Using stairs in a measured fashion

I am aware that two weeks have passed since my last instruction. It was no lapse in devotion that prompted my absence from this particular abstract realm rather I was called away on matters of the greatest importance. I have previously alluded to a threat to our world and of forces which were marshalled against it, without revealing too much now I will assert that I am a significant element of the force which stands between us and oblivion. I fear to say that all around us, in lonely and hidden places, the shades of the dead are conjured and hijacked by fools; meddling in necromantic evocation, these dabblers believe they are exploiting reserves of residual spiritual traces and in doing so are unwittingly – one hopes - opening up gateways to the abyss which hangs below our shining cosmos. The matter is now dealt with – all may sleep well in their beds but I was forced to travel through many hostelries of a northern town in pursuit of a presence that had slipped into one such dabbler and was driving him into ruinous ways. I shall reveal the methods employed to bind and destroy this shadow when you are sufficiently advanced in understanding however those of a mundane persuasion who witnessed the affair may have misunderstood what was occurring. It will be a while, I suspect, before I am permitted admission to the assorted hostelries of Whitby.

For one raised an idealist – perhaps I should say born an idealist – that folk should seek to meddle in spiritual matters for personal gain can come as an unpleasant shock. That there is an abyss circling our worlds of sound and light can be similarly disconcerting. What will anchor us is a faith. Whilst my parents were not psychically inclined, my maternal uncle – Sir Parnassus Mang – lodged with us during his final years. His anecdotes and demonstrations of his subtle powers were an inspiration and indeed assisted me in coming to terms with my own gifts. However, it was his assertion that the text of the Bhagavad-Gita is a genuine utterance of the Divine Mind, has been my personal rock that has steadied me as the waters of delusion and despair crash around me. It is in honour to both recount and commemorate his memory in my writings! Swami Sir Parnassus – I salute you and the realms of bliss in which you reside!
Now I was concealing my initial course of teachings within the factual narrative concerning the haunting at St Hilary’s. As I reported last time, sitting on the staircase, I had passed into a trance wherein a presence was detected. It is unsurprising that a staircase should often be the focal point of a haunting. There is so much that can happen on stairs. Not only can accidents occur on them but they can be the scene of tempestuous emotions: people storming up them, down them, people creeping in expectation, in fear etcetera. Those of us who have departed the shores of ego-attachment observe such displays of untrammelled passion with detached and even amused tolerance. I have only ever used stairs in a measured fashion for the past few decades. Also, the staircase can be considered part of the ‘limbo’ of the house – it is neither up nor down; I do wonder if it is this transient quality that renders them appealing for disembodied shades.

We sat again in the sitting room of the house – I suppose it should be called the Television room, as that item held court with the chairs arranged around it. West-facing and in receipt of the setting summer sun, there was yet an air of sadness about this room. Indeed I soon detected an air of sadness about the west side of the house in general.

The séance again started almost instantly and spontaneously. There were a number of ash-trays about the room although none of the young men smoked and I detected a pungent and vivid reek of smoke. So much so, that I was carried back to my years in India and i might have believed that I was stood on a Ghat overlooking the strand of shore where cremations were carried out. So vivid was this impression that I found myself sniffing the stale ashtrays, as if I would intensify the experience and I even called for smoke, until a lighter was struck and a joss stick lit. The sweet scent and the tendrils of blue smoke writhing through the room took my awareness until I was wafted onto that Indian shoreline, standing over a fire. A waning moon was in the sky, the house and the young men having vanished for me under the slop of the waters and the faint noise of the distant town. I could not say how long I remained in India, but when a frenzied disturbance broke through the water, I was shocked me into awareness of my physical surroundings. The sensation from my vision coincided with a distinct drumming sound from one of the empty rooms on the other side of the hallway. It could have been water dripping from the kitchen tap, or some old beams adjusting in the night air although the flurry of activity from the young men suggested they heard the tap of fingers against a window or even on a hard surface inside the house. I cannot say whether the breaking waters in my vision was an internal rendering of this exterior event, if it presaged it or indeed was even the origin of it. To this day I cannot say but I noted a room full of men driven into anxiety about a couple of tapping noises before I re-entered the trance. Again, I stood amid smoke at the water’s edge. There were no stars overhead and again the waters were upset as if one drowned within them. I perceived something surface, something glistening but indistinct before I was subjected to a rush of powerful and unpleasant sensations. I felt a blow to my torso, ripping the air from me or perhaps I suddenly plummeted; this was accompanied by a savage, stabbing blast of noise - a grinding, like the screaming of tormented metal and I was jolted back into consciousness.

Once fully conscious, I realised that this experience felt similar to that in the graveyard earlier that day. Disturbed as I was, what had befallen the young men had pitched them into a greater state of anxiety and excitement...