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MAGIC, WITCHCRAFT, AND
GHOSTS IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT

Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Enlightenment argues for the centrality of magical
practices and ideas throughout the long eighteenth century.
Although the hunt for witches in Europe declined precipitously after 1650, and
the intellectual justifcation for natural magic came under fre by 1700, belief in
magic among the general population did not come to a sudden stop. The philosophes
continued to take aim at magical practices, alongside religion, as examples of
superstitions that an enlightened age needed to put behind them. In addition to
a continuity of beliefs and practices, the eighteenth century also saw improvement
and innovation in magical ideas, the understanding of ghosts, and attitudes toward
witchcraft. The volume takes a broad geographical approach and includes essays
focusing on Great Britain (England and Ireland), France, Germany, and Hungary. It
also takes a wide approach to the subject and includes essays on astrology, alchemy,
witchcraft, cunning folk, ghosts, treasure hunters, and purveyors of magic.
With a broad chronological scope that ranges from the end of the seventeenth
century to the early nineteenth century, this volume is useful for undergraduates,
postgraduates, scholars, and those with a general interest in magic, witchcraft, and
spirits in the Enlightenment.

Michael R. Lynn is Professor of History at Purdue University Northwest. He has

published Popular Science and Public Opinion in Eighteenth-Century France (2006), The
Sublime Invention: Ballooning in Europe, 1783–1820 (2010), and “The Curious Science:
Chiromancy in Early Modern France”(2018). He is currently working on a monograph
analyzing the culture and practice of divination in Enlightenment France.
Routledge Studies in the History of Witchcraft,
Demonology and Magic

The Science of Demons

Early Modern Authors Facing Witchcraft and the Devil
Edited by Jan Machielsen

Demonology and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Europe

Edited by Julian Goodare, Rita Voltmer, and Liv Helene Willumsen

Folklore, Magic, and Witchcraft

Cultural Exchanges from the Twelfth to Eighteenth Century
Edited by Marina Montesano

The Voices of Women in Witchcraft Trials

Northern Europe
Liv Helene Willumsen

Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Enlightenment

Edited by Michael R. Lynn

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-

Studies-in-the-History-of-Witchcraft-Demonology-and-Magic/book-series/
RSHWDM
MAGIC, WITCHCRAFT,
AND GHOSTS IN THE
ENLIGHTENMENT

Edited by Michael R. Lynn

Cover image: The Fortune Teller on Casting the Cofee Grounds, from an Original Design at Vaux-hall
Gardens. After Francis Hayman (British, 1707/08–1776, London). Publisher: Robert Sayer
(British, Sunderland 1725–1794 Bath). 1748–60. Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, USA © Album/Alamy Stock Photo

First published 2022

by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Michael R. Lynn; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Michael R. Lynn to be identifed as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-50277-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-50276-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-04932-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003049326
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS

List of fgures vii

List of contributors viii
Acknowledgments x

Introduction: magic, witchcraft, and ghosts in the age of reason 1

Michael R. Lynn

1 The ghost of the Enlightenment: communication with the

dead in Southwestern Germany, seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries 12
Johannes Dillinger

2 Invisible worlds: magic, spirits, and experience in the

early Enlightenment 32
Tricia R. Peone

3 Priests in the storm: an approach on changes in ritual

attitudes in eighteenth-century Hungary 57
Dániel Bárth

4 East Anglian folk magic, folklore, and witchery in the

age of reason 73
Pádraig Lawlor

5 Jean-Baptiste Alliette and the Ecole de Magie in late-eighteenth

century Paris 100
Michael R. Lynn
vi Contents

6 Fortune telling, culture, law, and gender in Ireland,

c.1691–1840 123
Andrew Sneddon

7 A scientist at astrology’s funeral: Richard Saunder and

the Apollo Anglicanus 148
William E. Burns

8 Natural magic, hermeticism, and skepticism: orientalizing

chemical curiosity in eighteenth-century France 167
Stéphane Van Damme

Afterword 186
Jonathan Barry

Index 200
FIGURES

6.1 “Snap Apple Night,” Daniel Maclise, 1833 134

6.2 Detail, “Snap Apple Night,” Daniel Maclise, 1833 135
CONTRIBUTORS

Dániel Bárth is Associate Professor and Leader of the Department of Folklore at

the Eötvös Loránd University Budapest, Hungary. His main felds are the historical
aspects of vernacular religion and the historical sources of early modern Christian-
ity. His latest book was published by the Routledge series on Mircohistories, The
Exorcist of Sombor: The Mentality of an Eighteenth-Century Franciscan Friar (New York –
London, 2020).

Jonathan Barry is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Exeter and

a Guest Professor of Early Modern History at Ludwig Maximilian University of
Munich. He is co-editor of both Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and
Magic and Palgrave Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine, as well as
Bristol Record Society, and is currently working on several books about early mod-
ern medical practice, including a biography of William Salmon (1644–1712).

William E. Burns is a historian who lives in the Washington, DC, area. His many
books include An Age of Wonders: Prodigies, Politics and Providence in England, 1657–
1727 (2002); Knowledge and Power: Science in World History (2011, Second edition
2019); and The Scientifc Revolution in World History (2015). He also edited a refer-
ence book Astrology through History: Interpreting the Stars from Ancient Mesopotamia to
the Present (2018). He is currently working on a study of astrologers’ interpretations
of the Covid-19 crisis.

Johannes Dillinger is Professor of Early Modern History at Oxford Brookes and

Honorary Professor of Modern History and Regional History at Johannes Guten-
berg University Mainz. Dillinger’s publications include monographs on the political
representation of the peasantry in the early modern period and on terrorism, trea-
sure hunting, witchcraft, and concepts of alternate history.
 Contributors ix

Pádraig Lawlor serves on faculty at Canterbury School in New Milfort, CT,

where he teaches history and theology. He earned his Ph.D. in European history at
Purdue University. His scholarship focuses on medieval and early modern Europe,
specifcally the intersection of theology and religious culture in early modern Brit-
ain and Ireland.

Michael R. Lynn is Professor of History at Purdue University Northwest. He

received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He has published on
popular science, ballooning, divining rods, freworks, chiromancy, and spontaneous
human combustion, including Popular Science and Public Opinion in Eighteenth-Cen-
tury France (Manchester, 2006). His current project examines divination and magic
in France during the long eighteenth century.

Tricia R. Peone is a historian of early modern magic and witchcraft. She holds a
Ph.D. in history from the University of New Hampshire with a specialization in the
early modern Atlantic world and history of science.

Andrew Sneddon is Lecturer in International History at Ulster University. His

research focuses on witchcraft and magic in Ireland, from the later medieval to the
modern period. He has published three monographs on the subject, including Witch-
craft and Magic in Ireland (Palgrave, 2015). He is the author of numerous edited chap-
ters and journal articles on the religious, social, and medical history of Britain and
Ireland, and is volume editor, covering the Enlightenment period, of Bloomsbury’s
six volume collection Cultural History of Magic. In 2014, he produced the book-length
‘The Supernatural in Ulster Scots Folklore and Literature Reader’ and is the recipient
of numerous research fellowships, awards, and grants from institutions including the
Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University Belfast, Jawaharlal Nehru University,
New Delhi, the Wellcome Trust, and the Leverhulme Trust. Dr. Sneddon is cur-
rently president of the Ulster Society for Irish Historical Studies (est. 1936) and is a
member of the management board of the journal Irish Historical Studies.

Stéphane Van Damme is Professor of Early Modern History at the Ecole Nor-
male Supérieure in Paris. He has worked on the origins of early modern scientifc
knowledge and European culture between 1650 and 1850 by looking at essential
elements such as scientifc centers (Lyons, Paris, London, Edinburgh, New York),
founding fathers (Descartes, Linneaus), paradigmatic disciplines (philosophy, natural
history, archaeology), and imperial projects. His last book is entitled Seconde Nature.
Rematérialiser les sciences de Bacon à Tocqueville (Presses du réel, 2020). He co-edited
with Hanna Hodacs and Kenneth Nyberg, Linnaeus, Natural History and the circulation
of Knowledge (Oxford, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2018). He
is currently completing a book on French skeptical knowledge in the context of the
global seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The original idea for this volume arose prior to the appearance of Covid-19, but
the bulk of the work done by the contributors took place during the height of the
pandemic. I am extremely impressed by their persistence to undertake research dur-
ing such difcult and challenging times. I am especially grateful to the librarians and
archivists who helped everyone gain access to much-needed materials. In addition, I
would like to thank Michael Bailey, Jonathan Barry, Claire Fanger, Gabor Klancizay,
and Andrew Sneddon who provided recommendations for the volume along with
sage advice, more of which I probably should have taken. Jonathan Barry provided
excellent feedback as I was writing the introduction as well as for the volume as a
whole. Laura Pilsworth, Max Novick, the anonymous reviewers, and the editorial
team at Routledge, including Isabel Voice and Stewart Beale, provided fantastic
support and helped make this work possible. My wife Judy Lynn encouraged me to
try editing a book and has given me constant encouragement from start to fnish. I
cannot thank her often enough or deeply enough.
INTRODUCTION
Magic, witchcraft, and ghosts
in the age of reason

Michael R. Lynn

“The secret of doing what nature cannot do,” Voltaire argued in his Philosophical
Dictionary, defned the very nature of magic. As such, he added, the practice of
magic remained “an impossible thing.”1 In spite of this alleged impossibility, magi-
cal practices and beliefs appeared everywhere in Europe and North America in the
eighteenth century. Many, like Voltaire, viewed these practices as remnants from the
ignorant age that preceded the rational and progressive period in which they lived.
Nonetheless, the proponents of the Enlightenment found they had to spend an
inordinate amount of time refuting or rationalizing those beliefs, eforts that contin-
ued throughout the century in what turned out to be something of a losing battle.2
Even as the philosophes attempted to shunt magic and witchcraft to the fringe of the
Enlightenment and to eliminate superstition as a whole, others strove to fashion the
supernatural as a rational, scientifc enterprise or defended magical practices as not
just possible but also essential. Although the intellectual justifcation for magic tied
to Aristotelian and Neoplatonic reasoning ebbed against the tide of new scientifc
and philosophical ideas, the practice of magic retained much of its vibrancy and
people continued to work to develop models for understanding and explaining the
magical world. The lack of a strong philosophical rationale for the practice of magic
only impacted those people who needed that justifcation. For the rest of the popu-
lation who did not linger too long searching for explanations or delve too deeply
into the reasons why magic worked, it continued to form a signifcant part of their
lives.3 Magic proved far too useful – as a tool for understanding the future, explain-
ing the natural world, aiding in medical diagnosis and cures, or grappling with the
myriad number of problems that people faced every day – to simply toss it aside.
Indeed, the age of Enlightenment teemed with people committed to the divi-
natory arts; a belief in spirits and ghosts; the practice of alchemy, astrology, and
medical magic; and a host of other related components of the early modern magi-
cal world. Practitioners and their clients could be found seemingly everywhere, in
DOI: 10.4324/9781003049326-1
2 Michael R. Lynn

cities and the countryside, throughout the long eighteenth century. The historiog-
raphy surrounding magic in the eighteenth century had, for many years, considered
a continuity of belief and practice in magic to run counter to the rise of rationalism
in the age of Enlightenment. As such, scholars like Max Horkheimer and Theodor
Adorno, drawing on the work of Max Weber, could argue that “the program of the
Enlightenment was the disenchantment of the world.”4 This helps explain why for
many years scholars believed the eighteenth century occupied a gap in the history
of magic that allowed, instead, for the birth of modernity. However, the idea of the
eighteenth century as disenchanted has come under review over the last decades,
and the consensus suggests that the Enlightenment failed in eliminating enchant-
ment even if beliefs in demonic magic and witchcraft did wane somewhat. Instead,
this period experienced, at a minimum, the continuance of magical belief.5 More
precisely, as seen from the essays in this volume, ideas about magic, witchcraft, and
ghosts at times deepened, evolved, and underwent innovation and alteration dur-
ing the eighteenth century. New ideas developed within Europe and in some cases
drew on information entering Europe from abroad as cultural exchanges continued
to spread beliefs in all directions.
The historiography of magic in the eighteenth century has grown rapidly over
the last two decades. The essays in this volume seek to contribute to this scholar-
ship and further demonstrate the continuity of ideas and practices that spanned the
period. The end of the age of witch-hunts did not bring about an age without
magic. Writing a half century ago, Keith Thomas famously claimed, in Religion and
the Decline of Magic, that his book

began as an attempt to make sense of some of the systems of belief which

were current in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England but which no
longer enjoy much recognition today. Astrology, witchcraft, magical heal-
ing, divination, ancient prophecies, ghosts and fairies, are now all rightly
disdained by the intelligent person.6

While Thomas’ suggestion infuenced countless scholars, the wealth of magical

beliefs and practices continuing from the seventeenth century to the present belie
his claim. The resilience of superstition recently has led Simon Schafer to identify
a “crisis of facts” at the end of the Enlightenment when savants battled with char-
latans who claimed to be the initiates of the occult. Schafer examined the appeal
of mesmerism and the superstitions concerning aeroliths alongside other ideas on
the edge of reason and natural philosophy to try and understand how people used
authority and evidence to make truth claims. “Plebian superstition” and “fashion-
able imagination,” Schafer argued, led people to accept vulgar errors.7
Other scholars have written about the “dark side” of the Enlightenment in order
to forge connections between such magical pursuits as alchemy and astrology with
occult groups including the Freemasons, other secret societies, or purported practi-
tioners of the magical arts like Cagliostro.8 John Fleming, for example, has explored
the interconnections between Enlightenment and the work of self-proclaimed
 Introduction 3

wizards and alchemists with an eye toward revealing the continuity of thought
from an earlier age of witch-hunts into the eighteenth century. Similarly, Paul
Kléber Monod has argued for the continuity of belief in the occult from the period
before 1700 and persisting throughout the Enlightenment. Michael Hunter has
taken these ideas even further and tackled Thomas’ notion of a “decline of magic”
directly through an extended and sophisticated analysis of belief in magic across
Britain. He notes that science, as a whole, did not always oppose magic and that
to understand the rhythms and fows surrounding support for and criticism of
magic requires an exploration of other groups of freethinkers. Magic may have
undergone a transformation, but it did not vanish, and it was not entirely opposed
to science or medicine.9 From the side of scholarship on the Enlightenment, some
scholars have tried to expand our understanding of what counts as being part of the
Enlightenment movement to incorporate a greater range of ideas and practices into
the umbrella of enlightened thought. Dan Edelstein, for example, has described the
idea of a “super Enlightenment” that encompasses much more than the traditional,
historical views would have allowed. This opens the eighteenth century to stud-
ies that go beyond the traditional view of the rational.10 As Wolfgang Behringer
has noted regarding witch trials, “the Enlightenment, by defnition, was a success
story.” However, he adds, this was not as simple as “switching on the light,” and
beliefs in witchcraft did not simply stop in 1700. Instead trials continued through-
out the century. More research into Enlightenment-era beliefs, Behringer suggests,
is needed.11
A number of scholars have done just that. Eschewing the notion that the age of
Enlightenment must include a gap in the belief and practice of magic, the last few
decades have produced a range of studies examining magic in that period. Recent
research into the history of magical practices has emphasized that while the intel-
lectual justifcation for natural and judicial magic faded over the course of the sev-
enteenth century, practices and ideas about magic did not subsequently disappear
during the eighteenth century simply to be rediscovered in the nineteenth cen-
tury by those interested in reviving and romanticizing the past.12 In 1999 Marijke
Gijswijt-Hofstra noted that studies of magic and witchcraft exhibited “numerous
lacunae for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”13 Twenty years later, scholars
have flled in many of these gaps through analyses of magic and witchcraft and the
various practices and intellectual arguments associated with them.
During the eighteenth century, people attempted to fashion magic as a rational,
scientifc enterprise, developed new models for how to understand and defend such
practices in the public sphere, and catered to a growing consumer society inter-
ested in buying and participating in forms of magic. The work of Owen Davies,
for example, provides evidence of the continuity of practices and beliefs from the
seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.14 In addition, a number of excellent studies
over the last 20 years, including the infuential collection of essays edited by Willem
de Blécourt and Owen Davies titled Beyond the Witch Trials, have demonstrated the
continued importance of magic in the age of Enlightenment.15 As Sabine Doering-
Manteufel notes in her essay in that volume, there is good reason to believe the
4 Michael R. Lynn

