Curiosities & wonders > Demonology and witchcraft

LETTERS ON
to his sagacious advice—or a bereaved husband earnestly
desires again to behold the form of which the grave
has deprived him for ever—or, to use a darker, yet
very common instance, the wretched man who has
dipped his hand in his fellow-creature’s blood, is
haunted by the apprehension that the phantom of the
slain stands by the bedside of the murderer. In all, or
any of these cases, who shall doubt that imagination,
favoured by circumstances, has power to summon up
to the organ of sight, spectres which only exist in the
mind of those by whom their apparition seems to be
witnessed ?
If we add, that such a vision may take place in the
course of one of those lively dreams, in which the
patient, except in respect to the single subject of one
strong impression, is, or seems, sensible of the real
particulars of the scene around him, a state of slumber
which often occurs—If he is so far conscious, for ex¬
ample, as to know that he is lying on his own bed, and
surrounded by his own familiar furniture, at the time
when the supposed apparition is manifested, it becomes
almost in vain to argue with the visionary against the
reality of his dream, since the spectre, though itself
purely fanciful, is inserted amidst so many circumstances
which he feels must be true beyond the reach of doubt
or question. That which is undeniably certain, be¬
comes in a manner a warrant for the reality of the
appearance to which doubt would have been otherwise
attached. And if any event, such as the death of the
person dreamt of, chances to take place, so as to cor¬
respond with the nature and the time of the apparition