We compared notes, and found we had all, some six or seven of us, had similar nightmares, and proceeded to exchange experiences.
The effect of this upon Miss L.
was curious.
She squirmed upon her chair as if it had suddenly become red-hot and said with much emphasis: “These things should not be discussed, it is most unwholesome.” Out of deference to her feelings we desisted.
But presently up to the open window came another member of our community, a woman who slept in an open-air shelter at some little distance from the house.
We enquired after her health, as usual, and she replied that she was not feeling very well, as she had slept badly, and proceeded to recount the same nightmare as the rest of us.
Later on in the morning, another lady, who had a house a little way down the road, arrived, and she in her turn told of a similar nightmare.
These nightmares continued, on and off for the next few days, to afflict different members of the community.
They were vague and nebulous, and there was nothing we could pitch upon for diagnostic purposes, and we put it down to indigestion caused by the village baker’s version of war bread.
Then one day I had a quarrel with Miss L.
She had conceived a “crush” for me; I have a constitutional repulsion for crushes and give them scant politeness, and she complained bitterly of my lack of responsiveness.
What ever may be the rights and wrongs of the case, I had roused her resentment in good earnest.
That night I was afflicted with the most violent nightmare I have ever had in my life, waking from sleep with the terrible sense of oppression on my chest, as if someone were holding me down, or lying upon me.
I saw distinctly the head of Miss L., reduced to the size of an orange, floating in the air at the foot of my bed, and snapping its teeth at me.
It was the most malignant thing I have ever seen.
Still not attaching any psychic significance to my experiences, and being firmly convinced that the local baker was responsible, I told no one of my dream, thinking it one of those things that are better kept to oneself; but when the members of the community came to talk matters over in the light of subsequent events, we found that two other people had had similar experiences.
A night or two later, however, as it came to bed-time, I was overcome with a sense of impending evil, as if something dangerous were lurking in the bushes around the house threatening attack.
So strong was this sensation that I came down from my room and went all round the house, testing the catches of the windows to make sure that all was secure.
Miss L.
heard me, and called out to know what I was doing.
I told her of my feelings.
“You silly child,” she said, “it is no use latching the windows, the danger is not outside the house but in it.
Go to bed, and be sure and lock your door.” She would give no answer to my questions except to reiterate that I should lock my door.
This was the first night I had slept in that house, previously having been in a cottage on the opposite side of the road.
I did not lock my door because the night was intolerably hot and the room and the window small.
I compromised, however, by putting an enamel slop-pail at a strategic spot in the fairway, trusting that any intruder would fall over it and give the alarm.
Nothing happened, and I slept quietly.
Next morning, however, the storm broke.
Miss L.
and I were peacefully at work in the kitchen when she suddenly caught up a carving-knife and started after me, as mad as a March hare.
The doctrine and practice by which the etheric or astral double separates from the physical body, at will or involuntarily, to act, travel, or encounter other entities on a plane subtler than the physical — remaining tethered to the body by a silver cord, and capable of returning physical injury (bruises, exhaustion) sustained while thus projected. Distinct from linga_sharira (the static doctrine that a subtle form persists as a template) in describing its active operative use, and from shamanic_journey (a trance-journey framed within a shamanic ritual complex, undertaken to return with knowledge, songs, or a recovered soul) in being a Western-esoteric technical practice with its own physiology of cord-attachment and reciprocal wounding.
The narrator's experience of Miss L.'s head floating at the foot of his bed during sleep suggests a form of astral or etheric projection where an entity appears outside its physical body.
The doctrine and practice of one person deliberately inflicting harm on another through trained will, mind-power, or occult technique alone, without physical contact — producing exhaustion, illness, breakdown, or death in the victim; recognised cross-culturally as witchcraft, hexing, or the evil eye, and treated in Western esotericism as a genuine occult hazard requiring diagnosis and defence rather than dismissed as superstition. Distinct from magical_will (the general doctrine that trained volition has causal power, of which this is one malevolent application) and from spirit_conjuration (which subordinates an already-existing summoned spirit, rather than directing the operator's own power at a person).
The passage describes a clear case of one individual (Miss L.) inflicting harm through will and psychic means (nightmares, oppression) culminating in physical violence, fitting the definition of witchcraft or psychic attack.