An unpleasant bus incident with interesting implications

Jarring experiences on buses have been mentioned in several articles, including, for example, the one about another string of minor incidents. 

In many cases, these incidents happened just after I had been in contact with an energy vampire and wasn't feeling too good; the dynamics were different in the example featured in this post.

Many years ago, I returned to London after having had a very enjoyable day at the seaside. I was looking forward to having some tea and something light to eat when I got home; I was in a state that might be described as pleasantly tired but contented. 

As I waited for the bus outside Victoria Station, I noticed that the other people at the bus stop seemed to be in a similar, happy but rather subdued, state.

The bus came; we all got on. The small number of other passengers either conversed very quietly or sat in peaceful silence.

Everything changed when someone who seemed switched off, disconnected from what was going on around her, got on the bus a few stops later. Two formerly quiet men immediately became offensively loud and foul mouthed. 

I didn't think much of the incident at the time, but I later came to see it as supporting evidence for some of my ideas.

Trouble of various kinds breaks out around some people, but they are often oblivious of the effect they have on others. They may feel like victims, but they may unwittingly be the cause of bad experiences that they have.

I suspect that the men were influenced by the bad energy that surrounded the new bus passenger. It is possible that they had been drinking, which would have made them more open to contagion.

There is a lot to learn from incidents such as this one.

A scene of special interest from a Dion Fortune occult novel

There are a few scenes in Dion Fortune's occult novels that have particular relevance to some of the material on here. 

These scenes contain familiar elements; they provide supporting evidence for some key theories about certain metaphysical influences and phenomena; they enable people to put similar experiences into a wider context and learn some useful lessons.

This post features one of these scenes. It caught my attention when I was skimming through Dion Fortune's novel The Demon Lover (1927). It describes the negative effect that a girl who is being controlled by an evil entity has on someone she encounters.

Bad energy repels the doctor
A mediumistic young girl called Veronica Mainwaring is a major character in The Demon Lover. While she is harmless in herself, everything changes when she comes under the hypnotic influence of a black magician called Justin Lucas.

After his death, he uses her to help him drain children of their vital energy so that he can materialise; some of the children die.

Possessed by the spirit of Lucas, a huge mastiff goes crazy and kills the doctor's son; this man had hoped to marry Veronica, so Lucas saw him as a rival.

Veronica is taking her morning walk when the doctor drives past in his dog cart:

“He gave her one glance, and shaking the reins, drove swiftly past without any other sign of recognition than was conveyed by that look of hate and repulsion.”

The doctor knows nothing but senses everything:

“...there was something about the girl which did not fall within the laws of his three-dimensional universe. What it was, he could not define, even to himself, but he hated and dreaded her as children and dogs hate and fear, without reason assigned, yet with an unerring instinct.“

The doctor senses that Veronica is overshadowed by Lucas's malign influence, he is repelled by the negative energy around her, and his intuition rightly tells him that she was somehow involved in his son's death. No wonder that he hates and fears and hurries away from her. 

Veronica behaves in a similar way towards the huge killer dog that she has inherited from Lucas. She is a dog lover and at first she quite likes the friendly old thing, but this changes after he comes under the evil influence of the dead Lucas:

“...to Veronica...the whole ‘feel’ of dog, kennel, and surroundings was so repellent that she drew hastily back and hurried away from the yard and its sinister occupant.”

More minor misfortunes and an unexpected ending

Accounts of bad days, bad decisions and strings of minor misfortunes appear in several previous articles.

There is a little more of the same to report, including a very recent nightmare journey that had an unexpected but very welcome ending.

More electrical malfunctions

Tills have recently behaved strangely when it was my turn to pay. Although they worked for the customer immediately in front of me, one went crazy and had to be reset and the other refused to function at all so the girl on it had to move to another station.

It is interesting that Joyce Collin-Smith says that her friend, the one who could make events turn out to good advantage for herself and her circle, caused problems with electrical apparatus.

Some minor disappointments

It is quite a while since I have had what I think of as a good day. Most of the misfortunes are too petty to report, but a long string of tiny setbacks makes me feel that I am living under a cloud.

On several occasions I have made special a trip to a particular shop I remembered only to find that it had closed down.  I took some unwanted items to my favourite charity shop only to find that they were not accepting donations on that day.

These things have their funny side: I remembered seeing a stall in an indoor shopping centre where they repair watches, so took mine there to have a new battery put in. The watch repair man said he wouldn't do it because it would involve taking the back off and unscrewing things!

These are all very trivial problems; things could be and have been much worse. Not only that: a bad day had a good ending.

A meeting and another string of minor misfortunes

I have written several article about days when everything went wrong for me and I experienced some jarring incidents.

I have described some minor misfortunes and unpleasant occurrences, their effects and my ideas about their causes. 

These bad days are exceptional, but they still happen. The latest ‘one of those days’ was yesterday.

The misfortunes

They were very minor and also very typical.

I had left home and was walking towards the bus stop, when the sudden fear that I might not have switched off some plugs came into my mind. The fatal fire in the tower block in June has made me extra careful, so I went back and found that everything was in order. When my resistance is low, as it was at this time, wrong ideas get into my system like germs into a wound.

I went to get some money from the nearest ATM machine. Normally it says, "Please take your card and wait for your money", but this time it just said "Please wait", and I waited and waited and waited.

Eventually, I decided that something must be wrong so I pressed the Cancel button a few times, but nothing happened. I was very worried, and thought I would have to go into the bank first thing next morning and try to sort it out. Suddenly, the machine disgorged my money and card. It was lucky that I was still there to take them. I had trouble with this machine once before – again at a time when I was affected by bad energy.

I went on to pick up some parcels from a shop – I love the ‘Click & Collect’ option! I had intended to get there just before it opened, so I was worried that as I was behind schedule it would be packed with people. I worried unnecessarily. I had checked the opening time online, but actually they didn't open until one hour later so I had to kill some time. Then they couldn't find one of my parcels; they tracked it down eventually though.