The Night-Side of Nature; Or, Ghosts and Ghost-SeersCrowe, Catherine
Religion
The Night-Side of Nature; Or, Ghosts and Ghost-Seers
Crowe, Catherine
Ghosts; Parapsychology
One of the most remarkable stories of this class I know—excepting
indeed the famous one of the Grecian bride—is that which is said to
have happened at Crossen, in Silesia, in the year 1659, in the reign of
the Princess Elizabeth Charlotte. In the spring of that year, an
apothecary’s man, called Christopher Monig—a native of Serbest, in
Anhalt—died, and was buried with the usual ceremonies of the Lutheran
church. But, to the amazement of everybody, a few days afterward, he, at
least what seemed to be himself, appeared in the shop, where he would
sit himself down, and sometimes walk, and take from the shelves boxes,
pots, and glasses, and set them again in other places; sometimes try and
examine the goodness of the medicines, weigh them with the scales, pound
the drugs with a mighty noise—nay, serve the people that came with
bills to the shop, take their money and lay it up in the counter: in a
word, do all things that a journeyman in such cases used to do. He
looked very ghostly upon his former companions, who were afraid to say
anything to him, and his master being sick at that time, he was very
troublesome to him. At last he took a cloak that hung in the shop, put
it on and walked abroad, but minding nobody in the streets; he entered
into some of the citizen’s houses, especially such as he had formerly
known, yet spoke to no one but to a maid-servant, whom he met with hard
by the church-yard, whom he desired to go home and dig in a lower
chamber of her master’s house, where she would find an inestimable
treasure. But the girl, amazed at the sight of him, swooned away;
whereupon he lifted her up, but left a mark upon her, in so doing, that
was long visible. She fell sick in consequence of the fright, and having
told what Monig had said to her, they dug up the place indicated, but
found nothing but a decayed pot with a hemarites or bloodstone in it.
The affair making a great noise, the reigning princess caused the man’s
body to be taken up, which being done, it was found in a state of
putrefaction, and was reinterred. The apothecary was then recommended to
remove everything belonging to Monig—his linen, clothes, books,
&c.—after which the apparition left the house and was seen no more.
The fact of the man’s reappearance in this manner was considered to be
so perfectly established at the time, that there was actually a public
disputation on the subject in the academy of Leipsic. With regard to the
importance the apparition attached to the bloodstone, we do not know but
that there may be truth in the persuasion that this gem is possessed of
some occult properties of much more value than its beauty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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