'
But the difference for me between the two sets of experience is
as great as the difference between feeling a slight warmth
originating I know not where, and standing in the midst of a
conflagration with all the ordinary senses alert.
"It was about September, 1884, when I had the first experience.
On the previous night I had had, after getting into bed at my
rooms in College, a vivid tactile hallucination of being grasped
by the arm, which made me get up and search the room for an
intruder; but the sense of presence properly so called came on
the next night. After I had got into bed and blown out the
candle, I lay awake awhile thinking on the previous night's
experience, when suddenly I FELT something come into the room and
stay close to my bed. It remained only a minute or two. I did
not recognize it by any ordinary sense and yet there was a
horribly unpleasant 'sensation' connected with it. It stirred
something more at the roots of my being than any ordinary
perception. The feeling had something of the quality of a very
large tearing vital pain spreading chiefly over the chest, but
within the organism--and yet the feeling was not PAIN so much as
ABHORRENCE.
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