The Phantom World; or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c.

"You have been before me, sir, respecting the spirit of St. Maur, which causes so much conversation at Paris; for I had resolved to send you a short detail of that event, in ord...

We find in all history, both sacred and profane, ancient and modern, an infinite number of examples of the apparition of persons alive to other living persons. The prophet Ezeki...

The opinion of those who hold that all that is related of vampires is the effect of imagination, fascination, or of that disorder which the Greeks term _phrenesis_ or _coribanti...

The following Dissertation on the apparition which happened at St. Maur, near Paris, in 1706, was entirely unknown to me. A friend who took some part in my work on apparitions,...

On the 25th of August, 1746, I received a letter from a very worthy man, the curé of the parish of Walsche, a village situated in the mountains of Vosges, in the county of Dabo,...

The books of the Old and New Testament, together with sacred and profane history, are full of relations of the apparition of bad spirits. The first, the most famous, and the mos...

St. Augustine[165] remarks that not only the poets, but the historians even, relate that Diomede, of whom the Greeks have made a divinity, had not the happiness to return to his...

I was told lately at Valogne, that a good priest of the town who teaches the children to read, had had an apparition in broad day ten or twelve years ago. As that had made a gre...

St. Augustine[344] acknowledges that the dead have often appeared to the living, have revealed to them the spot where their body remained unburied, and have shown them that wher...

All that has just been said is more fitted to prove that the going of sorcerers and witches to the sabbath is only an illusion and a deranged imagination on the part of these pe...

Within a short time, a work composed by a Father Prémontré, of the Abbey of Toussaints, in the Black Forest, has been communicated to me. His work is in manuscript, and entitled...

The ancient Hebrews, as well as the greater number of other nations, were very careful in burying their dead. That appears from all history; we see in the Scripture how much att...

There was in Lorraine, about the year 1620, a woman, possessed (by the devil), who made a great noise in the country, but whose case is much less known among foreigners. I mean...

We read in works, published and printed, composed by Catholic authors of our days,[263] that it is proved by reason, that possessions of the demon are naturally impossible, and...

In order to combat the apparitions of angels, demons, and disembodied souls, we still bring forward the effects of a prepossessed fancy, struck with an idea, and of a weak and t...

After having spoken at some length upon apparitions, and after having established the truth of them, as far as it has been possible for us to do so, from the authority of the Sc...

If all that is related of spirits which are perceived in houses, in the cavities of mountains, and in mines, is certain, we cannot disavow that they also must be placed in the r...

Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, relates that a good priest named Stephen, having received the confession of a lord named Guy, who was mortally wounded in a combat, this lor...

The empire of the devil nowhere shines forth with more lustre than in what is related of the Sabbath (witches' sabbath or assembly), where he receives the homage of those of bot...

There are several kinds of spectres or ghosts which haunt certain houses, make noises, appear there, and disturb those who live in them: some are sprites, or elves, which divert...

The story of the Marquis de Rambouillet, who appeared after his death to the Marquis de Précy, is very celebrated. These two lords, conversing on the subject of the other world,...

Everybody acknowledges that there is an infinity of riches buried in the earth, or lost under the waters by shipwrecks; they fancy that the demon, whom they look upon as the god...

Several objections may be raised against the obsessions and possessions of demons; nothing is subject to greater difficulties than this matter, but Providence constantly and uni...

This is an unheard-of example; a man and woman who declared themselves to be a sorcerer and sorceress. Louis Gaufredi, Curé of the parish of Accouls, at Marseilles,[218] was acc...

Monsieur Pitton de Tournefort relates the manner in which they exhumed a pretended vroucolaca, in the Isle of Micon, where he was on the 1st of January, 1701. These are his own...

All that is said about witches going to the sabbath is treated as a fable, and we have several examples which prove that they do not stir from their bed or their chamber. It is...

The dogma of the immortality of the soul, and of its existence after its separation from the body which it once animated, being taken for indubitable, and Jesus Christ having in...

We must now report some of the most famous instances of the possession and obsession of the demon. Every body is talking at this time of the possession (by the devil) of the nun...

Hector Boëthius,[550] in his History of Scotland, relates that Duffus, king of that country, falling ill of a disorder unknown to the physicians, was consumed by a slow fever, p...

Peter, the venerable[483] abbot of Clugni, relates the conversation which he had in the presence of the bishops of Oleron and of Osma, in Spain, together with several monks, wit...

