf after having been so long so cruy tossed about by the angry waves of sentient life mored in it forever more needing no longer either sail or Rudder my bark will now find rest welcome then o death at this tempting price and fair Thee

Well poor body which having neither sought it nor derived pleasure from it I now readily give up while uttering this death chant to the prostrate form before me I bent over examined it with curiosity I felt the surrounding Darkness oppressing me Weighing on me almost tangibly and I fancied I found in

It the approach of the Liberator I was welcoming and yet how very strange if real final death takes place in our Consciousness if after the bodily death I and my conscious perceptions are one how is it that these these perceptions do not become weaker why does my brain

Action seem as vigorous as ever now that I am deao dead nor does the usual feeling of anxiety the heavy heart so-called decrease an intensity nay it even seems to become worse unspeakably so how long it takes for full Oblivion to arrive ah here’s my body again

Vanished out of sight for a second or two it reappears before me once more how white and ghastly it looks yet its brain cannot be quite dead since I its Consciousness am still acting since we too fancy that we still are that we live and think disconnected from our creator

And its ideating cells suddenly I felt a strong desire to see how much longer the progress of dissolution was likely to last before it placed its last seal on the brain and rendered it inactive I examined my brain and it’s it cranial cavity through the to me entirely transparent walls and roof of

The skull and even touched the brain matter how or with whose hands I am now unable to say but the impression of the slimy intensely cold matter produced a very strong impression on me in that dream to my great dismay I found that the blood having entirely congealed and

The Brain tissues having themselves undergone a change that would no longer permit any molecular action it became impossible for me to account for the phenomena now taking place with myself here was I or my Consciousness which is all one standing apparently entirely disconnected from my brain

Which could no longer function but I had no time left for reflection a new and most extraordinary change in my perceptions had taken place and now engrossed my whole attention what does this signify the same Darkness was around me as before a black impenetrable space extending in every direction only now

Right before me in whatever Direction I was looking moving with me which ways soever I moved there was a gigantic round clock a disc whose large white face Shone ominously on the ebony black background as I looked at its huge dial and at the pendulum moving to and fro

Regularly and slowly in space as if its swinging meant to defy an eternity I saw its needles pointing to 7 minutes past 5 the hour at which my torture had commenced at Kyoto I had barely found time to think of the coincidence when to my unutterable horror I felt myself going

Through the same The Identical process that I had been made to experience on that memorable and fatal day I swam underground dashing swiftly through the earth I found myself once more in the Popper’s grave and recognized my brother-in-law in the mangled remains I witnessed his terrible death entered my

Sister’s house followed her Agony and saw her go mad I went over the same scene sces without missing a single detail of them but alas I was no longer Ironbound in the calm indifference that had then been mine and which in that first Vision had left me as unfeeling to

My great Misfortune as if I had been a heartless thing of rock my mental tortures were now becoming Beyond description and well nigh unbearable even the settled despair the never ceasing anxiety I was constantly experiencing when awake had become now in my dream and in the face of this

Repetition of vision and events as an hour of darkened sunlight compared to a deadly Cyclone oh how I suffered in this wealth and pomp of infernal Horrors to which the conviction of the survival of man’s Consciousness after death for in that dream I firmly believed that my

Body was dead added to the most terrifying of all the relative relief I felt when after going over the last scene I saw once more the great white face of the dial before me was not of long duration the long arrow-shaped needle was pointing on the Colossal disc

At 7 minutes and a half past 5:00 but before I had time to well realize the change the needle moved slowly backwards stopping at precisely the 7 minute and oh cursed fate I found myself driven into a repetition of the same series over again once more I swam underground

And saw and heard and suffered every torture that hell can provide I passed through every mental anguish known to man or Fiend I return to see the Fatal dial and it needle after what appeared to me an eternity moved as before only half a minute forward I beheld it with

Renewed Terror moving back again and felt myself propelled forward a new and so it went on and on and on time after time in what seemed to me an endless succession a series which never had any beginning nor would it ever have an end worst of all my Consciousness my eye

Had apparently acquired the phenomenal capacity of trebling quadrupling and even of decoating itself I lived felt and suffered in the same space of time in half a dozen different places at once passing over various events of my life at different epics and under the most dissimilar circumstances though predominant overall was my spiritual

Experience at Kyoto thus as in the famous Fugue in Don Giovani the heart-rending notes of alvar’s Arya of despair ring high above but interfere in no way with the melody of the minuette the song of Seduction and the chorus so I went over and over my travailed woes

The feelings of Agony unspeakable at the awful sights of my vision the repetition of which blunted in no wise even a single pay of my Despair and horror nor did these feelings weaken in the least scenes and events entirely disconnected with the first one that I was living

Through again or interfere in any way the one with the other it was a maddening experience a series of contrapuntal mental fantasmagoria from real life here was I during the same half a minute of time examining with cold curiosity the mingled remains of my sister’s husband following with the same indifference the

Effects of the news on her brain as in my first Kyoto vision and feeling at the same time hell torture for these very events as when I return to Consciousness I was listening to the philosophical discourse of the bonds of every word of which I heard and

Understood and was trying to laugh him to scorn I was again a child then a youth hearing my mothers and my sweet sisters voices admonishing me and teaching me duty to all men I was saving a friend from drowning and was sneering at his aged father who thanked me for

Having saved a soul yet unprepared to meet his maker speak of dual Consciousness you psychophysiologists I cried in one of the moments when Agony mental and as it seemed to me physical also had arrived at a degree of intensity which would have killed a dozen living men speak of your psychological and physiological

Experiments you schoolmen puffed up with pride and book learning here I am to give you the lie and now I was reading the works and holding converse with learned professors and lecturers who had led me to my fatal skepticism and while arguing the impossibility of Consciousness divorced from its brain I

Was shedding tears of blood over the supposed fate of my nieces and nephews more terrible than all I knew as only a liberated Consciousness can know that all I had seen in my vision at Japan and all that I was seeing and hearing over and over again now was true in every

Point in detail that it was a long string of ghastly and terrible still of real actual facts for perhaps the H hundredth time I had riveted my attention on the needle of the clock I lost the number of my gations and was fast coming to the conclusion that they would never stop

That Consciousness is after all indestructible and that this was to be my punishment in eternity I was beginning to realize from personal experience how The Condemned Sinners would feel were not Eternal damnation a logical and mathematical impossibility in an Ever progressing Universe I still found the voice to

Argue yay indeed at this hour of my ever increasing Agony my consciousness now my synonym for I had still the power of revolting at certain theological claims of denying all their propositions all save itself no I denied the independent nature of my Consciousness no longer for

I knew it now to be such but is it Eternal with all oh thou incomprehensible and terrible reality but if Thou Art Eternal who then art thou since there is no deity no God whence Dost thou come and when did thou first appear if Thou Art not a part of

The cold body lying Yonder and whether Dost thou lead me who am thyself and shall our thought and fancy have an end what is thy real name thou unfathomable reality an impenetrable mystery oh I would Fain annihilate thee Soul Vision who speaks of soul and whose voice is

This it says that I see now for myself that there is a soul in man after all I deny this my soul my vital Soul or the spirit of life has expired with my body with the gray matter of my brain this eye of mine this Consciousness is not yet proven to

Me as Eternal reincarnation in which the bonds felt so anxious I should believe may be true why not is not the flower born year after year from the same root hence this eye once separated from its brain losing its balance and calling forth such a host of visions before

Reincarnating I was again face to face with the inexorable fatal clock and as I was watching its needle I heard the voice of the bonds coming out of the depths of its white face saying in this case I fear you would have only to open and to shut the temple door over and

Over again during a period which however short would seem to you an eternity the clock had vanished Darkness made room for light the the voice of my old friend was drowned by a multitude of voices overhead on deck and I awoke in my birth covered with a cold perspiration and faint with

Terror eight a tale of Woe we were at Hamburg and no sooner had I seen my partners who could hardly recognize me than with their consent and good wishes I started for nurburg half an hour after my arrival the last doubt with regard to the correctness of my vision had disappeared

The reality was worth wor than any expectations could have made it and I was henceforward doomed to the most desolate life I ascertained that I had seen the terrible tragedy with all its heart-rending details my brother-in-law killed under the wheels of a machine my sister insane and now rapidly sinking

Toward her end my niece the sweet flower of Nature’s fairest work Dishonored in a den of infamy the little children dead of a contagious disease in an orphanage my last surviving nephew at sea no one knew where a whole house A Home of love and peace scattered and I left alone a

Witness of this world of death of desolation and dishonor the news filled me with infinite Despair and I sank helpless before this wholesale dire disaster which rose before me all at once the shock proved too much and I fainted the last thing I heard before entirely losing my Consciousness was a remark of

The bergmeister had you before leaving Kyoto telegraphed to the city authorities of your whereabouts and of your intention of coming home to take charge of your young relatives we might have placed them elsewhere and thus have saved them from their fate no one knew that the children had a well-to-do

Relative they were left poppers and had to be dealt with as such they were comparatively strangers in nurenberg and under the unfortunate circumstances you could hardly have expected anything else I can only express my sincere sorrow it was this terrible knowledge that I might at any rate have saved my young niece

From her unmar fate but that through my neglect I had not done so that was killing me had I but followed the friendly advice of the bonds to MOA and telegraphed to the authorities some weeks previous to my return much might have been avoided it was all this

Coupled with the fact that I could no longer doubt Clairvoyance and Clare audience the possibility of which I had so long denied that brought me so heavily down upon my knees I could avoid the Cure of my fellow creatures but I could never escape the stings of my

Conscience the reproaches of my own aching heart no not as long as I lived I cursed my stubborn skepticism my denial of facts my Early Education I cursed myself and the whole world for several days I contrived not to sink beneath my load for I had a duty to

Perform to the dead and to the living but my sister once rescued from the poppers Asylum placed under the care of the best physicians with her daughter to attend to her last moments and the Jews whom I had brought to confess her crime safely lodged in jail my fortitude and strength suddenly abandoned

Me hardly a week after my arrival I was myself no better than a raving Maniac helpless in the strong grip of a brain fever for several weeks I lay between life and death the terrible disease defying the skill of the best physicians at last my strong Constitution prevailed

And to my lifelong sorrow they proclaimed me saved I heard the news with a bleeding heart doomed to drag the loathsome burden of Life henceforth alone and in constant remorse hoping for no help or remedy on Earth and still refusing to believe in the possibility of anything better than a short Survival

Of Consciousness beyond the grave this unexpected Return To Life added only one more drop of G to my bitter feelings they were hardly soothed by the immediate return during the first days of my convalescence of those unwelcome and unsought for Visions whose correctness and reality I could deny no

More alas the day they were no longer in my skeptical blind mind the children of an idle brain begot of nothing but vain fantasy but always the faithful photographs of the real woes and sufferings of my fellow creatures of my best friends thus I found myself doomed

Whenever I was left for a moment alone to the helpless torture of a chained Prometheus during the still hours of night as though held by some pitiless iron hand I found myself led to my sister’s bedside forced to watch there hour after hour and see the silent disintegration of her wasted organism to

Witness and feel the sufferings that her own tenantless brain could no longer reflect or convey to her perceptions but there was something still more horrible to Barb the dart that could never be extricated I had to look by day at the childish innocent face of my young niece

So sublimely simple and guess in her pollution and to witness By Night how the full knowledge and recollection of her dishonor of her young life now forever blasted came to her in her dreams as soon as she was asleep these dreams took an objective form to me as they had done on the

Steamer I had to live them over again night after night and feel the same terrible despair for now since I believed in the reality of seers ship and had come to the conclusion that in our bodies lies hidden as in the caterpillar the Chrysalis which may contain in its turn

The butterfly the symbol of the soul I no longer remained indifferent as of your to what I witnessed in my soul life something had suddenly developed in me had broken loose from its icy cocoon evidently I no longer saw only in consequence of the identification of my

Inner nature with a dig Jin my Visions arose in consequence of a direct personal psychic development the fish creatures only taking care that I should see nothing of an agreeable or elevating nature thus now not an unconscious pain in my dying sister’s emaciated body not a thrill of horror in my niece’s

Restless sleep at the recollection of the crime perpetrated upon her an innocent child but found a responsive echo in my bleeding heart the Deep Fountain of sympathetic love and sorrow had gushed out from the physical heart and was now loudly echoed by the awakened Soul separated from the

Body thus had I to drain the cup of misery to the very drags wo is me it was a daily and nightly torture oh how I mourned over my proud Folly how I was punished for having neglected to Avail myself at Koto of the profer purification for now I’d come to believe

