A Traveler's Diary

Dear Doctor:
From what I understand, you have disconnected the phone and removed yourself to the wainscoted confines
of your library, where you are bringing to conclusion your monumental and long-awaited Encyclopedia of Abnormal Psychology.  So I'm afraid this letter is reaching you at an inopportune time. Be that as it may, I find it necessary to make you aware of the following perplexing facts---facts of a sort never covered in any of your splendid courses at the university, and which have now taken on a certain urgency in light of recent developments.

To put the matter bluntly: I'm in trouble, and I need your help.

I have enclosed two items, namely, a travel diary written by one of my patients, and a 3 x 5 photograph whose significance will soon become clear. Let me tell you about this patient. I'll call him Mr. F... He came to me some weeks ago, having gotten my name from a local therapy referral service. I never learned much about his objective life---where he lived, where he worked, whether he was married, nor did he reveal to me by anamnesis any facts of his early years. I learned virtually nothing about him at all, except that he was a very disturbed individual.
He was a slight, trim man, in his late thirties, with the artificial look of preserved adolescence so typical of a classic puer aeternus. In the course of several sessions, Mr. F... related to me the outlines of a deeply perverse view of reality. I have rarely experienced such paranoid ideation in a client, and I was convinced past all doubting that the man was in the midst of a blossoming psychosis. His statements were fraught with the bizarre, archaic, quasi-religious, and grotesque images which are the hallmarks of a dangerously deluded mind. As to the cause of his illness, I hadn't a clue, until recently.

I will not burden you with a further prelude. The end of this letter will only make sense once you have read the enclosed travel diary: a narrative which Mr. F... gave to me at the conclusion of what became our final session. I have not seen him since. The truth is that I terminated our relationship myself. It seemed to me that there was nothing I could do for him. His was a hopeless case, I thought, and far beyond the redemption of analysis.
But things were not that simple, as it turned out. Read for yourself.

  Travel Diary

Aug. 6th---What a beautiful day! I can't believe I'm really in London, that I've actually gone and done the one thing that for so long I was afraid to do. And now that I'm here, the truth astounds me: traveling by myself is easy! Why was I so afraid to do it before? For months I was oppressed by vague terrors whenever I considered the idea. In the weeks before I left, I was in such a state of panic that I broke out in a chronic, irritating rash, had constant problems with my breathing, and my sleep was troubled with bad dreams. But somehow I found the strength to take this risk. And now I'm here, all by myself, an ocean away from America.

And guess what? After just one night in London, I woke up in my bed at the hostel this morning, from a serene and dreamless sleep, to discover that my rash had completely cleared up and that my breathing was perfectly normal. I feel as though I've taken a huge step in transforming myself, that I've crossed a threshold into a new realm where fear will never again destroy my will.

God---for the first time I can truthfully say that life is a wonderful adventure.

Aug. 8th---Arrived in Oxford last night. Today saw the Ashmolean Museum. They have an outstanding collection of Roman sculptures and a splendid Egyptian room, especially abundant in Pharaonic accessories---amulets, seal rings, fibulae, hieroglyphed slate pallets, as well as a macabre collection of mummified cats. Afterwards I bought a camera (unconscionably expensive over here) and stocked up on film. I'd no intention originally of taking photographs, but England is so visually opulent that I'd be a fool not to.

I drove south and stopped off at the White Horse of Uffington. It's a sculpture of a horse, hewn out of a chalk hill by the ancient Celts. To get to it, you leave your car in a parking lot, then hike up a gently ascending pasture. I took a photograph of the horse from the pasture, but I don't think it'll come out well. The horse cannot be seen clearly except from the air, unfortunately. It's as if it had been made for the observation of aerial beings.

As I walked back down the sloping pasture I felt very alone. Since I left Oxford, I've become inordinately aware of my own isolation. But I know that's just a result of being in a foreign country.

Stayed the night at a bed and breakfast inn just off the carriageway.

August 9th---Visited the stone circle at Avebury today. I cannot adequately define or explain the feeling that came over me when I entered the field in which the massive stones were standing. Everything was alluringly still and silent, the air felt thick with poised presences, and my skin seemed to tingle with the subtlest of vibrations. It was quite similar to feelings I've had when entering certain rooms in old houses. I know this sounds childish, but those ancient rocks seemed haunted to me. I stood next to one of them for some minutes, leaning against its cool unyielding surface. The most ludicrous idea then occurred to me. I felt as though all the stones were about to start walking! Can you imagine?

