Observations placeholder

Rosalind Heywood – The Infinite Hive

I will begin with the only exterior visual hallucination I ever had, apart from seeing Alex in Macedonia when he was in Paris. That may have been due to telepathy or simply to wish-fulfilment, but for this other figure I can find no emotional source.

I saw it in 1939 when staying with my husband’s brother in Johannesburg, and on another occasion my sister-in-law saw it too. This may suggest some link between it and the environment, for she and I are very different types and it is hard to imagine what common reason we could have had for creating it ourselves. But it is also hard to imagine what that link could have been, since the environment was a modern house near Johannesburg, and the figure was wearing a long white oriental-looking garment.

He caught my attention by obstructing the light in the passage. At this I looked up hastily, wondering who could have broken in, for the family were at the far end of the house, and this was always locked up with care when the African servants went out to their own quarters at night. For a moment I saw the man standing quite still and apparently unaware of me. The next moment he 'was not'.

I was startled and noticed a feeling of cold about my middle; but I was not afraid of him as such, and if he had been wearing ordinary clothes and had walked away I might have thought him an ordinary man. He did me one good turn. Hitherto, invisible human presences had made me feel uncomfortable, just because they were invisible, but now that I had actually seen this harmless figure I was able to react to them according to what they seemed to be in themselves, happy or sad, benign or sinister, as one would react to people who were present in the ordinary physical sense.

This type of experience is what is popularly known as seeing a ghost and it is far from uncommon