In answer to these, I allow that there is indeed very often a great deal of illusion, prepossession, and imagination in all that is termed magic and sorcery; and sometimes the d...

REASONS WHICH LEAD US TO BELIEVE THAT THE GREATER PART OF THE ANCIENT ORACLES WERE ONLY IMPOSITIONS OF THE PRIESTS AND PRIESTESSES, WHO FEIGNED THAT THEY WERE INSPIRED BY GOD.

Many persons regard magic, magicians, witchcraft, and charms as fables and illusions, the effects of imagination in weak minds, who, foolishly persuaded of the excessive power p...

Plutarch, whose gravity and wisdom are well known, often speaks of spectres and apparitions. He says, for instance, that at the famous battle of Marathon against the Persians, s...

Jamblichus, a disciple of Porphyry,[69] has treated the matter of genii and their apparition more profoundly than any other author of antiquity. It would seem, to hear him disco...

Here is another instance, which happened in 1698 to one of the so-called reformed religion.[636] A minister of the county of York, at a place called Hipley, and whose name was H...

St. Augustine relates on this subject,[596] that a countryman named Curma, who held a small place in the village of Tullia, near Hippoma, having fallen sick, remained for some d...

As soon as we admit it as a principle that angels and demons are purely spiritual substances, we must consider, not only as chimerical but also as impossible, all personal inter...

Good angels usually bring only good news, and announce nothing but what is fortunate; or if they do announce any future misfortunes, it is to persuade men to prevent them, or tu...

Some learned men have thought they discovered some vestiges of vampirism in the remotest antiquity; but all that they say of it does not come near what is related of the vampire...

After having made this exposition of my opinion concerning the apparitions of angels, demons, souls of the dead, and even of one living person to another, and having spoken of m...

Monsieur de St. André, consulting physician in ordinary to the king, in his sixth letter[144] against magic, maintains that in the affair of Hocque which has been mentioned, the...

The greatest objection that can be raised against the apparitions of angels, demons, and disembodied souls, takes its rise in the nature of these substances, which being purely...

There are two different ways of effacing the opinion concerning these pretended ghosts, and showing the impossibility of the effects which are made to be produced by corpses ent...

The most usual form in which good angels appear, both in the Old Testament and the New, is the human form. It was in that shape they showed themselves to Abraham, Lot, Jacob, Mo...

It is possible to allege against my reasoning the secrets of physics and chemistry, which produce an infinity of wonderful effects, and appear beyond the power of natural agency...

Phlegonus, freed-man of the Emperor Adrian,[458] in the fragment of the book which he wrote on wonderful things, says that at Tralla, in Asia, a certain man named Machates, an i...

The books of the New Testament are in the same manner full of facts which prove the apparition of good angels. The angel Gabriel appeared to Zachariah the father of John the Bap...

Moses had foreseen that so untractable and superstitious a people as the Israelites would not rest satisfied with the reasonable, pious, and supernatural means which he had proc...

It is with reason that obsessions and possessions of the devil are placed in the rank of apparitions of the evil spirit among men. We call it _obsession_ when the demon acts ext...

The Dutch Gleaner, who is by no means credulous, supposes the truth of these facts as certain, having no good reason for disputing them, and reasons upon them in a way which sho...

We cannot approve these opinions of Jews which we have just shown. They are contrary to our holy religion, and to the dogmas of our schools. But we believe that the spirit which...

We read in a new work that a man, Honoré Mirable, having found in a garden near Marseilles a treasure consisting of several Portuguese pieces of gold, from the indication given...

We have just seen that the vampires never speak of the other world, nor ask for either masses or prayers, nor give any warning to the living to lead them to correct their morals...

Both in ancient and modern writers, we find an infinite number of stories of spectres. We have not the least doubt that their apparitions are the work of the demon, if they are...

All pagan antiquity speaks of magic and magicians, of magical operations, and of superstitious, curious, and diabolical books. Historians, poets, and orators are full of things...

If it were well proved that the oracles of pagan antiquity were the work of the evil spirit, we could give more real and palpable proofs of the apparition of the demon among men...

If what is related of vampires were certainly true, the question here proposed would be frivolous and useless; they would reply to us directly--In Hungary, Moravia, and Poland,...

It is true that we know not what may be the food of angels who are substances which are purely spiritual, nor what became of that food which Raphael and the angels that Abraham...

