fix them on my own image in the glass, when a feeling of startled
surprise, as if I had not known I was there and did not immediately
recognize my own reflection, would cause me to remain looking at myself,
the intentness with which I did so increasing as the face appeared to me
not my own; and under this curious fascination my countenance has
altered, becoming gradually so dreadful, so much more dreadful in
expression than any human face I ever saw or could describe, while it
was next to impossible for me to turn my eyes away from the hideous
vision confronting me, that I have felt more than once that unless by
the strongest effort of will I immediately averted my head, I should
certainly become insane. Of course I was myself a party to this strange
fascination of terror, and must, no doubt, have exercised some power of
volition in the assumption of the expression that my face gradually
presented, and which was in no sense a distortion or grimace, but a
terrible look suggestive of despair and desperate wickedness, the memory
of which even now affects me painfully. But though in some measure
voluntary, I do not think I was conscious at the time that the process
was so; and I have never been able to determine the precise nature of
this nervous affection, which, beginning thus in a startled feeling of
sudden surprise, went on to such a climax of fascinated terror.

I was already at this time familiar enough with the theory of ghosts, of
which one need not be afraid, through Nicolai of Berlin's interesting
work upon the curious phantasmagoria of apparitions, on which he made
and recorded so many singular observations. Moreover, my mother, from a
combination of general derangement of the system and special affection
of the visual nerves, was at one time constantly tormented by whole
processions and crowds of visionary figures, of the origin and nature of
which she was perfectly aware, but which she often described as
exceedingly annoying by their grotesque and distorted appearance, and
wearisome from their continual recurrence and thronging succession. With
the recovery of her general health she obtained a release from this
disagreeable haunting.

One of the most remarkable and painful instances of affection of the
visual organs in consequence of a violent nervous shock was that
experienced by my friend Miss T----, who, after seeing her cousin, Lady
L----, drowned while bathing off the rocks at her home at Ardgillan, was