Even in the e y of the latter the Dig Jen had indeed obtained control over me and the fiend had let loose all the dogs of Hell upon his victim at last the awful Gulf was reached and crossed the poor insane martyr dropped into her dark and now

Welcome grave leaving behind her but for a few short months her young her firstborn daughter consumption made short work of that tender girlish frame hardly a year after my arrival I was left alone in the whole wide world my only surviving nephew having expressed a desire to follow his seafaring

Career and now the sequel of my sad sad story is soon told a wreck a prematurely old man looking at 30 as though 60 Winters had passed over my doomed head and owing to the never ceasing Visions myself daily on the verge of insanity I suddenly formed a desperate

Resolution I would return to Kyoto and seek out the yamabushi I would prostrate myself at the feet of the holy man I would not leave him until he had recalled the Frankenstein he had raised the Frankenstein with whom at the time it was I myself who would not part

Through my insolent pride and unbelief 3 months later I was in my Japanese home again and I at once sought out my old venerable bonds to Mora haeri I now implored him to take me without an hour’s delay to the yamabushi the innocent cause of my daily tortures his

Answer but placed the last the Supreme seal on my doom and tfold intensified my despair the yamabushi had left the country for lands unknown he had departed one fine morning into the interior on a pilgrimage and according to custom would be absent unless natural death shortened the period for no less

Than 7 years in this mischance I applied for help and protection of other learned yamabushi and though well aware how useless it was in my case to seek efficient cure from any other Adept my excellent old friend did everything he could to help me in my

Misfortune but it was to no purpose and the canker worm of my life’s despair could not be thoroughly extricated I found from them that not one of these learned men could promise to relieve me entirely from the demon of Clairvoyant Obsession it was he who raised certain

Dig gens calling on them to show Futurity or things that had already come to pass who alone had full control over them with kind sympathy which I had now learned to appreciate the holy men invited me to join the group of their disciples and learn from them what I

Could do for myself will alone faith in your own soul powers can help you now they said but it may take several years to undo even a part of the Great Mischief they added a DI Jin is easily dislodged in the beginning if left alone he takes possession of a man’s nature

And it becomes almost impossible to uproot the fiend without killing his victim persuaded that there was nothing but this left for me to do I gradually ascented doing my best to believe in all that these holy men believed in and yet ever failing to do so in my heart the

Demon of unbelief and all denial seemed rooted in me more firmly even than the do genen still I did all I could do decided as I was not to lose my last chance of Salvation therefore I proceeded without delay to free myself from the world and my commercial

Obligations in order to live for several years an independent life I settled my accounts with my Hamburg partners and severed my connection with the firm not withstanding considerable Financial losses resulting from such a precipitate liquidation I found myself after closing the accounts a far richer man than I had

Thought I was but wealth had no longer any attraction for me now that I had no one to share it with no one to work for Life had become a burden and such was my indifference to my future that while giving away all my fortune to my nephew

In case he should return alive from his sea Voyage I should have neglected entirely even a small provision for myself had not my native partner interfered and insisted upon my making it I now recognize with Lao say that knowledge was the only firm hold for a

Man to trust to as it is the only one that cannot be shaken by any Tempest wealth is a weak anchor in days of sorrow and self-conceit the most fatal counselor hence I followed the advice of my friends and laid aside for myself a modest sum which would be

Sufficient to assure me a small income for life or if I ever left my new friends and instructors having settled my Earthly accounts and disposed of my belongings at Kyoto I joined the masters of the long Vision who took me to their mysterious Abode there I remained for several years studying very earnestly

And in the most complete Solitude seeing no one but a few of the members of our religious community many are the mysteries of nature that I have fathomed since then and many a secret folio from the library of Zion have I devoured obtaining thereby Mastery over several

Kinds of invisible beings of a lower order but the great secret of power over the terrible D Jin I could not get it remains in the possession of a very limited number of the highest initiates of the LA Z the great majority of the yamabushi themselves being ignorant how

To obtain such Mastery over the dangerous Elemental one who would reach such power of control would have to become entirely identified with the yamabushi to accept their views and beliefs and to attain the highest degree of initiation very naturally I was found unfit to join the fraternity owing to

Many insurmountable reasons besides my congenital and ineradicable skepticism though I tried hard to believe thus partially relieved of my Affliction and taught how to conjure the unwelcome Visions away I still remained and do remain to this day helpless to prevent their forced appearance before me now

And then it was after assuring myself of my unfitness for the exalted position of an independent seer in aept that I reluctantly gave up any further trial nothing had been heard of the holy man the first innocent cause of my Misfortune and the old bonds himself who occasionally visited me in my retreat

Either could not or would not inform me of the whereabouts of the yamabushi when therefore I had to give up all hope of his ever relieving me entirely from my fatal gift I resolved to return to Europe to settle in solitude for the rest of my life with this object in view I

Purchased through my late Partners the Swiss Chalet in which my helpless sister and I were born where I had grown up under her care and selected it for my future Hermitage when bidding me farewell Forever on the steamer which took me back to my Fatherland the good

Old bonds tried to console me for my disappointments my son he said regard all that happened to you as your karma a just retribution no one who has subjected himself willingly to the power of a d Jin can ever hope to become a Rahat an Adept a high sold yamabushi unless

Immediately purified at best as in your case he may become fitted to oppose and to successfully fight off the fiend like a scar left after a poisonous wound the trace of a DI Jin can never be effaced from the soul until purified by a new rebirth with all feel not dejected but

Be of good cheer in your Affliction since it has led you to acquire true knowledge and to accept many a truth you would have otherwise rejected with contempt and of this Priceless knowledge acquired through suffering and personal efforts no D genen can ever deprive you Fare Thee Well then and may the Mother

Of Mercy the great Queen of Heaven afford you comfort and protection we parted and since since then I have led the life of an anchorite in constant Solitude and study though still occasionally Afflicted I do not regret the years I have passed under the instruction of the yamabushi but feel

Gratified for the knowledge received of the priest tamura haideri I think always with sincere affection and respect I corresponded regularly with him to the day of his death an event which with all its to me painful details I had the unthanked for privilege of witnessing across the seas at the very hour in

Which it occurred end of section two section three of nightmare Tales by Helena P baty this LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by Ben Tucker the cave of The Echoes a strange but true story footnote the story is given from The Narrative of an eyewitness a Russian gentleman very

Pious and fully trustworthy moreover the facts are copied from the police records of P the eyewitness in question attributes it of course partly to Divine interference and partly to the evil one HPB end footnote in one of the distant governments of the Russian Empire in a

Small town on the borders of syberia a mysterious tragedy occurred more than 30 years ago about six versts from the little town of P famous for the wild beauty of its scenery and for the wealth of its inhabitants generally Proprietors of mines and of iron foundaries stood an aristocratic Mansion its household

Consisted of the master a rich old Bachelor and his brother who was a widower and the father of two sons and three daughters it was known that the proprietor Mr isof had adopted his brother’s children and having formed an speci special attachment for his eldest nephew Nicholas he had made him the sole

Heir of his numerous Estates time rolled on the uncle was getting old the nephew was coming of age days and years had passed in monotonous Serenity when on the hitherto clear Horizon of The Quiet family appeared a cloud on an unlucky day one of the nieces took it into her

Head to study the zither the instrument being of purely tonic origin and no teacher of it residing in the neighborhood the indulgent uncle sent to St Petersburg for both after diligent search only one Professor could be found willing to trust himself in such close proximity to

Siberia it was an old German artist who sharing his affections equally between his instrument and a pretty blonde daughter would part with neither and thus it came to pass that one fine morning the old Professor arrived at the mansion with his music box under one arm and his fair munchin leaning on the

Other from that day the little Cloud began growing rapidly for every vibration of the melodious instrument found a responsive echo in the old bachelor’s heart music awakens love they say and the work begun by the zither was completed by munchin’s blue eyes at the expiration of 6 months the niece had

Become an expert zither player and the uncle was desperately in love one morning Gathering his adopted family around him he embraced them all very tenderly promised to remember them in his will and wound up by declaring his unalterable resolution to marry the blue-eyed munchin after this he fell

Upon their necks and wept in silent Rapture the family understanding that they were were cheated out of the inheritance also wept but it was for another cause having thus wept they consoled themselves and tried to Rejoice for the old gentleman was sincerely beloved by all not all of them rejoiced

Though Nicholas who had himself been smitten to the Heart by the pretty German and who found himself defrauded at once of his Bell and of his uncle’s money neither rejoiced nor consoled himself but disappeared for a whole day meanwhile Mr isof had given orders to prepare his traveling carriage on the

Following day and it was whispered that he was going to the chief town of the district at some distance from his home with the intention of altering his will though very wealthy he had no superintendent on his estate but kept his books himself the same evening after

Supper he was heard in his room angrily scolding his servant who had been in his service for over 30 years this man Ivan was a native of Northern Asia from Katka he had been brought up by the family in the Christian religion and was thought to be very much attached to his

Master a few days later when the first tragic circumstance I’m about to relate had brought all the police force to the spot it was remembered that on that night Ivan was drunk that his master who had a horror of this Vice had paternally thrashed him and turned him out of his

Room and that Ivan had been seen reeling out of the door and had been heard to mutter threats on the vast domain of Mr its birts off there was a curious Cavern which excited the Curiosity of all who visited it it existed this day and is

Well known to every inhabitant of PE a Pine Forest commencing a few feet from the garden gate climbs in steep Terraces up a long range of Rocky Hills which it covers with a broad belt of impenetrable vegetation The Grotto leading into the cavern which is known as the Cave of the

Echo is situated about a half a mile from the site of the mansion from which it appears as a small excavation in the hillside almost hidden by luxuriant plants but not so completely as to prevent any person entering it from being readily seen from the Terrace in front of the

House entering The Grotto the Explorer finds at the rear a narrow CFT having passed through which he emerges into a lofty Cavern feebly lighted through fissures and the vaulted roof 50 ft from the ground the cavern itself is immense and would easily hold between 2 and 3,000 people a part of it

In the days of Mr itver sof was paved with flagstones and was often used in the summer as a ballroom by picnic parties of an irregular oval it gradually Narrows into a broad Corridor which runs for several miles underground opening here and there into other Chambers as

Large and lofty as the ballroom but unlike this impassible otherwise than in a boat as they’re always full of water these natural basins have the reputation of being unfathomable on the margin of the first of these is a small platform with several Mossy rustic seats arranged on

It and it is from this spot that the phenomenal Echoes which give the cavern it name are heard in all their weirdness a word pronounced in a whisper or even a sigh is caught up by endless mocking voices and instead of diminishing in volume as honest Echoes do the sound

Grows louder and louder at every successive repetition until at last it bursts forth like the repercussion of a pistol shot and recedes in a plaintive whale down the corridor on the day in question Mr itsz off had mentioned his intention of having a dance party in this cave on his

Wedding day which he had fixed for an early date on the following morning while preparing for his drive he was seen by his family entering The Grotto accompanied only by his Siberian servant half an hour later Ivan returned to the mansion for a snuff box which his

Master had forgotten in his room and went back with it to the cave an hour later the whole house was startled by his loud cries pale and dripping with water Ivan rushed in like a madman and declared that Mr zerof was nowhere to be found in the cave think

Thinking he had fallen into the lake he had dived into the First Basin in search of him and was nearly drowned himself the day passed in vain attempts to find the body the police filled the house and louder than the rest in his despair was Nicholas the nephew who had returned

Home only to meet the sad Tidings a dark suspicion fell upon Ivan the Siberian he had been struck by his master the night before and had been heard to swear Revenge he had accompanied him alone to the cave and when his room was searched a box full of

Family Jewelry known to have been carefully kept in Mr itsz off’s apartment was found under Ivan’s bedding vainly did the surf call God to witness that the Box had been given to him in charge by his master himself just before they proceeded to the cave that it was

The latter’s purpose to have the jewelry reset as he intended it for a wedding present to his bride and that he Ivan would willingly give his own life to recall that of his master if he knew him to be dead no heed was paid to him however and he was arrested and thrown

Into prison upon a charge of murder there he was left for under the Russian law a criminal cannot at any rate he could not in those days be sentenced for a crime however conclusive the circumstantial evidence unless he confessed his guilt after a week had passed in useless

Search the family arrayed themselves in deep mourning and as the will as originally drawn remained without a Cil the whole of the property passed into the hands of the nephew the old teacher and his daughter bore this sudden reverse of Fortune with true Germanic flim and prepared to depart taking again

