The ability to open doors, to clank chains, and make other noises implies considerable coherence of the ghost's…
- Date of account
- Late nineteenth-century compilation
- Source
- The Ghost World
- Reference
- The Ghost World · selected passage 8
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
The ability to open doors, to clank chains, and make other noises implies considerable coherence of the ghost's substance.'[31] That this conception of the soul was not only received but taught, may be gathered from Tertullian, who says: 'The soul is material, composed of a substance different to the body, and particul…
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 onlyThe ability to open doors, to clank chains, and make other noises implies considerable coherence of the ghost's substance.'[31] That this conception of the soul was not only received but taught, may be gathered from Tertullian, who says: 'The soul is material, composed of a substance different to the body, and particular. It has all the qualities of matter, but it is immortal. It has a figure like the body. It is born at the same time as the flesh, and receives an individuality of character which it never loses.' He further describes[32] a vision or revelation of a certain Montanist prophetess, of the soul seen by her corporeally, thin and lucid, aerial in colour, and human in form. It is recorded, too, as an opinion of Epicurus, that 'they who say the soul is incorporeal talk folly, for it could neither do nor suffer anything were it such.' It was the idea of materiality that caused the superstitious folk in years gone by to attribute to ghosts all kinds of weird and eccentric acts which could not otherwise be explained.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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