Not pleased with such an image, I returned to my car. I drove to another ancient site nearby. It was a high, steeply sloped mound in the middle of a flat empty field of deep green grass. There are many such mounds in England. They call them "tors." I took a photograph of it. As I snapped the picture I noticed that there were some tourists across the field, who were walking along a road. So far, I haven't seen many tourists.

Aug. 10th---Arrived in Glastonbury last evening, just as the sun was setting over what is probably the most beautiful valley I've ever seen. They call it the Vale of Avalon, supposedly a haunt of King Arthur's. There is something profoundly serene and magical about it. It seems more real than reality, the world of myth made actual.

Today, had a rich breakfast of cream tea and scones. Then I visited the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, and the Chalice Well, where Joseph of Arimithaea is said to have placed the chalice of the Last Supper. I took a long walk up to Glastonbury Tor in the blistering heat. I had to walk along a steep and narrow paved road thickly shouldered with gorse. There's a single church tower atop the summit of the tor which makes an oddly contradictory visual statement. I took a shot of the tor, and when I got to the top, I took a few more shots of the stunning checkerboard vistas below.

I got my first roll of film developed today. Several shots of Oxford, the facade of the Ashmolean Museum, Carfax Tower. . . .Something curious, though, in the photo I took in the pasture leading to the Uffington chalk horse. In the middle of the field, about halfway to the horse, some 100 yards from where I shot the picture, a figure can be seen standing. It's hard to say whether it's a man or a woman---the face seems to be distorted, probably because the person was moving as I took the shot. Besides, he or she is wearing some kind of cape or robe with a big hood that largely hides the face. Now what surprises me about this photograph is that I do not recall seeing another person anywhere near me at the Uffington site. I saw no one at all in the pasture on my way to or from the white horse. I suppose someone may have been hiding, possibly in a fold of the hill. But wouldn't I have seen this person in my viewfinder as I took the shot? It's certainly odd.

Arrived in Bath later today. I intended to go straight to the Roman baths, but I'd just missed a tour, so, to kill time, I took a stroll along the river Avon, whose still waters beneath an arched stone bridge reflected the rays of the setting sun with shimmering, Impressionistic glory. I had two pints of bitters at a pub, then roast lamb and potatoes upstairs. Tomorrow I think I'll go to Wales.

Aug. 11---I've had to stay another day in Bath. I'm sick. I feel incredibly run-down and can barely get out of bed. I don't know what's wrong with me. I keep thinking my illness is somehow connected with the photographs I got back from the developer this morning before I fell ill. Of course, I'm probably just getting myself worked up over perfectly innocuous blemishes. Most of the shots, indeed, came out flawlessly. I'm really pleased with the camera. Still, a certain disturbing idea seems to have intimated itself in those blemishes, and my imagination has run with it, as it were. It's all quite foolish, of course. I'm disappointed in myself, too, for my fears seem to have returned with a vengeance.

Most of the shots, as I say, came out just fine---except for two. On the photograph of Glastonbury Tor, above the tower of the ruined church, there is what initially appears to be a grayish speck. At first I tried scraping the speck off with a fingernail, but then, looking more closely, I saw that it seemed to be more than a speck---that it had dimension and depth and was apparently in the picture. It is oval-shaped, almost disc-like, and seems to be hovering over the tor. I took note of this aberration with some curiosity, but it wasn't until I'd come upon the photograph of the other tor---the one near Avebury---that I actually became frightened. For an identical disc-like object can be seen hovering over this tor as well. But there was something different about it, and I realized what it was as I looked more closely. You can just make out several slender white lines angling down from the hovering object and passing through the group of tourists who are walking along the road near the field. They're almost like laser beams of some kind---laser beams piercing right through the bodies of those tourists.

Naturally, I'd noticed no such things in the sky when I'd taken these photographs. Why is the same object---if object it really is---visible in two photographs? And why above the two tors? And what is the meaning of those laser-like beams? I don't like thinking about it. I don't like mysteries like this.

Aug 12---Thank god for Welsh rain! I crossed the Severn bridge this afternoon, and the moment I got to the Welsh side the rain began to fall in quieting streams from vast leaden clouds that blanketed the entire sky. The downpour seemed to cleanse me of all my fears, and though I still feel run-down and drained, I'm in much better spirits than I was yesterday.