His zither under one arm the old man was about to lead away his munchin by the other when the nephew stopped him by offering himself as the fair damsels husband in the place of his departed Uncle the change was found to be an agreeable one and without Much Ado the

Young people were married 10 years roll away and we meet the happy family once more at the beginning of 1859 the fair munchin had grown fat and vulgar from the day of the old man’s disappearance Nicholas had become become morose and retired in his habits and

Many wondered at the change in him for now he was never seen to smile it seemed as if his only aim in life were to find out his uncle’s murderer or rather to bring Ivan to confess his guilt but the man still persisted that he was

Innocent an only son had been born to the young couple and a strange child it was small delicate and ever ailing his frail life seemed to hang by a thread when his features were in Repose his resemblance to his uncle was so striking that the members of the family often

Shrank from him in Terror it was the pale shriveled face of a man of 60 upon the shoulders of a child 9 years old he was never seen either to laugh or to play but perched in his high chair would Gravely sit there folding his arms in a

Way peculiar to the late Mr itoff and thus he would remain for hours drowsy and motionless his nurses were often seen furtively Crossing themselves at night upon approaching him and not one of them would con sent to sleep alone with him in the nursery his father’s Behavior

Towards him was still more strange he seemed to love him passionately and at the same time to hate him bitterly he seldom embraced or caressed the child but with livid cheek and staring eye he would pass long hours watching him as the child sat quietly in his Corner in

His goblin-like old-fashioned way the child had never left the estate and few outside the family knew of his existence about the middle of July a tall Hungarian Traveler preceded by a great reputation for eccentricity wealth and mysterious Powers arrived at the town of P from the

North where it was said he had resided for many years he settled in the little town in company with a shaman or South Siberian Magician on whom he was said to make mesmeric experiments he gave dinners and parties and invariably exhibited his Shaman of whom he felt very proud for

The amusement of his guests one day the notables of P made an unexpected invasion of the domains of Nicholas itoff and requested the loan of his cave for an evening entertainment Nicholas consented with great reluctance and only after still greater hesitancy was he prevailed upon to join the party the first Cavern and

The platform beside the bottomless lake glittered with lights hundreds of flickering candles and torches stuck in the Cliffs of the Rocks illuminated the place and drove the Shadows from the mossy nooks and Corners where they had crouched undisturbed for many years the stalagtites on the walls sparkled brightly and the sleeping Echoes were

Suddenly awakened by a joyous confusion of laughter and conversation the shaman who was never lost sight of by his friend and Patron sat in a corner entranced as usual crouched on a projecting Rock about midway between the entrance and the water with his lemon yellow wrinkled

Face flat nose and thin beard he looked more like an ugly Stone Idol than a human being many of the company pressed around him and received correct answers to their questions the Hungarian cheerfully submitted his mesmerized subject to cross-examination suddenly one of the party a lady remarked that it was in

That very cave that old Mr zerof had so unaccountably disappeared 10 years before the Foreigner appeared interested and desired to learn more of the circumstances so Nicholas was sought amid the crowd and led before the eager group he was the host and he found it impossible to refuse the demanded

Narrative he repeated the sad tail in a trembling voice with a pet cheek and tears were seen glittering in his feverish eyes the company were greatly affected and encomiums upon the behavior of the loving nephew and honoring the memory of his uncle and benefactor were freely circulating in Whispers when

Suddenly the voice of Nicholas became choked his eyes started from their sockets and with a suppressed groan he staggered back every eye in the crowd followed with curiosity his Haggard look as it fell and remained riveted upon a wheezed little face that peeped from behind the back of the

Hungarian where do you come from who brought you here child gasped out Nicholas as pale’s death I was in bed Papa this man came to me and brought me here in his arms answered the boy simply pointing to the shaman beside whom he stood upon the

Rock and who with his eyes closed kept swaying himself to and fro like a living pendulum that is very strange remarked one of the guests for the man has never moved from his place good God what an extraordinary resemblance muttered an old resident of the Town a friend of the

Lost man you lie child fiercely exclaimed the father go to bed this is no place for you come come interposed the Hungarian with a strange expression on his face and encircled with his arm the Slender childish figure the little fellow has seen the double of my Shaman

Which roams sometimes far away from his body and has mistaken the phantom for the man himself let him remain with us for a while at the these strange words the guests stared at each other in mute surprise while some piously made the sign of the cross spitting aside

Presumably at the Devil in all his works by the by continued the Hungarian with a peculiar firmness of accent and addressing the company rather than anyone in particular why should we not try with the help of my Shaman to unravel the mystery hanging over the tragedy is the suspected party still

Lying in prison what he has not confessed up to now this is surely very strange but now we will learn the truth in a few minutes let us all keep silent he then approached the tah chinii and immediately began his performance without so much as asking the consent of

The master of the place the latter stood rooted to the spot as if petrified with horror and unable to articulate a word the suggestion met with General approbation save from him and the Police Inspector colonel s especially approved of the idea ladies and gentlemen said the mesmerizer in soft

Tones allow me for this once to proceed otherwise than in my general fashion I will employ the method of native magic it is more appropriate to this wild place and far more effective as you will find than our European method of mesmerization without waiting for an

Answer he drew from a bag that never left his person first a small drum and then two little files one full of fluid the other empty with the contents of the former he sprinkled the shaman who fell to Trembling and nodding more violently than ever the air was filled with the

Perfume of spicy odors and the atmosphere itself seemed to become clearer then to the horror of those present he approached the Tibetan and taking a miniature stiletto from his pocket he plunged the sharp steel into the man’s forearm and drew blood from it which he caught in the empty file when

It was half filled he pressed the orifice of the wound with his thumb and stopped the flow of blood as easily as as if he had corked a bottle after which he sprinkled the blood over the little boy’s head he then suspended the drum from his neck and with two Ivory

Drumsticks which were covered with magic signs and letters he began beating a sort of revil to drum up the spirits as he said the bystanders half shocked and half terrified by these extraordinary proceedings eagerly crowded around him and for a few moments a dead silence rained throughout the lofty Cavern

Nicholas with his face livid and corpse-like stood spech less as before the mesmerizer had placed himself between the shaman and the platform when he began slowly drumming the first notes were muffled and vibrated so softly in the air that they awakened no Echo but the shaman quickened his pendulum likee

Motion and the child became Restless the drummer then began a slow chant low impressive and solemn as the unknown words issued from his lips the Flames of the candles and torches wavered and flickered until they began dancing and rhythm with the chant a cold wind came wheezing from the dark

Corridors beyond the water leaving a plaintive echo in its Trail then a sort of nebulous Vapor seeming to Ooze from the rocky ground and walls gathered about the shaman and the boy around the latter the aura was silvery and transparent but the cloud which enveloped the former was red and

Sinister approaching nearer to the platform the magician beat a louder roll upon the drum and this time the Echo caught it up with terrific effect it reverberated near and far in incessant peels one whale followed another louder and louder until the thunderous Roar seemed the chorus of a thousand demon

Voices rising from the fathomless depths of the lake the water itself whose surface illuminated by many lights had previously been smooth as a sheet of glass became suddenly agitated as if a powerful gust of wind had swept over its unruffled face another chant and a roll

Of the drum and the mountain trembled to its foundation with the cannon-like peels which rolled through the dark and distant corridors the Shaman’s body Rose two yards in the air and nodding and swaying sat self-suspended like an apparition but the transformation which now occurred in the boy chilled everyone

As they speechlessly watched the scene the Silvery Cloud about the boy now seemed to lift him too into the air but unlike the shaman his feet never left the ground the child began to grow as though the work of years was miraculously accomplished in a few

Seconds he became tall and large and his scile features Grew Older with the Aging of his body a few more seconds and the youthful form had entirely disappeared it was totally absorbed in another individuality and to the horror of those present who had been familiar with his appearance this individuality was that

Of old Mr its verz off and on his Temple was a large gaping wound from which trickled great drops of blood this Phantom moved towards Nicholas till it stood directly in front of him while he with his hair standing erect with the look of a Madman gazed at his own son

Transformed into his uncle the sepel silence was broken by the Hungarian who addressed the child Phantom asked him in solemn voice in the name of the Great Master of him who has all power answer the truth and nothing but the truth Restless Spirit hast thou been lost by accident or foul

Murdered the spectre’s lips moved but it was the echo which answered for them in lugubrious shouts murdered murdered murdered where how by whom asked the conjuror The Apparition pointed a finger at Nicholas and without removing its gaze or lowering its arm retreated backwards slowly towards the lake at

Every step it took the young itss off as if compelled by some irresistible Fascination Advanced a step towards it until the Phantom reached the lake and the next moment was seen gliding on its surface it was a fearful ghostly scene when he had come within two steps of the

Brink of the watery Abyss a violent convulsion ran through the frame of the guilty man flinging himself upon his knees he clung to one of The Rustic seats with a desperate clutch and staring wildly uttered a long piercing Cry of Agony the Phantom now remained motionless on the water and bending its

Extended finger slowly beckoned him to come crouched in abject Terror The Wretched Man shrieked until the cavern rang again and again I did not no I did not murder you then came a splash and now it was the boy who was in the Dark Water struggling for his life in the

Middle of the lake with the same motionless Stern Apparition brooding over him papa papa save me I am drowning cried a Pious little voice amid the Uproar of the mocking Echo my boy shrieked Nicholas in the accents of a Maniac springing to his feet my boy

Save him oh save him yes I confess I am the murderer it is I who killed him another Splash and the Phantom disappeared with a cry of horror the company rushed towards the platform but their feet were suddenly rooted to the ground as they saw amid the swirling

Edies a whitish shapeless Mass holding the murderer and the boy in tight Embrace and slowly sinking into the bottomless Lake on the morning after these occurrences when after a sleepless night some of the party visited the residence of the Hungarian gentleman they found it closed and deserted he and the shaman

Had disappeared many are among the old inhabitants of P who remember him the Police Inspector colonel s dying a few years ago in the full assurance that the noble traveler was the devil to add to the general consternation the itss off Mansion took fire on that that same

Night and was completely destroyed the Archbishop performed the ceremony of exorcism but the locality is considered a csed to this day the government investigated the facts and ordered silence end of section three section four of nightmare Tales by Helena P blatsky this LibriVox recording is in in the public domain read by Ben

Tucker the Luminous Shield we were a small and select party of light-hearted Travelers we had arrived at Constantinople a week before from Greece and had devoted 14 hours a day ever since to toiling up in down the Steep Heights of perah visiting bazaars climbing to the tops of minettes and

Fighting our way through armies of hungry dogs the traditional masters of the streets of stul nomadic life is infectious they say and no civilization is strong enough to destroy the charm of unrestrained Freedom when it has once been tasted the Gypsy cannot be tempted from his tint and even the common finds

A Fascination in his comfortless and precarious existence that prevents him from taking to any fixed Abode and occupation to guard my spaniel Ralph from falling a victim to this infection and joining the canine bins that infested the streets was my chief care during our stay in Constantinople he was

A fine fellow my con companion and cherished friend afraid of losing him I kept a strict watch over his movements for the first 3 days however he behaved like a tolerably well-educated quadruped and remained Faithfully at my heels at every impudent attack from his mohammadan cousins whether intended as a hostile

Demonstration or an overture of friendship his only reply would be to draw in his tail between his legs and with an air of dignified modesty seek protection under the wing of one or other of our party as he had thus from the first shown so decided an aversion

To Bad Company I began to feel assured of his discretion and by the end of the third day IID considerably relaxed my vigilance this carelessness on my part however was soon punished and I was made to regret my misplaced confidence in an unguarded moment he listened to the voice of some

Four-footed siren and the last I saw of him was the end of his bushy tale Vanishing around the corner of a dirty winding little back street greatly annoyed I passed the remainder of the day in a vain search after my dumb companion I offered 20 30 40 Franks

Reward for him about as many Vagabond malt began a regular Chase and towards evening we were invaded in our hotel by the whole troop every man of them with a more or less mangy Cur in his arms which he tried to persuade me was my lost dog

The more I denied the more solemnly they insisted one of them actually going down on his knees snatching from his bosom an old corroded metal image of the virgin and swearing a solemn oath that the Queen of Heaven herself had kindly appeared to him to point out the right

Animal the tumalt had increased to such an extent that it looked as if Ralph’s disappearance was going to be the cause of a small Riot and finally our landlord had to send for a couple of kassas from the nearest police station and have this Regiment of bipeds and quadrupeds

Expelled by main Force I began to be convinced that I should never see my dog again and I was the more despondent since the Porter of the hotel a semi- resectable old brigan who to judge by appearances had not passed more than half a dozen years at the GS Gravely

