Celts are notoriously susceptible to psychic influences, and are always the first to be affected by them.
It will be observed that the babies went down first under the attack, their resistance being low compared to that of an adult; and then the most sensitive of the adults was affected, the Irish Celt.
On several occasions the sound was heard of a cart and horse coming up the drive, but when the maid went to the door to open it, there was nothing to be seen.
Soon the ghost became even more energetic, and took to shoveling the coal from side to side of an outhouse.
It would shift several tons of coal in this way in a night, the occupants of the house lying shivering in their beds while lumps of coal thudded and rumbled’ against the sides of the bunkers.
As to why or wherefore this particular manifestation should take place, I can offer no suggestion.
On several occasions different people saw a strange man crossing the hall, and immediately afterwards children were taken ill.
Finally, in addition to all other troubles, mysterious fires began to break out all over the house.
A basket of clean linen in an empty room was found to be on fire.
Curtains were found to be smouldering.
Meanwhile the unfortunate Irish nurse went from bad to worse, lying in bed too weak to stand up, and rapidly going off her head.
It will probably be suggested that some mischievous or demented person was at the bottom of the trouble, but it is difficult to know what human agency either could or would shovel a truck-load of coal across a shed single-handed during the night.
The superintendent of the home was interested in mental healing and knew enough of the mind side of things to realise that something abnormal was happening in the house under her charge.
She consulted a mental healer, who in her turn consulted me.
I made a psychic diagnosis of the case, and reported that in my opinion the house had at some time been occupied by someone who had a knowledge of occultism, and who, being upon the Left-hand Path, objected strongly to going to face his portion of Purgatory after the death of the physical body, and that he was maintaining himself in an intermediate state as an earth-bound spirit by drawing upon the vitality of the unfortunate children, and had accidentally drawn too much from one, thus killing it outright.
Working on this hypothesis, the healer undertook to give the case “absent treatment.” Needless to say, the officials of the home were not taken into our confidence.
The result of this treatment was that the manifestations immediately ceased.
No more children had seizures and the Irish nurse rapidly recovered.
The superintendent was then told the hypothesis upon which we had worked.
She was greatly interested, and made enquiries in the village as to the history of the house, and learned that it was notoriously haunted, which was the reason they had obtained it so cheaply.
It appeared that no tenant could stop there long, and that there was a constant record of these exhausting and mysterious illnesses.
It also transpired that about sixty years previously the house had been occupied for a long period by a man who was viewed askance by his neighbours as an eccentric and mysterious personage, and was reported to be engaged in some sort of research which necessitated the use of a laboratory into which no one was ever allowed to go, and in which he worked by night.
It is interesting to note that neither the mental healer or myself ever visited the house or were within twenty miles of it; for it shows in what way these unseen forces can be manipulated from a distance.
A final example, taken from The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, will serve to show the nature of a haunting produced by ceremonial magic in which the forces invoked are not adequately dispersed.
“The demons connected with Abramelin do not wait to be invoked, they come unsought.
One night Jones and I went out to dinner.
The ritual practice of discerning hidden knowledge — future events, concealed causes, or the will of higher powers — through a structured technique applied to cards, lots, astrological configuration, entrails, oracle, or other sortilege, rather than through direct unmediated insight. Distinct from gnosis_direct_knowledge (unmediated inner apprehension of ultimate truth, not a technique applied to an external medium) and cosmic_sympathy (the underlying doctrine of hidden affinity that many divinatory techniques presuppose, rather than the practice of consulting it).
The narrator performs a 'psychic diagnosis' to discern the hidden cause and history of the haunting without visiting the site.
A ritual intended to drive out an unwanted possessing or afflicting spirit from a person or place, restoring it to its unafflicted state. Distinct from spirit_conjuration (the operator summons and binds a spirit that was not already present, rather than expelling one) and from possession (the affliction this ritual answers, not the ritual itself).
The mental healer performs an 'absent treatment' that successfully drives out the manifestations and restores the victims.
The interference of a discarnate human soul, or the lingering condition of a particular place, with the living — Dion Fortune's distinction between a soul in distress that clings out of ignorance and ties itself to a person or locality, versus deliberate malice. Distinct from animism (indwelling nature-spirits inherent to a place by nature, not a specific dead individual's soul) and from psychopomp_journey and ancestor_veneration (guiding the dead onward, or the living's ongoing ritual obligation to the honoured dead) in naming the pathological case: a soul that has NOT been guided onward and instead interferes, whether with a person or a place.
The passage is a detailed case study of a haunting involving physical manifestations, illness, and an earth-bound spirit interfering with the living.
The doctrine that human volition, cultivated by discipline and emancipated from passion and servitude, is the primary instrument of magical operation — will confirmed by persistent acts acquires causal power over self, others, and nature; distinct from faith and from mere desire.
The spirit maintains its intermediate state through will, and the healer manipulates unseen forces from a distance using trained volition.
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 spirit is described as deliberately drawing vitality from children and adults, causing illness and death through occult means.
The condition, often unconscious on the vampire's part, in which one person chronically drains the vital force of another in close relationship, leaving the victim persistently exhausted or ill while the vampire is sustained. Distinct from psychic_attack in mechanism (a parasitic, often unintentional energy-transfer within an ongoing relationship, rather than a deliberate willed assault) and in being a chronic condition rather than a discrete event.
The entity maintains its existence by chronically draining the vital force of the occupants, leaving them exhausted and ill.