"A Friendly, Sportive Hobgoblin"

Everard Feilding

The following tale comes to us courtesy of barrister/psychic researcher (not a combo one sees every day) Everard Feilding, in the form of two letters he sent his friend Hereward Carrington, who published them in the 1951 book “Haunted People.”  It is a rather delightful poltergeist account, complete with a supernatural snipe hunt!

Transylvania,

Jan. 26, 1914

Dear Carrington,

Your letter has just reached me in the middle of the most extraordinary adventure I have ever had. Last year, Crookes received a fantastic letter from a Hungarian lawyer, telling him of certain amazing things that had been happening to him and begging to be investigated. I was then ill and couldn’t come, but this time, finding myself within measureable reach, from Warsaw, I decided to come.

It felt like Dracula—a journey to a mysterious land, to stay in a country village with an unknown person round whom things equal to Home’s phenomena (if 1/10 of what he said was true) were happening. I didn’t know whether he was a lunatic or a liar, but I came.  And my journey has been repaid. I leave tomorrow, after about ten days in this country, with the mediums, ie., the lawyer and his wife, to hunt for buried treasure in Brittany! I shall spend a few days with Schrenck-Notzing, and also with la Tomezyk, with him, in Munich, and shall then take my mediums on, through Brittany, to London.

My lawyer has a Jinn. No less. A friendly, sportive hobgoblin, late a Roumanian, and now the most desirable imp that anyone could wish for. For most of the facts I have to depend on the lawyer, an excitable, very middleclass person, formerly much addicted to wine, gambling and women, good-hearted, hospitable, a spendthrift, hopelessly unbusiness-like, and absolutely staggered by the goings-on of his imp.

This creature first started operations at a time when, for lack of pence, the lawyer wanted to commit suicide. He suddenly found money in his pocket which he knew wasn’t there before. He thought he must have stolen it in a fit of aberration. Then money began to drop on to the table, and he thought he was mad. Then stones fell beside him as he walked out, and then gradually all sorts of things were chucked into his room at all hours of the day and night. Bromide tablets fell on his bed when he couldn’t sleep; bottles of Schnapps in his carriage of a cold night; cigarettes out of the air when he had run out of them, and cigars bearing the Emperor’s monogram!

As things materially eased then, the character of the phenomena changed, and now the things are mostly ancient and useless tagrags and bobtails, ranging from bottle-tops to an elderly pump, about 50 lbs. in weight and 4 feet long, slabs of marble, 5-foot poles, pieces of wood, heavy iron screws, pincers, knives, wire lampshades, toy animals--all hurtle into the room at unexpected moments…And they do: I have seen lots of them.  Two minutes after I first entered his room, a 5-foot pole fell at the other end of it--he and I being alone in it, and he at the opposite end (a room 30 ft. long.)  On another occasion, I being the first to enter the room, a 4 ft. pole jumped out at me from a corner which I was facing at a distance of 3 feet--the lawyer at the time just entering the door.  A glass fell very softly at my feet, the lawyer not being in the room at all, and the nearest person being not within 12 feet of me.  Cigarettes fall out of the air.  Objects which are put under the table change places, or disappear altogether within, once, one minute of having been put there, notwithstanding that we (he and his wife and I) are all sitting sideways with our feet well outside the legs of the table.  A rusty table-knife falls in the middle of the room while we are all sitting writing at the table.  The same 5 ft. pole before mentioned falls very gently at a distance of 6 ft. from the lawyer, sitting with me at the table.  If he had thrown it (as I tested) it would have made a devil of a noise.  Rappings all about the wall and quick rappings on the table, perhaps not evidential, but probably true, are heard.  And so on.  I am therefore tempted to believe the bigger things he tells me of, i.e., the pump which I have seen, and the marble slabs, which I have not.  The dinner table jumps up constantly at meals, again not strictly evidential, but I think true, as it could only be done by his wife, a frail little woman, with her feet under the chair, and I’m sure she doesn’t do it.