Assured me that all my pains were useless as my spaniel was undoubtedly dead and devoured too by this time the Turkish dogs being very fond of their more toothsome English Brothers all this discussion had taken place in the street at the door of the hotel and I was about to give up the

Search for the night at least and enter the hotel when an old Greek Lady uh fote who had been hearing the frakas from the steps of a door close by approached our disconsolate group and suggested to miss H one of our party that we should inquire of the dervishes concerning the fate of

Ralph and what can the dervishes know about my dog said I in no mood to joke ridiculous as the proposition appeared the holy men know all kyria Madam said she somewhat mysteriously last week I was robbed of my new satin pce that my son had just

Brought me from brussa and as you all see I have recovered it and have it on my back now indeed then the holy men have also managed to metamorphose your new police and an old one by all appearances said one of the gentlemen who accompanied us pointing as he spoke

To a large rent in the back which had been clumsily repaired with pins and that is just the most wonderful part of the whole story quietly answered the fote not in the least disconcerted they showed me in The Shining Circle the quarter of the town the house and even

The room in which the Jew who had stolen my police was just about to rip it up and cut it into pieces my son and I had barely time to run over to the kulos quarter and to save my property we caught the thief in the very act and we

Both recognized him as the man shown To Us by the dervishes in the magic Moon he confessed the theft and is now in prison although none of us had the least comprehension of what she meant by the magic Moon and The Shining Circle and we were all thoroughly mystified by her

Account of the divining powers of the holy men we still felt somehow satisfied from her manner that the story was not altogether a fabrication and since she had at all events apparently succeeded in recovering her property through being somehow assisted by the dervishes we determined to go the following morning

And see for ourselves for what had helped her might help us likewise the monotonous Cry of the muin from the tops of the minettes had just proclaimed the hour of noon as we descending from the heights of perah to the port of Galata with difficulty managed to Elbow our way

Through the unsavory crowds of the commercial quarter of the town before we reached the docks we had been half deafened by the shouts and incessant earpiercing cries and the Babel likee confusion of tongues in this part of the city it is useless to expect to be guided by either

House numbers or names of streets the location of any desired place is indicated by its proximity to some other conspicuous building such as a mosque bath or European shop for the rest one has to trust to Allah and his Prophet it was with greatest difficulty therefore that we finally discovered the British

Ship Chandler store at the rear of which we were to find the place of our destination our hotel guide was as ignorant of the dervishes Abode as we were ourselves but at last a small Greek in all the Simplicity of primitive undress consented for a modest copperback shees to lead us to the

Dancers when we were arrived we were shown into a vast and gloomy Hall that looked like a desert Ed stable it was long and narrow the floor was thickly strewn with sand as in a riding school and it was lighted only by small Windows placed at some height from the ground

The dervishes had finished their morning performances and were evidently resting from their exhausting labors they looked completely prostrated some lying about in Corners others sitting on their heels staring vacantly into space engaged as we were informed in meditation on their invisible deity they appeared to have

Lost all power of sight and hearing for none of them responded to our questions until a great gaunt figure wearing a tall cap that made him look at least 7 ft High emerged from an obscure Corner informing us that he was their Chief the giant gave us to understand

That the saintly Brethren being in the habit of receiving orders for additional ceremonies from Allah himself must on no account be disturbed but when our interpreter had explained to him the object of our visit which concerned himself alone as he was the sole custodian Ian of the divining Rod his

Objections vanished and he extended his hand for alms upon being gratified he intimated that only two of our party could be admitted at one time into the confidence of the future and led the way followed by Miss H and myself plunging after him into what seemed to be a half Subterranean passage

We were led to the foot of a tall ladder leading to a chamber under the roof we scrambled up after our guide and at the top we found ourselves in a wretched Garrett of moderate size with bare walls and destitute of furniture the floor was carpeted with a

Thick layer of dust and cobwebs festooned the walls and neglected confusion in the corner we saw something that I at first mistook for a bundle of old rags but the Heap presently moved and got on its legs Advanced to the middle of the room and stood before us the most extraordinary looking creature

That I ever beheld its sex was female but whether she was a woman or child it was impossible to decide she was a hideous looking dwarf with an enormous head the shoulders of a Grenadier with a waist in proportion the hole supported by two short lean spider-like legs that seemed

Unequal to the task of bearing the weight of the Monstrous body she had a grinning countenance like the face of a Sater and it was ornamented with letters and signs from the Quran painted in bright yellow on her forehead was a blood red crescent her head was crowned with a Dusty tarbou

Or Fez her legs were arrayed in large Turkish trousers and some dirty white muslin wrapped around her body barely sufficed to conceal its hideous deformities this creature rather let herself dropped and sat down in the middle of the floor and as her weight descended on the rickety boards it sent

Up a cloud of dust that set us coughing and sneezing this was the famous tmos known as the Damascus Oracle without losing time in idle talk the dervish produced a piece of chalk and traced around the girl a circle about 6 feet in diameter fetching from behind the door 12 small copper lamps

Which he filled with some dark liquid from a small bottle which he drew from his bosom he placed them symmetrically around the magic circle he then broke a chip of wood from a panel of the half ruined door which bore the marks of many a similar depredation and holding the chip between

His thumb and finger he began blowing on it at regular intervals alternating the blowing with mutterings of some kind of weird incantation till suddenly and without any apparent cause for its ignition the there appeared a spark on the Chip And it blazed up like a dry match the

Dervish then lit the 12 lamps at this self-generated flame during this process tmos who had sat till then altogether unconcerned and motionless removed her yellow slippers from her naked feet and throwing them into a corner disclosed an additional Beauty a sixth toe on each deformed foot the dervish now reached

Over into the circle and seizing the dwarf’s ankles gave her a jerk as if he had been lifting a bag of corn and raised her clear off the ground then stepping back a pace held her head downward he shook her as one might a sack to pack its contents the motion

Being regular and easy he then swung her to and fro like a pendulum until the necessary momentum was acquired when letting go one foot and seizing the other with both hands he made a powerful muscular effort and Whirled her round in the air as if she had been an Indian

Club my companion had shrunken back in alarm to the far this corner round and round the dervish swung his living burden she remained perfectly passive the motion increased in rapidity until the eye could hardly follow the body in its circuit this continued for perhaps 2 or 3 minutes until gradually slackening

The motion he at length stopped it altogether and in an instant had landed the girl on her knees in the middle of the lampit circle such was the Eastern mode of mesmerization as practiced among the dervishes and now the dwarf seemed entirely oblivious of external objects

And in a deep trance her head and jaw dropped on her chest her eyes were glazed and staring and altogether her appearance was even more hideous than before the dervish then carefully closed the shutters of the only window and we should have been in total obscurity but

That there was a whole board in it through which entered a bright Ray of sunlight that shot through the darkened room and Shone upon the girl he arranged her drooping head so that the ray should fall upon the crown after which motioning us to remain silent he folded

His arms upon his bosom and fixing his gaze upon the bright spot became as motionless as a stone image I too riveted my eyes on the same spot wondering what was to happen next and how all this strange ceremony was to help me find Ralph by degrees the bright

Patch as if it had been drawn through the Sunbeam a greater Splendor from without and condensed it within its own area shaped itself into a brilliant star sending out rays in every direction as from a focus a curious Optical effect then occurred the room which had been previously partially lighted by the

Sunbeam grew darker and darker as the star increased in Radiance until we found ourselves in an Egyptian Gloom the star twinkled trembled and turned at first with a slow gyratory motion then faster and faster increasing its circumference at every rotation until it formed a brilliant disc and we no longer

Saw the dwarf who seemed absorbed into its light having gradually attained an extremely rapid velocity as the girl had done when Whirled by the dervish the motion began to decrease and finally merged into a feeble vibration like the Shimmer of moon beams on Rippling water then it

Flickered for a moment longer emitted a few last flashes and assuming the density and iridescence of an immense opal it remained motionless the disc now radiated a moonlike luster soft and silvery but instead of Illuminating the Garrett it seemed only only to intensify the darkness the edge of the circle was

Not penumbras but on the contrary sharply defined like that of a silver Shield all being now ready the dervish without uttering a word or removing his gaze from the disc stretched out a hand and taking hold of mine he drew me to his side and pointed to the Luminous

Shield looking at the place indicated we saw large patches appear like those on the moon these gradually formed themselves into figures that began moving about in high relief in their natural colors they neither appeared like a photograph nor an engraving still less like the reflection of images on a

Mirror but as if the disc were a cameo and they were raised above its surface and then endowed with life and motion to my astonishment and my friend’s consternation we recognized the bridge leading from Galata to stul spanning the Golden Horn from the new to The Old City there were the people

Hurrying to and fro Steamers and gay gliding on the blue Bosphorus The Many Colored buildings Villas and palaces reflected in the water and the whole picture illuminated by the Noonday Sun it passed like a panorama but so vivid was the impression that we could not tell whether it or ourselves were in

Motion all was bustle in life but not a sound broke the oppressive Stillness it was noiseless as a dream it was a phantom picture Street after Street and quarter after quarter succeeded one another there was the Bazar with its narrow roofed passages the small shops on either side the coffee houses with

Grally smoking Turks and as either they glided past us or we past them one of the smokers upset the naril and coffee of another and a volley of soundless invectives caused us great Amusement so we traveled with the picture until we came to a large building that I recognized as the Palace

Of the Minister of Finance in a ditch behind the house and close to a mosque lying in a pool full of mud with a silken coat all bedraggled lay my poor Ralph panting and crouching down as if exhausted he seemed to be in a dying condition and near him were gathered

Some sorry looking CS who lay blinking in the Sun and snapping at the Flies I had seen all that I desired although I had not breathed a word about the dog to the dervish and had come more out of curiosity than with the idea of any success I was impatient to leave at

Once and recover Ralph but as my companion besought me to remain a little while longer I reluctantly consented the scene faded away and Miss H placed herself in turn by the side of the dervish I will think of him she whispered in my ear with the eager tone

That young ladies generally assume when talking of the woried him there was a long stretch of sand and a blue sea with white waves dancing in the sun and a great steamer is plowing her way along past a desolate Shore leaving a Milky track behind her the

Deck is full of life the men are busy forward the cook with the white cap and apron is coming out of the galley uniformed officers are moving about passengers fill the quarter deck lounging flirting or reading and a young man we both recognize comes forward and

Leans over the Taff rail it is him Miss H gives a little gasp blushes and smiles and concentrates her thoughts again the pictures of the steamer vanishes the magic Moon remains for a few moments blank but new spots appear on its luminous face we see a library slowly

Emerging from its depths a library with Green carpet and hangings and bookshelves around the sides of the room seated in an armchair at the table under a hanging lamp is an Old Gentleman writing his gray hair is brushed back from his forehead his face is smooth shaven and his countenance has an

Expression of benignity the dervish made a hasty motion to enjoin silence the light on the disc Quivers but resumes its steady brilliancy and again its surface is IM midus for a second we are back in Constantinople now and out of the Pearly depths of The Shield forms our own apartment in the

Hotel there are our papers and books on the bureau my friend’s traveling hat in a corner her ribbons hanging on the glass and lying on the bed the very dress she had changed when starting out on her Expedition no detail was lacking to make the identification complete and

As if to prove that we were not seeing something conjured up in our own imagination there lay upon the dressing table to unopened letters the handwriting on which was clearly recognized by my friend they were from a very dear relative of hers from whom she had

Expected to hear when in Athens but had been disappointed the scene faded away and we now saw her brother’s room with himself lying upon the lounge and a servant bathing his head whence to our horror blood was trickling we had left the boy in perfect health but an hour

Before and upon seeing this picture my companion uttered a cry of alarm and seizing me by the hand dragged me to the door we rejoined our guide and friends in the long hul and hurried back to the hotel young H had fallen down the stairs and cut his forehead rather badly in our

Room on the dressing table were the two letters which had arrived in our absence they had been forwarded from Athens ordering a carriage I at once drove to the Ministry of Finance and a lighting with the guide hurriedly made for the ditch I had seen for the first time in The Shining

Disc in the middle of the pool badly mangled half famished but still alive lay my beautiful Spaniel and near him were the blinking curs unconcernedly snapping at the Flies end of section 4 section five of nightmare Tales by Helena P blavatsky this LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by Ben

Tucker from The Polar lands A Christmas Story just a year ago during the Christmas holidays a numerous Society had gathered in the country house or rather the old hereditary castle of a wealthy land owner in Finland many were the remains in it of our forefathers hospitable way of living and many the