That bodies which have died of violent maladies, or which have been executed when full of health, or have simply swooned, should vegetate underground in their graves; that their...

On examining the narrative of the death of the pretended martyrs of vampirism, I discover the symptoms of an epidemical fanaticism; and I see clearly that the impression made up...

We cannot reasonably dispute the truth of these ecstatic trances, the elevations of the body of some saints to a certain distance from the ground, since these circumstances are...

Father Pierre Thyree,[316] a Jesuit, relates an infinite number of anecdotes of houses haunted by ghosts, spirits, and demons; for instance, that of a tribune, named Hesperius,...

The Greeks have always boasted that they received the art of magic from the Persians, or the Bactrians. They affirm that Zoroaster communicated it to them; but when we wish to k...

All that we have just reported concerning the bodies of persons who had been excommunicated leaving their tombs during mass, and returning into them after the service, deserves...

After what we have just related from the books of the Old and New Testament, it cannot be disavowed that the Jews in general, the apostles, the Christians, and their disciples h...

In order to omit nothing which can throw light on this matter, I shall insert here the letter of a very honest man, who is well informed respecting ghosts. This letter was writt...

All these traditions are clearly to be found in Homer, Virgil, and other Greek and Latin authors; they were doubtless originally derived from the Hebrews, or rather the Egyptian...

These resurrections have a manifest relation to the matter which we are here treating of, since it relates to persons who are dead, or held to be so, who appear bodily and anima...

Plutarch relates that a man who fell from a great height, having pitched upon his neck, was believed to be dead, without there being the appearance of any hurt. As they were car...

Business[308] having led the Count d'Alais[309] to Marseilles, a most extraordinary adventure happened to him there: he desired Neuré to write to our philosopher (Gassendi) to k...

The difficulty is much greater, if we suppose that these spirits are absolutely disengaged from any kind of matter; for how can they assemble about them a certain quantity of ma...

I have been told by the late Monsieur de Vassimont, counsellor of the Chamber of the Counts of Bar, that having been sent into Moravia by his late Royal Highness Leopold, first...

The ancient heathens, both Greeks and Romans, attributed to magic and to the demon the power of occasioning the destruction of any person by a manner of devoting them to death,...

After having treated in a separate dissertation on the matter of the apparitions of angels, demons, and disembodied souls, the connection of the subject invites me to speak also...

Whatever respect I may feel for St. Gregory the Great, who relates some instances of deceased persons who died in a state of excommunication going out of the church before the e...

Were we to believe what is said by the poets concerning the effects of magic, and what the magicians boast of being able to perform by their spells, nothing would be more marvel...

The affair of ghosts having made so much noise in the world as it has done, it is not surprising that a diversity of systems should have been formed upon it, and that so many ma...

We read in an old work, written in the time of St. Augustine,[629] that a man having been crushed by a wall which fell upon him, his wife ran to the church to invoke St. Stephen...

Supposing the principle which we established as indubitable at the commencement of this dissertation--that God alone is the sovereign arbitrator of life and death; that he alone...

In a certain canton of Hungary, named in Latin _Oppida Heidanum_, beyond the Tibisk, _vulgo_ Teiss, that is to say, between that river which waters the fortunate territory of To...

To resume, in a few words, all that we have related in this dissertation: we have therein shown that a resurrection, properly so called, of a person who has been dead for a cons...

Here follow some instances of drowned persons[568] who came to themselves several days after they were believed to be dead. Peclin relates the story of a gardener of Troninghalm...

Very clever physicians assert[570] that in cases of the suffocation of the womb, a woman may live thirty days without breathing. I know that a very excellent woman was six-and-t...

INSTANCES OF PERSONS WHO HAVE SHOWN SIGNS OF LIFE AFTER THEIR DEATH, AND WHO HAVE DRAWN BACK FROM RESPECT, TO MAKE ROOM OR GIVE PLACE TO SOME WHO WERE MORE WORTHY THAN THEMSELVES.

I shall not fail to be told that all these testimonies from Scripture do not prove the reality of magic, sorcery, divination, and the rest; but only that the Hebrews and Egyptia...

Those who have recourse to the fascination of the senses to explain what is related concerning the apparition of vampires, throw themselves into as great a perplexity as those w...

Le Loyer, in his book upon spectres, maintains[536] that the demon can cause the possessed to make extraordinary and involuntary movements. He can then, if allowed by God, give...

