Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men | Page 6

The portrait of a so-called Nathan Early, at the beginning of Osgood
Mason's book, has the eyebrows, eyes, and mouth of a much
mesmerised man. The mouth has not become stiffened into a laugh, as
he was of a gentle firm disposition, and the hypnotism probably was
from a distance.
The possessed hypnotist transferred it to his victim, Mrs. Juliette
Burton.
The qualification, "at first," is important; visions are perhaps not easily
transferred to a new subject, but the question of what is good policy for
the rascals may have to be considered. This may limit the experience of
those who have been more seriously victimised than Miss Freer and her
garrison were.
The experiments reported in Mr. Podmore's excellent book, though
invaluable, are probably not exhaustive.
Colonel Meysey Thompson's Reminiscences relate a wonderful
occurrence connected with his father, but it is believed that more
striking matters occurred even than this. To return to the haunted
house.

The cottage to the east of the glen--Ballechin cottage--(there is no
reason for not using the name except that B---- is shorter than Ballechin;
indeed the public and the Perthshire police should combine to clear the
neighbourhood of the gang who have troubled a charming country
house)--was once a place for retreat for nuns. The fact was not known
to Miss Freer and her friends until several visions of nuns had been
seen in the glen.[18]
[Footnote 18: "Haunting of B---- House," p. 136.]
The poor religious women, like the priests, must have been a favourite
prey of the hypnotists.
The writer believes that the late Cardinal Manning approved of
religious ladies residing with their families and carrying on works of
charity, a less wretched life than the usual nun's life often unavoidably
must be. English Catholics have not been subjected to the terrors of a
casa de exercitios such as broke the courage of Mrs. Grahame's spinster
friend.[19] It must have been extremely repulsive to the feelings of a
man like Bishop Guerrero, and doubtless did not continue to exist long
even in remote Chile.
[Footnote 19: Grahame's "Chile."]
But subdued in spirit as they are, the attacks of hypnotists would be
terribly felt by most nuns.
Father H.'s apparition was seen by Miss Langton in a dream or vision.
She recognised him when she met him three months later; he may have
been shadowed by some of the hypnotists for purposes of information;
and the idea that he should be begged to aid in blessing the house and
banning the haunters, may have been a thought transferred by a
hypnotist to Miss Freer, who is liable to thought transfer, and is a good
transferrer herself. Why should not a nun's apparition be transferred as
was Father H.'s (to Miss Langton)?
It appears that valiant resistance can inflict this possession upon
hypnotists as well as the horrors of a hard and disgusting victory do.

Perhaps the Scin-laeca of Bulwer's "Harold," the apparition of Cerdic,
haunted the imaginations of generations of magicians. These were
possibly Celts; only one witch-rune on a Saxon sword was found; that
was in the Isle of Wight. It was, Professor Stephens said, a solitary
instance, as the brave Germans thought magic the art of a coward. The
hypnotism from which all the garrison suffered was a slight hypnotism;
the eyes remained open and people went about behaving almost
normally. Father B. lost his self-control for an instant. Some people
would have to be tricked in a complicated way. Thought
transfer--audible to the person affected alone, or even inaudible but
perceptible like a thought--accounts for the whole of Mrs. Piper's
operations; she might have accomplices who would never be seen
speaking to her, and who would dictate actions, say, to one of the
Pelham or Howard family. These dictated actions, or inchoate plans,
would then be reported by Mrs. Piper writing as George Pelham. What
Mrs. Piper saw or felt or heard would be--at least at stated times--seen
or felt or heard by her fellow conspirators. As in conjuring everything
found was placed beforehand in the desired position. Thus facts
recounted had been induced. The blackguard who spoke to her as
Phinuit was less educated than the one who dictated George Pelham's
communications.
Mrs. Piper's education was rather suited to receive the vulgar Phinuit's,
than the more refined pseudo Pelham's communications. But the
progress from the one stage so revolting to Miss Freer, to the other so
delightful, a sign of increased refinement to Mr. Myers, was hardly
more a change than the turning on a hot tap after a cold water tap into a
basin. The receptacle was the same. But as a strong hypnotist herself,
Mrs. Piper could bring off the Sutton matter; she could easily give Mrs.
Sutton visual hallucinations. The startling position taken up by Mr.
Myers