The candles blew and then disappeared

In "Knock, knock, Neo" (February 27), I mention reading the H. G. Wells story "The Red Room." The narrator, scoffing at ghosts, attempts to stay in the titular room, which is supposed to be haunted, but ends up getting spooked in spite of himself. He lights lots of candles, but they keep going out, one after another, faster than he can relight them, and in the end he panics. After his ordeal, he tells his hosts that the room is haunted by Fear itself:

"You believe now," said the old man with the withered hand, "that the room is haunted?" He spoke no longer as one who greets an intruder, but as one who condoles with a friend.

"Yes," said I, "the room is haunted. . . . There is neither ghost of earl nor ghost of countess in that room; there is no ghost there at all, but worse, far worse, something impalpable --”

"Well?" they said.

"The worst of all the things that haunt poor mortal men," said I; "and that is, in all its nakedness -- 'Fear!' Fear that will not have light nor sound, that will not bear with reason, that deafens and darkens and overwhelms. It followed me through the corridor, it fought against me in the room --"

I stopped abruptly. There was an interval of silence. My hand went up to my bandages. "The candles went out one after another, and I fled --"

Three or four days ago, about a week after reading "The Red Room," I was praying in my chapel at night, with several candles as my only illumination. At one point, although the door and windows were closed, the candle flames all suddenly turned horizontal and then went out one by one. No panic ensued, in part because, unlike Wells's protagonist, I had the option of just flipping on the light switch.

In a comment on my own March 10 post "Weirdly specific sync: Meerkats and piranhas," I mentioned listening to the Keep Shelly in Athens version of the Blue Öyster Cult song "(Don't Fear) the Reaper," noting the "Valentine" reference in the lyrics. Debbie replied that she didn't know the song but had looked up the lyrics and was struck by a different line: "Then the door was open, and the wind appeared." I hadn't noticed that line myself because that verse isn't included in the KSiA version. I looked up the original:

Then the door was open and the wind appeared
The candles blew and then disappeared
The curtains flew and then he appeared
Saying don't be afraid . . .