Medieval Customs preserved founded on traditions and superstitions semi-finish and semi- Russian the latter imported into it by its female Proprietors from the shores of the Nava Christmas trees were being prepared and implements for divination were being made ready for in that old castle there were Grim worm eaten portraits of famous

Ancestors and knights and ladies old deserted turrets with bastions and Gothic Windows mysterious somber alleys and dark endless Cellar easily transformed into Subterranean passages and caves ghostly prison cells haunted by the Restless Phantoms of the heroes of local Legends in short the old Manor offered every commodity for romantic Horrors but

Alas this once they served for not in the present narrative these dear old Horrors Play No Such part as they otherwise might its Chief hero is a very commonplace praic man let us call him kler yes Dr kler professor of medicine half German through his father a full-blown Russian on his mother’s side

And by education and one who looked a rather heavily built and ordinary mortal nevertheless very extraordinary things happened with him ker as it turned out was a great traveler who by his own choice had accompanied one of the most famous explorers on his journey around the world more than once they had both

Seen death face to face from sunstrokes under the tropics from cold in the polar regions all this notwithstanding the doctor spoke with a never abating enthusiasm about their wintering in Greenland and Nova Zima and above the desert Plains in Australia where he lunched off a kangaroo and dined off an

Emu and almost perished of thirst during The Passage through a waterless track which it took them 40 hours to cross yes he used to remark I’ve experienced almost everything save what you would describe as Supernatural this of course if we throw out of account a certain extraordinary

Event in my life a man I met of whom I will tell you just now and it’s indeed rather strange I may add quite inexplicable results there was a loud demand that he should explain himself and the doctor forced to yeld began his narrative in 1878 we were compelled to

Winter on the Northwestern coast of spitsbergen we had been attempting to find our way during the short summer to the pole but as usual the attempt had proved a failure owing to the icebergs and after several such fruitless Endeavors we had to give it up no sooner

Had we settled than the polar night descended upon us our Steamers got wedged in and Frozen between the blocks of ice in the Gulf of muscle and we found ourselves cut off for eight long months from the rest of the Living World I confess I for one felt it terribly at

First we became especially discouraged when one stormy night the snow hurricane scattered a mass of materials prepared for our winter buildings and deprived us of over 40 Deer from our herd starvation and Prospect is no incentive to Good Humor and with the deer we had lost the best plot de resistance against polar

Frosts human organisms demanding in that climate an increase of heating in solid food however we were finally reconciled to our loss and even got accustomed to the local and in reality more nutritious food seals and seal grease our men from the remnants of our lumber built a house neatly divided into

Two compartments one for our three professors and myself and the other for themselves and a few wooden sheds being constructed for meteorological astronomical and magnetic purposes we even added a protecting staple for the few remaining deer and then began the monotonous series of dawnless nights and days hardly distinguishable one from the

Other except through dark gray Shadows at time the blues we got into were fearful we had contemplated sending two of our three Steamers home in September but the premature and unforseen formation of ice walls round them had thwarted our plans and now with the entire cruise on our hands we had to

Economize still more with our meager Provisions Fuel and light lamps were used only for scientific purposes the rest of the time we had to content ourselves with God’s light the moon and the Aurora Borealis but how describe these glorious incomparable Northern Lights Rings arrows gigantic conflagrations of accurately divided

Rays of the most Vivid and varied colors the November Moonlight nights were as gorgeous the play of Moonbeams on the snow and the Frozen rocks was most striking these were fairy Knights well one such night night it may have been one such day for all I know as from

The end of November to about the middle of March we had no Twilights at all to distinguish the one from the other we suddenly aspired in the play of colored beams which were then throwing a golden Rosy Hue on the snow Plains a dark moving

Spot it grew and seemed to scatter as it approached nearer to us what did this mean it looked like a herd of cattle or a group of living men trotting over the snowy wilderness but animals there were white like everything else what then was this human

Beings we could not believe our eyes yes a group of men was approaching our dwelling it turned out to be about 50 seal hunters Guided by matelis a well-known veteran Mariner from Norway they had been caught by the icebergs just as we had how did you know that we

Were here we asked old Yan this very same old party showed us the way they answered pointing to a ven venerable looking old man with Snow White locks in Sober Truth it would have besed their guide far better to have sat at home over his fire than to have been

Seal hunting in polar lands with younger men and we told them so still wondering how he came to learn of our presence in this Kingdom of white bears at this matus and his companions smiled assuring us that old Yan knew all they remarked that we must be novices in polar

Borderlands since we were ignorant of Johan’s personality and could still wonder at anything said of him it is n 45 years said the chief hunter that I have been catching seals in the polar seas and as far as my personal remembrance goes I have always known him

And just as he is now an old white bearded man and so far back as in the days when I used to go to sea as a small boy with my father my dad used to tell me the same of old Johan and he added that his own father and grandfather too

Had known Johan in their days of Boyhood none of them having ever seen him otherwise than white as our snows and as our forefathers nicknamed him the whired all knower thus do we the seal hunters call him to this day would you make us believe he is 200 years old we laughed

Some of our Sailors crowding round the white-haired phenomenon ped him with questions grandfather answer us how old are you I really do not know it myself sunnes I live as long as God has decreed me to as to my years I never counted them and how did you know grandfather that we

Were wintering in this place God guided me how I learned it I do not know save that I knew it I knew it end of Section Five Section six of nightmare Tales by Helena paty this lib recordings in the public domain read by Ben Tucker the insold violin

One in the year 1828 an old German a music teacher came to Paris with his pupil and settled unostentatiously in one of the quiet faux bour of the Metropolis the first rejoiced in the name of Samuel klus the second answered to the more poetical appellation of fron

Stino the younger man was a violinist gifted as rumor went with extraordinary almost miraculous Talent yet as he was poor and had not hither to made a name for himself in Europe he remained for several years in the capital of France the heart and pulse of capricious Continental fashion unknown and

Unappreciated fron was a steran by birth and at the time of the event to be presently described he was a young man considerably under 30 a philosopher and a dreamer by Nature imbued with all the Mystic Oddities of true genius he reminded one of some of the heroes in Hoffman’s K

Fantasti his earlier existence had been a very unusual in fact quite an eccentric one and its history must be briefly told for the better understanding of the present story born of a very Pious country people in a quiet Berg among steran Alps nursed by the native gnomes who watched over his

Cradle growing up in the weird atmosphere of the ghouls and vamp Empires who play such a prominent part in the household of every steran and slavonian in southern Austria educated later as a student in the shadow of the old renish castles of Germany France from his childhood had

Passed through every emotional stage on the plane of the so-called Supernatural he had also studied at one time the occult Arts with an enthusiastic disciple of paracelsus and kunrath Alchemy had few theoretical secrets for him and he had dabbled in ceremonial magic and sorcery with some Hungarian

Zigon yet he loved Above All Else music and above music his violin at the age of 22 he suddenly gave up his practical studies in the occult and from that day though as devoted as ever in thought to the beautiful Grecian Gods he surrendered himself entirely to his

Art of his classic studies he had retained only that which related to the muses utepia especially at whose altar he worshiped and Orphus whose magic liar he tried to emulate with his violin except his dreamy belief in the nymphs and the sirens on account probably of the double relationship of the latter to

The muses through kopy and orus he was interested but little in the matters of this subliner world all his aspirations mounted like incense with the wave of the Heavenly Harmony that he drew from his instrument to a higher and nobler sphere he dreamed awake and lived a real though unenchanted life only during

Those hours when his his magic bow carried him along the wave of sound to the Pagan Olympus to the feet of uty a strange child he had ever been in his own home where Tales of magic and Witchcraft grow out of every inch of the soil a still stranger boy he had become

Until finally he had blossomed into manhood without one single characteristic of Youth never had a fair face attracted his attention not for one moment had his thoughts turned from his solitary studies to a life beyond that of a Mystic bohemian content with his own company he had thus

Passed the best years of his Youth and manhood with his violin for his chief Idol and with the gods and goddesses of old Greece for his audience in perfect ignorance of practical life his whole existence had been one long day of dreams of Melody and sunlight and he had never felt any other

Aspirations how useless but oh how glorious those dreams how Vivid and why should he desire any better fate was he not all that he wanted wanted to be transformed in a second of thought into one or Another Hero from orus who held all nature breathless to the urchin who

Piped away under the plain tree to the niads of Cero’s Crystal Fountain did not the Swift footed nymphs Frolic at his beckon call to the sound of The Magic Flute of The Arcadian Shepherd who was himself behold the goddess of love and beauty herself descending from on high

Attracted by the sweet voiced notes of his violin yet there came a time when he preferred sings to Aphrodite not as the fair nymph pursued by pan but after her transformation by the merciful gods and to the Reed out of which the frustrated god of the Shepherds had made his magic

Pipe for also with time ambition grows and is rarely satisfied when he tried to emulate on his violin the enchanting sounds that resounded in his mind the whole of Parnassus kept silent under the spell or joined in Heavenly chorus but the audience he finally craved was

Composed of more than the gods sung by heod verily of the most appreciative melomans of European capitals he felt jealous of the magic pipe and would Fain have had it at his command oh that I could Allure a nymph into my beloved violin he often cried after Awakening from one of his

Daydreams oh that I could only Span in Spirit flight the abyss of time oh that I could find myself for one short day a partaker of the secret Arts of the Gods a god myself in the sight and hearing of enraptured humanity and Having learned the mystery of the liar of Orpheus or

Secured within my violin a siren thereby benefit Mortals to my own Glory thus having for long years dreamed in the company of the Gods of his fancy he now took to dreaming of the transitory glories of Fame upon this Earth but at this time he was suddenly

Called home by his widowed mother from one of the German universities where he had lived for the last year or two this was an event which brought his plans to an end at least so far as the immediate future was concerned for he had hither to drawn upon her alone for his meager

Pittance and his means were not sufficient for an independent life outside his native place his return had a very unexpected result his mother whose only love he was on Earth died soon after she had welcomed her Benjamin back and the good wives of the Berg exercised their Swift

Tongues for many a month after as to the real causes of that death fro before Fran’s return was a healthy buom middle-aged body strong and Hearty she was a Pious and a God-fearing Soul too who had never failed in saying her prayers nor had missed an early mass for years during his

Absence on the first Sunday after her son had settled at home a day that she had been longing for and had anticipated for months in joyous Visions in which she saw him kneeling by her side in the little Church on the Hill she called him

From the foot of the stairs the hour had come when her Pious dream was to be realized and she was waiting for him carefully wiping the dust from the prayer book he had used in his Boyhood but instead of fronds it was his violin that responded to her call mixing

Its sonorous voice with the rather cracked tones of the peel of the merry Sunday Bells the fond mother was somewhat shocked at hearing the prayer inspiring sounds drowned by the weird fantastic notes of the dance of the witches they seemed to her so unearthly and mocking but she almost fainted upon

Hearing the definite refusal of her wellbeloved son to go to church he never went to church he coolly remarked it was loss of time besides which the loud peels of the old church organ Jarred on his nerves nothing should induce him to submit to the torture of listening to

That cracked organ he was firm and nothing could move him to her supplications and remonstrances he put an end by offering to play for her a hymn to the son he had just composed from that memorable Sunday morning fral stino lost her usual Serenity of mind

She hastened to lay her sorrows and seek for consolation at the foot of the confessional but that which she heard in response from the stern priest filled her gentle and unsophisticated soul with dismay and almost with despair a feeling of fear a sense of profound Terror which

Soon became a chronic state with her pursued her from that moment her nights became Disturbed and Sleepless her days passed in prayer and Lamentations in her maternal anxiety for the Salvation of her beloved son’s soul and for his postmortem welfare she made a series of rash vows finding that

Neither the Latin petition to the mother of God written for her by her spiritual adviser nor yet the humble supplications in German addressed by herself to every saint she had reason to believe was residing in Paradise worked the desired effect she took to pilgrimages to distant shrines during one of the these Journeys

To a holy Chapel situated high up in the mountains she caught cold amidst the glaciers of the tyru and redescending result the poor woman was now given an opportunity of seeking out in propria Persona the Saints she had believed in so well and of pleading face

To face for the recreant son who refused adherence to them and to the church scoffed at Monk and confessional and held the organ in such horror fron sincerely lamented his mother’s death unaware of being the indirect cause of it he felt No Remorse but selling the modest household

Goods and chatles light and Pur and heart he resolved to travel on foot for a year or two before settling down to any definite profession a hazy desire to see the great cities of Europe and to try his luck in France lurked at the bottom of this traveling project but his Bohemian

