I am still near, Watching the smiles I prized on earth, Your converse mild, your blameless mirth.[64
- Date of account
- Late nineteenth-century compilation
- Source
- The Ghost World
- Reference
- The Ghost World · selected passage 162
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
the biography of William Smellie is the history of a compact he made with his friend William Greenlaw, whereby it was mutually agreed that whoever died first should return and give the other an account of his condition after death
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 biography of William Smellie is the history of a compact he made with his friend William Greenlaw, whereby it was mutually agreed that whoever died first should return and give the other an account of his condition after death. Shortly after the anniversary of his death, the ghost of Greenlaw is reported to have appeared to Smellie, and in a solemn tone informed him 'that he had experienced great difficulties in procuring permission to return to this earth, according to their agreement; that he was now in a much better world than the one he had left,' but added 'that the hopes and wishes of its inhabitants were by no means satisfied, as, like those of the lower world, they still looked forward in the hope of eventually reaching a still happier state of existence.' Another case of a similar kind is that of the appearance of the Rev. Theodore Alois Buckley, formerly one of the chaplains of Christ Church, Oxford, to his friend Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie.
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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