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Colin Wilson - Mysteries

One grey afternoon in January, Tom Lethbridge and his wife Mina drove down to Ladram Bay to
collect seaweed for Mina's asparagus bed. 'As I stepped on to the beach,' writes Lethbridge, 'l passed into a kind of blanket, or fog, of depression, and, I think, fear. 'Mina went off to look for seaweed at the other end of the beach. A few minutes later she hurried back.

'I can't stand this place any longer. There's something frightful here . . .'

That evening, Mina spoke to her mother on the phone and mentioned what had happened; her mother commented that she had experienced the same depression on the beach on Christmas day, five years earlier.

The following Saturday, a warm, drizzly day, Tom and Mina set out for the Ladram beach, carrying sacks for seaweed.

'The same bank of depression greeted me at the same place as before.' And he noted that it was close to a place where a tiny stream ran on to the beach. The depression occurred in a definite place around this stream, like a bad smell. Mina pointed out the spot where she had experienced  the 'ghoul' the previous week.
'Here the feeling was at its worst.  It was so strong as to make me feel almost giddy. The nearest I can get to a description is that it felt not unlike one feels with a high temperature and when full of drugs. There was definitely a sensation of tingling to accompany it.'
They went to the clifftop, and Lethbridge began to make a sketch. Mina wandered off and stood at the clifftop;
Here she experienced another unpleasant sensation, and a feeling as if someone was urging her to jump.......................

The earth itself is, in a certain basic respect, a living being, and its surface is permeated with magnetic forces that are influenced, like the tides, by the heavenly bodies, particularly the moon.   But these forces are not purely magnetic or electrical. The most important thing about them is that they can interact with the human mind.

A 'negative dowser' can be shaken by thern so violently that he falls down or feels faint. Moreover, the human mind itself can affect these earth forces, somehow causing them to 'record' strong emotions - as Lethbridge realised on Ladram beach.