Habits of life were too strong to be abruptly abandoned he placed his small Capital with a banker for a rainy day and started on his pedestrian Journey via Germany and Austria his violin paid for his board and lodging in the ins and farms on his

Way and he passed his days in the green fields and in the solemn silent woods face to face with nature dreaming all the time as usual with his eyes open during the three months of his Pleasant travels to and fro he never descended for one moment from Parnassus but

As an alchemist transmutes lead into gold so he transformed everything on his way into a song of heod or anacreon every evening while fiddling for his supper in bed whether on a green lawn or in the Hall of a Rustic Inn his fancy changed the whole scene for him

Village swains and maidens became transfigured into Arcadian Shepherds and nymphs the sand covered floor was now a green sword the UNC couple spinning round in a measured Waltz with the wild Grace of tamed Bears became priests and priestesses of terpsicore the bulky cherry cheeked and blue-eyed Daughters of rural Germany were the Hesperides

Circling around the trees Laden with the golden apples nor did the melodious strains of The Arcadian demigods piping on their serines and audible but to his own Enchanted ear vanish with the dawn for no sooner was the curtain of sleep raised from his eyes then he would Sally

Forth into a new magic realm of Daydreams on his way to some dark and solemn Pine Forest he played incessantly to himself and to everything else he fiddled to the Green Hill and forth with the mountain and the moss covered rocks moved forward to hear him the better as

They had done at the sound of the orian liar he fiddled to the merry voiced Brook to the hurrying River and both slackened their speed and stopped their waves and becoming silent seemed to listen to him in an entranced Rapture even the long-legged stor who stood meditatively on one leg on the thatched

Top of The Rustic Mill Gravely resolving unto himself the problem of his too long existence sent out after him a long and strident cry screeching art thou Orpheus himself otino it was a period of full Bliss of a daily and almost hourly exaltation the last words of his dying

Mother whispering to him of the horrors of Eternal condemnation had left him unaffected and the only vision of her warning evoked in him was that of Pluto by a ready Association of ideas he saw the lord of the dark nether Kingdom greeting him as he had greeted the

Husband of Uris before him Charmed with the magic sounds of his violin the will of ixion was at a standstill once more thus affording relief to The Wretched Seducer of Juno and giving the lie to those who claim Eternity for the duration of the punishment of condemned Sinners he perceived tentalus forgetting

His never ceasing thirst and smacking his lips as he drank in the heaven-born melody the stone of Copus becoming motionless the furies that themselves smiling on him and The Sovereign of the gloomy regions delighted and awarding preference to his violin over the liar of Orphus ticken Aero mythology thus

Seems a decided antidote to fear in the face of theological threats especially when strengthened with an insane and passionate love of music with France ay proved always victorious in every contest I even with hell itself but there is an end to everything and very soon France had to get up

Uninterrupted dreaming he had reached the university town where dwelt his Old Violin teacher Samuel klous when this Antiquated musician found that his beloved and favorite pupil fron had been left poor in purse and still poorer in Earthly affections he felt his strong attachment to the boy awaken with

Tenfold Force he took fronds to his heart and forth with adopted him as his son the old teacher reminded people of one of those grotesque figures which look as if they had just stepped out of some medieval panel and yet clouse with his fantastic Allure of a night Goblin

Had the most loving heart as tender as that of a woman and the self-sacrificing nature of an old Christian martyr when fron had briefly narrated to him the history of his last few years the professor took him by the hand and leading him into his study simply said

Stop with me and put an end to your Bohemian life make yourself famous I am old and childless and will be your father let us live together and forget all SA name and forth with he offered to proceed with fron to Paris via several large German cities where they would

Stop to give concerts in a few days klouse succeeded in making fron forget his vagrant life and his artistic Independence and reawakened in his pupil his now dormant ambition and desire for worldly Fame hither to since his mother’s death he had been content to receive Applause only from the gods and

Goddesses who inhabited his Vivid fancy now he began to Crave once more for the admiration of mortal under the clever and careful training of old clouse his remarkable Talent gained in strength and Powerful charm with every day and his reputation grew and expanded with every city in town wherein

He made himself heard his ambition was being rapidly realized the presiding geni of various musical centers to whose patronage his talent was submitted soon proclaimed him the one violinist of the day and the public declared loudly that he stood unrivaled by anyone whom they had ever heard these laudations very

Soon made both master and pupil completely lose their heads but Paris was less ready with such appreciation Paris makes reputations for itself and will take none on faith they had been living in it for almost 3 years and were still climbing with difficulty the artist Calvary when an event occurred

Which put an end even to their most modest expectations the first arrival of Nicolo Paganini was suddenly heralded and threw luticia into a convulsion of expectation the UN paralleled artist arrived and all Paris fell at once at his feet two now it is a well-known fact that a

Superstition born in the dark days of medieval Superstition and surviving almost to the middle of the present Century attributed all such abnormal outof theeway Talent as that of Paganini to Supernatural agency every great and marvelous artist had been accused in his day of dealings with the devil a few instances will

Suffice to refresh the reader memory tartini the great composer and violinist of the 17th century was denounced as one who got his best Inspirations from the evil one with whom he was it was said in regular League this accusation was of course due to the almost magical impression he produced upon his

Audiences his inspired performance on the violin secured for him in his native country the title of Master of Nations the sonat also called tartini’s dream as everyone who has heard it will be ready to test ify is the most weird Melody ever heard or invented hence the marvelous composition has become the

Source of endless Legends nor were they entirely baseless since it was he himself who was shown to have originated them tartini confessed to have written it on awakening from a dream in which he had heard his Sonata performed by Satan for his benefit and in consequence of a bargain made with his infernal

Majesty several famous singers even whose exceptional voices struck the hearers with superstitious admiration have not escaped a like accusation pasta’s Splendid voice was attributed in her day to the fact that 3 months before her birth the Diva’s mother was carried during a trance to heaven and there treated to a vocal

Concert of seraps malabon was indebted for her voice to St Cecilia While others said she owed it to a demon who watched over her cradle and sung the baby to sleep finally Paganini the unrivaled performer the mean Italian who like dren’s Jubal striking on the corded shell forced the throngs that followed

Him to worship the Divine sounds produced and made people say that less than a God could not dwell within the hollow of his violin Paganini left a legend too the almost Supernatural art of the greatest violin player that the world has ever known was often speculated upon never understood the

Effect produced by him on his audience was literally marvelous overpowering the great rosini is said to have wept like a Sentimental German Maiden on hearing him play for the first time the princess Elisa of Luca a sister of the great Napoleon in whose service Paganini was as director of her private Orchestra for

A long time was unable to hear him play without fainting in women he produced nervous fits and hysterics at his will stout-hearted men he drove to frenzy he changed cowards into Heroes and made the bravest soldiers feel like so many nervous school girls is it to be wondered at then that

Hundreds of weird Tales circulated for long years about and around the mysterious genoise that modern orus of Europe one of these was especially ghastly it was rumored and was believed by more people than would probably like to confess it that the strings of his violin were made of human intestines

According to all the rules and requirements of the black art exaggerated as this idea may seem to some it has nothing impossible in it and it is more than probable that it was this legend that led to the extraordinary events which we are about to narrate human organs are often used

By the Eastern black magician soall and it is an AED fact that some Bengali tantricas reciters of tantas or invocations to the demon as a reverend writer has described them use human corpses and certain internal and external organs pertaining to them as powerful magical agents for bad

Purposes however this may be now that the magnetic and mesmeric potencies of hypnotism are recorded as facts by most Physicians it may be suggested with less danger than her too for that the extraordinary effects of paganini’s violin playing were not perhaps entirely due to his talent and

Genius the Wonder and awe he so easily excited were as much caused by his external appearance which had something weird and demoniacal in it according to certain of his biographers as by the inexpressible charm of his execution and his remarkable mechanical skill the latter is demonstrated by his perfect imitation

Of the flet and his performance of long and magnificent Melodies on the G string alone in this performance which many an artist has tried to copy without success he remains unrivaled to this day it is owing to this remarkable appearance of his termed by his friends eccentric and by his two nervous victims

Diabolical that he experienced great difficulties in refuting certain ugly rumors these were credited far more easily in his day than they would be now it was whispered throughout Italy and even in his own native town that Paganini had murdered his wife and later on a mistress both of whom he had loved

Passionately and both of whom he had not hesitated to sacrifice to his fish ambition he had made himself proficient in Magic Arts it was asserted and had succeeded thereby in imprisoning The Souls of his two victims in his violin his famous Crona it is maintained by the immediate

Friends of Ernst tww Hoffman the celebrated author of d alexar T Mr Martin and other charming and mystical Tales the councelor crespel and the violin of Crona was taken from the legend about Paganini it is as all who have read it know the history of a celebrated violin

To which the voice and soul of a famous Diva a woman whom crespel had loved and killed had passed and to which was added the voice of his beloved daughter Antonia nor was this Superstition utterly ungrounded nor was Hoffman to be blamed for adopting it after he had heard paganini’s

Playing the extraordinary facility with which the artist drew out of his instrument not only the most unearthly sounds but positively human voices Justified the suspicion such effects might well have startled an audience and thrown Terror into many a nervous heart add to this the impenetrable mystery connected with a certain period of

Paganini’s Youth and the most wild tales about him must be found in a measure justifiable and even excusable especially among a nation whose ancestors knew the bouras and the michis of black art Fame three in those pre- telegraphic days newspapers were limited and the wings of

Fame had a heavier flight than they have now France had hardly heard of Paganini and when he did he swore he would rival if not eclipse the genoise magician yes he would either become the most famous of all living violinists or he would break his instrument and put an end to

His life at the same time old klouse rejoiced at such a determination he rubbed his hands in Glee and jumping about on his lame leg like a crippled Sater he flattered and incensed his pupil believing himself all the while to be performing a sacred duty to the holy and Majestic cause of

Art upon first setting foot in Paris 3 years before frons had all but failed musical critics pronounced him a rising star but had all agreed that he required a few more years practice before he could hope to carry his audiences by storm therefore after a desperate study of over two years and uninterrupted

Preparations the steran artist had finally made himself ready for his first serious appearance in the Great opera house where a public concert before the most exacting critics of the old world was to be held at this critical moment paganini’s arrival in the European Metropolis placed an obstacle in the way

Of the realization of his hopes and the old German Professor wisely postponed his pupil’s debut at first he had simply smiled at the wild enthusiasm the laudatory hymns sung about the genoise violinist and the almost superstitious awe with which his name was pronounced but very soon paganini’s name became a

Burning iron in the hearts of both the artists and a threatening Phantom in the mind of Claus a few days more and they shuddered at the very mention of their great rival whose success became with every night more unprecedented the first series of concerts was over but neither clouse nor

France had as yet had an opportunity of hearing him and of judging for themselves so great and so beyond their means was the charge for admission and so small the hope of getting a free pass from a brother artist justly regarded as the meanest of men in monetary

Transactions that they had to wait for a chance as did so many others but the day came when neither Master nor pupil could control their impatience any longer so they pawned their watches and with the proceeds bought two modest seats who can describe the enthusiasm the triumphs of this

Famous and at the same time fatal night the audience was frantic men wept and women screamed and faint Ed while both Claus and stino sat looking paler than two ghosts at the first touch of paganini’s magic bow both fron and Samuel felt as if the icy Hand of Death

Had touched them Carried Away by an irresistible enthusiasm which turned into a violent unearthly mental torture they dared neither look into each other’s faces nor exchange one word during the whole performance at midnight while the chosen delegates of the musical societies and the conservatory of Paris unhitched the

Horses and dragged Carriage of the grand artist home in Triumph the two Germans returned to their modest lodging and it was a pitiful sight to see them moreful and desperate they placed themselves in their usual seats at the fire corner and neither for a while opened his mouth Samuel at last exclaimed France

Pale as death itself Samuel it remains for us now but to die do you hear me we are worthless we were too mad men to have ever hoped that anyone in this world would ever rival him the name of Paganini stuck in his throat as in utter despair he fell into

His armchair the old professor’s wrinkles suddenly became purple his little greenish eyes gleamed phosphorescent as bending toward his pupil he whispered to him inoar and broken tones nine nine Thou Art wrong my friends I have taught thee and thou Hast learn all of the great art that a simple

Mortal and a Christian by baptism can learn from another simple mortal am I to blame because these accursed Italians in order to reign unequaled in the domain of art have recourse to Satan and the Diabolical effects of black magic fron turned his eyes upon his old Master there was a Sinister light

Burning in those glittering orbs a light telling plainly that to secure such a power he too would not scruple to sell himself body and soul to the evil one but he said not a word and turning his eyes from his old Master’s face gazed dreamily at the dying Embers the same

