Handwriting on the wall has ever struck terror to the hearts of even
sane men. I remember as one of my most unpleasant experiences that I
began to see handwriting on the sheets of my bed staring me in the
face, and not me alone, but also the spurious relatives who often stood
or sat near me. On each fresh sheet placed over me I would soon begin
to see words, sentences, and signatures, all in my own handwriting. Yet
I could not decipher any of the words, and this fact dismayed me, for I
firmly believed that those who stood about could read them all and
found them to be incriminating evidence.

I imagined that these visionlike effects, with few exceptions, were
produced by a magic lantern controlled by some of my myriad
persecutors. The lantern was rather a cinematographic contrivance.
Moving pictures, often brilliantly colored, were thrown on the ceiling
of my room and sometimes on the sheets of my bed. Human bodies,
dismembered and gory, were one of the most common of these. All this
may have been due to the fact that, as a boy, I had fed my imagination
on the sensational news of the day as presented in the public press.
Despite the heavy penalty which I now paid for thus loading my mind, I
believe this unwise indulgence gave a breadth and variety to my
peculiar psychological experience which it otherwise would have lacked.
For with an insane ingenuity I managed to connect myself with almost
every crime of importance of which I had ever read.

Dismembered human bodies were not alone my bedfellows at this time. I
remember one vision of vivid beauty. Swarms of butterflies and large
and gorgeous moths appeared on the sheets. I wished that the usually
unkind operator would continue to show these pretty creatures. Another
pleasing vision appeared about twilight several days in succession. I
can trace it directly to impressions gained in early childhood. The