all form--armless, legless--fashioned
like the gnarled trunk of a tree--white, startlingly white in places
where the bark had worn away, but on the whole a bright, a luridly
bright, yellow and black. At first I successfully resisted a powerful
impulse to raise my eyes to its face; but as I only too well knew would
be the case, I was obliged to look at last, and, as I anticipated, I
underwent a most violent shock. In lieu of a face I saw a raw and
shining polyp, a mass of waving, tossing, pulpy radicles from whose
centre shone two long, obliquely set, pale eyes, ablaze with devilry and
malice. The thing, after the nature of all terrifying phantasms, was
endowed with hypnotic properties, and directly its eyes rested on me I
became numb; my muscles slept while my faculties remained awake,
acutely awake.

Inch by inch the thing approached me; its stealthy, gliding motion
reminding me of a tiger subtly and relentlessly stalking its prey. It
came up to me, and the catalepsy which had held me rigidly upright
departed. I fell on the ground for protection, and, as the great unknown
curved its ghastly figure over me and touched my throat and forehead
with its fulsome tentacles, I was overcome with nervous tremors; a
deadly pain griped my entrails, and, convulsed with agony, I rolled over
on my face, furiously clawing the bracken. In this condition I continued
for probably one or even two minutes, though to me it seemed very much
longer. My sufferings terminated with the loud report of firearms, and
slowly picking myself up, I found that the apparition had vanished, and
that standing some twenty or so paces from me was a boy with a gun. I
recognised him at once as the son of my neighbour, the village
schoolmaster; but not wishing to tarry there any longer, I hurriedly
wished him good night, and leaving the copse a great deal more quickly
than I had entered it, I hastened home.

What had I seen? A phantasm of some dead tree? some peculiar species of
spirit (I have elsewhere termed a vagrarian), attracted thither by the
loneliness of the locality? some vicious, evil phantasm? or a
vice-elemental, whose presence there would be due to some particularly
wicked crime or series of crimes perpetrated on or near the spot? I
cannot say. It might well have been either one of them, or something
quite different. I am quite sure, however, that most woods are haunted,
and that he who sees spirit phenomena can be pretty certain of seeing
them t