classic account of people increasingly being rationalized during the eighteenth cen-
tury should not be accepted in its entirety.16 Put diferently, Peter Maxwell-Stuart
notes that although there were certainly changes over time, “magic and witchcraft
. . . constituted the scenery, and often the script, of everyone’s life during the eigh-
teenth century as much as it had ever done in the seventeenth or sixteenth.”17
A number of studies focus on particular regions, such as Jonathan Barry’s infu-
ential work on witchcraft in the English southwest from 1640 to 1789.18 Barry
notes that in addition to ideas about witchcraft and magic surviving into the eigh-
teenth century from the previous period, it is also possible to see the evolution of
such practices thanks, in part, to the growth of “the popular press and a consumer
marketplace.” He also tackles the notion of “decline” by acknowledging that a
binary understanding of belief versus non-belief creates a view of magic prac-
tices and witchcraft that does not always represent the complexities of how people
viewed the world. Through an examination of medical astrology, Barry reveals the
myriad ways magic continued to play an important role.19 Andrew Sneddon also
touches on this topic and suggests that for “those placed lower down the social lad-
der,” witchcraft and magic “continued to be regarded as a threat” throughout the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.20
Additional research – often focused on specifc geographic regions and politi-
cal entities such as Norway, Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, Scotland, Ireland,
Portugal, and Hungary – corroborates these arguments.21 What many of these
studies have in common is their demonstration of the power of magical beliefs to
continue at multiple levels of society across time and space. In addition to national
approaches, there are also many regional studies. In the French commune of
Mayenne, for example, Marie-Claude Denier examined the judicial archives and
concluded that magical beliefs remained largely unchanged from the eighteenth
century to the twentieth century.22
The essays in this volume contribute to the ongoing historiographical develop-
ments regarding the place of magic and witchcraft in eighteenth-century Europe.
Through a series of microhistories, the book as a whole seeks to deepen our under-
standing of the range of ideas and practices available to people and explore how they
understood the supernatural. In addition, the essays in this volume help explore
the complicated nature of the relationship between the eighteenth century and
superstition. The savants of the Enlightenment often attacked superstition through
critiques of religious belief, something many of them saw as a source of much of
the evil in the present world and of the problems found in the past. But the philos-
ophes condemned other practices alongside religion, including magic. Diderot and
D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie included a large number of articles devoted to critiquing
beliefs in magic and superstition more generally. In addition, Voltaire focused on
this topic with great regularity in his Philosophical Dictionary and elsewhere. Such
sustained attacks existed because, like religion, there were still innumerable believ-
ers throughout the eighteenth century whom the philosophes hoped to dissuade
or, if nothing else, marginalize.
 Introduction 5

This volume will concentrate on three areas of magical practice and belief.
The frst area examines the continued belief in and practice of magic throughout
Europe. Both educated and less educated people found no reason to stop believing
in the reality of spirits and ghosts, who could cause changes to the material world
or provide advice or insights into the past, present, or future. Using key texts and
examining popular practices, this section will elucidate how magical beliefs main-
tained a presence in spite of attacks in the seventeenth century on witchcraft and
magical theory. The second area explores fortune-telling and divination. These
methods often required some additional education or, alternatively, the appropri-
ate tools such as access to almanacs and handbooks. At a time when philosophes
like Voltaire and Diderot roundly and routinely attacked divination, these forms of
magic retained their popularity. The last area examines the intersections between
science, magic, and medicine. Through case studies, this section will reveal the
ways in which natural philosophy integrated with esoteric ideas, sometimes origi-
nating outside Europe, to develop theories regarding specifc magical practices.
One entry point to understanding the supernatural in this period derives from
reactions to the human interaction with the spirit world. Johannes Dillinger exam-
ines the presence of ghosts and their interactions with humans in eighteenth-cen-
tury Swabia. Focusing on the Duchy of Württemberg, Dillinger delves into the
archives to examine the presence of ghosts in judicial records, especially in trials
for fraud and for illicit magical practices. In this Lutheran area, claims regarding
ghosts should have elicited dismissal and neglect. Nonetheless, Dillinger traces a
willingness to allow people to interact with ghosts, or to at least to claim to do so,
when treasure was involved. One of the signifcant functions played by ghosts in
this period was to act as assistants to the living to fnd lost or buried treasure. Some
ghosts worked through people (mediums), while others haunted houses and com-
municated directly with those around them. Dillinger also unearths the curious
case of the Weilheim ghost cult, a group whose activities threatened both Church
and state.
Ghosts also made a variety of appearances to people, haunted specifc locations,
and occasionally caused problems in other parts of Europe. Tricia R. Peone exam-
ines one such instance of this through an examination of the life of John Beaumont,
a savant elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society who, as it happens, also had visita-
tions from spirits over a fve-year period. The methods through which Beaumont
chose to understand this visitation, along with the debates he engaged in with
others, reveal a complicated set of world views dependent on one’s outlook and
religious beliefs, scientifc knowledge, and medical understanding of diseases like
melancholia. Peone contextualizes Beaumont’s attitude toward his ghostly visitors
within British and North American debates and relates his thinking on the topic
to the works of the Cotton Mathers, Hans Sloane, Francis Hutchinson, and oth-
ers. Beaumont’s world view made room for magic and witchcraft and encouraged
people to trust their senses.
The emphasis people placed on dealing with real-world problems coupled with
the desire to utilize any and all forms of power available led some to engage with
6 Michael R. Lynn

“white magic.” Dániel Bárth explores the interrelationships between ecclesiastical

and folk magic in eighteenth-century Hungary and demonstrates how popular
practices and Church rituals combined to create useful tools for people seeking to
grapple with a wide range of issues in their daily lives. Using ritual manuals from
a variety of regions, Bárth also ofers a comparative analysis of practices through-
out Hungary and explicitly engages with the development of sacramentals in the
Catholic Enlightenment.
Magic and superstition did not dramatically recede during the eighteenth cen-
tury. In addition, historians can also fnd continued evidence of prosecution for
witchcraft even if it no longer achieved the levels it had during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Regional studies can reveal local variations in beliefs regard-
ing the existence of witches and the need to continue to prosecute and punish
those witches, even in the age of reason. Pádraig Lawlor examines cases of witch-
craft from the English countryside in East Anglia and explores the interconnec-
tions of fear, religion, and skepticism that led to continued accusations even if the
accused were not always found guilty. Lawlor interrogates the regional attitude
toward cunning folk as well as the case of Jane Wenham, accused of witchcraft, to
uncloak the ways in which people continued to accept ideas about witches.
At the end of the eighteenth century, the belief in magic remained strong enough
that Jean-Baptiste Alliette decided to open an école de magie, a school of magic, in the
city of Paris. Alliette, best known by his pseudonym Etteilla and as one of the foun-
dational fgures in the development of Tarot cards used for cartomancy, practiced
a range of magical activities in the 1770s and 1780s including card reading, palm-
istry, dream interpretation, metoposcopy, astrology, and the manufacture of amulets.
Michael R. Lynn examines this fgure and his innovations in magical practice and
argues that magic did not simply continue into the age of Enlightenment but also
underwent innovation and change. Parisians had access to a wide array of magic in
the city that purported to be the capital of the Enlightenment, and Alliette’s writings
hint at the composition of the audience for some of these activities.
Fortune-telling in Ireland similarly engaged a wide variety of practitioners and
clients, as shown by Andrew Sneddon. While most of the scholarship has focused
on later time periods or other countries, Sneddon delves deeply into the archives
and draws on an extensive swathe of primary sources to gain access to and analyze
the practices of fortune-tellers in the eighteenth century. He also explores the
state’s response to such activities and its attempt to curtail fortune-telling through
the enactment of various laws. In spite of these eforts, fortune-telling often con-
tinued in Ireland unabated. Using songs, folklore, newspapers, pamphlets, and
other documents, Sneddon shows how deeply ingrained fortune-telling was within
Irish society even as critics attacked it and tried to convince people that it lacked
efcacy. Nonetheless, through a wide variety of methods, some specialized and
others more easily practiced and requiring less sophisticated knowledge or means,
people worked as fortune-tellers and enjoyed an extensive clientele. Sneddon also
engages with the image of the fortune-teller, their links with Irish travelers, and the
gendered assumptions assigned to practitioners.
 Introduction 7

While fortune-telling, and prognostications in general, continued to fourish in

the eighteenth century, there was some pushback from the state and, subsequently,
from some individuals. William E. Burns explores the complex landscape of astrol-
ogy in England through the lens of almanacs. Although astrology did not die out, it
did not remain exactly the same either. A powerful set of tools and techniques from
antiquity forward, astrology played an important role in Church and state issues and
medical practice. On a more quotidian level, it helped people identify thieves, fnd
lost objects, and resolve a multitude of other problems that might engage the aver-
age person. However, as Burns notes, opposition to astrology did have an impor-
tant function and, even more curiously, appeared in the very instruments that had
formerly done the most to spread astrological ideas, namely almanacs. Expanding
literacy and the exploding publishing industry had resulted in a large number of
almanacs, with many devoted all or in part to astrology. However, as Burns elabo-
rates, a temporary ban on predictions in almanacs after the ascension of James II
led some astrologers to adopt ongoing attacks on its practice. Burns traces these
critiques from the end of the seventeenth through the frst half of the eighteenth
century and explores the interrelationship between astrology and almanacs.
The infuence of ideas and forces from outside Europe impacted magical prac-
tices and rituals to a considerable extent from antiquity through to the eighteenth
century. Stéphane Van Damme examines the impact of ideas on the continued
development of alchemical (and chemical) understandings during the Enlighten-
ment. Thanks in part to travelers and their published accounts of the institutions,
people, ideas, and cultures they encountered, people in Europe continued to be
on the receiving end of a fow of information about such practices as alchemy.
Information about alchemy from areas to the East (ranging from the Near East to
China) especially infuenced European notions. In this way, Van Damme explores
the connections between alchemy, chemistry, and natural magic and the continu-
ing ways in which people thought about the transmutation of metals. The fuid
borders between these concepts demonstrate how people tried to imbue them
with particular sets of meanings. In reconstructing the eastern infuences on French
alchemy, Van Damme presents a more global understanding of the development of
magic during the Enlightenment.
In the period preceding the Enlightenment, religious thinkers led the critique
of ideas about superstition, magic, and witchcraft, whether they represented popu-
lar practices or the product of educated theorists. As Voltaire noted, however, the
Church rarely suggested magic did not exist. Instead, they wanted sole rights as the
purveyors of supernatural infuences in the form of religious rituals in which the
source of power remained their deity. When the philosophes engaged in a critique
of magic in the eighteenth century, they lumped religion and magic together as
equally superstitious and worthy of their derision and scorn. The result was a wide-
spread attack that failed to put a signifcant dent in the popular understanding of the
supernatural world and their participation in a host of magical practices, as well as
the intellectual eforts that continued to develop new ways of thinking about and
interacting with magic and encouraged experimentation. Instead of witnessing a
8 Michael R. Lynn

successful battle against the irrational in favor of the rational, the age of Enlighten-
ment remained a time of magic that carried through into the nineteenth century
and provided succeeding generations a remembrance of times past as well as a variety
of novel ways to understand the magical world. The eighteenth century remained
enchanted even as it developed institutions and practices that appeared modern.

Notes
1 Voltaire quoted in Roy Porter, “Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment, Roman-
tic, and Liberal Thought,” in Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, vol. 5, The Eighteenth and
Nineteenth Centuries, eds. Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 193–282, 219.
2 For the philosophes’ ongoing engagement with superstition and magic in France, see,
e.g., Kay Wilkins, “The Treatment of the Supernatural in the Encyclopédie,” Studies on
Voltaire & the Eighteenth Century 90 (1972): 1757–1771; Kay Wilkins, “Attitudes to
Witchcraft and Demonic Possession in France during the Eighteenth Century,” Journal
of European Studies 3 (1973): 348–362; and Kay Wilkins, “Some Aspects of the Irra-
tional in 18th-century France,” Studies on Voltaire & the Eighteenth Century 140 (1975):
107–201.
3 Brian Copenhaver, Magic in Western Culture: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); and Euan Cameron, Enchanted Europe:
Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
4 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cum-
ming (New York: Continuum, 1969), 3.
5 On the continuity of belief, see Stephen Wilson, The Magical Universe: Everyday Ritual
and Magic in Pre-Modern Europe (London: Hambledon and London Publisher, 2000).
6 Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Scribner’s, 1971), ix.
7 Simon Schaffer, “Late Enlightenment Crises of Facts: Mesmerism and Meteorites,” Con-
figurations 26 (2018): 119–148, 130 (emphasis in the original); also see Vaughn Scribner,
“‘Such Monsters Do Exist in Nature’: Mermaids, Tritons, and the Science of Wonder
in Eighteenth-Century Europe,” Itinerario 41 (2017): 507–538; and Michael R. Lynn,
“Divining the Enlightenment: Popular Science and Public Opinion in Eighteenth-
Century France,” Isis 92 (2001): 34–54.
8 For an older version of this argument, see Ernest d’Hauterive, Le Merveilleux au XVIIIe
siècle (Paris: Félix Juven, 1902).
9 John V. Fleming, The Dark Side of the Enlightenment: Wizards, Alchemists, and Spiritual
Seekers in the Age of Reason (New York: Norton, 2013); Paul Kléber Monod, Solomon’s
Secret Arts: The Occult in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2013); and Michael Hunter, The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2020).
10 Dan Edelstein, ed., The Super-Enlightenment: Daring to Know Too Much (Oxford: Vol-
taire Foundation, 2010). Cf. Harold Pagliaro, ed., Irrationalism in the Eighteenth Century
(Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University, 1972).
11 Wolfgang Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts: A Global History (Cambridge: Polity,
2004), 187.
12 Copenhaver, Magic in Western Culture.
13 Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, “Witchcraft After the Witch Trials,” in Witchcraft and Magic in
Europe, vol. 5, The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, 97–189, 175.
14 See, e.g., Owen Davies, Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History (London: Ham-
bledon Continuum, 2007); and Davies, Witchcraft, Magic, and Culture, 1736–1951
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999).
15 See, e.g., Owen Davies and Willem de Blécourt, eds., Beyond the Witch Trials: Witchcraft
and Magic in Enlightenment Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).
 Introduction 9

