United States or North Macedonia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As they and some church-followers come near the door of the vault, they hear knockings, and desperate plunges within; Saville swoons away, the crowd falls back in terror, and the hardened Rowland alone dares unlock the door.
The door of the room opening on the balcony was locked, and, in response to his repeated knockings, a quavering voice asked what was wanted. "You must open instantly," was his reply. A trembling, gray-haired woman put the door ajar, and he pushed in at once, saying: "Bolt the door again, madam.
No low beatings and knockings about, no jokings and squeakings like your precious Punches, but always the same, with a constantly unchanging air of coldness and gentility; and so like life, that if wax-work only spoke and walked about, you'd hardly know the difference.
For some time we knocked in vain no answer was made. At length, our knockings were answered by a female voice "What want ye here at this time o' nicht, disturbing a lone woman?" "My good woman," I replied, "we are strangers, who know not where we are. Be so kind as open the door to us." "Gae 'wa gae 'wa; I will do nae sic thing; I hae nae uppitting for ye."
As they and some church-followers come near the door of the vault, they hear knockings, and desperate plunges within; Saville swoons away, the crowd falls back in terror, and the hardened Rowland alone dares unlock the door.
Thus, uneasy because undeveloped, erring because I had never known the necessary guidance, seeking, but almost despairing of enlightenment, I was a fit subject for any spiritual epidemic which seemed to offer me a cure for worse maladies. At this juncture occurred the phenomena known as the "Rochester Knockings."
When they kneeled this time they heard the most curious muffled grunts and knockings, apparently under their feet. Sometimes it sounded as though a blind puppy were squeaking above the lamp; then as if a stone were being ground on hard ice; and again, like muffled blows on a drum; but all dragged out and made small, as though they travelled through a little horn a weary distance away.
To make matters worse, the neighbors, hearing of the weird occurrences, besieged the house day and night, their curiosity whetted by a report that, exactly as in the case of the Fox sisters, communications from the dead were being received through the knockings. Incredible as it seemed, this report found speedy confirmation.
Finally, it is said that strange noises and knockings are still heard in that place, a mysterious survival of strong human passions attested in other cases, as on the supposed site of the murder of James I. of Scotland in Perth. Do I believe in this identification of the other man? I have marked every trace of him in the documents, published or unpublished, and I remain in doubt.
In fact the phenomena, luminous apparition, 'tumultuous sounds, and all, were familiar to the ancients. Nobody seems to have noted this, but one unusually sensible correspondent of a newspaper quoted cases of knockings from Baxter's Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits, and thought that Baxter's popular book might have suggested the imposture.
Word Of The Day