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"I slowly realized there was a strange being standing there—perhaps had been standing before me since I had sat down in the chair—holding out his hand towards me. It was a grey, broad-shouldered creature, about the size of a sturdily built human, leaning on a knotted, corkscrew stick of white wood. Where the head should have been I could see nothing but a sphere of pale mist. The apparition gave off a dismal odor of sandalwood and damp slate. I was in the grip of a feeling of utter helplessness, which almost robbed me of my senses. All the torment, which for weeks had been gnawing at my nerves, had condensed into mortal fear and taken shape in this abortion. My instinct for self-preservation told me—warned me, screamed in my ear—that I would go mad with terror if I could see the face of the phantom, and yet it drew me like a magnet so that I found it impossible to avert my gaze from the pale, misty sphere and kept scrutinizing it for eyes, a nose, a mouth. Despite all my efforts, however, I could not discern the slightest movement in the misty sphere. I could visualize all kinds of heads on the body, but I knew that each and everyone was a product of my own imagination. And they always dissolved, almost at the very moment, I had created them."
- excerpt from The Golem, Gustav Meyrink
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