able to move, and
re-entering my room, I locked myself in, turned on the gas, and buried
myself under the bedclothes.

I left the house next day, and shortly afterwards received the
melancholy tidings of the death of my dear friend. For the time being,
at least, the clock had been possessed by an elemental spirit of death.

I know an instance, too, in which a long, protracted whine, like the
whine of a dog, proceeded from a grandfather's clock, prior to any
catastrophe in a certain family; another instance, in which loud thumps
were heard in a grandfather's clock before a death; and still another
instance in which a hooded face used occasionally to be seen in lieu of
the clock's face.

In all these cases, the clocks were undoubtedly temporarily possessed by
the same type of spirit--the type I have classified "Clanogrian" or
Family Ghost--occult phenomena that, having attached themselves in
bygone ages to certain families, sometimes cling to furniture (often not
inappropriately to clocks) that belonged to those families; and, still
clinging, in its various removals, to the piece they have "possessed,"
continue to perform their original grizzly function of foretelling
death.

Of course, these charnel prophets are not the only phantasms that
"possess" furniture. For example, I once heard of a case of
"possession" by a non-prophetic phantasm in connection with a chest--an
antique oak chest which, I believe, claimed to be a native of Limerick.
After experiencing many vicissitudes in its career, the chest fell into
the hands of a Mrs MacNeill, who bought it at a rather exorbitant price
from a second-hand dealer in Cork.

The chest, placed in the dining-room of its new home, was the recipient
of much premature adulation. The awakening came one afternoon soon after
its arrival, when Mrs MacNeill was alone in the dining-room at twilight.
She had spent a very tiring morning shopping in Tralee, her nearest
market-town, and consequently fell asleep in an arm-chair in front of
the fire, directly after luncheon. She awoke with a sensation of extreme
chilliness, and thinking the window could not have been shut properly,
she got up to close it, when her attention was attracted by something
white protruding from under the lid of the chest. She went up to inspect
it, but she recoiled in horror. It was a long finger, with a very
protuberant knuckle-bone, but no sign of a nail. She was so shocked that
for some seconds she could only