“Accordingly, on August 12, 1764, being the Sabbath, I returned as usual into my study, the door of which is secured by a lock with a spring-bolt, and sat down to my accustomed evening devotion; the business of this day by rotation laying in the New Testament, and in that part of it where St. Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians proposes, maintains and proves the resurrection of the body. Struck with the sublimity of his thoughts, boldness of his figures, and energy of his diction, and convinced by the number and weight of his arguments, and looking with a pleasing foretaste of happiness into futurity, I was on a sudden surprised with the perfect form and appearance of a man, who stood erect at a small distance from my right side. “Conscious that the door was locked and that there was no other means by which my visitor could have entered, I was considerably surprised--surprise turning into abject terror--when, glancing with irresistible fascination at the man, I perceived in him something indefinably but most unmistakably Unnatural. “Feeling sure that I was in the actual presence of an apparition, I contrived, by an almost superhuman effort, I admit, to sum up sufficient courage to speak--my voice seeming dry and unrecognisable. “I addressed it in the power and spirit of the Gospel; inquiring on what errand it was sent; what was intended by such an application, and what services could be expected from a person of so little note and mean abilities as myself. “I must here state that although the spectre had inspired me with so much awe, I did not associate it with anything EVIL. “Every second tended to strengthen my composure, and when it spoke in a voice rather more hollow and intense, perhaps, than that of a human being, my fears were instantly dissipated. I was now able to take a close stock of it, and observed that in features, general appearance, and clothes it closely resembled any ordinary labouring man; it was in expression and colouring, only it differed--its eyes were lurid, its cheeks livid. “Raising one extremely white and emaciated hand, it desired me to compose myself, saying that as it was now strictly limited by a Superior Power, and could do no one act but by the permission of God, I had no reason to be afraid, abrupt as was its appearance, and that if I would endeavour to overcome the visible perturbation I was in, it would proceed in the business of its errand. “At this announcement my heart fluttered with an excitement I found difficult to control. Was the wonderful mystery that had hitherto enshrouded the existence and composition of the Unknown about to be revealed to me--was I going to be initiated into those secrets heretofore denied to man? Eagerly promising to compose myself, and lost to all else save the fascinating presence of my guest, I settled down to listen to anything the phantasm might have to say.