Mrs. H. Dodd had a strange experience with an Elemental. "Waking up one night many years ago," she tells me, "I saw a tall figure standing by my bedside. It appeared to have a light inside it, and gave the same impression that a hand does when held in front of a candle. I could see the red of the flesh and dark-blue lines of the ribs--the whole was luminous. What the face was like I do not know, as I never got so far, being much too frightened to look. It bent over me, and I hid my head in the bedclothes with fright. When I told my parents about it at breakfast, to my surprise no one laughed at me; why, I do not know, unless the house was haunted and they knew it. My brother said he had seen a tall figure disappear into the wall of his room in the night."
As Mrs. Dodd adds that a near relative of hers died about that time, it is, of course, possible that the phantasm was that of the latter, although from the possibilities of grotesqueness suggested by what she saw of the ghost, as well as from the fact that the house was newly built in a neighbourhood peculiarly favourable to Elementals, I am inclined to assign it to that class of apparitions.
Some months ago I received from the Baroness Von A---- the following account of a haunting experienced by her family:--
"I should be much obliged if you would tell me the meaning of the things witnessed by my grandmother, Lady W----, widow of General Sir B. W----. I must first tell you that she was always a most truthful, sensible and unimaginative woman, that I am quite sure she would not have invented or added to anything she told so often. The story is thus:--
"During the fifties or sixties, she and my grandfather, then Colonel W----, went to stay with some very old friends of theirs, Colonel and Mrs. V----, at their place in the country: I forget the name, but think it was near Worcester. Neither of my grand-parents had ever heard of anything supernatural in connection with the V----'s house, yet my grandmother told me she felt a sense of the most acute discomfort the minute she entered her friends' house. This, however, passed off until, having occasion to go upstairs to her room after dinner to fetch her needlework, she felt it again on crossing the hall. Scarcely had she started to mount the stairs than she distinctly heard footsteps behind her. She stopped, so did they; so, thinking it a trick of imagination, she went on, when the footsteps went on, too. They could not possibly be the echo of hers, as she heard the sound of her own, and the others were quite different, lighter and shorter. They followed her to the door of her bedroom, the door of which she quickly shut and bolted, as she was feeling very frightened, but all the time she felt the footsteps were waiting for her outside. At last she made up her mind to go down again, but scarcely had she emerged from her room and started to go down the corridor, when the footsteps recommenced. Thoroughly frightened, she ran to the drawing-room, never stopping till she was in the midst of her friends, but hearing all the while the light steps flying after her. They stopped only when she entered the drawing-room. On Mrs. V---- remarking on her pale face, my grandmother told her what had happened. Mrs. V---- then announced that the footsteps were a common occurrence, that nearly every one in the house had heard them, and that a thorough investigation had been made without result--there was no explanation. My grandmother heard the footsteps on several other occasions.