“A short time afterwards, however, the proprietor of the hotel informed a gentleman of the party that the terrible scene witnessed by the young lady had in reality been enacted only three nights previously in that very room, when a young French officer put an end to his life with a pistol of a peculiar description, which, together with the body, was then lying at the Morgue, awaiting identification. The gentleman examined them both, and found them exactly correspond with the description of the man and the pistol seen in the apparition. The Archbishop of Paris, Monseigneur Sibour, being exceedingly impressed by the story, called upon the young lady; and, directing her attention to the words spoken by the mysterious voice, urged her to embrace the Roman Catholic faith, to whose teaching, as His Grace asserted, it pointed so clearly.”
The various examples of Spectral Appearances now given (and they might have been largely augmented) may certainly serve to provide cases, so inherently striking and conclusive in themselves, as to leave little or no doubt of their intrinsic truth. Making every allowance for unintentional misconceptions and exaggeration in the record of them, putting aside mere rhetorical ornaments and literary additions, it seems quite impossible, being guided by the ordinary rules of evidence, not to admit the force and value of such striking facts as the above. In the cases already set forth, it is quite irrational to maintain that the disturbed imagination or wild fancy of the persons who are said to have seen the Apparitions were the sole foundations of the things seen; more especially as in some instances the Appearances were beheld by two or more persons at the same time, and often the same form presented itself to different people upon different occasions. It may be that some own a power of seeing disembodied spirits, which is not possessed by others, and it is tolerably certain that the large majority of people have never beheld anything of the sort. But this, after all, is but negative testimony. That which is positive, covering, it may be, a small area, is of considerable value and importance in aiding those who are open to conviction in coming to a reasonable conclusion. For existing positive evidence cannot be rudely and arrogantly set aside, when found to be, as in the case under consideration, so completely in harmony with many of the plain and specific statements of Holy Scripture, with the express testimony of the Fathers of the Christian Church, and the almost universal tradition of mankind in every age.
HAUNTED HOUSES AND LOCALITIES.
“Nations civilized as well as uncivilized: barbarians of the rudest type, and Christians of the highest and deepest spirituality, have always believed that certain localities were the haunts of unquiet spirits.”—Richard H. Froude.