To think that I let two little specks upset me so!
Saw Chepstow Castle and Tintern Abbey. Wound up in the village of Brecon. It's a nice little burg, with several quaint churches, and a leafy, burbling river running through town. I took no photographs, however.

Aug. 13---Hay-On-Wye. This village is a bibliophile's dream. The main street is narrow and lined with dainty little shops, many of which are used bookstores. They've even turned the ruins of a castle into a bookstore. The village is so delightful, yet at first, remembering my strange photographs, I hesitated to capture any of it on film. But then I went into a pub and had two pints of cider, and by the time I came out my confidence was so restored that I shot an entire roll.

Later, in one of the bookstores, I found a peculiar volume. It was all about prehistoric sites in Great Britain and what the author called "earth magic." I came across an unsettling passage about tors: apparently, these mounds were considered by the ancient Celts to be entrances to the mythical underworld. According to the author, strange energies still linger about the tors.

Aug. 14th---I left Hay-On-Wye shortly after getting yesterday's photographs developed. I'm really quite upset, and I don't know what to do. Yesterday, I took a photograph of the diamond-paned Tudor window of the Fellowship Bookshop. Just as I snapped the shot, a village policeman entered the picture from one direction, and two old women entered it from the other, ruining the shot. That's what I remember seeing in my viewfinder. But looking at the photograph now, a fourth  figure has entered the scene between the old women and the policeman---a somewhat blurry figure dressed in a long cape or robe. A large hood is collapsed around the shoulders of this figure, uncovering its head. And the face revealed: even though it's blurry, you can tell it's not normal. It isn't shaped right. . . .

I've re-checked the photograph I took at Uffington: I think the figure in the pasture is the same figure that's walking in front of the Fellowship Bookshop.

Aug. 16th---Tenby. I've taken a room along the beachside promenade of this seaside resort in Pembrokeshire. I've spent the last two days in bed, too tired to move, but so prone to horrible dreams that sleep has been impossible. One dream in particular has stayed with me, oppressing me. I dreamed that I was in bed, trying to sleep, when suddenly I realized that some sort of snake was sucking on me, like a baby on its mother. In the dream I opened my eyes and saw that it wasn't a snake after all, but a long transparent tube that was neatly inserted into my stomach. A shining substance flowed through the tube. I knew that this substance was something vital, and that it was being drawn through the tube, right out of me.
I woke up screaming and for a frightening instant in which the dream seemed to become projected into my awakening, I felt my hands pulling on something long and ropy. But then I opened my eyes and it was gone, my fingers clutching the empty air. Later on, I noticed a strange red welt on my stomach.

It's been two days since I've taken any photographs. I have this intense urge to take some more. To prove that I'm just imagining things. I threw out those other photographs without even looking at them again. No point in mulling over them. If I can just be calm and rational about things, I think I'll be all right.

I should force myself to take a stroll around town, and---damn it!---some photographs.

Aug. 17th---If I believed that I was suffering from delusions, experiencing hallucinations, I would actually feel quite comforted. But the photographs prove something else entirely.

I took a roll of film yesterday: various shots of Tenby and the beach. The first few shots came out perfectly normal, nothing untoward in them, and for a moment I thought I was no longer afflicted. But then I came to the shot I took of the main street in Tenby. A man and woman are strolling down the sidewalk, occupying the space of the foreground. In the middle distance is the street, a red car is passing by---and across the street, about thirty feet from where I was shooting the picture, standing along the wall next to the gatehouse of Tenby Castle, are a group of spectators. They are hooded, and wear long black robes. Their faces are all distorted, as if seen through smears of water, with insufferably large, dark eyes set far apart on their irregular skulls, like the eyes of insects. The expression in those eyes is horrible. It seems at once profoundly meaningful and utterly vacuous---as of eyes revealing an awareness of reality far beyond the limited mind of man. And what is worse, they're all staring at me!
Three of the hooded things are holding transparent tubes that ascend out of the picture.

But when I came to the photos of the beach I was in for an even worse surprise. I'd taken a shot of a group of young children walking across the beach, the hotels along the cliffs looming above on the left, the waves of Carmarthen Bay on the right, and an empty blue sky above. But the photograph shows a large silver object hovering in that sky about 100 feet above the beach---an object from which dozens of sinuous glowing tubes fall down to the sand, each of their ends attached to one of the frolicking children, like dog leashes. There was one tube that seemed errant, though, not attached to any of the children, until I realized that it was pointing right at the camera---at me.