Long forgotten incoherent dreams which after seeming such realities to him in his younger days had been given up entirely and had gradually faded from his mind now crowded back into it with the same force and vividness as of old the grimacing Shadows of ixion Copus and Tantalus resurrected and stood before

Him saying what matters hell in which thou believest not and even if hell there be it is the hell described by the old Greeks not that of the modern bigots a locality full of conscious Shadows to whom thou canst be a second Orphus fron felt that he was going mad

And turning instinctively he looked his old Master once more right in the face then his bloodshot eye evaded The Gaze of klous whether Samuel understood the terrible state of mind of his pupil or whether he wanted to draw him out to make him speak and thus to divert his

Thoughts must remain as hypothetical to the reader as it is to the writer whatever may have been in his mind the German Enthusiast went on speaking with a feigned calmness France my dear boy I tell you that the art of the accursed Italian is not natural that it is due neither to

Study nor to genius it never was acquired in the usual natural way you need not stare at me in that wild manner for what I say is in the mouth of millions of people listen to what I now tell you and try to understand you have heard the strange tale whispered about

The famous tartini he died One Fine Sabbath night strangled by his familiar demon who had taught him how to endow his violin with a human voice by shutting up in it by means of incantations the soul of a young virgin Paganini did more in order to endow his

Instrument with the faculty of emitting human sounds such as sobs despairing cries supplications moans of love and fury in short the most heart-rending notes of the human voice Paganini became the murderer not only of his wife and his mistress but also of a friend who was more tenderly attached to him than

Any other being on this Earth he then made the four chords of his magic violin out of the intestines of his last victim this is the secret of his enchanting Talent of that overpowering Melody that combination of sounds which you will never be able to master

Unless the old man could not finish the sentence he staggered back before the fish look of his pupil and covered his face with his hands fronze was breathing heavily and his eyes had an expression which reminded clouse of those of a hyena his palor was cadaverous for some

Time he could not speak but only gasped for breath at last he slowly muttered are you in Earnest I am as I hope to help you and and do you really believe that had I only the means of obtaining human intestines for Strings I could rival Paganini ask friends after a moment’s

Pause and casting down his eyes the old German unveiled his face and with a strange look of determination upon it softly answered human intestins alone are not sufficient for our purpose they must have belonged to someone who had loved us well with an unselfish Holy Love tartini endowed his violin with the

Life of a virgin but that virgin had died of unrequited love for him the fish artist had prepared beforehand a tube in which he me managed to catch her last breath as she expired pronouncing his beloved name and he then transferred this breath to his violin as to Paganini

I’ve just told you his tale it was with the consent of his victim though that he murdered him to get possession of his intestines oh for the power of the human voice Samuel went on after a brief pause what can equal the eloquence the magic

Spell of the human voice do you think my poor boy I would not have taught you this great the this final secret were it not that it throws one right into the clutches of him who must remain unnamed at night he added with a sudden return to the superstitions of his youth fron

Did not answer but with a calmness awful to behold he left his place took down his violin from the wall where it was hanging and with one powerful grasp of the cords he tore them out and flung them into the fire Samuel suppressed a cry of horror the cords were hissing

Upon the coals where among the Blazing logs they wriggled and curled like so many living Snakes by The Witches of thessaly and the dark arts of cersi he exclaimed with foaming mouth and his eyes burning like coals by the furies of hell and Pluto himself I now swear in thy presence o

Samuel my master never to touch a violin again until I can string it with four human cords may I be a cursed forever and ever if I do he felt fell senseless on the floor with a deep SOB that ended like a funeral whale Old Samuel lifted

Him up as he would have lifted a child and carried him to his bed then he sallied forth in search of a physician four for several days after this painful scene fron was very ill ill almost Beyond recovery The Physician declared him to be suffering from brain

Fever and said that the worst was to be feared for nine long days the patient remained delirious and CLA who was nursing him night and day with the solicitude of the tenderest mother was horrified at the work of his own hands for the first time since their acquaintance began the old teacher owing

To the wild ravings of his pupil was able to penetrate into the darkest corners of that weird superstitious cold and at the same time passionate nature and he trembled at what he discovered for he saw that which he had failed to perceive before frond as he was in

Reality and not as he seemed to superficial IAL observers music was the life of the young man and agulation was the air he breathed without which that life became a burden from the chords of his violin alone stenio drew his life and being but the Applause of men and even of gods was

Necessary to its support he saw unveiled before his eyes a genuine artistic Earthly Soul with its Divine counterpart totally absent a son of the muses all fancy in brain poetry but without a heart while listening to the ravings of that delirious and unhinged fancy klouse

Felt as if he were for the first time in his long life exploring a marvelous and untraveled region a human nature not of this world but of some incomplete Planet he saw all of this and shuddered more than once he asked himself whether it would not be doing a kindness to his boy

To let him die before he returned to Consciousness but he loved his pupil too well to dwell for long on such an idea fron had Bewitched his truly artistic nature and now old klouse felt as though their two lives were inseparably linked together that he could thus feel was a

Revelation to the old man so he decided to save fron even at the expense of his own old and as he thought useless life the seventh day of the illness brought on a most terrible crisis for 24 hours the patient never closed his eyes nor remained for a moment silent he

Raved continuously during the whole time his Visions were peculiar and he minutely described each fantastic ghastly figures kept slowly swimming out of the penumbra of his small dark room in regular and uninterrupted procession and he greeted each by name as he might greet old acquaintances he referred to

Himself as Prometheus bound to the Rock by four bands made of human intestines at the foot of the Caucasian Mount the black Waters of the river sticks were running they had deserted Arcadia and were now endeavoring to encircle within a seven-fold Embrace The Rock upon which he was

Suffering what’s thou know the name of the Promethean Rock old man he roared into his adopted father’s ear listen then its name is called Samuel clous yes yes the German murmured disconsolately it is I who killed him while seeking to console the news of paganini’s magic Arts struck his fancy

Too vividly oh my poor poor boy the patient broke into a loud and Discord laugh I poor old man sayest thou so so Thou Art of poor stuff anyhow and whats look well only when stretched Upon A Fine cromona violin CLA shuddered but said nothing he

Only bent over the poor maniac and with a kiss upon his brow a caress as tender and as gentle as that of a doting mother he left the sick room for a few instants to seek relief in his own Garrett when he returned the ravings were following another Channel fron was

Singing trying to imitate the sounds of a violin toward the evening of that day the delirium of the sick man became perfectly ghastly he saw spirits of fire clutching at his violin their skeleton hands from each finger of which grew a flaming claw beckoned to Old Samuel they

Approached and surrounded the old master and were preparing to rip him open him the only man on this Earth who loves me with an unselfish Holy Love and whose intestines can be of any good at all he went on whispering with glaring eyes and Demon laugh by the next morning however

The fever had disappeared and by the end of the 9th day stino had left his bed having no recollection of his illness and no suspicion that he had allowed clouse to read his inner thought nay had he himself any knowledge that such a horrible idea as the sacrifice of his

Old Master to his ambition had ever entered his mind hardly the only immediate result of his fatal illness was that as by reason of his vow his artistic passion could find no issue another passion awoke which might Avail to feed his ambition and his insatiable fancy he plunged headlong into the study

Of the occult Arts of alchemy and of magic in the practice of Magic the young dreamer sought to stifle the voice of his passionate longing for his as he thought forever lost violin weeks and months passed away and the conversation about Paganini was never resumed between

The master and the pupil but a profound melan had taken possession of fron the two hardly exchanged a word the violin hung mute cordless full of dust in its habitual place it was as the presence of a soulless corpse between them the young man had become gloomy and

Sarcastic even avoiding The Mention Of Music once as his old Professor after long hesitation took out his own violin from its dust covered case and prepared to play fron gave a convulsive shudder but said nothing at the first notes of the bow however he glared like a madman

And rushing out of the house remained for hours wandering in the streets then Old Samuel in his turn threw his instrument down and locked himself up in his room till the following morning one night as France sat looking particularly pale and gloomy Old Samuel suddenly jumped from his seat and after

Hopping about the room in a magpie fashion approached his pupil imprinted A fond kiss upon the young man’s brow and squeaked at the top of his shrill voice is it not time to put an end to all of this whereupon starting from his usual lethargy fron echoed as in a dream yes

It is time to put an end to this upon which the two separated and went to bed on the following morning when fron awoke he was astonished not to see his old teacher in his usual place to greet him but he had greatly altered during the last few months and he had

First paid no attention to his absence unusual as it was he dressed and went into the adjoining room room a little parlor where they had their meals and which separated their two bedrooms the fire had not been lighted since the Embers had died out on the previous

Night and no sign was anywhere visible of the professor’s busy hand in his usual housekeeping duties greatly puzzled but in no way dismayed fronze took his usual place at the corner of the now cold fireplace and fell into an aimless Ry as he stretched himself in his old armchair raising both his hands

To clasp them behind his head in a favorite posture of his his hand came into contact with something on a Shelf at his back he knocked against a case and brought it violently on the ground it was old Claus’s violin case that came down to the floor with such a sudden

Crash that the case opened and the violin fell out of it rolling to the feet of fron and then the cords striking against the brass Fender emitted a sound prolonged sad and mournful as the sigh of an unrestful Soul it seemed to fill the whole room and reverberated in the head and the

Very heart of the young man the effect of that broken violin string was magical Samuel cried stenio with his eyes starting from their sockets and an unknown Terror suddenly taking possession of his whole being Samuel what has happened my good my dear old Master he called out hastening to the

Professor’s little room and throwing the door violently open no one answered all was silent within he staggered back frightened at the sound of his own voice so changed and hoarse it seemed to him at this moment no reply came in response to his call not followed but a dead

Silence that Stillness which in the domain of sounds usually denotes death in the presence of a corpse as in the lugubrious Stillness of a tomb such silence acquires a mysterious power which strikes the sensitive soul with a nameless Terror the little room was dark and frons hastened to open the

Shutters so Samuel was lying on his bed cold stiff and lifeless at the sight of the corpse of him who had loved him so well and had been to him more than a father fron experienced a dreadful revulsion of feeling a terrible shock but the ambition of the fanatical artist

Got the better of the despair of the man and smothered the feelings of the latter in a few seconds a note bearing his own name was conspicuously placed upon a table near the corpse with trembling hand the violinist tore open the envelope and read the following my

Beloved Son France when you read this I shall have made the greatest sacrifice that your best and only friend and teacher could have accomplished for your Fame He Who Loved You Most is now but an inanimate lump of clay of your old teacher there now remains but a CLA of cold organic

Matter I need not prompt you as to what you have to do with it fear not stupid prejudices it is for your future Fame that I have made an offering of my body and you would be guilty of the blackest ingratitude were you now to render useless the

Sacrifice when you shall have replaced the cords upon your violin and these cords a portion of my own self under your touch it will Acquire The Power of that accursed sorcerer all the magic voices of paganini’s instrument you will find therein my voice my sze and groans my song of

Welcome the prayerful sobs of my infinite and sorrow sympathy my love for you and now my frowns fear nobody take your instrument with you and dog the steps of him who filled our lives with bitterness and despair appear in every Arena where hitherto he has reigned without arrival and bravely throw the

Gauntlet of defiance in his face oh fron then only Wilt now hear what a magic power the full notes of unselfish love will issue forth from thy violin per chance with the last caressing Touch of its cords thou Wilt remember that they once formed a portion of thine old

Teacher who now Embraces and blesses thee for the last time Samuel two burning tears sparkled in the eyes of frons but they dried up instantly under the fiery Rush of passionate hope and pride the two orbs of the future magician artist riveted to the ghastly face of the dead man Shone

Like the eyes of a demon our pin refuses to describe that which took place on that day after the legal inquire was over as another note written with the view of satisfying the authori had been prudently provided by The Loving Care of the old teacher the verdict was suicide

From causes unknown after this the coroner and the police retired leaving the bereaved Heir alone in the death room with the remains of that which had once been a living man scarce a fortnight had elapsed from that day a the violin had been dusted and for knew

Stout strings had been stretched upon it fron dared not look at them he tried to play but the bow trimmed LED in his hand like a dagger in the grasp of a novice brigand he then determined not to try again until the portentious Knight should arrive when he should have a

Chance of rivaling Nay of surpassing Paganini the famous violinist had meanwhile left Paris and was giving a series of triumphant concerts at an old Flemish town in Belgium five one night as Paganini surrounded by a crowd of admirers was sitting in the dining room of the hotel at which he was staying a

