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
At any rate, they do not proceed to this without a form of justicial
law. They call for and hear the witnesses; they examine the arguments;
they look at the exhumed bodies, to see if they can find any of the
usual marks which lead them to conjecture that they are the parties
who molest the living, as the mobility and suppleness of the limbs,
the fluidity of the blood, and the flesh remaining uncorrupted. If all
these marks are found, then these bodies are given up to the
executioner, who burns them. It sometimes happens that the spectres
appear again for three or four days after the execution. Sometimes the
interment of the bodies of suspicious persons is deferred for six or
seven weeks. When they do not decay, and their limbs remain as supple
and pliable as when they were alive, then they burn them. It is
affirmed as certain that the clothes of these persons move without any
one living touching them; and within a short time, continues our
author, a spectre was seen at Olmutz, which threw stones, and gave
great trouble to the inhabitants.
CHAPTER VIII.
DEAD PERSONS IN HUNGARY WHO SUCK THE BLOOD OF THE LIVING.
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 master of the house saw a person
he did not know come in and sit down to table also with them. The
master of the house was strangely frightened at this, as were the rest
of the company. The soldier knew not what to think of it, being
ignorant of the matter in question. But the master of the house being
dead the very next day, the soldier inquired what it meant. They told
him that it was the body of the father of his host, who had been dead
and buried for ten years, which had thus come to sit down next to him,
and had announced and caused his death.
The soldier informed the regiment of it in the first place, and the
regiment gave notice of it to the general officers, who commissioned
the Count de Cabreras, captain of the regiment of Alandetti infantry,
to make information concerning this circumstance. Having gone to the
place, with some other officers, a surgeon and an auditor, they heard
the depositions of all the people belonging to the house, who attested
unanimously that the ghost was the father of the master of the house,
and that all the soldier had said and reported was the exact truth,
which was confirmed by all the inhabitants of the village.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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