Letters on the Truths Contained in Popular Superstitions |
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Common terms and phrases
afterwards Alexis alive apparition appears Arnod attention Barèges believed body BOPPARD buried catalepsy cataleptic chemical decomposition chest Cloquet common conversation convulsions death death-trance delusions described died divining rod dream effect entranced person excited exercize experiments eyes fact faculties feeling fingers flames force form of trance-sleep gentleman ghost grave hand head hear heard insanity insensible instance lady less letter liable light living look magnet manifested Medulla oblongata mental Mesmer mind Montgeron motion moved natural neral nervous system Nicolai objects observed occasion occurred operator ordinary organs Paderborn passed patient perfectly Petetin Pfeffel phenomena phenomenon pole possessed present principle Puységur Reichenbach Renata rienced rism scene Schwedenborg seemed seen sensation sense sensorial illusions shewn sitting sleep sometimes somnambulism stomach superstition supposed thing thought Timarchus tion told took trance trance-waking Trophonius truth Vampyr vampyr-visit vision waking witchcraft young
Popular passages
Page 117 - Nothing in nature could better represent this strange and unaccountable operation, than for one to goad another, alternately on every side, with a piece of red-hot iron. The exercise commonly began in the head, which would fly backward and forward, and from side to side, with a quick jolt, which the person would naturally labor to suppress, but in vain...
Page 92 - ... by adding the letter / with exact precision to the word first written. To ascertain whether he used his eyes, the archbishop interposed a sheet of pasteboard between the writing and his face. He took not the least notice, but went on writing as before. The limitation of his perceptions to what he was thinking about was very curious. A bit of aniseed cake that he had sought for he ate approvingly ; but when, on another occasion, a piece of the same cake was put into his mouth, he spat it out without...
Page 23 - A Vampyr is a dead body which continues to live in the grave ; which it leaves, however, 'by night, for the purpose of sucking the blood of the living, whereby it is nourished and preserved in good condition, instead of becoming decomposed like other dead bodies.
Page 118 - I have seen," says the writer, "all denominations of religion exercised by the jerks — gentleman and lady, black and white, young and old, without exception. I passed a meeting-house, where I observed the undergrowth had been cut...
Page 67 - ... tradesman's life, of his school years, his peccadilloes, and finally of a little act of roguery committed by him on the strong box of his employer. I described the uninhabited room with its white walls, where to the right of the brown door, there had stood upon the table the small black moneychest, etc.
Page 118 - I observed the undergrowth had been cut done for camp-meetings, and from fifty to a hundred saplings were left for the people who were jerked to hold by. I observed where they had held on they had kicked up the earth, as a horse stamping flies.
Page 62 - I have had opportunities of inquiring of two near relations of this general Wynyard upon what evidence the above story rests. They told me that they had each heard it from his own mouth. More recently, a gentleman, whose accuracy of recollection exceeds that of most people, has told me, that he had heard the late Sir John Sherbroke, the other party in the ghost story, tell it much in the same way at a dinner-table. One does not feel as comfortably satisfied that the complicated coincidences in this...
Page 70 - The same principle is applicable to the explanation of the vampyr visit. The soul of the buried man is to be supposed to be brought into communication with his friend's mind. Thence follows, as a sensorial illusion, the apparition of the buried man. Perhaps the visit may have been an instinctive effort to draw the attention of his friend to his living grave. I beg to suggest that it would not be an act of superstition now, but of ordinary humane precaution, if one dreamed pertinaciously of a recently...
Page 66 - On a certain fair-day I went into the town of Waldshut accompanied by two young foresters, who are still alive. It was evening, and, tired with our walk, we went into an inn called the 'Vine.
Page 21 - ... imposture ; in the second — that is, when it is beginning to force itself into notice — it is cursorily examined, and plausibly explained away ; in the third, or cui bono stage, it is decried as useless, and hostile to religion. And when it is fully admitted, it passes only under a protest that it has been perfectly known for ages — a proceeding intended to make the new truth ashamed of itself, and wish it had never been born.