Jerome Cardan says[604] that he fell into a trance when he liked; he owns that he does not know if, like the priest Pretextat, he should not feel great wounds or hurts, but he d...

St. Gregory the Great relates[490] that St. Benedict having threatened to excommunicate two nuns, these nuns died in that state. Some time after, their nurse saw them go out of...

Ricaut, in the history he has given us of the present state of the Greek church, acknowledges that this opinion, that the bodies of excommunicated persons do not decay, is gener...

But the possibility, the verity and reality of the obsessions and possessions of the devil are indubitable, and proved by the Scripture and by the authority of the Church, the F...

I have already proposed the objection formed upon the impossibility of these vampires coming out of their graves, and returning to them again, without its appearing that they ha...

Apparitions in dreams, for instance, that of the angel[439] who told St. Joseph to carry the infant Jesus into Egypt because King Herod wished to put him to death; there are two...

The resuscitation of some persons who were believed to be dead, and who were not so, but simply asleep, or in a lethargy; and of those who were supposed to be dead, having been...

It is an opinion widely spread in Germany, that certain dead persons chew in their graves, and devour whatever may be close to them; that they are even heard to eat like pigs, w...

A scholar of the town of Saint Pons, near Narbonne,[508] having died in a state of excommunication, appeared to one of his friends, and begged of him to go to the city of Rhodes...

The apparitions or appearances of good angels are frequently mentioned in the books of the Old Testament. He who was stationed at the entrance of the terrestrial Paradise[3] was...

The Greeks relate[514] that under the Patriarch of Constantinople Manuel, or Maximus, who lived in the fifteenth century, the Turkish Emperor of Constantinople wished to know th...

About fifteen years ago, a soldier who was billeted at the house of a Haidamagne peasant, on the frontiers of Hungary, as he was one day sitting at table near his host, the mast...

The most remarkable instance cited by Rauff[580] is that of one Peter Plogojovitz, who had been buried ten weeks in a village of Hungary, called Kisolova. This man appeared by n...

The Life of St. Fursius,[634] written a short time after his death, which happened about the year 653, reports several visions seen by this holy man. Being grievously ill, and u...

We read in the _menées_ of the Greeks, on the 15th of October, that a monk of the Desert of Sheti, having been excommunicated by him who had the care of his conduct, for some ac...

We see again in history, several other examples of the dead bodies of excommunicated persons being cast out of consecrated earth; for instance, in the life of St. Gothard, Bisho...

Supposing these facts, which I believe to be incontestably true, may we not imagine that the vampires of Hungary, Silesia, and Moldavia, are some of those men who have died of m...

William of Malmsbury says[481] that in England they believed that the wicked came back to earth after their death, and were brought back in their own bodies by the devil, who go...

We read in a new work, a story which has some connection with this subject. A shopkeeper of the Rue St. Honoré, at Paris, had promised his daughter to one of his friends, a shop...

Those authors have reasoned a great deal on these events. 1. Some have believed them to be miraculous. 2. Others have looked upon them simply as the effect of a heated imaginati...

We have just had in this part of Hungary a scene of vampirism, which is duly attested by two officers of the tribunal of Belgrade, who went down to the places specified; and by...

The famous Hincmar,[632] Archbishop of Rheims, in a circular letter which he wrote to the bishops, his suffragans, and the faithful of his diocese, relates, that a man named Ber...

It is a very ancient opinion that the bodies of the excommunicated do not decompose; it appears in the Life of St Libentius, Archbishop of Bremen, who died on the 4th of January...

Some advantage of these instances and these arguments may be derived in favor of vampirism, by saying that the ghosts of Hungary, Moravia, and Poland are not really dead, that t...

Thomas Bartholin, the son, in his treatise entitled "_Of the Causes of the contempt of Death felt by the Ancient Danes while yet Gentiles_," remarks[480] that a certain Hordus,...

The instance we are about to relate occurred in Peru, in the country of the Ititans. A girl named Catharine died at the age of sixteen an unhappy death, and she had been guilty...

John Brompton, Abbot of Sornat in England,[502] says that we may read in very old histories that St. Augustin, the Apostle of England, wishing to persuade a gentleman to pay the...

Vestiges of these ghosts are still found in Lapland, where it is said they see a great number of spectres, who appear among those people, speak to them, and eat with them, witho...

The public memorials of the years 1693 and 1694 speak of _oupires_, vampires or ghosts, which are seen in Poland, and above all in Russia. They make their appearance from noon t...