J. W. Harris

“ Miss Freer not only heard sounds in the house, where she was less exposed than in the glen, but saw apparitions on four occasions.
The visions that can be inflicted telepathically, i.e. hypnotically, seem to be at first limited to two kinds—first, the vision of the person himself: this hallucination has often been effected by honest experimentalists; secondly, and this is rather matter of inference, a rascal who has hypnotised a person may be unable to get rid of the image of his victim, and transfers the ghost that haunts him to another subject. ”

“ A friend informs the writer that when some years ago he visited a fortune-teller of the Mrs. Piper class in London, he had a cold trickling up his feet, doubtless from hypnotism, to help thought reading.
The tickling of the face is the result of a more or less vain attempt to reach the ear or eye. It will be felt by people driving whose ear and eye would otherwise be affected. People sleeping in an exposed place may suffer more, as the fixed recumbent position makes them obnoxious to attack, as was previously remarked. The hyperaesthesia spreads in a slight degree round the eye. ”

“ 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) ? ”

“ Secondly, speech is addressed to the right ear; the sufferer of course declines attention to it, but this slight, almost automatic effort, yet distracts attention from the left ear, and a communication to that ear is unheard, but perceived as a thought.
To detect speech a very trifling pressure on the ear has to be watched for. In a law court or in society the interest of what is going on knocks the operators out.
A facility for receiving thought transferred makes a person perhaps more susceptible to depression by dull or inferior people, but principle partly cures this. ”

“ If the doctrine of a very light stream of electricity be admitted, the pressure on the ear readily causes raps—there is a slight buzzing sound if the pressure on the ear be relaxed at a distance at first, later there is pain; the flap is from an intermitted pressure. It is a thud if the pressure be more acute, and the pattering, which is almost identical to the effect produced by a drop of water rolling on the inside of a sensitive ear, occurs when there is a double or treble intermission. In some cases where the victim is strong, the consonants can be worked off to his hearing. ”

“ The reason why more audile phenomena are perceived at night is that the percipient is tolerably still. Father H. and other people heard these sounds more when in bed after daylight. If loud clangs, &c., were heard by night by the garrison under Miss Freer's command, it was that the attacking hypnotists did not have the chances they had with Father H. of hypnotising their victims; and here again, where action on the ear and eye is concerned, talking with a friend, or indeed any one, is a great safeguard. The tympanum is stirred, the eye moves—the mere irregularity of the breath is an aid. ”

“ The many people who hear their names called, and find that no death or other striking occurrence coincides in time with this, are perhaps being experimented on by hypnotists, who somehow or other, perhaps by community of feeling, have hit upon the precise moment of a state of subconscious expectation that makes transfer of an actual word easier.
Of course people, friends or others, about the victim are an antidote to influences. The inevitable tendency of pious natures, sensitive people who are indispensable to society, is to self-blame. ”

“ They were doubtless too busy to study the eminent statesman whom she told that he had money transactions with a person called George. [28]
[Footnote 28: Miss Goodrich Freer's "Essays," p. 119.]
Study and inquiry should eradicate the superstition and the fraud called spiritism, and people should be protected against a most dangerous and cowardly form of crime—criminal hypnotism. It enfeebles the mind; and murder is hardly more serious to a man than a marriage that embitters his life, or the loss of a career that is the moral stay of his existence. ”

“ Early rising deprives the operators of the time when they pin their victim best.
A dog's bark, a peahen's cry, above all a bird's song, is a great interruption to hypnotism—silent or by voices. A nightingale will foil the worst attack.
The scoundrels may try and substitute an ugly sound for the song of birds; they cannot affect the sharp, short, and sudden cry of the swallow.
Walking up and down hill is much better than walking on the flat. The air is forced harder through the lungs. Windy weather is a help, and rain, for two reasons: it is an advantage to the victim, and keeps rascals away. ”

“ Of four people whose lives have been destroyed or grievously injured by hypnotism, whose circumstances are known to the writer, three were childless married men (two were unhappily married) , and the fourth case was a bachelor's, a poor young man's.
It may be noted that in the North of Europe, at least half a small class of men were attacked, and the others were more or less connected with these. The most were diplomatists and consuls.
The advantage of society must be referred to a great extent to the stream of thought-transfer from hypnotists being checked and broken up ”

“ The nature of the eye is hardly understood yet; it is quite possible that subconscious pictures pass before us like a cinematograph, enforcing or enforced by our thoughts. It has been remarked that thought is a species of self-hypnotism. Hypnotism may only make these pictures more distinct and modify them by degrees. In the attempt to inflict a picture on the eye, only the dark image of it may be seen. The writer believes that this means failure to affect the mind. Binet and Féré mention the dark after-shadow. ”

“ The extremest direct effect of hypnotism upon the eye, mechanically speaking, is doubtless scarcely more than the shock of thistledown wafted against it by a gentle breeze. It appears to affect the corners of the eye ”

“ A double image is seen, the eye being curiously affected, when for instance the knobs of a chest of drawers appeared through the apparition.
The vision is in the veil or mist of Ibn Khaldoon. Does not this cast a light upon the conceptive and receptive powers of the eye. The conceptive power is shown, as Binet and Féré remark, by the fact that our imagination has done away with the end of a nerve which should be seen at every instant of our lives. Light images may be given by feeble hypnotists of which but the dark reaction can be detected only once in a way. Compare Binet and Féré. ”

