The Strange Experiences of Tina Malone. Ethel C. M. Paige

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       Ethel C. M. Paige

      The Strange Experiences of Tina Malone

      Published by Good Press, 2021

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066441999

Table of Contents

       PROLOGUE

       The Occult School

       Naomi

       Rooms to Let

       The Week in My Flat

       Despair and Solitude

       Alice Griffiths

       The Rosary

       The Automatic Writing

       The Chain of Voices

       Illness and Weariness, Delusions or What?

       The Girl at the Gate Who Talked With Her Eyes

       The Secret Service and the Hurried Doctor

       A Fight for my Individuality.

       The Spirits

       Wallerawang

       The Underground Passages

       The Miracle

       Question

      PROLOGUE

       Table of Contents

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      PROLOGUE.

       Table of Contents

      Has it been all a dream?

      If you want an account of a wonderful unbelievable experience, just listen.

      People don't believe in ghosts—will they believe in this? For this has truly happened:

      I was lonely—God alone knows how lonely—for we had broken up our home only three months before. I had to earn my own living for the money that was left to me when my father died was not enough to pay for more than my rent. So I lived as so many single women do now—I "batched."

      It all began with the "Woman in the Mask."

      She was fascinating in a way, with the fascination one finds in a Sorceress. There was something in the way she let her eyelids droop over her eyes while she looked at you that suggested "spells"—I don't know why. She gave me that impression anyway.

      She was rather beautiful to look at. Her eyes were deep blue and curiously shaped, rather like a Jap's. She wore her hair drawn back from a forehead that was singularly beautiful, few women can wear their hair like that and look beautiful, Her voice was low and sweet. Yet there was something—I don't know what—just something—that puzzled. You felt that she never showed her real self; that she wore a mask and dared not let it fall.

      The night I found Chester House I was tired and miserable.

      The trip across the Harbour comforted me somewhat. It was already growing dark and the harbour lights twinkled through a misty gleam. It was like a dream of fairyland and I made up my mind that I would find rooms on that side of the harbour even if those in question did not suit just for the sake of the boat trip.

      A light drizzle of rain began to fall. I was hungry and tired and longed for a home of some sort, dreading to return to the Metropole where I had been living for the last week.

      The narrow street was dark. There were only one or two houses and these were back from the road.

      At last, with relief, I found myself outside the queer little building known as Chester House.

      "Does Miss Perkins live here?" I asked a wierd-looking creature who opened the door.

      "No, two doors down!"

      ​A queer little building was the one she directed me to and when Miss Perkins opened at my knock I felt as if I were in a book.

      She was quaintly dressed in white—a small person with sloping shoulders and a vague hesitating manner.

      "Well, I don't know that I can let you have rooms," she said with a long-drawn emphasis on the "rooms," "but there's a flat next door that will be empty to-morrow. The people are in now but they might let you look at it."

      When I found that it was not very much more than I had been paying for my room in town I admitted that I should like to see it and we went together.

      "The lower floor is already let," said Miss Perkins, "but that is underground. You would not care for it."

      She led the way walking lightly—almost on tip-toes as if she were afraid of being heard.

      I followed her through the hall and to the small balcony room in front and the view that burst upon me there took my breath away it was so beautiful—the harbour lights twinkling through a mist.

      I then and there decided to take it and soon afterwards I moved in.

      And Naomi was in the flat below.

      The Occult School

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      CHAPTER I.

      THE OCCULT SCHOOL.

      THEY always did attract me—second-hand bookshops. This morning I began at the windows, then at the boxes of books outside, then at those hanging at the doors till, at last, I gave way to temptation and went inside.

      It was only the books I noticed and I walked along by the tables, scanning the titles till at last I found "The Drama of Love and Death," by Edward Carpenter, and pulled it out.

      I opened it at "The Return