“The carpet was rolled back and piled in a heap in the corner, and upon the white boards of the floor I noticed a large circle drawn in black of some material that emitted a faint glowing light and was apparently smoking.  Inside this circle, as well as at regular intervals outside it, were curious-looking designs, also traced in the same black, smoking substance.  These, too, seemed to emit a feeble light of their own.

“My first impression on entering the room had been that it was full of—­people, I was going to say; but that hardly expresses my meaning. Beings, they certainly were, but it was borne in upon me beyond the possibility of doubt, that they were not human beings.  That I had caught a momentary glimpse of living, intelligent entities I can never doubt, but I am equally convinced, though I cannot prove it, that these entities were from some other scheme of evolution altogether, and had nothing to do with the ordinary human life, either incarnate or discarnate.

“But, whatever they were, the visible appearance of them was exceedingly fleeting.  I no longer saw anything, though I still felt convinced of their immediate presence.  They were, moreover, of the same order of life as the visitant in my bedroom of a few nights before, and their proximity to my atmosphere in numbers, instead of singly as before, conveyed to my mind something that was quite terrible and overwhelming.  I fell into a violent trembling, and the perspiration poured from my face in streams.

“They were in constant motion about me.  They stood close to my side; moved behind me; brushed past my shoulder; stirred the hair on my forehead; and circled round me without ever actually touching me, yet always pressing closer and closer.  Especially in the air just over my head there seemed ceaseless movement, and it was accompanied by a confused noise of whispering and sighing that threatened every moment to become articulate in words.  To my intense relief, however, I heard no distinct words, and the noise continued more like the rising and falling of the wind than anything else I can imagine.

“But the characteristic of these ‘Beings’ that impressed me most strongly at the time, and of which I have carried away the most permanent recollection, was that each one of them possessed what seemed to be a vibrating centre which impelled it with tremendous force and caused a rapid whirling motion of the atmosphere as it passed me.  The air was full of these little vortices of whirring, rotating force, and whenever one of them pressed me too closely I felt as if the nerves in that particular portion of my body had been literally drawn out, absolutely depleted of vitality, and then immediately replaced—­but replaced dead, flabby, useless.