Among the most remarkable phenomena, is the real or apparent opening of the door, so that they could see what was in the passage. Eslinger said that the spirit was often surrounded by a light, and his eyes looked fiery; and there sometimes came with him two lambs, which occasionally appeared as stars. He often took hold of Eslinger, and made her sit up, put her hands together, that she might pray; and once he appeared to take a pen and paper from under his gown, and wrote, laying it on her coverled.
It is extremely curious that, on two occasions, Eslinger saw Dr. Kerner and Justice Heyd enter with the ghost, when they were not there in the body, and both times Heyd was enveloped in a black cloud. The ghost, on being asked, told Eslinger that the cloud indicated that trouble was impending. A few days afterward his child died very unexpectedly, and Dr. Kerner now remembered, that the first time Eslinger said she had seen Heyd in this way, his father had died directly afterward. Kerner attended both patients, and was thus associated in the symbol. Follen also saw these two images, and spoke, believing the one to be Dr. Kerner himself.
On other occasions she saw strangers come in with the ghost, whom afterward, when they really came in the body, she recognised. This seems to have been a sort of second sight.
Dr. K. says, I think justly enough, that if Eslinger had been feigning, she never would have ventured on what seemed so improbable.
Some of the women, after the spectre had visibly leaned over them, or had spoken into their ears, were so affected by the odor he diffused that they vomited, and could not eat till they had taken an emetic; and those parts of their persons that he touched became painful and swollen, an effect I find produced in numerous other instances.
The following particulars are worth observing, in the evidence of a girl sixteen years of age, called Margaret Laibesberg, who was confined for ten days for plucking some grapes in a vineyard. She says she knew nothing about the spectre, but that she was greatly alarmed the first night at hearing the door burst open and something come shuffling in. Eslinger bade her not fear, and said that it would not injure her. The girl, however, being greatly terrified every night, and hiding her head under the bed-clothes, on the fourth Eslinger got out of her own bed, and, coming to her, said: “Do, in the name of God, look at him! He will do you no harm, I assure you.”—“Then,” says the girl, “I looked out from under the clothes, and I saw two white forms, like two lambs—so beautiful that I could have looked at them for ever. Between them stood a white, shadowy form, as tall as a man, but I was not able to look longer, for my eyes failed me.” The terrors of this girl were so great, that Eslinger had repeatedly occasion to get out of bed and fetch her to lie with herself. When she could be induced to look, she always saw the figure, and he bade her also pray for him. Whenever he touched her, which he did on the forehead and eyes, she felt pain, but says nothing of any subsequent swelling. Both this girl and another, called Neidhardt, who was brought in on the last day of Margaret L——’s imprisonment, testified that on the previous night they had heard Eslinger ask the ghost why he looked so angry; and that they had heard him answer that it was “because she had on the preceding night neglected to pray for him as much as usual,” which neglect arose from two gentlemen having passed the night in the cell.
When on the tenth day the girl Margaret L—— was released, she said that there was something so awful to her in this apparition, that she had firmly resolved and vowed to be pious and lead henceforth a virtuous life.
Some of them seem to have felt little alarm; Maria Bar, aged forty-one, said: “I was not afraid, for I have a good conscience.” The offences for which these women were confined appear to have been very slight ones, such as quarrelling, &c.
In a room that opened into the same passage, men were shut up for disputing with the police, neglect of regulations, and similar misdemeanors. These persons not only heard the noises as above described, such as the walking, shuffling, opening and shutting the door, &c., &c., but some of them saw the ghost. Christian Bauer deposed that he had never heard anything about the ghost, but that, being disturbed by a knocking and rustling toward three o’clock on the second morning of his incarceration, he looked up and saw a white figure bending over him, and heard a strange hollow voice say: “You must needs have patience!” He said he thought it must be his grandfather, at which Stricker, his companion, laughed. Stricker deposed that he heard a hollow voice say: “You must needs have patience;” and that Bauer told him that there was a white apparition near him, and that he supposed it was his grandfather. Bauer said that he was frightened the first night, but got used to it and did not mind.
It is worthy of observation, that when they heard the door of the women’s room open, they also heard the voice of Eslinger praying, which seems as if the door not only appeared to open, but actually did so. We have already seen that this spirit could open doors. In the “Seeress of Prevorst,” the doors were constantly audibly and visibly opened, as by an unseen hand, when she saw a spectre enter; and I know to an absolute certainty that the same phenomenon takes place in a house not far from where I am writing; and this, sometimes, when there are two people sleeping in the room—a lady and gentleman. The door having been fast locked when they went to bed, the room thoroughly examined, and every precaution taken—for they are unwilling to believe in the spiritual character of the disturbances that annoy them—they are aroused by a consciousness that it is opening, and they do find it open, on rising to investigate the fact.