No; I do believe that, for certain purposes, and on certain and all-wise occasions, such things are, and have…
- Date of account
- Published 1814
- Source
- Apparitions; Or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed
- Reference
- Apparitions; Or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed · selected passage 2
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
No; I do believe that, for certain purposes, and on certain and all-wise occasions, such things are, and have been permitted by the Almighty; but by no means do I believe they are suffered to appear half so frequently as our modern ghost-mongers manufacture them
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyNo; I do believe that, for certain purposes, and on certain and all-wise occasions, such things _are_, and _have been_ permitted by the Almighty; but by no means do I believe they are suffered to appear half so frequently as our modern ghost-mongers manufacture them. Among the various idle tales in circulation, nothing is more common than the prevalent opinion concerning what is generally called a _death-watch_, and which is vulgarly believed to foretel the death of some one in the family. "This is," observes a writer in the Philosophical Transactions, "a ridiculous fancy crept into vulgar heads, and employed to terrify and affright weak people as a monitor of approaching death." Therefore, to prevent such causeless fears, I shall take this opportunity to undeceive the world, by shewing what it is, and that no such thing is intended by it.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis source supplies historical scientific, skeptical or conventional context. Its terminology and conclusions may not reflect current scholarship.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice uses this as an alternative-explanation source, not as an automatic dismissal of testimony. Claims still need to be compared with the actual evidence and current knowledge.
Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.