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The Maniac – A Realistic Study of Madness from the Maniac’s Point of View – E Thelmar

I did not feel in the least afraid, and was racking my brain to think what prayer would be suited to this most unusual occasion, when suddenly I experienced a violent physical sensation inside my own body.

It felt like some wholly extraneous object jumping energetically up and down inside me.  It did not in the least hurt me, but it was so violent and unaccountable it frightened me.  I could not understand what was happening to me.  I neither saw nor heard a thing.

I thought to myself ‘Has this perhaps anything to do with that fiend that they were warning me against?’  And instantly the voices confirmed this fear, saying that the fiend had now got inside my body because I had not been resisting it; that the explanation of this mysterious sensation was that I had been seduced by a fiend, and that I should therefore have a fiend-child……………….

This sent me off in a perfect frenzy.  I fully believed it to be the true explanation of the unaccountable sensation I had experienced.

I began calling on God, and everything and everyone I could think of, in heaven and earth, to come to my rescue.

I sobbed and cried and wrung my hands in agony of terror and despair. I got up off my knees and rocked myself to and fro on the arm of the big arm-chair, exclaiming- "O God! What have I done, that such an awful thing should have happened to me? O God! O God! O God! O God!"

While I was going on thus, like the demented creature that I was, the wall of the room facing me seemed suddenly to fade away before my eyes, and up near the ceiling-but as if far away in the dim distance-I saw a crowd of people seated in what looked like a very large box at a theatre. They seemed to have been observing, from that great way off, all that had been taking place in my room.

They seemed to be the people who had been conducting the experiment which had resulted in this awful catastrophe to me. Seated in the centre of the box, I could distinguish the woman-occultist whose reflection I had seen in the japanned coal-scuttle, and I could hear her sobbing; whilst beside her, turning towards her so that his face was hidden from me was a men standing up and denouncing her and these infernal experiments, in a voice that I instantly recognised as Ray Hall's.

He said, " Mrs. -, you are a fiend, and this is your doing!"

I stopped sobbing, and exclaimed, "Ray Hall! Take care what you say! I am quite certain that Mrs, - would never have harmed me intentionally. It may be nobody's fault, but I am simply done for!" and I recommenced sobbing.

He said, "I am going to drag all these fiends of people, with their infernal experiments, to justice! I swear I will denounce them and their practices, publicly, to the whole world I If I die for it, I will have vengeance on them for the fiendish wrong that they have committed!"

"What is the use of vengeance?" I moaned. "It will help nobody. Stop their experiments, to save other victims-not for any vengeance. As for me, anything now is too late to save me; I am done for! " And I sobbed and sobbed.