16 Sabine Doering-Manteuffel, “The Dissemination of Magical Knowledge in Enlighten-

ment Germany,” in Beyond the Witch Trials, 187–206, 187.
17 Peter Maxwell-Stuart, “Witchcraft and Magic in Eighteenth-Century Scotland,” in
Beyond the Witch Trials, 81–99, 91.
18 Jonathan Barry, Witchcraft and Demonology in South-West England, 1640–1789 (Basing-
stoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Also see Barry, Raising Spirits: How a Conjuror’s Tale
Was Transmitted across the Enlightenment (Basingstoke: Palgrave Pivot, 2013).
19 Barry, Witchcraft and Demonology, 4. Also, see “Afterword”.
20 Andrew Sneddon, Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2015), 98. Cf. Michael Bailey, “The Age of Magicians: Periodization in the History of
European Magic,” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 3, no. 1 (2008): 1–28. Bailey argues that
disenchantment at the level of the intellectual elites did occur in the eighteenth century
but that this does not mean there were immediate changes in “common beliefs and
practices.” Bailey, 26–27.
21 In addition to the works by Barry and Sneddon already mentioned, see, for example,
Timothy D. Walker, Doctors, Folk Medicine and the Inquisition: The Repression of Magical
Healing in Portugal during the Enlightenment (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Martin Pott, Aufklärung
und Aberglaube: Die deutsche Frühaufklärung im Spiegel ihrer Aberglaubenskritik (Tübingen:
Max Niemeyer, 1992); Sabine Doering-Manteuffel, Das Okkulte: Eine Erfolgsgeschichte
im Schatter der Aufklärung: Von Gutenberg bis zum World Wide Web (München: Siedler,
2008); H. C. Erik Midelfort, Exorcism and Enlightenment: Johann Joseph Gassner and the
Demons of Eighteenth-Century Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); Ber-
nard Dompnier, ed., La superstition à l’âge des lumières (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1998);
Jacqueline Van Gent, Magic, Body and the Self in Eighteenth-Century Sweden (Leiden: Brill,
2009); Ulrike Krampl, Les secrets des faux sorciers: police, magie et escroquerie à Paris au XVIIIe
siècle (Paris: Editions de l’Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2011); Per Sörlin,
“Wicked Arts”: Witchcraft and Magic Trials in Southern Sweden, 1635–1754 (Leiden: Brill,
1999); Lizanne Henderson, Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment: Scotland,
1670–1740 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Valerie Molero, Magie et sorcellerie
en Espagne au siècle des lumières, 1700–1820 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006); Gabor Klaniczay
and Eva Pócs, eds., Witchcraft and Demonology in Hungary and Transylvania (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
22 Marie-Claude Denier, “Sorciers, presages et croyances magiques en Mayenne aux
XVIIIe et XIXe siècles,” Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest 97 (1990): 115–132.

Bibliography
Ankarloo, Bengt and Stuart Clark. Witchcraft and Magic in Europe. Vol. 5. The Eighteenth and
Nineteenth Centuries. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Bailey, Michael D. “The Age of Magicians: Periodization in the History of European Magic.”
Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 3, no. 1 (2008): 1–28.
Barry, Jonathan. Raising Spirits: How a Conjuror’s Tale was Transmitted across the Enlightenment.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Pivot, 2013.
———. Witchcraft and Demonology in South-West England, 1640–1789. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012.
Behringer, Wolfgang. Witches and Witch-Hunts: A Global History. Cambridge: Polity, 2004.
Cameron, Euan. Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250–1750. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2010.
Copenhaver, Brian. Magic in Western Culture: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Davies, Owen. Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History. London: Hambledon Con-
tinuum, 2007.
10 Michael R. Lynn

———. Witchcraft, Magic, and Culture, 1736–1951. Manchester: Manchester University

Press, 1999.
——— and Willem de Blécourt, eds. Beyond the Witch Trials: Witchcraft and Magic in Enlight-
enment Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004.
Denier, Marie-Claude. “Sorciers, presages et croyances magiques en Mayenne aux XVIIIe
et XIXe siècles.” Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest 97 (1990): 115–132.
Doering-Manteufel, Sabine. Das Okkulte: Eine Erfolgsgeschichte im Schatter der Aufklärung:
Von Gutenberg bis zum World Wide Web. München: Siedler, 2008.
Dompnier, Bernard, ed. La superstition à l’âge des lumières. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1998.
Edelstein, Dan, ed. The Super-Enlightenment: Daring to Know Too Much. Oxford: Voltaire
Foundation, 2010.
Fleming, John V. The Dark Side of the Enlightenment: Wizards, Alchemists, and Spiritual Seekers
in the Age of Reason. New York: Norton, 2013.
Hauterive, Ernest d’. Le Merveilleux au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Félix Juven, 1902.
Henderson, Lizanne. Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment: Scotland, 1670–
1740. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Horkheimer, Max and Theodor Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. John Cumming.
New York: Continuum, 1972.
Hunter, Michael. The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment. New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 2020.
Klaniczay, Gabor and Eva Pócs, eds. Witchcraft and Demonology in Hungary and Transylvania.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Krampl, Ulrike. Les secrets des faux sorciers: police, magie et escroquerie à Paris au XVIIIe siècle.
Paris: Editions de l’Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2011.
Lynn, Michael R. “Divining the Enlightenment: Popular Science and Public Opinion in
Old Regime France.” Isis 92 (2001): 34–54.
Midelfort, H.C. Erik. Exorcism and Enlightenment: Johann Joseph Gassner and the Demons of
Eighteenth-Century Germany. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
Molero, Valérie. Magie et sorcellerie en Espagne au siècle des lumières, 1700–1820. Paris:
L’Harmattan, 2006.
Monod, Paul Kléber. Solomon’s Secret Arts: The Occult in the Age of Enlightenment. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.
Pagliaro, Harold E., ed. Irrationalism in the Eighteenth Century. Cleveland: Case Western
Reserve University, 1972.
Pott, Martin. Aufklärung und Aberglaube: Die deutsche Frühaufklärung im Spiegel ihrer Aber-
glaubenskritik. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1992.
Schafer, Simon. “Late Enlightenment Crises of Facts: Mesmerism and Meteorites.” Confgu-
rations 26 (2018): 119–148.
Scribner, Vaughn. “‘Such Monsters Do Exist in Nature’: Mermaids, Tritons, and the Sci-
ence of Wonder in Eighteenth-Century Europe.” Itinerario 41 (2017): 507–538.
Sneddon, Andrew. Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Sörlin, Per. “Wicked Arts”: Witchcraft and Magic Trials in Southern Sweden, 1635–1754. Leiden:
Brill, 1999.
Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic. New York: Scribner’s 1971.
Van Gent, Jacqueline. Magic, Body and the Self in Eighteenth-Century Sweden. Leiden: Brill, 2009.
Walker, Timothy D. Doctors, Folk Medicine and the Inquisition: The Repression of Magical Healing
in Portugal during the Enlightenment. Leiden: Brill, 2005.
Wilkins, Kay S. “Attitudes to Witchcraft and Demonic Possession in France during the
Eighteenth Century.” Journal of European Studies 3 (1973): 348–362.
 Introduction 11

———. “Some Aspects of the Irrational in 18th-century France.” Studies on Voltaire & the
Eighteenth Century 140 (1975): 107–201.
———. “The Treatment of the Supernatural in the Encyclopédie.” Studies on Voltaire & the
Eighteenth Century 90 (1972): 1757–1771.
Wilson, Stephen. The Magical Universe: Everyday Ritual and Magic in Pre-Modern Europe. Lon-
don: Hambledon and London Publisher, 2000.
1
THE GHOST OF THE
ENLIGHTENMENT
Communication with the dead in
Southwestern Germany, seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries

Johannes Dillinger

Introductory remarks
This chapter investigates popular ghost beliefs in the German Southwest. We defne
“ghost” as the spirit of a deceased person that haunts a certain place and is still able
to interact with the material world in some way.1 This study will ask how and with
what results people tried to communicate with ghosts. The text focuses on the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This period lends itself to a more specifc
investigation of the question whether the Enlightenment might have infuenced the
belief in ghosts or at least the authorities’ reaction to rumors about hauntings.
The aim of this chapter is neither to present a general survey of the Enlighten-
ment’s attitude toward traditional ideas about the returning spirits of the dead nor
to attempt a discussion of the clash between religious faiths, political ideologies, and
enlightened thinking in the German Southwest. Rather, it focuses on the direct
and concrete interaction between the so-called common people, the authorities,
and the local Churches on the village level in the context of alleged apparitions of
ghosts.2 This text is almost exclusively based on much neglected primary sources,
especially trial records about fraud and illicit magic that mention ghosts as well
as reports of ofcial investigations of allegedly haunted houses. The focus will be
on Swabia, especially on the Lutheran Duchy of Württemberg, simply because its
well-organized administration created the greatest quantity and the most detailed
documents about supposed encounters with the spirits of the dead. We will throw
some short side glances at the relatively poor Catholic area of Southern Swabia.
To the best of the author’s knowledge, there are no other studies that combine
the cultural history of the ghost in the context of the Enlightenment with concrete
case studies and regional history. Within the framework of this publication, it is nec-
essary to focus on the most relevant sources instead of aiming at a complete survey
of all primary sources referring to ghosts from early modern Southwest Germany.3

DOI: 10.4324/9781003049326-2
 The ghost of the Enlightenment 13

This chapter has three main sections. First, we will give a short survey of the
secular authorities’ attitude toward ghost beliefs. In the second section, we focus
on reports about apparitions of ghosts that did not involve a medium. Of course, if
the term “medium” is to make any sense at all in the eighteenth-century context,
it is to be understood in the broadest sense. A “medium” was simply a person who
claimed to be able to communicate with ghosts in a meaningful way.4 Lastly, we
will discuss ghostly apparitions that did involve mediums.

Talking about ghosts

Even if we focus exclusively on the Lutheran Duchy of Württemberg, it is difcult to
say anything conclusive about the government’s attitude toward ghost beliefs. How
exactly the authorities behaved when they were confronted with rumors or ofcial
reports about ghosts depended on the concrete situation. The government’s general
stance might be best described as skeptical indiference. The authorities stayed alert
and were willing to investigate rumors and reports about hauntings. This attitude
that might be called “open” as well as “reluctant” or “undecided” does not seem to
have changed signifcantly between the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries.
So far, no case has been discovered in which the government positively accepted the
apparition of a ghost as real. Any such statement would have been scandalous given
the fact that the Lutheran Church ofcially denied the existence of ghosts.5
Even though the Württemberg government never explicitly accepted a specter
as real, in a number of cases it behaved as if it believed in ghosts. Instead of rejecting
reports about ghosts, the authorities often acknowledged them tacitly. These cases
had to do with treasure hunting.6 In early modern Württemberg, treasure hunting
as such was legal. A number of people requested ofcial permits for treasure hunts
that the government usually granted. However, the use of any kind of magic dur-
ing a treasure hunt was ofcially forbidden. In early modern Germany and beyond,
it was common knowledge that ghosts watched over treasures. The apparition of a
ghost indicated the spot where a treasure could be found. In many cases, the Würt-
temberg government was at least willing to ignore magical elements of a treasure
hunt and not to comment on ghostly apparitions connected with alleged treasure
sites. One example might be the treasure hunt that went on in Laufen in 1711.7
The innkeeper Veit Conz had bought the ruin of a castle. As his horses did not
seem to like the place, he immediately concluded that the ruin was haunted and
that a treasure must be hidden there. Conz requested an ofcial permit for a trea-
sure hunt from the ducal administration of Württemberg. Even though the govern-
ment knew that Conz believed in the treasure because he believed in the ghost, it
granted the permit provided that Conz did not use magic actively. Conz hired the
bricklayer Christoph Schomm who had a reputation as a treasure magician and a
conjurer. Immediately before the Laufen treasure hunt, a local government ofcial
had employed Schomm because the ofcial too thought that his house was haunted
and that a treasure might be hidden in it. Schomm had allegedly laid the ghost,
enabling it to leave the world for good, and had thus discovered the treasure with
14 Johannes Dillinger

magical means. Even though all of that came to the government’s knowledge, it still
allowed Schomm – with the explicit approval of the duke personally – to work for
Conz. The Laufen treasure hunt was an extreme but a typical case. In the interest
of fnding the treasure the government was prepared to ignore magical practices as
well as to tacitly accept the existence of ghosts.
In Württemberg, stories about ghosts only began to damage the chance to get
an ofcial permit for a treasure hunt one generation later. In 1744, the government
expressed suspicion regarding the haunting and the still hidden treasure and did not
allow a treasure hunt to take place.8 Fourteen years later, a private person requested
a permit for a treasure hunt. He stressed that before the treasure could be found he
needed Franciscan monks to redeem the ghost that haunted his house. The govern-
ment rejected this petition outright as “nonsensical,” probably not so much because
it had mentioned a ghost but rather because it had implied that representatives of
the Catholic Church were best suited to deal with the spirit world.9 If a treasure
played no or no major role in the reports about ghosts, the government displayed
a more critical attitude.
A standard explanation for supposed hauntings was fraud. The government sus-
pected that the inhabitants of allegedly haunted houses faked the apparitions for
some ulterior motive. The Württemberg government – as well as other governments
in the German Southwest – repeatedly sent watchmen into haunted houses. They
should not only note down what they experienced but also keep an eye open for any
indication of fraud or stage tricks. There were several such cases in the eighteenth
century.10 Even in the Alb, a poor and remote hill country south of Württemberg,
large parts of which were governed by the Catholic Hohenzollern, the authori-
ties were quick to explain specters as fraud, indeed as “indubitable malevolence
[‘Bosheit’] ensnaring the rifraf that is prone to faithlessness (‘Unglauben’) anyway.”
The entire investigation of a haunted house in the period from 1783 to 1784 in
Ringingen in the Alb was based on the unchanging assumption that the haunting
which had been going on for four years had been staged by a con man. Even though
the suspect was arrested repeatedly, he simply refused to confess. What made things
worse, at least for the government’s ofcials, was the sensation the ghost created in
the vicinity. “I call it a disgrace that in the enlightened times [‘aufgeklärten Zeiten’]
we have now the village of Ringingen that belongs to my jurisdiction has become
the laughingstock of the neighbourhood because of such a silly ghost story,” the local
bailif lamented in a letter to the government.11 Of course, the bailif presented him-
self as an advocate of the Enlightenment. However, it would be too easy to claim
the interpretation of supposed hauntings as fraud as a result of the popularization of
enlightened skepticism. We fnd exactly the same arguments in Württemberg in the
seventeenth century. For example, in 1630, the government went to some lengths
to unmask an alleged haunting in Kirchheim as a confdence trick. The authorities
had a supposedly haunted house searched for concealed doors, false bottoms in the
furniture, and so on. They apparently expected the inhabitants of the house to use
complicated and elaborate tricks. In 1697, the authorities suspected some property
fraud behind ghostly apparitions in Plieningen.12
 The ghost of the Enlightenment 15

Another seemingly enlightened explanation of ghost sightings was delusion.

