The Phantom World; or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c.Calmet, Augustin
Religion
The Phantom World; or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c.
Calmet, Augustin
Apparitions; Demonology; Spirits
Here is another sort of apparition of one living man to another, which
is so much the more singular, because it proves at once the might of
spells, and that a magician can render himself invisible to several
persons, while he discovers himself to one man alone. The fact is
taken from the Treatise on Superstitions, of the reverend father Le
Brun,[414] and is characterized by all which can render it
incontestible. On Friday, the first day of May, 1705, about five
o'clock in the evening, Denis Misanger de la Richardiere, eighteen
years of age, was attacked with an extraordinary malady, which began
by a sort of lethargy. They gave him every assistance that medicine
and surgery could afford. He fell afterwards into a kind of furor or
convulsion, and they were obliged to hold him, and have five or six
persons to keep watch over him, for fear that he should throw himself
out of the windows, or break his head against the wall. The emetic
which they gave him made him throw up a quantity of bile, and for four
or five days he remained pretty quiet.
At the end of the month of May, they sent him into the country to take
the air; and some other circumstances occurred, so unusual, that they
judged he must be bewitched. And what confirmed this conjecture was
that he never had any fever, and retained all his strength,
notwithstanding all the pains and violent remedies which he had been
made to take. They asked him if he had not had some dispute with a
shepherd, or some other person suspected of sorcery or malpractices.
He declared that on the 18th of April preceding, when he was going
through the village of Noysi on horseback for a ride, his horse
stopped short in the midst of the _Rue Feret_, opposite the chapel,
and he could not make him go forward, though he touched him several
times with the spur. There was a shepherd standing leaning against the
chapel, with his crook in his hand, and two black dogs at his side.
This man said to him, "Sir, I advise you to return home, for your
horse will not go forward." The young La Richardiere, continuing to
spur his horse, said to the shepherd, "I do not understand what you
say." The shepherd replied, in a low tone, "I will make you
understand." In effect, the young man was obliged to get down from his
horse, and lead it back by the bridle to his father's dwelling in the
same village. Then the shepherd cast a spell upon him, which was to
take effect on the 1st of May, as was afterwards known.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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