Later. . . .
I've destroyed the photographs of Tenby, as well as the camera. I return to America tomorrow. Returning to what, I don't know. I have this terrible fear that sooner or later, even without a camera, I'll start seeing them, because an organ of perception has been activated in me---an organ of perception which every human being must also possess.

I've had a chance to think about things and I've come up with a theory. I believe they are using us as sources for a substance necessary to life on their world. I think they're mining us for our spiritual essences and using those essences for their own purposes. Why is it that man has not yet transcended the bonds of dualism which keeps him in conflict with himself? Why is it that we have not yet become higher beings capable of true understanding and wisdom? The answer is simple: we are trapped in an overvaluation of matter because those creatures are siphoning off our spirit. They are feeding themselves on our God-given capacity for divinity. For thousands of years our spiritual aspirations have been held in check because of the appetite of these invisible entities. While they become ever more refined in the ways of the holy, we stay imprisoned in the corrupting paradoxes of the flesh. But the most terrible thing is---they have no compunction about doing this to us, and it's not because they're evil. I think that their feeding on us is part of the balance of nature. Maybe it's part of the natural order that we will never have enough spirit to permanently attain a higher form of consciousness. Maybe mankind isn't meant for transcendence.

My god, doesn't anyone else in the world know what's going on?

*******************************************

So there you have it, Doctor---the increasingly fey and panicked ravings of the unfortunate Mr. F.... I was glad to be rid of him, and not just because, as I say, I felt I could do nothing to heal him. I must confess to a level of psychic disturbance within myself which deepened with each of our sessions. I instinctively felt that if I saw him for much longer some insidious potency might be transmitted to me---that I might become infected by the same lethal enchantments that had so tormented and overwhelmed him.

But it wasn't until I'd returned from a camping trip with my wife Madeline that I seriously questioned if an especially nasty example of the counter-transference was really what I had to fear.

You see, the photograph that I've enclosed was not taken by Mr. F..., but by my wife.

The photo shows me standing on a trail near Mount Lassen, California, high woods and shadows all around, zigzagging sections of blue sky mantling the scene. I have a back-pack on and I'm squinting into the sun, which bathes my face with late-morning intensity. As far as Madeline and I were concerned, we were all alone in the woods when that shot was taken. But as the photograph in your hands plainly shows, several hooded figures are visible standing on either side of the trail, their faces blurred and ill-formed. No doubt you have also noticed the curious glowing shaft or tube that seems attached to my head and that sweeps up past the tops of the trees and into the sky where its other end disappears inside a hovering disc-like craft.

And now I must add that this morning, jogging in the park, I saw three of the entities sitting on a bench, staring at me. I have not told my wife about this, nor did I show her the enclosed photograph. I have not gone to the authorities, the likelihood of being denounced as a charlatan dissuading me from doing so. But if I could convince someone of impeccable stature and academic reputation, such as yourself, of the authenticity of this phenomenon, I think the right people would take us seriously enough to investigate. Whether or not that investigation would validate Mr. F...'s theory of the incessant devouring of the human spirit by unknown Others, is something about which I dare not speculate.
In any case, Doctor, I do not believe that I will have to convince you to join me.

You see, Mr. F... became accidentally linked to spheres unknown, and that linkage somehow allows those spheres to be transmittable to photo-sensitive material. By being near him for some time, I too developed his "gift." Then, this morning, I was able to experience the phenomenon without the aid of a camera, an eventuality which Mr. F... himself suggested in his diary. Apparently, we are dealing here with a kind of perceptual virus. Perhaps it has started to break out in little pockets all over the earth. In any event, it is highly contagious and its progress is alarmingly rapid. (But what of Mr. F...'s theory? Isn't it just as likely that these entities, rather than removing spirit from us, are inserting  it into us, and that this increase in spiritual capacity is the very thing which allows us to perceive them?)

Now I hate to be guilty of a presumption, Doctor, but I'm sure that you won't ignore the chance of being on the cusp of an entirely new field of psychological research. Nor do I believe that you really have a choice in the matter. For having no doubt gazed upon the enclosed photograph, having handled these pages and absorbed their essence, it seems fairly assured that you have already been infected with this perceptual virus yourself, and will soon start to see certain things---the likes of which we have all been unaware of for years.

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