It has moved from place to place, unable
to settle in any one spot for any length of time, had frequent fits of
shivering, gone to the door, sniffed the atmosphere, thrown back its
head and mewed in a low, plaintive key, and shown the greatest
reluctance to being alone in the dark. "This faculty--possessed by certain cats--may in some measure explain
certain of the superstitions respecting them. Take, for example, that of
cats crossing one's path predicting death. "The cat is drawn to the spot because it scents the phantom of death,
and cannot resist its magnetic attraction. "From this, it does not follow that the person who sees the cat is going
to die, but that death is overtaking someone associated with that
person; and it is in connection with the latter that the spirit of the
grave is present, employing, as a medium of prognostication, the cat,
which has been given the psychic faculty of smell that it might be so
used. "But although I regard this theory as very feasible, I do not attribute
to cats, with the same degree of certainty, the power to presage good
fortune, simply because I have had no experience of it myself. Yet,
adopting the same lines of argument, I see no reason why cats should not
prognosticate good as well as evil. "There may be phantoms representative of prosperity, in just the same
manner as there are those representative of death; they, too, may also
have some distinguishing scent (flowers have various odours, so why not
spirits?) and certain cats, i.e. white cats in particular, may be
attracted by it. "This becomes all the more probable when one considers how very
impressionable the cat is--how very sensitive to kindness. There are
some strangers with whom the cat will at once make friends, and others
whom it will studiously avoid. Why? The explanation, I fancy, lies once
more in the occult--in the cat's psychic faculty of smell. Kind people
attract benevolently disposed phantoms, which bring with them an
agreeably scented atmosphere, that, in turn, attracts cats. The cat
comes to one person because it knows by the smell of the atmosphere
surrounding him, or her, that it has nothing to fear--that the person is
essentially gentle and benignant. On the contrary, cruel people attract
malevolent phantoms, distinguishable also to the cat by their smell, a
smell typical of cruelty--often of homicidal lunacy (I have particularly
noticed how cats have shrunk from people who have afterwards become
dangerously insane). Is this sense of smell, then, the keynote to the
halo of mystery that has for all times surrounded the cat--that has led
to its bitter persecution--that has made it the hero of fairy lore, the
pet of old maids? I believe it is--I believe that in this psychic
faculty of smell lies, in degree, the solution to the oft-asked
riddle--why is the cat uncanny? Having then satisfied oneself on this
point, namely, that cats are in the possession of rare psychic
properties, is it likely that the Unknown Powers which have so endowed
them, should withhold from them either souls or spirits? Is it not
contrary to reason, instinct, and observation to suppose that the many
thoroughly material and grossly minded people--people whose whole beings
are steeped in money worship--we see around us every day should have
spirits, and that pretty, refined and artistic-looking cats, whose
occult powers place them in the very closest connection with the
superphysical, should not? Monstrous--the bare conception of such
incongruity in the one case, and such an omission in the other, is
inconceivable, wholly irreconcilable with the notion of any other than a
mummer of a creator--a mere court fool of a God." CHAPTER II

APPARITIONS OF DOGS


One of the most extraordinary cases of hauntings by the phantasms of
dogs is related in an old Christmas number of the _Review of Reviews_,
edited by the late Mr. W.T. Stead, and entitled "Real Ghost Stories." "The most remarkable," writes Mr. Stead, "of all the stories which I
have heard concerning ghosts which touch is one that reaches me from
Darlington. I owe this, as I owe so many of the other narratives in this
collection, to the Rev. Harry Kendall, of Darlington, whose painstaking
perseverance in the collection of all matters of this kind cannot be too
highly praised. Mr. Kendall is a Congregational minister of old
standing. He was my pastor when I was editing the _Northern Echo_, and
he is the author of a remarkable book, entitled _All the World's Akin_. The following narrative is quite unique in its way, and fortunately he
was able to get it at first hand from the only living person present. Here we have a ghost which not only strikes the first blow, hitting a
man fair in the eye, but afterwards sets a ghostly dog upon his victim
and then disappears. The narrative was signed by Mr. James Durham as
lately as December 5th, 1890." Mr. Stead then proceeds to quote the
account which he had from Mr. Kendall, and which I append _ad verbum_
from the _Review of Reviews_. It is as follows: "I was night watchman at
the old Darlington and Stockton Station at the town of Darlington, a few
yards from the first station that ever existed. I was there fifteen
years. I used to go on duty about 8 p.m. and come off at 6 a.m. I had
been there a little while--perhaps two or three years--and about forty
years ago. One night during winter at about 12 o'clock or 12.30 I was
feeling rather cold with standing here and there; I said to myself, 'I
will away down and get something to eat.' There was a porter's cellar
where a fire was kept on and a coal-house was connected with it. So I
went down the steps, took off my overcoat, and had just sat down on the
bench opposite the fire and turned up the gas when a strange man came
out of the coal-house, followed by a big black retriever. As soon as he
entered my eye was upon him, and his eye upon me, and we were intently
watching each other as he moved on to the front of the fire. There he
stood looking at me, and a curious smile came over his countenance. He
had a stand-up collar and a cut-away coat with gilt buttons and a Scotch
cap. All at once he struck at me, and I had the impression that he hit
me. I up with my fist and struck back at him. My fist seemed to go
through him and struck against the stone above the fireplace, and
knocked the skin off my knuckles. The man seemed to be struck back into
the fire, and uttered a strange, unearthly squeak. Immediately the dog
gripped me by the calf of my leg, and seemed to cause me pain. The man
recovered his position, called off the dog with a sort of click of the
tongue, then went back into the coal-house, followed by the dog. I
lighted my dark lantern and looked into the coal-house, but there was
neither dog nor man, and no outlet for them except the one by which they
had entered. "I was satisfied that what I had seen was ghostly, and it accounted for
the fact that when the man had first come into the place where he sat I
had not challenged him with any enquiry.