“We know from experience just how often people deceive themselves with fanta-
sies, imaging that they see a ghost here or there,” a Württemberg ofcial wrote to
the government in 1747. Persons with a “strong imagination” might believe that
they had seen a ghost. In the telling these alleged experiences became even more
extraordinary and impressed people of “small intelligence” so much that they also
started to see ghosts.13 Again, the authorities advocated this explanation – ghosts
were “empty fantasies” and “pipe dreams” – in the seventeenth as well as in the
eighteenth century.14 Thus, enlightened thinking might have strengthened this
explanation, but it did not create it.
In 1659, the Württemberg government did not only have a supposedly haunted
house in Pfafenhofen ofcially watched, it even recommended a special prayer
to the inhabitants that would drive the apparitions away. This would suggest that
the government accepted the Protestant interpretation that denounced all ghostly
apparitions as demons.15 In four cases in 1630, 1670, 1675, and 1704, representa-
tives of the state and the Lutheran Church briefy discussed the possibility that the
apparition of a ghost and attempts to communicate with it might be connected
to witchcraft.16 However, in all cases, they dismissed the idea quickly. Even if the
apparitions were demonic, there was just no evidence that would suggest that any-
body had made a pact with the Devil. Württemberg had never engaged very much
in witch-hunting. The witch trials began to peter out there in the1630s. Late
accumulations of witch trials in Württemberg in the 1660s and the 1680s were
connected with children who accused themselves and others of witchcraft. There
was no signifcant overlap between the discourses on ghosts and on witches.17 The
demonological interpretation of the ghosts was clearly not in any way connected
to the Enlightenment. Not even the decline of this explanation can be attrib-
uted to enlightened thinking. Administrative reforms marginalized and ended the
witch trials in the seventeenth century before there was any discernible infuence
of enlightened philosophy.18

Noise and silence: ghosts without mediums

The manifestations of ghosts as described in the sources may be grouped into just
two simple categories: apparitions that were not connected to any human medium
and apparitions that were. If there was no human medium to talk to the ghost
(and, at least to a certain degree – for the ghost), then how did the ghost manifest
itself? Which phenomena did common people from the eighteenth century inter-
pret as hauntings? Most alleged manifestations of ghosts found in the sources were
described as being of the “poltergeist” variety: the spirits moved objects and “went
bump in the night.”
Several Swabian sources from the seventeenth century mention ghosts making
noise and throwing or removing objects.19 This remained the most common form
of haunting throughout the eighteenth century. In 1715, in the vicarage of Zaisers-
weiher in Württemberg, doors opened on their own account. Witnesses claimed
16 Johannes Dillinger

not to have seen anything but to have heard noises like somebody splitting wood
or like violent stomping that shook the windows.20 In a 1725 case from Fricken-
hausen, before an exorcist forced the ghost to appear, all that could be experienced
in a haunted house was “something clattering” (etwas geklepperet).21 The ghost that
haunted the vicarage of Hemmingen in 1747 often manifested itself with a variety
of noises, including a rumbling or a light tread like somebody walking with stock-
inged feet. One visitor of the haunted house thought that he heard heavy rain but
found the night entirely dry when he looked out of the window.22
The Hemmingen ghost also assumed a variety of visual forms such as a little
blue light, a dog, or, most often, a cat that simply could not be kept out of the bed-
room. “Every night,” it was reported, “a cat went to bed with the maidservant no
matter how hard she tried to get rid of it. Even if she closed the door right behind
her, the cat was there anyway.” At times, the ghost stood in front of the bed in the
shape of a woman with outstretched arms. Once, the ghost came in that form
even in the kitchen and sat down next to the oven. The maid did not even realize
that the visitor was a ghost. However, the specter never spoke. The Hemmingen
ghost also manifested itself as a “mare.” The “mare” (Alp) was a magical being that
might be a ghost, a malevolent household spirit, or the spirit of a living person. It
pressed down on persons asleep in their beds like a heavy weight that threatened
to sufocate them.23
A relatively versatile ghost haunted Vinzenz Diepolt’s house in Ringingen in
the Southswabian Hohenzollern territory for years. A lengthy ofcial investigation
that started in 1783 noted a number of apparitions. Even if the inhabitants of the
house could hear or see nothing, the specter seemed to make the livestock in the
stable restless. However, the ghost was often heard walking through the house like
a man with bare feet. At times, it grunted like a pig, barked like a dog, or mooed
like a cow. The acoustical apparition could start with barely audible noises like
woodworms moving in the walls that increased in volume and ended in “an awful,
loud groan.” Most often, the ghost produced loud knocking or banging noises like
a person hammering away with a heavy mallet. These noises could make the win-
dows rattle in their frames and sometimes went on all night. At some point, Diepolt
was so deprived of sleep that he lost his nerves and his fear and searched his house
with his rife to shoot the ghost. When the government sent soldiers to watch the
haunted house, they did not see anything but heard knocking and banging sounds
of varying volume, like objects crashing against iron and, once, as if three logs were
tumbling down the stairs. Diepolt’s case was among the few in which the ofcial
government reports actually used the word “Poltergeist,” which translates literally
as “rumbling spirit.” The haunting in Diepolt’s house was so closely connected to
acoustical perception that “if the cow in the stable or the cat in the garret made
noise . . . it always brought new fear” of the ghost. In a way, the poltergeist’s din
had become the yardstick of the normal sounds of the farmhouse, not the other
way round. On three occasions, the Diepolt ghost seemed to talk. One witness said
simply that it had a male voice, while another explained that the ghost spoke “in
a voice that was not quite that of a human being and not quite that of an animal.”
 The ghost of the Enlightenment 17

Unfortunately, nobody seems to have been able to understand the ghost. The sol-
diers who had been sent by the government to investigate the haunting heard the
ghost talk:

“It started to speak but very unclearly and as if the mouth was full of rags. But
they did not understand anything apart from the word ‘authorities’ [‘Obrig-
keit’] in the middle of its talk and ‘otherwise it will not go well’ (‘sonst wird
es nicht gut gehen’)” at the end.

It remained unclear if these cryptic utterings were supposed to threaten or to warn

the soldiers as representatives of the authorities. At any rate, it is remarkable that
this ghost that had never deigned to say anything remotely comprehensible to
Diepolt and his family gave a little speech to the soldiers.24
The Diepolt ghost crossed the line between visibility and invisibility. Diepolt
said that the ghost often slipped under the bed like a black dog, but if he shone a
light under the bedstead, there was nothing to be seen. A boy Diepolt employed as
a cowherd claimed to have seen a mysterious light. This might mean – if it means
anything – that the ghost stayed invisible most of the time but could appear in vari-
ous forms at will. Later on, Diepolt’s neighbors claimed that the ghost shied away
from light and became active only in total darkness.25
As the ghosts usually did not communicate in a meaningful or comprehensible
way, what or who the spirit actually was often remained unclear. In 1660, after two
years’ worth of reports about strange apparitions in Maulbronn, it was still an open
question if “a ghost, witches or some other monstrosity” was to blame.26 The ghost
in the vicarage of Hemmingen could never be identifed even though it was said to
have haunted the place for 70 years and had shown itself in human form to several
people.27 Even after four years of torment by the noisy poltergeist, Vinzenz Diepolt
from Hohenzollern knew only that “they just have something that is not right in
the house” (“sie hätten halt etwas unrechtes im Haus”).28
In 1725, even though the inhabitants of a haunted house in Frickenhausen sus-
pected who the ghost might be, they preferred to refer simply to “something that
was not right” (ohnrichtigkeit) when they had to talk about the specter, probably in
order not to attract the attention of ill-disposed neighbors or of the authorities.29
The identity of a ghost could become a controversial issue. According to folk belief,
the continued existence of someone as a ghost was a form of punishment. Whoever
had to walk as a ghost had penance to do for a serious mistake or had other very
important things left undone. Thus, if you claimed that somebody had to return
as a ghost, you criticized him, implicitly but harshly.30 In 1725, two women quar-
reled loudly at the marketplace of Nürtingen. Nestlerin had told Schillerin that
the neighbors claimed Schillerin’s mother would haunt Johann Martin Kayser’s
house. The ghost was so bothersome that Kayser considered moving out. Schil-
lerin paid Nestlerin back with the same coin. She claimed that Nestlerin’s dead
cousin haunted the house of his widow. Thus, not one but two specters featured in
the quarrel between the women. Both ghost stories defamed individuals and their
18 Johannes Dillinger

families most efectively.31 The notion that only people who had unfnished busi-
ness had to return as ghosts could be used to criticize rumors about hauntings. In
1620, the bailif of Backnang explained that a rumor about a certain person having
come back as a ghost was unworthy of belief simply because the person in question
had been an unobtrusive and upstanding character who certainly had no unfulflled
tasks.32 In 1697, stories about ghostly apparitions in Plieningen were rejected as
libel and a cover for property fraud because the person supposed to have turned
into a ghost had been a respected member of the community.33
People who lived in a haunted house often tried to get rid of the ghost by hav-
ing the house blessed by a priest or even by having the ghost exorcized. In theory,
a formal exorcism by a Catholic priest would imply that the spirit haunting the
house was a demon. In practice, however, a number of monks were apparently
willing to read the exorcism without enquiring about the nature of the spirit in any
detail. There was some demand for Catholic clergymen who were willing to per-
form such rites in Protestant Württemberg.34 There were, however, persons who
claimed to be able to drive spirits out of haunted houses who were not Catholic
priests, or even Catholics. These conjurers were merely village wizards. They were
often Protestant laypersons who claimed to know spells and prayers with which
they could drive the ghost out of the house or “ban” it into a specifc place where it
could not harm or disturb anybody anymore. In contrast to Catholic priests, these
“lay exorcists” expected some material reward for their services.35
A good example of such a “lay exorcist” was Hans Jörg Hoß from Wolfschlu-
gen.36 Witnesses referred to Hoß respectfully as a “renowned exorcist” (renommirten
exorcisten). In 1725, the Protestant Vicar Georg Friedrich Hausch and the sherif
Gebhard Friedrich Mollventer opened an ofcial investigation of Hoß’s dealings
with a specter in Frickenhausen, a village in Württemberg about 30 kilometers
south of Stuttgart. At that time, Hoß was 73. He was an experienced and self-
assured “lay exorcist.” Hoß was not only known to have laid a number of ghosts,
but he was proud of his achievements. He said clearly that his “exorcisms” were
legal. Hoß explained willingly that Nestler, a forester’s servant, had told him that
since the death of one Johann Georg Schauber, his house was haunted. Nestler
was a distant relative of Schauber’s and seems to have acted on behalf of Schauber’s
widow, who still lived in the house. Hoß visited the house three times at night.
Hoß’s fnal visit to the haunted house attracted some attention. Curious neighbors
assembled in the middle of the night in the street near Schauber’s house. They
later claimed to have heard hammering. They allegedly saw fickering fames and
fnally witnessed Hoß coming out of the house carrying a sack, supposedly with
the ghost in it.
During his frst visits, Hoß explained to his interrogators, he had merely heard
strange noises. In the third night, the lay exorcist drew a circle with magical char-
acters on the ground where he stood. Even though this practice is often associated
with learned magic, it was quite common and popular with rural treasure magi-
cians. The ghost was not supposed to be able to enter the circle. Then, Hoß made
the ghost come to him by speaking the formula “in the name of God, I search you.
 The ghost of the Enlightenment 19

In the name of Jesus Christ, I search you. In the name of the holy spirit I fnd you.”
As Hoß maintained, these words “made such a thing [‘solches ding’] appear and if
it were in hell.” The ghost came in the form of a man wearing a hat and a white
garment, the lower part of which was blackish. Hoß challenged the ghost with the
traditional formula “All good spirits praise God the Lord,” to which the ghost did
not reply but merely turned around. Now Hoß said:

Trutt, trutt, trutt, I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ, so that you shall
avoid this house and yard, door and gate, also all other openings so that this
house shall be so pure as the bones of Christ the Lord.

The word “Trutt” or Trude could mean “nightly ghostly apparition” as well as
“nightmare” or “witch.” Hoß avoided (or claimed to have avoided) the much less
ambivalent term Gespenst (“ghost”) but still used a word with strong negative con-
notations (unlike the more neutral Geist (“spirit”)). This would indicate that he was
not quite sure what he was dealing with even though he regarded the apparition as
a potential threat. Afterward, Hoß ordered the ghost to leave the house and to stay
outside in the open. On hearing this, the ghost showed “various kinds of unpleas-
ant shapes” (allerlay widrige fguren) and breathed fre. Therefore, Hoß allowed the
ghost to enter a hollow tree “because they dislike being out in the open as much
as human beings because unpleasantness makes them sufer, too.” How exactly the
ghost left the house remained unclear. The dialogue between Hoß and his inter-
rogators about this is worth quoting:

Did he [= Hoß] put the ghost into a sack and carry it out of the house? No,
some of them were very heavy. Did he guide the ghost outside? Laughing,
he said nothing, only that it simply had to go.

Finally, Hoß nailed bits of paper with parts of a Protestant hymn “Des Weibes
Samen” to the front and rear door of the house.
Hoß seems to have been a bit reluctant to talk to the vicar and the sherif. He
never volunteered any details in his statement but was ready enough to answer if he
was asked specifc questions. Topics that were supposed to discredit Hoß’s account,
such as how he could have seen the ghost in the dark, the “lay exorcist” answered
readily enough and it seems at times with ironic simplicity and matter-of-factness.
Hoß never claimed that the ghost actually was the spirit of Schauber. He patiently
explained to his interrogators that he had never met Schauber. Thus, he did not
know what he had looked like, and therefore, even though ghosts were supposed to
look like the people they used to be, Hoß could not tell who the apparition really
had been. Of course, Hoß might have avoided identifying the ghost as this might
have been interpreted as libel. However, there was more to this. Hoß’s reluctance
to give the ghost’s name ftted together with his use of the unspecifc word “Trutt.”
Both seem to indicate general insecurity. Hoß’s entire statement suggested that he
did not know what he was dealing with in the haunted house. It also suggests that
20 Johannes Dillinger

he did not really care or did not need to care. Almost all of Hoß’s communication
with the ghost consisted of ritual formulae. They were essentially independent of
the creature or person Hoß was dealing with. His strange reference to hell when
he explained his incantation to his interrogators suggests that he thought it possible
that he was dealing with a demon. It is remarkable that as Hoß told the story, there
had never been a real exchange between him and the ghost. The ghost seems not
to have said anything. Even though it took on new threatening forms when it tried
to keep Hoß from banning it out into the open, it remained silent.
Hoß presented himself like the equivalent of a Catholic priest conducting an
exorcism. He wanted to be seen as the master of the ghosts. He was not inter-
ested in a conversation with them. He simply made them appear and sent them
away. The ghost did not matter. It had neither a name nor a history. As the ghost
could not or would not talk the reason why it came back to haunt the living at all
remained unclear. In these respects, Hoß’s case was absolutely typical. Most haunt-
ings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, at least in Southwest Germany,
were of this non-communicative type. The questions of who the ghost had been
and why it had to walk remained usually open.

