The Book of the Damned

It seems proper, and it will give luster to the new orthodoxy, now to have an instance in which, not merely quake and fall of rocks or meteorites, or quake and either eclipse or luminous appearances in the sky have occurred, but in which are combined all the phenomena, one or more of which, when accompanying earthquake, indicate, in our acceptance, the proximity of another world. This time a longer duration is indicated than in other instances. In the Canadian Institute Proceedings, 2-7-198, there is an account, by the Deputy Commissioner at Dhurmsalla, of the extraordinary Dhurmsalla meteorite--coated with ice. But the combination of events related by him is still more extraordinary: That within a few months of the fall of this meteorite there had been a fall of live fishes at Benares, a shower of red substance at Furruckabad, a dark spot observed on the disk of the sun, an earthquake, "an unnatural darkness of some duration," and a luminous appearance in the sky that looked like an aurora borealis-- But there's more to this climax: We are introduced to a new order of phenomena: Visitors. The Deputy Commissioner writes that, in the evening, after the fall of the Dhurmsalla meteorite, or mass of stone covered with ice, he saw lights. Some of them were not very high. They appeared and went out and reappeared. I have read many accounts of the Dhurmsalla meteorite--July 28, 1860--but never in any other of them a mention of this new correlate--something as out of place in the nineteenth century as would have been an aeroplane--the invention of which would not, in our acceptance, have been permitted, in the nineteenth century, though adumbrations to it were permitted. This writer says that the lights moved like fire balloons, but: