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Chapter fourteen. Things That Go Bump in the Night. |
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Like most New Year resolutions, it was never kept. (107) The parting of the Zemi dead from the living and the various propitiatory sacrifices to spirits were not the only times when the unseen world impinged upon ours. One way and another, the supernatural was always with one in Naga life. Sometimes mysterious lights were seen in the remote jungle on the surrounding hills and the men claimed that they were " spirit-fires "; sometimes there were alarms at night and half the household declared they heard cries and eerie whistling. But the " spirit-fires " always looked to me like brushwood burning, and though I heard the cries twice, and couldn't identify the animal making them, I never managed to hear the whistles at all. My scepticism, however, received a sharp jolt when in January of 1941 we developed a poltergeist in the camp itself. |
