Letters on demonology and witchcraft / [Sir Walter Scott].

  • Walter Scott
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters on demonology and witchcraft / [Sir Walter Scott]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    when the curtains are left a little open,” answered the invalid, “ the skeleton, to my thinking, is placed between them, and fills the vacant space.”—“You say you are sensible of the delusion,” said his friend; “have you firmness to convince yourself of the truth of this 1 Can you take courage enough to rise and place yourself in the spot so seeming to be occupied, and 'convince yourself of the illusion 1” The poor man*sighed, and shook his head negatively. “ Well,” said the doctor, “ we will try the experiment other- wise.” Accordingly, he rose from his chair by the bedside, and placing himself between the two half- drawn curtains at the foot of the bed, indicated as the place occupied by the apparition, asked if the spectre was still visible ? “ Not entirely so,” replied the patient, “ because your person is between him and me; but I observe his scull peering above your shoulder.” It is alleged the man of science started on the instant, despite philosophy, on receiving an answer ascertaining, with such minuteness, that the ideal spectre was close to his own person. He resorted to other means of investigation and cure, but with equally indifferent success. The patient sunk into deeper and deeper dejection, and died in the same distress of mind in which he had spent the latter months of his life; and his case remains a melan- choly instance of the power of imagination to kill the body, even when its fantastic terrors cannot over- come the intellect of the unfortunate persons who suffer under them. The patient, in the present case, sunk under his malady; and the circumstances of his singular disorder remaining concealed, he did not, by his death and last illness, lose any of the well-merited reputation for prudence and sagacity which had attended him during the whole course of his life. Having added these two remarkable instances to the general train of similar facts quoted by Ferriar,