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Algernon Blackwood, Christian, Christianity, Epilepsy, Epileptic Fits, Ghost Story, Ghosts, Horror, Humor, Quote, Spirits, Spiritualism
“Cautiously, I put indirect questions [about spiritualism] to my father, who at once – the clumsy questions betraying me – detected Satan’s subtle handiwork. He was grave and troubled. With affectionate solicitude he told me, finally, a story of naive horror, intended to point the warning:
“A young man, who suffered from repeated epileptic fits, had tried every doctor and specialist in vain, when, as a last resort, he followed some friend’s counsel of despair, and consulted a medium. The medium, having conferred with his familiar, handed the patient a little locket which he was to wear day and night about his neck, but never on any account to open. The spell that would save him from a repetition of his fits lay inside, but he must resist to the death the curiosity to read it.
“To the subsequent delight and amazement of everybody, the fits abruptly ceased; the man was cured; until one day, after years of obedience, curiosity overcame him; he opened the brief inscription, and fell down in a fit – dead.
“The wording, minutely written in red ink, ran as follows: ‘Let him alone till he drop into Hell!'”
Algernon Blackwood, Episodes Before Thirty. London: Cassell and Company Ltd, 1923. p 30.
Tychy 