Demands and doctrines: ghosts with mediums

As soon as a medium became involved, the situation demanded that the medium
talked for and thus about the ghost. The medium could only justify his or her own
role by providing some sort of explanation for the haunting. The medium thus
acquired an exceptional, and indeed at times a highly advantageous, status. The
position of the medium was clearly a position of power. It goes almost without
saying that these mediums were usually frauds who exploited the ghost beliefs of
others for fnancial gain. The mediums of the eighteenth century were comparable
to those of nineteenth-century Spiritualism insofar as they presented themselves as
the “spokespersons” of the ghosts and claimed to function as intermediaries between
the ghosts and the living. Thus, the mediums were quite unlike the exorcists and
village wizards who also dealt with ghosts. These people merely tried to get rid
of the ghosts, to free a house from haunting. Far from presenting themselves as
“mouthpieces” of the ghosts, they were essentially their adversaries who claimed to
command superior spiritual powers to which the ghosts would have to succumb.
One of the most successful fraudulent mediums of eighteenth-century Southwest
Germany was Margaretha Schütterin, the wife of a stonemason from Schwaikheim
in Württemberg. Schütterin claimed to have come into contact with the ghost of a
monk in 1704.37 The ghost explained that he and 15 fellow monks had lived in the
house now inhabited by Schütterin 240 years ago. The 16 monks had to haunt the
place because they had important unfnished business. Not only had they hidden
a vast treasure, but they also had vowed to do certain pious works according to the
Catholic tradition like paying for masses, donating candles, and clothing statues in
Churches. However, the monks had been killed by marauding mercenaries before
they could fulfll their tasks. They could only leave the visible world and truly die
 The ghost of the Enlightenment 21

if Schütterin did those pious works for them. If she did so, the ghosts would show
her the place where the treasure was hidden. Schütterin explained exactly why
the monks needed to communicate with her and only with her. She had been
“chosen” for this task centuries before her birth. Schütterin had the same horo-
scope as Christ. She was the ghosts’ redeemer. The medium thus claimed to have
supernatural powers that set her apart from everybody else. The parallels with Jesus
Christ were obvious.
The tasks the medium claimed she had to fulfll in order to help the ghosts
had been well-chosen. In Protestant Württemberg it was comparatively difcult to
fnd out if somebody made donations to Catholic institutions in neighboring ter-
ritories. The alleged request of the ghost in combination with the promise to help
the medium to a treasure was an excellent basis for a confdence trick. Schütterin
began to borrow from friends and neighbors the money she supposedly needed
to pay for masses and for lavish donations to the Catholic Church. As security
she ofered shares of the treasure that she would get as soon as the wishes of the
ghost had been fulflled. Schütterin guaranteed profts of up to 100,000 forins, an
astronomical sum few people would earn in their entire lives. Like many modern
con artists, Schütterin made reluctant investors believe that there was an actual
competition for shares in the treasure venture. But money was not all that could
be gained. The medium explained that the ghosts had promised that “whoever
gave the least thing would be rewarded not only in this life but hereafter, too.” In
this way, Schütterin managed to swindle 912 forins out of one David Fischer, an
afuent baker, alone. Schütterin fnally left her husband, whom she may also have
deceived with her ghost story, and fed with the money. Fischer brought charges
against Schütterin after her fight. This turned out to be another mistake. Fischer
was sentenced to a fne of 14 forins. The court decided that he was guilty of trea-
sure hunting without an ofcial permit. It did not help Fischer that he maintained
that Schütterin had assured him the Duke of Württemberg himself had allowed the
treasure hunt.
The conglomerate of religion, magic, and commerce was typical for early mod-
ern treasure hunts.38 Schütterin’s case was an extreme but by no means an atypical
example. Nevertheless, it is remarkable how traditional and Catholic Schütterin’s
ghosts were. They seemed to represent the ghosts of the old folk tales. They had
unfnished business that kept them in the visible world. As if to confrm this tradi-
tional idea of ghosts, Schütterin’s spirits were the souls of medieval monks. Some
of the ritual tasks they had left unfnished and needed Schütterin to fulfll could
be associated with the traditional Catholic care of the dead. Purgatory was never
mentioned, but the entire narrative seemed to imply the Catholic interpretation of
ghosts as spirits of the dead sent back from Purgatory to warn the living. Finally, the
ghosts claimed through the medium that anybody who would help them would be
rewarded in the hereafter. This was clearly – if in a rather crude form – the Catholic
concept of God rewarding good deeds. Even though Württemberg was notorious
for its aggressive Lutheran orthodoxy, Schütterin’s case suggested that more than
a century and a half of Protestantism had left the Catholic concept of ghosts in
22 Johannes Dillinger

folk belief absolutely intact. This embarrassing revelation might have provoked
the harsh reaction of the Protestant minister and the bailif of Strümpfelbach as
well as that of the sherif and dean of Schorndorf when they learned about Schüt-
terin. They condemned Schütterin’s alleged contact with spirits as a violation of
the entire frst table of the Ten Commandments. As the spirits could – according
to ofcial Protestant teaching – only be demons, a few decades earlier Schütterin’s
behavior might have provoked a witch trial.
Schütterin’s case shows not even a marked confict between competing Chris-
tian denominations. It shows a largely Catholic folk belief with some essentially
inconsequential Protestant criticism voiced by local elites. Infuence of the Enlight-
enment is not discernible at all. The fact that Schütterin was a fraud is not enough
to see her case as a break from tradition. The con artist exploited an environment
that still accepted traditional concepts of the ghost. The only real challenge Schüt-
terin had to face was a specifc gender role. It was highly unusual for a woman to
search for hidden treasures. Treasure magic was almost exclusively male magic.39
The fles of Schütterin’s case are the only legal documents from early modern
Württemberg that use the term “treasure huntress” (Schatzgräberin), the female
form of “treasure hunter” (Schatzgräber), at all. In order to convince her victims
that a woman could be a successful treasure hunter, the con woman had to create
the ghost story with herself as the medium and the chosen redeemer of the ghosts.
This story provided the ghosts with a pseudo-historical background that had been
lacking in most of the older Southwest German documents about encounters with
the spirits of the dead. Schütterin’s story ofered a glimpse of the historical person-
ages behind the ghosts. Of course, the fraud’s story was not about “real” history. It
contained no reliable historical information at all. However, it claimed to be about
history. As older ghost narratives had been essentially uninterested in history, this
was an important deviation from tradition. Still, it would be far-fetched to explain
this deviation from older tradition as evidence for the impact of enlightened think-
ing on the popular level.40
Whether Schütterin’s house where she had supposedly met the ghosts had
had a reputation for being haunted before remains unclear. Two other prominent
eighteenth-century mediums from Southwest Germany found ghosts in places that
had defnitely not been said to be haunted before. Nobody had experienced any-
thing that was interpreted as ghostly activity before the mediums entered the scene.
In 1743, the secretary Fehleysen met a person who called himself Paul Benoit
de la Rivière and claimed to be a French army ofcer on leave.41 Whether it was a
“two man con” from the beginning or whether Fehleysen inadvertently provided
Rivière with an idea he exploited must remain open. At any rate, when Fehleysen
talked to his new acquaintance, he mentioned a printed book about the alchemist
Paracelsus. According to this book, Fehleysen explained, Paracelsus had not only
discovered the Philosophers’ Stone but also hidden it in Hohenheim, a small town
near Stuttgart where Paracelsus’ family had originally come from. The Philoso-
phers’ Stone was, of course, the greatest treasure imaginable as it could turn base
metals into gold. Rivière at once revealed that he was an experienced treasure
 The ghost of the Enlightenment 23

hunter. Fehleysen brought him into contact with Captain von Dehl, who resided
in Hohenheim castle. Naturally, Dehl was most interested in fnding the treasure,
especially as Rivière claimed not to be interested in any material gain so that the
treasure, minus a provision for the heavily indebted Fehleysen, would go to Dehl.
Within hours of his arrival at Hohenheim castle, Rivière saw a shadow in the
chapel that turned out to be the ghost of Paracelsus himself. It promised to reveal
the treasure to Rivière. However, black evil spirits wanted to keep the treasure
hidden. Paracelsus’ ghost sent a good spirit who helped Rivière. This good spirit
began to dictate lengthy Latin letters to Rivière. The ghost of Paracelsus wanted
these letters to be given to Dehl. The letters contained religious and moral exhor-
tations. Before Dehl could get the treasure, the ghost of Paracelsus demanded, he
had to become a much better person, a morally impeccable and pious Christian,
virtually a new man. The treasure, the ghost stressed, belonged neither to Paracel-
sus nor to Dehl. It belonged to God. Dehl was merely supposed to become God’s
administrator who was to use the treasure according to God’s will. He was to dis-
tribute great parts of the immeasurable wealth the Philosophers’ Stone promised to
the needy. The point of the letters was to give Dehl the moral and religious instruc-
tion he needed to live up to this great responsibility. As might be expected, this
conversion took several months during which Rivière and his female companion
lived as guests at Hohenheim castle. When Dehl became impatient, the letters from
the ghost of Paracelsus became more authoritarian:

This is not about me [i.e. Paracelsus], this is about God. If God commands
you to do something why do you not do his will? God forsakes the sin-
ner. . . . Fulfil your promises . . . and God will be with you for eternity. And
you will receive your crown in Heaven.

The tone of the letters suggested that it was not Paracelsus but rather God himself
who spoke. Following the instructions given in the letters and Rivière’s advice,
Dehl began to say Latin prayers daily and fasted. Did Rivière try to convert Dehl to
Catholicism? Both stressed that they wanted to have nothing to do with Catholics.
Rivière claimed that for at least two years he had adhered to Calvinism. The new
contact with the beyond that the letters from Paracelsus had established made old
religious identities and traditional denominations much less important.
Even when Rivière had to fee Württemberg after the authorities had learned
about the treasure hunt, he kept sending a steady stream of letters to Dehl from
the nearby Free Imperial City of Esslingen. Dehl covered all of Rivière’s expenses.
After about a year of entirely fruitless treasure hunting, a servant of Dehl’s brought
charges against Rivière. Only after the Esslingen authorities had extradited the
self-styled magician to the Württemberg authorities did Dehl reluctantly bring
charges himself and accused Rivière of fraud. During a frst interrogation, Rivière
said that he had lived in faraway Düsseldorf for some years. The Württemberg
authorities inquired in Düsseldorf about a French ofcer named Paul Benoit de
la Rivière. Düsseldorf answered that such a person was unknown in the town.
24 Johannes Dillinger

However, some years ago a French teacher who was heavily in debt had left his
wife and his children in utter poverty and fed, presumably following the French
army. His name was Paul Benedikt Bach: “Rivière” was the French equivalent of
the German “Bach.”
Still, under interrogation Bach/Rivière protested his innocence. The entire
treasure hunt including the alleged communication with the ghost, he claimed,
had been an elaborate scheme to bring Dehl back to a Christian life. In a way,
the treasure hunt had been a religious metaphor. The treasure of Paracelsus con-
sisted of charity toward the poor; its gold was patience; its jewels piety; and the
Philosophers’ Stone was the transformation of vice into virtue. Thus, the treasure
hunt had been a complete success. Dehl was now a new man. Rivière boasted:
“Ten Jesuits would not have achieved Herr Dehl’s conversion. But now he is an
angel.” The court pronounced Bach/Rivière guilty of fraud and banned him from
ever entering Württemberg again. Dehl and Fehleysen were let of with an ofcial
reprimand.
The fraud Rivière had given the ghost a new role to play. It was a religious men-
tor, Godlike in its authority and otherworldliness. The ghost of Paracelsus did not
need to be redeemed. It did not want Dehl to do something for it. It wanted Dehl
to do something for himself, to change his life and to come closer to God. The
ghost of Paracelsus was a spirit and a spiritual guide. It seemed less earth-bound
than heaven-sent. It was not the ghost that needed to shake of the ties that bound
it to the material world. It was Dehl who under the guidance of the ghost had to
free himself of overly worldly aims and considerations. Of course, the ghost’s mes-
sage was Christian. However, it had no denominational identity which is remark-
able in an aggressively Protestant state like Württemberg and in a period that was
still shaped by denominational diferences and controversies. The Lutheran Dehl
and the Catholic-turned-Calvinist Rivière both seemed not to care for the estab-
lished Churches any longer. The messages of the ghost ofered a new and personal
glimpse of the beyond and an interpretation of the will of God. Even if the ghost of
Paracelsus seemed not to have left the material world altogether, Dehl was willing
to hear in its admonitions the voice of God. The ghost was, at the very least, the
gatekeeper of Heaven.
Treasure hunts even if they did not involve alleged apparitions of ghosts often
had a quasi-religious aspect. Treasure hunters prayed together. Certain saints like
St. Christopher and St. Corona were supposed to help treasure seekers. There were
special invocations, spells rather than prayers, that compelled these saints to help
treasure hunters. It was a genuine part of the motivation of some treasure seekers
that fnding the treasure would enable the ghost guarding it to go to Heaven.42
However, Schütterin’s and Rivière’s cases had a new quality. The communication
with the ghost was now really at the center of the treasure hunt. The ghost was
able to communicate in a meaningful way. Rivière turned the ghost into a religious
mentor, an almost divine fgure that promised redemption instead of needing to be
redeemed. The “logical” next step would be the religious veneration of a ghost.
This was precisely the center of the Weilheim ghost cult.
 The ghost of the Enlightenment 25

In 1770, Anna Maria Freyin, the maidservant of Georg Buck, a butcher in the
Württemberg small town of Weilheim an der Teck, claimed to have redeemed a
ghost.43 She never explained how exactly she did that or how and why the ghost
approached her. The ghost that had at frst been dark and threatening became
white and beautiful. According to folk belief, the redemption of a ghost meant
that its ties with the visible world were dissolved. The ghost showed itself – in
white symbolizing its redemption – one last time and disappeared for ever. How-
ever, Freyin’s ghost, even though she stressed that she had redeemed the spirit,
kept coming to Buck’s house by night and day. It was even joined by another
white spirit. The ghosts had been delivered – that is to say, they had already
reached eternal bliss. The apparitions were therefore part of a heavenly sphere
even though they remained in contact with the living. This meant nothing less
than that a new divine revelation had begun. Anna Maria Freyin had established a
direct contact with Heaven.
Freyin, her master Buck, and a fast-growing number of curious visitors saw and
heard the ghosts. The ghosts conducted religious services. They quoted passages
from the Bible, prayed, sang religious songs, and preached to their visitors urging
them to live morally impeccable lives according to Christian ethics. The role of the
Württemberg ghosts was that of a saint, a prophet, or rather an angel. They revealed
the will of God to the faithful.
Within weeks, random gatherings at Buck’s house to see the ghosts and worship
with them had developed into regular meetings. Buck who had a bad reputation
as a drunkard and an idler had been excluded from the Lutheran Lord’s Supper.
He became the leader of the ghost cult. Buck used his new position to better his
fnancial situation. He borrowed money from the adherents of the ghosts. Buck
promised to pay back his debts as soon as the ghosts had revealed to him where a
treasure could be found.
The people who met regularly at Buck’s came to regard the spirits’ utterances as
divine revelation. It was claimed that the ghosts were capable of working miracles
greater than those that had occurred at the birth of Christ. Buck’s followers stated
publicly that they got a far better instruction in Scripture by the spirits than by their
minister. The religious songs the spirits sang were said to be of unearthly beauty
and in themselves proof of the divine nature of the apparitions. Freyin was vener-
ated like a saint. She was called “redeemer of souls . . . right holy warrior, spiritual
mother . . . worker of miracles.” Even more than Schütterin about two generations
earlier, Freyin acquired religious authority that should have been quite out of reach
for a Protestant woman at that time. The ghost narrative helped her to defy gender
norms and to acquire a position reminiscent of the female mystics in Catholicism.
The ghost worshippers celebrated the anniversary of Freyin’s decisive meeting with
the spirits on epiphany, which had in German the somewhat ambivalent name of
Fest der Erscheinung. This can be interpreted as “Feast of Jesus’ appearing in the
world” or as “Feast of the Apparition.” Thus, the Church holiday was reinterpreted,
and its name was understood to be an allusion to the apparition of the spirits. Buck
adopted a six-year-old boy whom he did not allow to attend Protestant service
26 Johannes Dillinger

and catechism. The boy was allegedly on particularly good terms with the ghosts.
At least according to Weilheim’s Protestant minister, the boy was taught to ofer
the spirits the type of veneration normally reserved only for God. He reportedly
worshiped them on his knees. It is likely that the boy was supposed to take on
the role of a priest in due course. Freyin had allegedly begun to write down the
sayings of the ghosts, and their prayers and hymns were considered as immediate
divine revelation by the sect. This text could have become the holy book of a new
Christian community.
The followers of Freyin and Buck cultivated a sense of mission and an aggres-
sive self-confdence. They “alone had bright, open eyes whereas the other people
were blind, perverse and pitiable.” They claimed to have received a special grace
from God. “The matter about the ghosts was something divine and those who
were not chosen could not comprehend it.” Buck based his criticism of Protestant-
ism on the revelations of the ghosts. The apparitions proved, he explained, that
there was “a third place in which the ghosts of the deceased stayed.” Buck did not
have the Catholic concept of Purgatory in mind. According to Catholic teaching,
some souls might return from Purgatory to warn the living. However, they were
hardly capable of giving religious instructions. The Catholic neighborhood of
Württemberg did not accept Buck’s views. It seems likely, even though there is no
clear evidence for it, that Freyin and Buck were infuenced by Pietism. Following
the ideas the minister Oetinger had published in 1765, some Württemberg Pietists
believed in the existence of the Empire in Between (Zwischenreich) where the souls
of the deceased awaited their ascent to Heaven. Oetinger was active as a minister
at Murrhardt only about 60 kilometers north of Weilheim and also in the Duchy
of Württemberg at the time of the ghost sect. However, he does not seem to have
taken any notice of it. Oetinger himself was familiar with Swedenborg’s writings
and published a book that discussed his ideas. If one wants to see Swedenborg as
an exponent of the Enlightenment, one could claim that the Enlightenment infu-
enced the Weilheim ghost sect indirectly. Of course, Pietists never entertained
the idea that spirits could give religious instructions. On the contrary, prominent
Pietist preachers like Oetinger allegedly preached to the dead in the Empire in
Between.44 The Weilheim ghost sect turned this idea on its head. Thus, it must
not be regarded as just another variant of Pietism. The Freyin–Buck group is
best understood as a new religious sect. They established a new cult with regular
gatherings, a holiday, and rituals such as the gestures of adoration performed at
least by the boy.
The ghost worshippers openly rejected the authority of the established
Church and the state connected with it. According to Protestant tradition, the
Church suspected the ghosts to be really demons. The central administration of
the Württemberg Protestant Church decreed early in 1771 that the meetings
at Buck’s house were to be discontinued immediately. The ghost sect ignored
the order. The Württemberg government ordered Christoph von Bühler, the
head of the regional administration, to arrest Freyin. However, Bühler was not
only unable to fnd Freyin, but a raid on Buck’s house ordered by the duke
 The ghost of the Enlightenment 27

failed because it had been given away. The leaders of the ghost sect reveled in
“prophesies” reinterpreting harassment as the road to martyrdom and a prereq-
uisite of their fnal triumph. Buck publicly denounced the Lutheran minister
of Weilheim as a “preacher of lies” and the town clerk as a “writer of lies.”
The cohesion of the Lutheran community at Weilheim began to sufer. Some
parishioners began to doubt the Lutheran orthodoxy and complained that “they
were no longer sure what to believe . . . [and] wondered whether they should
throw their Bibles out of the window.” The ghost sect was detrimental for the
reputation of Württemberg’s Protestantism. The Catholics in the neighboring
territories ridiculed the new religious community and the Lutheran authorities
who seemed to be incapable of fghting it: “If something like that happened in
their country the madcaps would not escape punishment, indeed they would
risk life and limb.”
The situation got, from the point of view of the government, even worse when
the ghost sect managed to overcome social boundaries. All of the early adherents
of the ghost sect had been of questionable social status. They were poor, had no
family support, or sufered from a bad reputation. Within two years, however, the
background of the ghost worshippers became completely heterogeneous. A gov-
ernment ofcial, an alderman, and a number of craftsmen joined the movement.
Even a noblewoman became interested in the sect. The members of the sect were
criticized for consciously ignoring social diferences.
Three years after Freyin’s supposed frst contact with the ghosts, the situation
at Weilheim was out of control. The government thought that there was a con-
crete threat of “revolution.” Thus, it fnally intervened decisively. Buck and another
leader of the ghost sect were arrested. Even though they refused to confess fraud,
they were sent to Ludwigsburg prison for two years. Even in the late eighteenth
century, Ludwigsburg prison had a bad reputation for brutality. Without their
spokesmen, the group slowly dissolved. In 1773, Bühler managed to arrest Freyin.
Under massive pressure she confessed that she had been hiding in Buck’s house, all
the time staging the alleged apparitions of the spirits. Some days later, Freyin fed
again, this time for good. The last person who openly confessed to believe in the
Weilheim ghosts even after imprisonment and fogging was pronounced insane by
the Württemberg authorities in 1774.
At frst glance, the treatment of the ghost sect would suggest that the Würt-
temberg government was untouched by that part of the Enlightenment movement
that advocated human rights and religious freedom. However, it is remarkable how
slowly the government reacted. For three years, the authorities looked on pas-
sively or at least without taking any decisive action while a highly unorthodox sect
developed right under their noses. The harsh measures the government resorted to
in 1773 and 1774 look very much like an “emergency break.” The sect was only
stopped when the authorities already expected a “revolution” and the situation was
about to get totally out of hand. Should we see this apparent reluctance to inter-
vene on the behalf of the established Lutheran Church as proof that the govern-
ment had adopted enlightened ideas about religious toleration?
28 Johannes Dillinger

By the time the ghost sect came into existence, the Lutheran establishment
in Württemberg had long grown accustomed to a de facto toleration of dis-
sident Protestant minorities. The duke had allowed Calvinists and Walden-
sians to settle in Württemberg in 1699/1700. The most important dissident
group, however, were the Pietists. Pietism was an integral element of Würt-
temberg Protestantism. During the seventeenth century and in the frst decades
of the eighteenth century, Württemberg’s authorities had looked suspiciously
at the so-called Separatist Pietists that formed local conventicles and engaged
in household and family worship. In 1743, the duke ofcially legalized the
Pietist movement. After that, the Pietists formerly outspoken critics of the
state quietened down. By the 1780s, however, a new wave of Pietist religious
enthusiasm emerged. Long before their ofcial acceptance by the Württemberg
state, Pietists had managed to become a major infuence at the faculty of theol-
ogy at Tübingen University.45 When the ghost sect came into existence, the
Württemberg authorities had grown accustomed to the de facto and de jure
toleration of Pietism. The ghost sect was at frst a strictly local group. Buck’s
house that was now supposed to be haunted was the sect’s only meeting place.
Thus, there was a superfcial resemblance between the sect and a village Pietist
conventicle. That the government was prepared not to intervene in any decisive
way for a very long time might thus have had more to do with an older and
well-established toleration for Protestant dissenters than with enlightened ideas
about religious freedom.
As far as the infuence of the Enlightenment on ghost beliefs in Southwest
Germany is concerned, the results of this study are almost entirely negative.
There is no positive evidence that enlightened ideas changed, let alone weak-
ened the belief in ghosts or infuenced the authorities’ reactions to rumors
about hauntings. What we do observe, however, is the rise of mediumship. In
the seventeenth century, there were hardly any attempts to really communi-
cate with ghosts. The ghosts were mostly poltergeists, incapable of meaningful
exchange. The experts who dealt with them presented themselves as the equiv-
alent of exorcists. They wanted merely to get rid of the ghost. As a rule the
ghost had no personality and hardly any identity or history. In the eighteenth
century, we encounter a new of type of communication with ghosts. Certain
individuals claimed to be able to talk to ghosts. Even though these mediums
were, unlike the mediums of the nineteenth century, still not really interested
in the personality of the ghosts, they began to present ghosts in a much more
positive light. Ghosts acquired almost Godlike qualities. Communication with
them was viewed as a new way to communicate with the realm of the divine.
Thus, almost a century before the rise of Spiritualism, alleged encounters with
ghosts carried in them the nucleus of a new religion. Even if this development
was quite unconnected to the Enlightenment, the new interest in the revela-
tions of ghosts and mediums and the rise of the Enlightenment might have had
the same precondition, namely the beginning of religious diversity and the
relative decline of the established Church.
 The ghost of the Enlightenment 29

Notes
1 The historiography is just beginning to investigate the history of ghost beliefs before
Spiritualism. New groundbreaking publications include Claire Gantet and Fabrice
d’Almeida, eds., Gespenster und Politik (Munich: Fink, 2007); Owen Davies, The Haunted:
A Social History of Ghosts (London: Palgrave, 2007); Christa Tuczay, et al., eds., “Sei wie
du wilt namenloses Jenseits.” Neue Interdisziplinäre Ansätze zur Erforschung des Unerklärlichen
(Vienna: Praesens, 2016); Susan Owens, The Ghost: A Cultural History (London: Tate,
2017); Johannes Dillinger, Magical Treasure Hunting in Europe and North America: A History
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
2 This aspect of the culture of the ghost is much underrated. Even a recent multivolume
edition of primary sources about ghosts ignores the ghost in the everyday culture of the
majority almost completely, Owen Davies, ed., Ghosts: A Social History, 5 vol. (London:
Pickering & Chatto, 2009–2010).
3 The author is currently working on a monograph-length study of this topic. See Johannes
Dillinger, Ghosts in Early Modern Southwest Germany (work in progress). The Covid-19
crisis has limited the accessibility of major archives in Germany.
4 Alex Owen, The Darkened Room (London: Virago, 1989); Cathy Gutierrez, ed., Hand-
book of Spiritualism and Channeling (Leiden: Brill, 2015).
5 Davies, Haunted, 101–132; Jean Delumeau, Angst im Abendland (Hamburg: Rowohlt,
1985), I:48–64, 112–121.
6 Johannes Dillinger, “‘Das Ewige Leben und fünfzehntausend Gulden’. Schatzgräberei
in Württemberg 1606–1770,” in Zauberer – Selbstmörder – Schatzsucher. Magische Kultur
und behördliche Kontrolle im frühneuzeitlichen Württemberg, ed. Johannes Dillinger (Trier:
Kliomedia, 2003), 221–297; and Johannes Dillinger and Petra Feld, “Treasure-Hunting:
A Magical Motif in Law, Folklore, and Mentality. Württemberg, 1606–1770,” German
History 20 (2002): 161–184.
7 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart A 209 Bü 1451.
8 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart St A 209 Bü 833.
9 Dillinger, Ewige, 242–243.
10 E.g. Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart A 206 Bü 3257; A 206 Bü 4276; A 209 Bü 1421; A 209
Bü 833.
11 Staatsarchiv Sigmaringen, Ho 172T1.
12 E.g. Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 206 Bü 3257; Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A206 Bü
2743.
13 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 206 Bü 3257.
14 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 206 Bü 3202; A 206 Bü 3257.
15 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 206 Bü 2186a.
16 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 210 I Bü 459; A 206 Bü 669; A 209 Bü 1808.
17 Thomas Meyer, “Rute” Gottes und “Beschiß des Teufels.” Theologische Magie- und Hexenlehre
an der Universität Tübingen in der Frühen Neuzeit (Hamburg: Tredition, 2019), 17–23;
Johannes Dillinger, Kinder im Hexenprozess (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2013), 107–122.
18 Marianne Sauter, Hexenprozess und Folter (Bielefeld: Regionalgeschichte, 2010), 184–
279; Johannes Dillinger, Hexen und Magie (Frankfort: Campus, 2018), 144–148.
19 E.g. Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A206 Bü 2743; A 206 Bü 2186a; A 206 Bü 3614.
20 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 206 Bü 3674.
21 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 206 Bü 4276.
22 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 206 Bü 3257.
23 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 206 Bü 3257.
24 Staatsarchiv Sigmaringen, Ho 172T1.
25 Staatsarchiv Sigmaringen, Ho 172T1.
26 Staatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 206 Bü 3614.
27 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 206 Bü 3257.
28 Staatsarchiv Sigmaringen, Ho 172T1.
29 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 206 Bü 4276.
30 Johannes Dillinger

30 Johannes Dillinger, “Glaube jenseits der Konfessionen,” in Tuczay, et al., eds., “Sei
wie du wilt namenloses Jenseits,” 299–308; Johannes Dillinger, “Gespenster von Amts
wegen. Männliche Amtsträger als Totengeister im Schnittpunkt von Gender, Herrschaft
und Erinnerung,” in Nachtgeschöpfe und Phantasmen. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven, eds.
ChristaTuczay, et al. (forthcoming).
31 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 206 Bü 4276.
32 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 209 Bü 78.
33 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 210 II Bü 113.
34 Dillinger, Ewige, 233, 242–243, 249–250; Dillinger, Magical, 105, 120, 154–159.
35 E.g. Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 206 Bü 2186a; A 206 Bü 3257; A 206 Bü 4276; A
210 I Bü 459.
36 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 206 Bü 4276.
37 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 209 Bü 1808.
38 Dillinger, Magical, 153–166.
39 Dillinger, Magical, 161–163.
40 Ulrich Muhlack, Geschichtswissenschaft im Humanismus und in der Aufklärung (Munich:
Beck, 1991).
41 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 209 Bü 833.
42 Dillinger, Magical, 77–79, 85–91.
43 The following account is according to Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 209 Bü 1421; see
also Dillinger, Ewige, 263–271.
44 Richard Haug, Reich Gottes im Schwabenland. Linien im württembergischen Pietismus (Metz-
ingen: Franz, 1981), 160–162; Eberhard Zwink, “‘Schrauben-förmige Bewegung ist in
allem’ – Oetinger lenkt den Blick auf Swedenborgs ‘irdische Philosophie’,” in Sabine
Holtz, ed., Mathesis, Naturphilosophie und Arkanwissenschaft im Umkreis Friedrich Christoph
Oetingers (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005), 197–230.
45 Martin Brecht, “Der württembergische Pietismus,” in Martin Brecht, Martin and Klaus
Deppermann, eds., Der Pietismus im achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck
and Ruprecht, 1995), 225–295; Mary Fulbrook, Piety and Politics: Religion and the Rise of
Absolutism in England, Württemberg, and Prussia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1983), 137–152; Joachim Weinhardt, “Christian Eberhard Weismann (1677–1747): Ein
Tübinger Theologe zwischen Spätorthodoxie, radikalem Pietismus und Frühaufklärung,”
in Ulrich Köpf, ed., Die Universität Tübingen zwischen Orthodoxie, Pietismus und Aufklärung
(Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2014), 91–122.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Manuscript sources
Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart (Main State Archive Stuttgart)
A 206 Bü 2186a
A 206 Bü 669
A 206 Bü 2743
A 206 Bü 3202
A 206 Bü 3257
A 206 Bü 3614
A 206 Bü 3674
A 206 Bü 4276
A 209 Bü 1421
A 209 Bü 1451
 The ghost of the Enlightenment 31

A 209 Bü 1808
A 209 Bü 78
A 209 Bü 833
A 210 I Bü 459
A 210 II Bü 113
Staatsarchiv Sigmaringen (State Archive Sigmaringen)
Ho 172T1

Printed sources

Secondary sources (selection)

Brecht, Martin and Klaus Deppermann, Klaus, eds. Der Pietismus im achtzehnten Jahrhundert.
Göttingen: Vanderhoeck and Ruprecht, 1995.
Davies, Owen, ed. Ghosts: A Social History. 5 vols. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2009–2010.
———. The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts. London: Palgrave, 2007.
Dillinger, Johannes. “‘Das Ewige Leben und fünfzehntausend Gulden’. Schatzgräberei
in Württemberg 1606–1770.” In Johannes Dillinger, ed. Zauberer – Selbstmörder –
Schatzsucher. Magische Kultur und behördliche Kontrolle im frühneuzeitlichen Württemberg.
Trier: Kliomedia, 2003: 221–297.
———. Hexen und Magie. Frankfort: Campus 2018.
———. Kinder im Hexenprozess. Stuttgart: Steiner 2013.
———. Magical Treasure Hunting in Europe and North America: A History. Basingstoke: Pal-
grave Macmillan, 2012.
——— and Petra Feld. “Treasure-Hunting: A Magical Motif in Law, Folklore, and Mental-
ity. Württemberg, 1606–1770.” German History 20 (2002): 161–184.
Gantet, Claire and Fabrice d’Almeida, eds. Gespenster und Politik. Munich: Fink, 2007.
Gutierrez, Cathy, ed. Handbook of Spiritualism and Channeling. Leiden: Brill 2015.
Holtz, Sabine, ed. Mathesis, Naturphilosophie und Arkanwissenschaft im Umkreis Friedrich Chris-
toph Oetingers. Stuttgart: Steiner 2005.
Köpf, Ulrich, ed. Die Universität Tübingen zwischen Orthodoxie, Pietismus und Aufklärung. Ost-
fldern: Thorbecke 2014.
Meyer, Thomas: ‘Rute’ Gottes und ‘Beschiß des Teufels’. Theologische Magie- und Hexenlehre an
der Universität Tübingen in der Frühen Neuzeit. Hamburg: Tredition 2019.
Owen, Alex. The Darkened Room. London: Virago 1989.
Owens, Susan. The Ghost: A Cultural History. London: Tate 2017.
Sauter, Marianne. Hexenprozess und Folter. Bielefeld: Regionalgeschichte 2010.
Tuczay, Christa, et al., eds. “Sei wie du wilt namenloses Jenseits.” Neue Interdisziplinäre Ansätze
zur Erforschung des Unerklärlichen. Vienna: Praesens, 2016.
2
INVISIBLE WORLDS
Magic, spirits, and experience in the
early Enlightenment

Tricia R. Peone

On several occasions, the invisible world made itself visible to John Beaumont
(c. 1640–1731). He described his personal experiences in brief but vivid detail
in two books, explaining that a group of spirits appeared to him at his home in
Somerset and stayed with him for extended periods of time. He could see, smell,
touch, and hear them, and they also spoke to him in dreams. Yet he struggled to
explain his visual and auditory encounters with spirits and attempted to histori-
cize them by drawing upon ancient and contemporary sources, including recent
accounts from the wider British Atlantic. Although trained as a physician, he
did not accept a diagnosis of melancholia for his afiction; instead, he used an
empirical approach and insisted that his own experience could provide a frame
of reference for others.
Beaumont’s writings provide a rare opportunity to examine how a natural phi-
losopher interpreted his own experiences with the preternatural during the early
Enlightenment, a time when competing explanations provided ambiguity rather
than clarity about the invisible world.1 While prescriptive literature instructed read-
ers in how they should understand these experiences, in practice people could rely
on their own senses to resolve uncertainties in interpretation. It is worth empha-
sizing that early modern people could look at the same evidence and conclude
that it may have been caused by witchcraft, the Devil, spirits, divine intervention,
or artifce or fraud. Ministers, natural philosophers, and other interested parties
argued over the qualities of apparitions, spirits, and witchcraft as the new science
shifted understandings of these phenomena. The correct interpretation was criti-
cally important, and accounts like Beaumont’s reveal the complex process by which
early moderns made sense of their world – how they described and interpreted
these events as well as the signifcance attributed to them. Exploring Beaumont’s
“visitation” can help us discern the process of interpretation and the role of experi-
ence in shaping beliefs about the invisible world.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003049326-3
 Invisible worlds 33

For Beaumont, these debates went beyond the theoretical; they impacted him
on a deeply personal level. In 1705, he published An Historical, Physiological and
Theological Treatise of Spirits, Apparitions, Witchcrafts, and other Magical Practices. He
was prompted to write this treatise as a result of “some extraordinary Visitations
having happened to me.” In Beaumont’s Treatise of Spirits, along with his other
book on this subject, Gleanings of Antiquities (1724), he presented his ideas about
the nature of spirits as well as stories of apparitions that he collected from credible
sources. He gave accounts of what he considered to be related phenomena: cases
of second sight, prophetic dreams, oracles, visions, witchcraft, fairies, and magical
feats. He acted as an investigator into his own case and others, and he promised
his readers an “account of my particular experience as to a sensible perception of
spirits.”2 Although he demonstrated familiarity with occult texts, he was careful to
note that he never summoned the spirits by magical means but rather was surprised
each time they appeared to him unsolicited. Concerned about his reputation at a
time when his experiences could have been dismissed by contemporaries, he urged
his readers “not to be over hasty in rejecting things that may seem Strange, and do
not presently fall within their comprehension.”3
John Beaumont had trained as a physician and practiced medicine but was also
keenly interested in natural history and especially geology.4 It was on the basis of
his work on fossils that Beaumont was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in
1685. He shared an interest in apparitions and the occult with other members of
the Society such as Robert Boyle and Joseph Glanvill.5 While other authors in
this period often retold stories of other people’s experiences with apparitions, and
some authors had direct experiences which they described, those authors sought
out such experiences intentionally based on accounts they heard from others of
haunted houses or spirit possessions. Beaumont is exceptional for documenting
his own involuntary direct experiences with apparitions over a period of two
decades.
In his examples of spirits, Beaumont chose several modern accounts that could
be verifed or came from credible sources. He collected stories from friends’
acquaintances (as did other early modern authors on these subjects), carefully not-
ing their position and reason for having access to such information. For example,
he related a story he heard from a justice of the peace in Gloucestershire, who was
able to provide him with the exact details of a case.6 He also made particular use
of stories from New England and developed his own interpretation of the Salem
witch trials. What made Beaumont’s treatise diferent from other collections of
ghost stories and preternatural tales (and there were many available popular collec-
tions) was his emphasis on his own personal experience – an implicit recognition
that in spite of the hotly contested debates in the previous century over the nature
of the invisible world it was difcult to refute a sincerely held belief based on frst-
hand experience.7
So what precisely did John Beaumont experience? While it is challenging (if
not impossible) to accurately reconstruct what someone in the past may have expe-
rienced, the sources Beaumont left do allow us to explore how he characterized
34 Tricia R. Peone

his experiences and the process of interpretation he developed for these events.8
Beaumont experienced two distinct periods of what he called “visitation.” Both
occurred around Christmas, some fve years apart. He was surprised by the frst
visitation. “Their frst coming was most dreadful to me,” he wrote. They did not
appear visually to him at frst; he only heard singing and ringing bells:

I have heard every night, for some time, Hundreds of Spirits, coming, as it
seem’d to me, first at a great distance, Singing, and Ringing hand Bells, who
gradually approach’d my House, the Sound seeming nearer and nearer, till
at length they came to my Chamber Windows, and some would come in to
my Chamber. The first Ringing Sound I heard, was of a Bell gently Tolling
at one of my Chamber Windows, which looks to the South; and at the same
time, at the same Window, I heard a Spirit striking gentle strokes with a small
Rod, as it seem’d to me, on a Brass Pan, or Bason, tuning his strokes to a call
he us’d, Come away to me, Come away to me; and just upon it another Spirit, at
another of my Chamber Windows, which look’d to the East, called to me in
a louder and earnest Tone, Come away to me, Come away to me.9

