THE invisible Wights which haunt Houses seem rather to be some of our subterranean Inhabitants, (which appear…
- Date of account
- Written 1691; later edited edition
- Source
- The secret commonwealth of elves, fauns & fairies
- Reference
- The secret commonwealth of elves, fauns & fairies · selected passage 58
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English/Scots historical text
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
THE invisible Wights which haunt Houses seem rather to be some of our subterranean Inhabitants, (which appear often to Men of the Second Sight,) than evill Spirits or Devills; because, tho they throw great Stones, Pieces of Earth and Wood, at the Inhabitants, they hurt them not at all, as if they acted not malitiously,…
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 only8. THE invisible Wights which haunt Houses seem rather to be some of our subterranean Inhabitants, (which appear often to Men of the Second Sight,) than evill Spirits or Devills; because, tho they throw great Stones, Pieces of Earth and Wood, at the Inhabitants, they hurt them not at all, as if they acted not malitiously, like Devills at all, but in Sport, lyke Buffoons and Drolls. All Ages have affoorded some obscure Testimonies of it, as Pythagoras his Doctrine of Transmigration; Socrates’s Dæmon that gave him [Warning] of future Dangers; Platoe’s classing them into various vehiculated Specieses of Spirits; Dionisius Areopagita’s marshalling nyne Orders of Spirits, superiour and subordinate; the Poets their borrowing of the Philosophers, and adding their own Fancies of Fountain, River, and Sea Nymphs, Wood, Hill, and Montain Inhabitants, and that every Place and Thing, in Cities and Countreys, had speciall invisible regular Gods and Governours. Cardan speaks of his Father his seeing the Species of his Friend, in a moon-shyn Night, riding fiercely by his Window on a white Horse, the verie Night his Friend dy’d at a Vast Distance from him; by which he understood that some Alteration would suddenly ensue.
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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