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
The spectre attacked even the animals, and some cows were found
debilitated and half dead. Sometimes it tied them together by their
tails. These animals gave sufficient evidence by their bellowing of
the pain they suffered. The horses seemed overcome with fatigue, all
in a perspiration, principally on the back; heated, out of breath,
covered with foam, as they are after a long and rough journey. These
calamities lasted several months.
The author whom I have mentioned examines the affair in a lawyer-like
way, and reasons much on the fact and the law. He asks if, supposing
that those disturbances, those noises and vexations proceeded from
that person who is suspected of causing them, they can burn her, as is
done to other ghosts who do harm to the living. He relates several
instances of similar apparitions, and of the evils which ensued; as of
a shepherd of the village of Blow, near the town of Kadam, in Bohemia,
who appeared during some time, and called certain persons, who never
failed to die within eight days after. The peasants of Blow took up
the body of this shepherd, and fixed it in the ground with a stake
which they drove through it.
This man, when in that condition, derided them for what they made him
suffer, and told them they were very good to give him thus a stick to
defend himself from the dogs. The same night he got up again, and by
his presence alarmed several persons, and strangled more amongst them
than he had hitherto done. Afterwards, they delivered him into the
hands of the executioner, who put him in a cart to carry him beyond
the village and there burn him. This corpse howled like a madman, and
moved his feet and hands as if alive. And when they again pierced him
through with stakes he uttered very loud cries, and a great quantity
of bright vermilion blood flowed from him. At last he was consumed,
and this execution put an end to the appearance and hauntings of this
spectre.
The same has been practiced in other places, where similar ghosts have
been seen; and when they have been taken out of the ground they have
appeared red, with their limbs supple and pliable, without worms or
decay; but not without a great stink. The author cites divers other
writers, who attest what he says of these spectres, which still
appear, he says, pretty often in the mountains of Silesia and Moravia.
They are seen by night and by day; the things which once belonged to
them are seen to move themselves and change their place without being
touched by any one. The only remedy for these apparitions is to cut
off the heads and burn the bodies of those who come back to haunt
people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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