"It was all too cruelly brief; for with the vision my old ego vanished too; and I felt--I knew it had been…
- Date of account
- Published 1917
- Source
- Haunted Places in England
- Reference
- Haunted Places in England · selected passage 38
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
"It was all too cruelly brief; for with the vision my old ego vanished too; and I felt--I knew it had been wrested from me and hurried to some far-off place where the like of my present self could not be admitted
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"It was all too cruelly brief; for with the vision my old ego vanished too; and I felt--I knew it had been wrested from me and hurried to some far-off place where the like of my present self could not be admitted. I rose at length chilled and hopeless, and tearing myself away from the landing with a desperate effort, wandered home. I could not rest. An intense dissatisfaction with myself, with my whole mode of life, my surroundings, obsessed me. I longed to alter, to become something different, something unsophisticated, simple, even elementary. This change in me brought me into closer sympathy with Ghoul, who, as I have said, was strangely altered himself. He avoided Darnton with the most marked persistence, and was always hovering round my doorstep and lying on the lawn. At last one day I could stand it no longer. 'Ghoul,' I said, 'the same yearning possesses us both. It's the child--the child with the lovely eyes. We must see her. You and I are rivals, old fellow. But never mind! We'll visit the house together and let her take her choice.
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.
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