Joan asked her father to report on what he had discovered.

          He did not respond.

          "Are you all right?" asked Joan.

          No answer.

          "Dad?"

          Again no answer.

          I went and stood next to Joan.

          "What's wrong with your father?" I whispered.

          "I'm not sure,"  she answered with a shrug. "I've never seen
          him like this before."

          Suddenly her father  became  agitated.  His  breathing  less
          relaxed. There was,  he  claimed,  a nebulous octopoid shape
          taking form in  the  hallway.  A  venomous creature, brought
          into existence out  of  a  luminous  green mist. Although we
          could see nothing  in  the  hall,  we  could  all  sense it.
          Something was there. An ageless evil. Cold and unclean.

          It began to move towards him.

          "No! Go back! Go back!" he cried.

          "Call on your  Spirit  Guides,"  said Joan. "They'll protect
          you."

          As the minutes  passed,  and  nothing  happened, we began to
          fear that the  attempt  was  failing.  Nervous  glances were
          exchanged.  Had  the   creature  taken  possession  of  him?
          Suddenly he exhaled  deeply.   "It's  gone," he said softly.
          "It's gone now."

          Everyone started breathing again.

          "I've never seen anything like it!" he exclaimed. "There was
          some kind of  energy  field  here  in the past. I think we'd
          better start the seance as soon as possible."

          It was now  11:00  a.m. and everyone was keen for the seance
          to begin. We  sat  around  the  table  holding  hands in the
          darkened living room.  A solitary candle stood in the middle
          of the table.  As an aid in contacting the forces at work in
          the apartment, a young girl in the group volunteered to stay
          apart and stand in one of the energy fields for the duration
          of the seance.

          At 11:05 a.m., we became aware that something was happening.
          The girl who  had  left  the  room  screamed  out  loud that
          someone or some  thing had just tried to push her over. Joan
          asked the girl's  husband,  an acupuncturist called Owen, to
          go and bring  his  wife back into the living room. After she
          had returned and  positioned  herself  between Ralph and her
          husband, the seance continued.

          The air around  us became ice cold. The girl sitting next to
          Ralph became so  cold that he felt as if he were standing in
          front of an  open  freezer.  The cold travelled up his right
          arm as well as along his right leg. The girl was so cold she
          started to shiver. Ralph's right arm became numb and he lost
          all feeling and  movement  in  his  arm. During this time, I
          began to gradually  lose  touch  with reality, aware and yet
          unaware of those  round  about me. The sound of Joan's voice
          describing how she could hear a woman's spirit screaming for
          help, brought me  back  to the here and now. The others were
          getting quite scared  as  I don't think that any of them had
          ever experienced anything  like this before.  "Tell me about
          the little girl, Joan." I asked.

          "All I can tell you is, her name is Ellie."

          Shortly after this  we  broke  from the seance. The girl who
          had sat next  to Ralph was still quite cold, so we wrapped a
          blanket around her  to  keep  her  warm.  In  the hours that
          followed  we  discussed  the  strange  apparition  that  had
          appeared in the  hallway.  Obviously,  we  concluded, it had
          been a dangerous  entity  of  some sort. Perhaps it had been
          the work of  the  devil!  I  was advised that the burning of
          sandalwood incense would  create a protective barrier around
          me with which  to  keep the beast at bay. Incense has always
          been a staple  item  in  the  occultist's  world  of chants,
          spells and rituals.  It  has  a  long  tradition  of magical
          powers,  being  used   for   all   kinds   of  purposes  but
          specifically to make one susceptible to psychic changes deep
          within one's own  mind.  All  in  all,  it had been quite an
          experience for all  concerned.  But  after  a few weeks this
          class, too, ceased. They were just too scared to continue.

          It did not occur to me at the time that all this would be so
          frightening to others.  The  person who did surprise me most
          by her reaction  was  Joan.  I  thought  that she would have
          encountered these kind  of happenings dozens of times, after
          all she was  conducting psychic development classes and gave
          the impression of being experienced in such matters, but she
          had seemed to  be  more  scared than any of us. As she left,
          she warned me  that  the  creature would return at 8:00 p.m.
          that night. It did not.