John Herman Merivale

“ For the sake of that noble faculty of our souls, the imagination, we are not ashamed to confess, that we take greater pleasure in hearing of one story of the sort which defies the attempt of a probable natural solution, than twenty of which the physician or moralist may pique himself upon being able to finish the explanation. There is too much philosophy stirring in our days, and has been for this last century at least ”

“ The “Pleasures of Superstition” form a distinct and peculiar class of those of the imagination; and, in a philosophical investigation of the sources from which they are derived, we soon discover that even those others which appear most of kin to them, must be traced in their descent through very different channels. The species of delight afforded by a tragedy, or an execution, may, to an unreflecting observer, appear very similar to that communicated by a well-authenticated ghost-story ”

“ Upon this subject then, it may be laid down as an undeniable axiom, that the more common and familiar, the more terrific is the apparition,—the more powerful, therefore, the effect of the story which is built upon such a foundation,—which is the same thing that was meant by the writers on demonology in the time of our good, believing King James, when they uniformly attribute to the class of spirits, which they entitle Παρεδριος (domestics, sitting close at your elbow,) the chief and most constantly prevailing influence over mankind. ”

“ The idea of a phantom appearing to claim the property of its own bones, and rescue them from violation by the living, is not original, though capable of being worked upon to good effect. The antiquary who carried off a tooth in triumph from one of the Wiltshire Barrows, only dreamed that he saw a Roman soldier by his bed-side, who horribly whistled through the gap which its absence produced in the front of his mouth, “Redde mihi quod abstulisti!” ”

“ It is the spectral appearance, or wraith, of a person yet living.
A young and beautiful girl, on the eve of marriage to the man she loves, is represented as suddenly becoming a prey to the most unaccountable melancholy and abstraction of thought. ”

“ We must not quit this chapter without reminding our sceptical readers, that the spectral apparition of persons yet living is a fact sanctioned by authority of no less eminence in the church than that of St Augustin, who relates of himself, that he appeared at two several times, without being conscious of it, to persons with whom he was not acquainted, but who afterwards satisfied him of the truth by the most unequivocal evidence. ”

“ To mention no other proofs of dissimilarity, a certain dignity of character and circumstances has always been considered as essential to the support of tragic interest, which loses its effect in proportion as it mixes itself with the every-day concerns of middling life, with customary scenes, and modern manners. ”

“ Those that, to confute their incredulity, desire to see apparitions, shall questionless never behold any; the devil hath them already in a heresie as capital as witchcraft, and to appear to them were but to convert them. ”

“ The operation seems, it is true, to demand something more of real flesh and blood in the agent than is usually attributed to spectres; but perhaps we labour under an error on this subject, and that real substantial phantoms, like the Vampires of Hungary and Moravia, and the Vroucholachis of the modern Greeks, are more common in their appearance than we are at all aware of. That spirits may be fattened by good living, and again reduced to circumstances more befitting their ghostly character, by an alteration of diet, is a fact of which we have the most unquestionable evidence ”

“ Being rallied by her most intimate female companions, she gives obscure intimations of her own approaching death, which, however discredited by them, naturally inspire a poignant and even distressing sensation of curiosity and wonder. They require, in short, an explanation, which the unhappy victim of these second-sighted impressions at length consents to give, and which she commences in the following manner:
“You are acquainted with my sister Seraphina, whom I had the misfortune to lose ”