Research source

I will conclude this chapter with the following extract from “Lockhart’s Life of Scott:”

Date of account: First published 1848
Source: The Night-Side of Nature; Or, Ghosts and Ghost-Seers
Reference: The Night-Side of Nature; Or, Ghosts and Ghost-Seers · selected passage 146
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

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 only

With respect to the wraiths, he observes that the more the ether is freed, as by trance or the immediate approach of death, the more easily the soul sets itself in rapport with distant persons; and that thus it either acts magically, so that the seer perceives the real actual body of the person that is acting upon him, or else that he sees the ethereal body, which presents the perfect form of the fleshly one, and which, while the organic life proceeds, can be momentarily detached and appear elsewhere; and this ethereal body he holds to be the fundamental form, of which the external body is only the copy, or husk.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This is a historical account assembled under the reporting and publishing conventions of its period. It may preserve testimony, hearsay, retelling and editorial interpretation together.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

A modern comparison can identify recurring descriptions and possible explanations, but the account is not treated as independently verified evidence merely because it appeared in print.

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