Visiting card with a few words written on it in pencil was handed to him by a young man with wild and staring eyes fixing upon the Intruder a look which few persons could bear but receiving back a glance as calm and determined as his own Paganini slightly

Bowed and then dry said sir it shall be as you desire name the Knight I am at your service on the following morning the whole town was startled by the appearance of bills posted at the corner of every street and bearing the strange notice on the night of blank at the

Grand Theater of blank and for the first time will appear before the public fron stino a German violinist arrived purportedly to throw down the gauntlet to the world famous Paganini and to challenge him to a duel upon their violins he purposes to compete with the great virtuoso in the execution of the

Most difficult of his compositions the famous Paganini has accepted the challenge France sto will play in competition with the unrivaled violinist the celebrated fantasy Caprice of the latter known as The Witches the effect of the notice was magical Paganini who amid his greatest triumphs never lost sight of a

Profitable speculation doubled the usual price of admission but still the theater could not hold the crowds that flocked to secure tickets for that memorable performance at last the morning of the concert day dawned and the duel was in everyone’s mouth France stino who instead of sleeping had passed the whole

Long hours of the preceding midnight in walking up and down in his room like an encaged Panther had toward morning fallen on his bed from Mere physical exhaustion gradually he passed into a deathlike and dreamless Slumber at the gloomy winter Dawn he awoke but finding it too early to rise he fell asleep

Again and then he had a vivid dream so vivid indeed so lifelike that from its terrible realism he felt sure that it was a vision rather than a dream he had left his violin on a table by his bedside locked in its case the key of

Which never left him since he had strung it with those terrible cords he never let it out of his sight for a moment in accordance with his resolution he had not touched it since his first trial and his bow had never but once touched the human strings for he had since always

Practiced on another instrument but now in his sleep he saw himself looking at the locked case something in it was attracting his attention and he found himself incapable of detaching his eyes from it suddenly he saw saw the upper part of the case slowly rising and within the thus produced he

Perceived two small phosphorescent green eyes eyes but too familiar to him fixing themselves on his lovingly almost beseechingly then a thin shrill voice as if issuing from these ghastly orbs the voice in orbs of Samuel Claus himself resounded in stino’s horrified ear and he heard it say France my beloved boy FR

I cannot no I cannot separate myself from them and they twanged pitously inside the case Fran stood speechless horror bound he felt his blood actually freezing and his hair moving and standing erect on his head it’s but a dream an empty dream he attempted to formulate in his

Mind I have tried my best frin I have I have tried my best to sever myself from these accursed strings without pulling them to Pieces pleaded the same shrill familiar voice wilt thou help me to do so another twing still more prolonged and dismal resounded within the case now

Dragged about the table in every direction by some interior power like some living wriggling thing the tangs becoming sharper and more jerky with every new pull it was not for the first time that stino heard those sounds he had often remarked them before indeed ever since

He had used his master’s viscera as a foot stol for his own ambition but on every occasion a feeling of creeping horror had prevented him from investigating their cause and he had tried to assure himself that the sounds were only a hallucination but now he stood face to face with the terrible

Fact whether in dream or in reality he knew not nor did he care since the hallucination if hallucination it were was far more real and Vivid than any reality he tried to speak to take a step forward but as often happens in nightmares he could neither utter a word

Nor move a finger he felt hopelessly paralyzed the pulls and jerks were becoming more desperate with each moment and at last something inside the case snapped violently the vision of his Stratovarius devoid of its magical strings flashed before his eyes throwing him into a cold sweat of mute and

Unspeakable Terror he made a superhuman effort to rid himself of the incubus that held him Spellbound but as the last supplicating Whisper Of The Invisible Presence repeated do oh do help me to cut myself off fronze sprang to the case with one bound like an enraged tiger

Defending its prey and with one frantic effort breaking the spell leave the violin alone you old fiend from hell he cried in horse and trembling tones he violently shut down the self-raising lid and while firmly pressing his left hand on it he seized with the right a piece of rosin from the

Table and Drew on the leather covered top the sign of the six-pointed star the seal used by King Solomon to bottle up the rebellious jins inside their prisons a whale like the howl of a She Wolf moaning over her dead little ones came out of the violin case Thou Art

Ungrateful very ungrateful my friends sobbed the blubbering spirit voice but I forgive for I still love thee well yet thou canst not shut me in boy behold and instantly a grayish Mist spread over in covered case and table and Rising upward formed itself first into an indistinct shape then it began

Growing and as it grew fron felt himself gradually infolded in cold and damp coils slimy as those of a huge snake he gave a terrible cry and awoke but strangely enough not on his bed but near the table just as he had dreamed pressing the violin case desperately with both his

Hands it was but a dream after all he muttered still terrified but relieved of the load on his heaving breast with a tremendous effort he composed himself and unlocked the case to inspect the violin he found it covered with dust but otherwise sound and in order and he

Suddenly felt himself self as cool and as determined as ever having dusted the instrument he carefully rosined the bow tightened the strings and tuned them he even went so far as to try upon it the first notes of the witches first cautiously and timidly then using his bow boldly and with full

Force the sound of that loud solitary note defiant as the war trumpet of a conqueror sweet and Majestic as the touch of a sarae on his Golden Harp in the fancy of the faithful thrilled through the very soul of fron it revealed to him a hitherto unsuspected

Potency in his bow which ran on in strains that filled the room with the richest swell of Melody unheard by the artist until that night commencing in uninterrupted Legato tones his bow sang to him of Sun bright hope and beauty of moonlit nights when the soft and balmy

Stillness endowed every blade of grass and all things animate and inanimate with a voice and a song of love for a few brief moments it was a torrent of Melody the harmony of which tuned to soft woe was calculated to make mountains weep had there been any in the

Room and to soothe even the inexorable powers of Hell the presence of which was undeniably felt in this modest hotel room suddenly the solemn Legato chant contrary to all laws of Harmony quivered became arpeggios and ended in shrill staccato like the notes of a hyena laugh the same creeping sensation of Terror as

He had before felt came over him and fron threw the bow away he had recognized The Familiar laugh and would have no more of it dressing he locked the bedeviled violin securely in its case and taking it with him to the dining room determined to await quietly the hour of trial

Six the terrible hour of the struggle had come and stun was at his post calm Resolute almost smiling the theater was crowded to Suffocation and there was not even standing room to be got for any amount of hard cash or favoritism the singular challenge had reached every

Quarter to which the post could carry it and gold flowed freely into paganini’s unfathomable Pockets to an extent almost satisfying even to his insit and venol soul it was arranged that Paganini should begin when he appeared upon the stage the thick walls of the theater shook to their foundations with the

Applause that greeted him he began and ended his famous composition the witches amid a storm of Cheers the shouts of public enthusiasm lasted so long that fron began to think his turn would never come when it last Paganini amid the Roaring Applause of a frantic public was

Allowed to retire behind the scenes his eye fell upon Seno who was tuning his violin and he felt amazed at the Serene calmness the air of assurance of the unknown German artist when fron approached the foot lights he was received with icy coldness but for all that he did not feel in the

Least disconcerted he looked very pale but his thin white lips wore a scornful Smile as response to this dumb unwelcome he was sure of his Triumph at the first notes of the Prelude of the witches a thrill of astonishment passed over the audience it was paganini’s touch and it was

Something more some and they were the majority thought that never in his best moments of inspiration had the Italian artist himself in executing that diabolical composition of his exhibited such an extraordinary diabolical power under the pressure of the long muscular fingers of fron the cords shivered like the palpitating intestines of a

Disemboweled victim under the Vivas sector’s knife they moaned melodiously like a dying child the large Blue Eye of the artist fixed with a satanic expression upon the sounding board seemed to summon forth orus himself from the infernal regions rather than the musical notes supposed to be generated in the depths of the

Violin sounds seemed to transform themselves into objective shapes thickly and precipitately Gathering as at the evocation of a mighty magician and to be whirling around him like a host of fantastic infernal figures dancing The Witch’s goat dance in the empty depths of the shadowy background of the stage behind the artist a nameless

Fantasmagoria produced by the concussion of unearthly vibrations seemed to form pictures of Shameless orgies of the voluptuous hyans of a real witch’s Sabbat a collective hallucination took hold of the public panting for breath ghastly and trickling with the icy perspiration of an inexpressible horror they sat Spellbound and unable to break

The spell of the music by the slightest motion they experienced all the illicit innervating Delights of the paradise of Muhammad that come into the disordered fancy of an opium eating musan and felt at the same time the abject Terror the agony of one who struggles against an attack of delirium tremens many ladies

Shrieked aloud others fainted and strong men nashed their teeth in a state of utter helplessness then came the finale thundering uninterrupted Applause delayed its beginning expanding the momentary pause to a duration of almost a quarter of an hour the Bravos were Furious almost hysterical at last when

After a profound and Last Bow sto whose smile was as sardonic as it was triumphant lifted his bow to attack the famous finale his eye fell upon Paganini who who calmly seated in the manager’s box had been behind none in zealous Applause the small and piercing black

Eyes of the genoise artist were riveted to the Strat of varus in the hands of fron but otherwise he seemed quite cool and unconcerned his Rivals face troubled him for one short instant but he regained his self-possession and lifting once more his bow drew the first note then the public enthusiasm reached

Its Acme and soon knew no bounds the listeners heard saw indeed The Witch’s voices resounded in the air and beyond all the other voices One Voice Was Heard discordant and unlike to human sounds it seemed of dogs the bark of wolves the howl the doleful screeching of the

Midnight owl the hiss of snakes the hungry lion roar the sounds of Billows beating on the shore the groan of winds among the leafy wood and burst of thunder from the rending cloud was these all these in one the magic bow was drawing forth its last quivering sounds famous among prodigious

Musical Feats imitating the precipitate Flight of The Witches before bright dawn of the Unholy women saturated with the fumes of their nocturnal saturnalia when a strange thing came to pass on stage without the slightest transition the notes suddenly changed in their aerial flight of Ascension and descent their melody was unexpectedly altered in

Character The Sounds became confused scattered disconnected and then it seemed from the sounding board of the violin came out squeaking jarring tones like those of a street punch screaming at the top of a scile voice art thou satisfied FR my boy have not I gloriously kept my promise the spell was broken though

Still unable to realize the whole situation those who heard the voice and the punchinello like tones were freed as by enchantment from the terrible charm arm under which they had been held loud Roars of laughter mocking exclamations of half anger and half irritation were now heard from every corner of the vast

Theater the musicians and the orchestra with faces still blanched from weird emotion were now seen shaking with laughter and the whole audience Rose like one man from their seats unable yet to solve the Enigma they felt nevertheless too disgusted too disposed to laugh to remain one moment longer in the

Building but suddenly the Sea of moving heads and the Stalls in the pit became once more motionless and stood petrified as though struck by lightning what all saw was terrible enough the handsome though wild face of the young artist suddenly aged and his graceful erect figure bent down as though under the

Weight of years but this was nothing to that which some of the most sensitive clearly perceived France sto’s person was now entirely enveloped in a semi-transparent Mist cloudlike creeping with surp Serpentine motion and gradually tightening around the living form as though ready to engulf him and there were those also who discerned in

This tall and ominous pillar of smoke a clearly defined figure a form showing the unmistakable outlines of a grotesque and grinning but terribly awful looking old man whose viscera were protruding and the ends of the intestines stretched on the violin within this hazy quivering Veil The violinist was then seen driving his

Bow furiously across the human cords with the contortions of a demoniac as we see them represented on medieval Cathedral paintings an Indescribable Panic swept over the audience and breaking now for the last time through the spell which had again bound them motionless every living creature in the theater made one

Mad rush towards the door it was like the sudden Outburst of a dam a human torrent roaring amid a shower of discordant notes idiotic squeakings prolonged and whining moans cacophonous cries of frenzy above which like the detonations of pistol shots was heard the consecutive bursting of the four

Strings stretched upon the soundboard of that Bewitched violin when the theater was emptied of the last man of the audience the terrified manager rushed on the stage in search of the unfortunate performer he was found dead and already stiff behind the foot lights twisted up into the most

Unnatural of postures with the cat guts wound curiously around his neck and his violin shattered into a thousand fragments when it became publicly known that the unfortunate wouldbe rival of Nicolo Paganini had not left a scent to pay for his funeral or his hotel bill the genoes his proverbial meanness notwithstanding

Settled the hotel bill and had poor stino buried at his own expense he claimed however in exchange the fragments of the Stratovarius as a momento of the strange event end of section six end of nightmare Tales by Helena p blavatsky

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