The Jinn communicates by Ouija, an alphabet on a card and a bottle-top into which he and his wife each put a finger, with enormous rapidity.  In addition to this is a romantic story, by writing, of a former incarnation, when he was a German Baron called Schindtreffer, who lived in Mindelheim, Bavaria--a place he says he never heard of--in 1700.  And further, of 9 cases of money and jewels and papers, said to have been sent with his son to Brittany in 1713, and buried in a particular place to avoid an attack by robbers.  A map is given of the exact whereabouts, with details of rivers and small villages, and the present aspect of the country.  An ordinance map having been sent for, these villages and rivers are found to exist.  And now nothing will satisfy him but to start forth and hunt, and another lawyer is putting up the journey money, partly because he is smitten with the romance of the thing, and partly to share in the possible treasure.  And I am to go too, to translate, as they can’t speak a word of French.  All kinds of family details are given of the Schindtreffer affair, including an “apport” of a photograph of a picture, said to be in the Munich gallery, of his then-wife, and brought by her!  This we shall investigate first.  We’ll see!

As ever,

E.F.

N.B. I don’t believe the Brittany story, but I do believe in the Jinn.

A short time later, Carrington received a follow-up report:

Just returned from Transylvania.  The lawyer and his wife, and I hope the Jinn too, are coming to stay with me here for a few days.  If he produces a pump in my dining room I shall be pleased.

My Transylvanians have gone, and I am left hopelessly puzzled by the whole business.  There were a considerable number of phenomena here, though nothing at all like they were in Hungary.  Nearly all could (though in some cases with great difficulty) be attributed to the wife.  They nearly all came at unexpected moments, and it was thus impossible to control them.  There was also fraud, e.g., when a snipe, which was found on the dinner-lamp (on indications of the spook at the end of dinner) was traced as having been bought by the wife in a neighboring shop.  At the same time, the circumstances of this “apport” are otherwise so curious--the lamp having previously been examined by the servant before dinner, and the snipe being so very obvious once it was seen--that it is almost unthinkable that it should have escaped observation.

If one accepts the possibility of a poltergeist, it is possible to suppose that part of the phenomenon, namely the purchase of the snipe, was carried through normally by the medium, and the remainder, namely the apport, by the spook.  She said she did not remember anything about the purchase, but in hypnosis I recovered the memory.  She said she was sitting in the park, and that her sister came to her and insisted upon her going with her, and bought the snipe, and then took it away after returning with her to the park.  Her husband, who was present, appeared amazed at this, and said he had no knowledge of any sister, and certainly none in London.  She then said that the sister was sitting in a chair in the room, and got up and went towards her, and then appeared to pursue a phantom round the room, upsetting everything as she went, ending up at the window, apparently very much frightened, and saying that her sister was outside, laughing at her.  Questioned after awakening, she said that she had an elder sister with whom she had not been on good terms, and who had died some ten years ago.  In hypnosis I also recovered the memory in similar conditions of another attempt to purchase something which she knew normally I had been unable to trace.

All this looks very much like double personality action, and therefore in the realm of subconscious and not conscious fraud, in a trance condition.  She does, as a matter-of-fact, fall very readily into trances, e.g., when I play the piano she falls spontaneously into a trance and dances, but her husband says that this is the first time he has any knowledge of a trance occurring outside the house.

As a result of five weeks’ intimate seeing of the people, I am more inclined to believe in their honesty than otherwise, but in view of the fraud it is impossible at present to put forward such a theory, excepting to anyone already familiar with these curious hypnoid conditions--and who has not seen, as I have, a certain number of phenomena under really good control.

The best controlled phenomena here were a rapid drumming on the table during dinner, exactly as though one were drumming with one’s fingers, although the hands were visible and the feet controlled--not concurrently, but immediately after--and seemed far away from any contact.  Besides, the noise was one which could not be made with the feet as far as I am aware.

I went with them last week to Brittany.  The man said he could not resume his ordinary work without having visited the place.  Excepting the names of small places, nothing was found correct, and he returned to Hungary much disappointed.  He appeared frightfully concerned about his wife’s “unconscious” fraud, and seemed terrified lest in this presumably trance condition she should do dishonest actions.  He begged me again to visit him in Hungary, and to carry-on the control in a still more rigorous manner, if the phenomena continue, and to bring someone with me to help.  I do wish you were here…

Unfortunately, the outbreak of WWI prevented any further investigation of the “Jinn,” which apparently ceased its operations after the lawyer and his wife returned to Transylvania.  Unsurprisingly, but disappointingly,  the Schindtreffer “buried treasure” was never located.