"One o'clock struck, and ere the hollow-sounding vibrations had ceased, the vague form once again appeared…
- Date of account
- Published 1911
- Source
- Byways of Ghost-Land
- Reference
- Byways of Ghost-Land · selected passage 123
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
"One o'clock struck, and ere the hollow-sounding vibrations had ceased, the vague form once again appeared behind the chair, and the malignant, evil eyes met mine in a diabolical stare; whilst, as before, on trying to speak or move, I found myself tongue-tied and paralysed
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention only"One o'clock struck, and ere the hollow-sounding vibrations had ceased, the vague form once again appeared behind the chair, and the malignant, evil eyes met mine in a diabolical stare; whilst, as before, on trying to speak or move, I found myself tongue-tied and paralysed. As the moments slowly glided away, the shape of the Thing became more and more distinct; a dark and sexless face appeared, surmounted with a straggling mass of black hair, the ends of which melted away into mist. I saw no trunk, but I descried two long and bony arms, ebony as the chair, with crooked, spidery, misty fingers. As I watched its development with increasing horror, hoping and praying for the arrival of the never-again-to-be-despised waits, I suddenly realised with a fresh grip of terror that the chair had moved out of the corner, and that the Thing behind it was slowly creeping towards me.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.