“ Pain combined was efficient. The pain is partly by affection of cutaneous nerves—partly by affection of the ear; but no one on the watch would be driven into lunatic acts by it. Of course after exhaustion (and pain makes this easier) the victim may be in a stupefied condition and obey: this is the post-hypnotic state, which will not come off with people who have been instructed against this villainous game. Miss Freer's admirable nerve was doubtless due to the habit of studying phenomena. ”

“ The maid-servants in the attics were often more impressed than the people in the rooms below. This seems due to the construction of the house; the attics are more approachable than the rooms from the staircase. The electricity follows the track of a person far better on a stair than on a ladder, it may be remarked. Thick walls, high window-sills, a commanding position, and a murmuring brook, are great securities against hypnotism, and these would be found in older Scotch castles. ”

“ For nearly fifty years a gentleman was tormented at times, and died and lived sane.
The attack has perhaps been more developed in the last twenty or thirty years, the influence of above-board hypnotism acted upon that practised by criminal scoundrels. A combination possible is, for instance, one rascal showing a faint image of a fiend, and another transmitting a sound like a scratching at a window; this was a failure, the percipient believing that the devil acted under the authority of the Almighty, and had no business with innocent people. ”

“ The cure for this witchcraft is found in science, the criminal law, and the mutual kindness that, derived from Christianity, though often promoted by men whom we can only call God-fearing unbelievers, has grown so much in this century, and more elsewhere even than in Britain. Thousands of poor people perished in the days of old, guiltless victims, whilst some scoundrelly hypnotists went free. In modern times some poor people, bothered by hypnotists, have been sent to lunatic asylums and have fallen victims of the greed, cruelty, and neglect that so often prevail there. ”

“ The young lady who, when an attempt at transferring the sight of a candle to her was made, heard the word candle or something like it, the first letter doubtful, shows that thought transfer is to the ear as well as to the eye, or at least goes over from one to the other ”

“ The fact of the name Ishbel being transferred to the inquirers assembled at Ballechin, may indicate whose was the spirit that should profess to preach to victims. Women are often said to be worse, if evil, than men, and they play this ugly role better.
That rain interrupted the phenomena is another point against the partisans of the supernatural. When after rain the nun was surprised and chased by Miss Freer, it would seem that she intended mischief to some other member of the garrison at B——, or she would have been en rapport with Miss Freer, and aware that she was nearing her. ”

“ Envy, malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness are shown in these attacks upon people, whose lives were useful and whose characters were high. Possibly the hope of profit may be sometimes present;—when this is past and the scoundrels have had their triumph, their persecution is continued, unprofitable though it be; partly to render pursuit more difficult, partly maybe for practice, partly because they have acquired a horrible habit which they cannot get rid of. Du Potet's feeling of pride becomes in the bosom of a blackguard wholly evil. ”

“ The knowledge that such a thing exists would, if it induced one per cent, more care, save many lives. Apparitions of beneficent spirits can be easily accounted for. They are cases of automatic visualisation. Thus the children mentioned in the late Mr. Spurgeon's Life, who went down an underground passage and saw a vision of their dead mother, who stopped them from falling into a well, felt as other children would feel, that they must think of the one person who is always ready to preserve her little children from terror and pain ”

“ The terror is sometimes brought about by two people operating; one producing a terrifying effect, the other intensifying the terror. In attempting to weaken a person to whom speech has been made intelligible at a distance, a sensation would be transferred after the speech, so that he might believe it affected him, and cease jeering at and despising the operator. A man with some knowledge of mesmerism, and living a life with good interests in it, could defy them: such a case has happened. ”

“ One gang, if not both, were connected with Copenhagen; indeed, they may have been the same gang.
If striking haunted house stories are rare, the reason is that, on obvious grounds, gangs of hypnotists are rare also.
The writer believes that Lord Howe's and his sister's courage prompted the attack on them by a gang of hypnotists 120 years ago. [6] Poltergeist disturbances are caused by a single person generally; it is not impossible that in rare cases there is a confederate. ”

“ Their frame of mind is very contrary to the gospel teaching, and to science; but the division of labour is moral as well as material; one man takes the kicks undeservedly, another the halfpence undeservedly. These gentle people can thus be driven into apparently insane acts, if they have fools about them. ”

“ Another element of safety, the purling brook, is here mentioned; all noise is a good antidote; it is perhaps the case that with hypnotism from a distance the hypnotic state is continually waxing and waning, one link, generally a weaker one, succeeding another in the chain of impressions on the temperament. ”

“ An initial starts a word there is some reason to believe. Mr. Osgood Mason dwells upon community of sensation, and it is doubtless this that renders the direction of aim so exact; but when the subject of tickled faces is considered, we shall see that it does not insure complete accuracy, any more than that exists in volley firing, which with inferior shots is more telling than independent firing, and yet is not perfect. ”

“ The art of dismissing obtrusive thoughts and persisting in one's own has to be cultivated by people with the readiest perceptions.
Natural caution and a habit of studying probabilities are great helps against such attackers; but, on the other hand, the man who drinks a glass of wine when he feels low will beat the hypnotist, who will doubtless harm him by causing degeneration. ”

“ Rights of way from the north-west pass north of the house, and there were some empty lodges there; these might afford shelter to the persons of strong hypnotic power who chose to play the ghost. The continuity of the noises at night would be thus facilitated. The house belonged to the grand-nephew of a retired Indian major. It is apparently suggested that the major's relations with a young housekeeper were suspicious. The two and a native Indian servant are buried in the kirkyard at L——; presumably Logierait.
The haunted house is, as was said, at Ballechin in Perthshire ”