This continued for two months. The spirits did not come into his house at this
time; he speculated that they were preparing him for what would come next.
The second visitation was more disruptive. Two spirits were with him constantly
for a period of three months, although he saw hundreds of them over the course of
this visitation. These two spirits appeared as women “of a Brown Complexion, and
about Three Foot in Stature” wearing black and gold gowns with black sashes and
white lace caps. Three men joined the women, and they threatened to kill him if
he told anyone that they were there in the house. He stayed awake for three nights,
while one of the spirits lay next to him in his bed and told him that if he went
to sleep the spirits would kill him. On the fourth night he defed them and told
someone that there were spirits harassing him and then he fnally slept, although
the spirits continued to trouble him.10
He heard the names of several of these spirits from their conversation, but the
only name he provided to his readers was Ariel, a name with angelic and Shake-
spearean associations. Another time, he saw the spirits dancing in a ring in his
garden; they were holding hands and facing outward and singing. Beaumont stated
that the spirits never tried to make him do anything, but they talked to him and to
each other constantly. Sometimes, they also spoke to him in his dreams.11
Throughout his text, Beaumont used the terms “spirits” or “genii” to refer to
his visitors. Spirit is a term that held multiple meanings for early modern people –
one seventeenth-century writer observed that “the very word spirit, is a term of
great ambiguity.”12 For example, a ghost or specter might be referred to as a spirit;
consulting with “familiar spirits” was prohibited by law; spirit could be used as a
synonym for the soul or life force of a person; spirit could also be used to distinguish
an immaterial substance or quality; and it could be used to indicate an extract or
distilled liquid. Beaumont defned genii as a type of spirit that “attended” someone
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CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE,
AND ART, FIFTH SERIES, NO. 137, VOL. III, AUGUST 14, 1886 ***
 CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND
ART.
 CONTENTS
THE DEATH-ROLL OF MONT BLANC.
IN ALL SHADES.
COUNTRY JOTTINGS.
A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY.
AN OLD TULIP GARDEN.
ABOUT COBRAS.
MITIS METAL.
MISSION TO DEEP-SEA FISHERMEN.
LOST AT SEA.
No. 137.—Vol. III. SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 1886. Price 1½d.
 THE DEATH-ROLL OF MONT BLANC.
In these days, when it is the fashion to decry Mont Blanc, in
company with a good many other old institutions, there is one thing
about the mountain which is apt to be lost sight of, and that is how
very fatal it has been to mountaineers. It is quite possible that the
proportion of killed to those who succeed in the ascent—and the
same will hold good in respect of any other Alpine peak—would not
be found to be great, for probably more people have gone up Mont
Blanc than any other high mountain; but no number of successful
ascents will minimise the fact that there can be very real danger on
Mont Blanc. The causes of danger are not far to seek. The mountain
is regarded, and in fact is, comparatively easy of ascent; and from
the days when Albert Smith did so much to dispel the awe with which
it was once the fashion to regard it, the popularity of the expedition
has grown year by year, till quite a considerable percentage of those
who now go to Chamouni consider but the half of their visit
accomplished if they fail to ‘do’ Mont Blanc. Thus it comes to pass
that a great number of individuals are allowed to ascend who ought
not to go on the mountain at all, and who, under certain conditions,
may easily become a source of danger to themselves and to those
who accompany them.
But the danger from this cause is as nothing compared with that
which exists in the inferior quality of many of the guides. At
Chamouni, every one who styles himself a guide must belong to a
kind of trades-union society called the ‘Compagnie des Guides,’ and
presided over by a ‘Guide-chef.’ All who enter the ‘Compagnie des
Guides,’ good, bad, and indifferent, enter it on the same footing, and
are compelled to take their turn for an engagement on a register kept
at the office of the ‘Guide-chef’ for the purpose. Thus, a traveller who
wishes to engage a guide, is not allowed—except under very special
circumstances—to choose his man, but must take him whose name
stands first on the list; and it may so happen that quite an
incompetent individual is given charge of a party wishing to ascend
Mont Blanc, while a really good guide is told off to carry a knapsack
over the Col de Balme.
It is easy to imagine what may result from a system such as this. For
one thing, it has had the effect of utterly demoralising Chamouni
guides as a body; and it has been the means, as we shall see
presently, of some of the worst accidents that have ever happened in
the Alps. It is usual nowadays for members of Alpine Clubs to bring
to Chamouni their own guides from other districts, rather than trust to
the local men; and so it has come about that Chamouni guides have
been reduced to taking casual parties up Mont Blanc, with the result,
that very few of them are of any use out of their own particular
district, and as regards the more difficult peaks of the range, very
little even in it. In fact, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the
really good Chamouni men may now be counted on the fingers. The
grave scandal occasioned by the desertion of the Russian, Professor
Fedchenko, by his guides—two inexperienced boys—and his
subsequent death on the Mer de Glace, called forth a severe protest
against the Chamouni guide system on the part of the Alpine Club;
but beyond some slight modification of the rules as regards the
choosing of special men, very little has been done; and to this day
the Rules and Regulations of the ‘Compagnie des Guides’ of
Chamouni remain a byword with all mountaineers.
Finally, there is the danger—and this perhaps greatest of all—from
weather. Easy though Mont Blanc may be as long as the weather is
good, there is not a mountain in all the Alps which can become so
dangerous in a storm. Every one who has had experience of
climbing, knows how weather can affect a mountain, and how an
ascent which is easy enough one day, may become dangerous if not
impossible the next. It is quite a mistake to suppose that because a
mountain offers no physical difficulties, that there is no risk attending
the ascent. We have Mont Blanc as a case in point. Easiest of all the
Great mountains, he has proved himself the most fatal of any.
The first accident within our knowledge which occurred on Mont
Blanc was that to Dr Hamel’s party in 1820, and being the first
accident to Alpine climbers, it created at the time an immense
sensation. From accounts published by the survivors, it seems clear
that the accident was caused by ignorance of the state of the snow—
ignorance excusable enough in those days, when as a matter of fact
the art of climbing was very little understood. On August 18, 1820, a
Russian professor, Dr Hamel; two Oxonians, Messrs Durnford and
Henderson; a Genevese named Sellique; and twelve guides, left
Chamouni, and in twelve hours—about double the time now taken—
reached the rocks of the Grands Mulets. Here they pitched a tent
which they had brought with them, and passed the night. Bad
weather came on after sunset; and as it did not clear next morning in
time for them to start, they had to pass another night in the tent. It
came on to rain again in the evening; but the following morning,
August 20, was fine, and it was determined to make a push for the
summit. At this juncture, M. Sellique was overcome with ‘scruples’ on
the subject of making the ascent, and declined to accompany the
others, so he was left behind in charge of two of the guides. The rest
of the party set out at five a.m. The weather kept fine; but the snow—
to quote one of the survivors—was found to be ‘rather too soft.’ They
would appear to have followed the line of ascent usually adopted in
these days, until opposite the Dome du Goûté, and on a level with it,
when they branched off sharply to the left, and commenced to
traverse a steep snow-slope, directing their course straight for the
Mont Maudit. They were not roped, and were apparently proceeding
in Indian file, when suddenly the snow gave beneath their feet, and
carried them away bodily down the slope. They were all carried a
great distance—some accounts say twelve hundred feet—and then
the whole avalanche buried itself in a great crevasse. The three
leading guides were completely overwhelmed; but the rest of the
party stopped short of the crevasse, and were saved. The survivors
made frantic efforts to rescue their unfortunate companions; but the
poor fellows must have been buried under many tons of snow, and
these efforts were unavailing.
It was scarcely thought probable that trace of them would ever again
be found; but after the lapse of nearly half a century, the glacier
yielded up its dead. In 1863, or forty-three years after the
catastrophe, portions of human bodies, the débris of a lantern and
Alpenstock, and the leaves of a Latin book, were found imbedded in
the ice on the surface of the Glacier des Bossons and near its foot.
They were recognised as belonging to the lost guides of Dr Hamel’s
party. Further discoveries were made in the two following years; and
of the relics thus brought to light, some are preserved to this day by
the Alpine Club in their rooms at St Martin’s Place.
This accident afforded strong evidence in favour of the fact of glacier
motion, for the remains were found to have been carried by the ice a
distance of nearly five miles from the spot where the catastrophe
occurred.
Almost simultaneously with the finding of the relics of Dr Hamel’s ill-
fated expedition, occurred another accident on Mont Blanc. On
August 9, 1864, a young porter named Ambroise Couttet, while
accompanying two Austrian gentlemen in the ascent of Mont Blanc,
fell into a crevasse on the Grand Plateau. This was an accident
attributable entirely to carelessness, for it appears that at the
moment of the catastrophe Couttet was walking apart from the
others and quite unattached. His companions did their best to effect
a rescue; but the crevasse was of such great depth that they could
not come near him. A party of guides subsequently went out with the
object of recovering the body; but although two of their number
descended ninety feet into the crevasse, they failed to reach it. It is
almost certain, from the terrible nature of the fall, that the unfortunate
man’s death must have been instantaneous.
There were two sad accidents on Mont Blanc in 1866. The precise
cause of the first is somewhat obscure, but the facts as far as they
are known are these. Sir George Young and his two brothers,
unaccompanied by guides, set out to ascend Mont Blanc on August
23, and succeeded in reaching the summit in safety. They had not
proceeded far in the descent, when, for some reason unexplained,
one of the party slipped and dragged down the other two. They slid
for a short distance, then fell a height of twenty feet or so, and were
finally stopped by soft snow. Sir George and his second brother
escaped serious injury; but the youngest brother, Mr Bulkeley Young,
was found to have broken his neck.
The accident to Captain Arkwright’s party was of a different
description, and in many respects bears a close resemblance to that
in which Dr Hamel’s guides lost their lives. On the 13th of October—
unusually late in the year for such an expedition—Captain Arkwright
with one guide, Michel Simond, and two porters, started from the
Grands Mulets to ascend Mont Blanc. At a little distance they were
followed by the landlord of the Pierre Pointue, Silvain Couttet, and a
porter—these two having apparently come for their own pleasure—
on a separate rope. The guides, probably by reason of its being a
shorter route, and, as such, likely to save time—an important matter
at that season of the year—chose the route adopted by Dr Hamel’s
party, and which had come to be known by the name of the Ancien
Passage. They had almost reached the spot where the disaster of
1820 occurred, when the roar of an avalanche was heard. Couttet
and his companion, realising the danger, fled for their lives. They
were a little way behind the others, and were so fortunate as to
escape; but Captain Arkwright and his guides were caught by the
avalanche and swept away. This accident arose from precisely the
same cause as that which happened to Dr Hamel’s party—ignorance
of the state of the snow; but it differed in one respect: whereas Dr
Hamel’s party started the avalanche, the avalanche which proved
fatal to Captain Arkwright and his guides fell from above.
The fact of a second accident occurring at the same place and from
a similar cause, has given to the Ancien Passage the reputation of
being essentially unsafe. It is not necessarily more dangerous than
other routes, and indeed it may even be the safest route from
Chamouni up Mont Blanc. It is only really dangerous when the snow
is in bad order; and this is a point upon which a guide is—or should
be—competent to give an opinion. On the day of the accident, the
snow was not in proper condition, and it was because a right
discretion was not used, that Captain Arkwright and his companions
lost their lives.
We now come to an accident which ranks as by far the most terrible
which has ever happened to Alpine climbers, for it resulted in the
loss of no fewer than eleven lives. On September 5, 1870, a party
consisting of two American gentlemen, Messrs Beane and Randall,
and a Mr MacCorkendale, with eight guides and porters—with one
exception, all Chamouni men—left Chamouni with the intention of
ascending Mont Blanc. They passed the night at the Grands Mulets,
and next morning started for the summit. Early in the afternoon, a
violent storm burst over Mont Blanc; and as the weather became
very bad and they did not return, it was resolved to send out a
search-party from Chamouni. The weather, however, continued for
some days of such an unfavourable character that it was not until the
17th, and when all hope had been abandoned of finding any of the
lost party alive, that a discovery was made. The dead bodies of Mr
MacCorkendale and two of the porters were first found. They were
lying on the snow quite uninjured, head uppermost, a little way
above the Mur de la Côte; and from the torn condition of their
clothes, it seemed probable that they had slid some distance to the
spot where they were discovered. Higher up, lay the bodies of Mr
Beane and another porter, with the greater portion of the baggage
beside them. Of the remaining six, no trace could be seen. A few
small articles which must have belonged to them were picked up
subsequently in the direction of the Brenva Glacier; but that was all.
To this day their fate remains a mystery.
The only light thrown upon the catastrophe was that which could be
gathered from the pages of a diary found on Mr Beane, and written
by him. Some doubt at first was cast upon the authenticity of the
entry, but there seems no reason at all for disbelieving its
genuineness. What it told was as follows: ‘Tuesday, September 6.—I
have made the ascent of Mont Blanc with ten persons—eight guides,
Mr Corkendale, and Mr Randall. We arrived at the summit at half-
past two o’clock. Immediately after leaving it, I was enveloped in
clouds of snow. We passed the night in a grotto excavated out of the
snow, affording very uncomfortable shelter, and I was ill all night.
September 7 (morning).—Intense cold, much snow, which falls
uninterruptedly, guides restless. September 7 (evening).—We have
been on Mont Blanc for two days in a terrible snowstorm; we have
lost our way, and are in a hole scooped out of the snow, at a height
of fifteen thousand feet. I have no hope of descending. Perhaps this
book may be found and forwarded.... We have no food; my feet are
already frozen, and I am exhausted; I have only strength to write a
few words. I die in the faith of Jesus Christ, with affectionate
thoughts of my family; my remembrances to all. I trust we may meet
in heaven.’
The diary ended with instructions to his family as to his private
affairs.
It is to be regretted that poor Mr Beane gives us so little information
of any practical value; but meagre as his diary is, it sheds light on
one or two points. First, we gather that the party actually reached the
summit; and next, that it was about half-past two in the afternoon,
and immediately after leaving it, that the storm caught them. Now,
how was it, we may fairly ask, that so little progress was made on
the downward path?—for the ice-grotto of which Mr Beane speaks
was constructed at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet, or only seven
hundred and eighty-one feet below the summit. How was it that the
guides failed completely to find a way back over ground which they
had traversed so recently? Mr Beane does not tell us if any attempts
were made on the 6th and 7th to find the way down—what little
evidence we have tends to prove that there were none—he merely
says, ‘We have lost our way.’ To sit down and wait where they were,
as they appear to have done, showed a want of judgment which,
without being better acquainted than we are with the facts of the
case, seems quite inexplicable. Nothing is more common in the high
Alps than to be overtaken by bad weather; but out of the Chamouni
district there has not been an instance of a whole party perishing
from this special cause. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the
guides were not equal to their task, that they lost their heads at the
very approach of danger, and gave themselves up for lost at the
moment when they should have made the most determined effort to
escape.
There was another circumstance, too, which was held at the time to
reflect somewhat upon the conduct of the guides—not one of their
bodies was found. The five bodies recovered were those of the
heaviest members of the party, and there can be little doubt that they
must have been left behind, while the rest made an effort to save
themselves. Mr Beane, however, makes no mention of any division
of the party, and it is charitable to suppose that no division actually
took place until after the weaker members had succumbed to the
exposure. What led to the division, will never be known; neither will it
be known what motive impelled the guides to act in such an utterly
incomprehensible manner. That the leaders of the party ought to
have been thoroughly up to their work, is emphasised by the fact,
that neither Mr Beane, Mr Randall, nor Mr MacCorkendale had had
previous experience of mountaineering, and were quite incapable of
giving advice of any practical value when difficulties arose. As a
matter of fact, it does not appear that any one of the guides held a
foremost place in his profession. Judging by their actions, they
certainly proved themselves singularly wanting in many of the most
important qualities of good guides; and it is impossible to believe that
they could have been other than very second-rate. But should the
blame of the disaster be laid to their charge? Should it not rather
attach to a system which rendered such an accident only too
probable?
In the same year (1870) there was yet another accident on Mont
Blanc. A gentleman and two ladies, accompanied by a guide and a
porter, were out on the mountain; and the gentleman wishing to go
further than the ladies cared to, took the guide, and left them in
charge of the porter. With what object, it is not known, the porter
promptly proceeded to conduct his charges across a snow-field
which was well known to be honeycombed with concealed
crevasses. Under these circumstances, it would have been only
wonderful if an accident had not occurred, and unfortunately that
took place which might have been predicted. The porter had given
his arm to one of the ladies, and was leading her across, when the
snow gave way beneath them, and they both fell headlong into a
deep crevasse. Here was a case of two lives wantonly sacrificed.
That any one calling himself a guide should have shown such gross
ignorance of the very first principles of mountaineering as this porter
did, is almost inconceivable. It is perfectly clear that he did not
understand his business, and was certainly not a fit person to have
been sent on expeditions above the snow-line.
A still later accident on Mont Blanc took place on the south side. On
the 30th August 1874, Mr J. A. G. Marshall, with two Oberland
guides, Johann Fischer and Ulrich Almer, left Courmayeur with a
view to attempting the ascent of Mont Blanc by way of the Brouillard
Glacier, an ascent which had not at that time been effected. They
camped out upon the mountain at a height of about ten thousand
feet, and the following day worked their way a considerable distance
upwards till they found themselves finally stopped by an impassable
wall of rock. This occurred somewhat late in the afternoon, too late,
indeed, to attempt any other route, and accordingly they turned back.
The descent was difficult, and night overtook them before they
reached the spot where they had bivouacked the previous evening.
They were crossing the last bit of glacier, when Fischer inquired the
time, and Mr Marshall drew out his watch, while the others came up
to him with a light. As they stood thus close together, the snow gave
way beneath them. Fischer fell first into a crevasse which at this
point was some thirty feet deep and five feet in width; and Mr
Marshall was dragged on to him; while Almer alighted upon a
hummock of snow but a few feet below the mouth of the crevasse.
Mr Marshall’s head came in contact with the side of the crevasse,
and in his case, death must have been instantaneous; while
Fischer’s injuries were of such a character that he, too, could not
have lived for any time after the fall. Almer escaped with a severe
shaking, but was rendered insensible by the shock of the fall. Upon
coming to himself, he found that both his companions were beyond
help; and as soon as there was sufficient light, he struggled down to
Courmayeur with the intelligence of the accident. The dead bodies
were recovered the same evening, and brought back the next day to
Courmayeur.
Of all the accidents which have happened on Mont Blanc, this was
perhaps the one most deserving the term. Mr Marshall and his
guides were first-rate mountaineers, and it was scarcely from any
fault of their own that the catastrophe occurred. From a sketch of the
spot taken by M. Loppé the artist a few days after the occurrence,
the crevasse looks curiously narrow, and if the party had only been
standing but a few paces to right or left, they would have been in
perfect safety. Moreover, the scene of the catastrophe was not five
minutes’ walk from the moraine.
Thus Mont Blanc is responsible for the loss of no fewer than twenty-
four lives; but it is when we compare him with other mountains that
we realise how much more fatal he has been than any of his fellows.
The following table, compiled from the Alpine Journal, will best bring
home this fact:
Accidents. Lives lost.
Mont Blanc 7 24
Matterhorn 3 6
Lyskamm 2 6
Monte Rosa 2 4
Monte Cevedale 1 4
Dent Blanche 1 3
Haut de Cri 1 2
Titlis 1 2
Jungfrau 1 2
Wetterhorn 1 2
Aiguille Blanche 1 2
Single lives have been lost upon each of the following mountains:
Riffelhorn, Gross Venedeger, Schreckhorn, Piz Tschierva, Diablerets,
Blumlis Alp, Piz Bernina, Grandes Jorasses, Meije.
Of accidents which may fairly come under the head of Alpine
accidents, such as accidents upon glaciers and subsidiary peaks,
there appear to have been thirty-five—making a total loss since
1859, when climbing became a recognised form of amusement, of
ninety-eight lives, or, inclusive of Dr Hamel’s accident, one hundred
and one. When we come to consider that Mont Blanc is responsible
for nearly one-fourth of the whole, we may well question whether the
depreciation of the mountain is quite justified. Is it not rather a case
of underrating the enemy?
No reasonable person can deny that there is at times danger on
Mont Blanc, and when we consider from what a variety of causes it
may arise—from weather, from the state of the snow, from the
unfitness of many of those who attempt the ascent, and last, but not
least, from the guide system of Chamouni—we feel inclined to
wonder not, indeed, that the loss of life has been great, but rather
that the death-roll is not much greater.
 IN ALL SHADES.
CHAPTER XL.
Even as Delgado stood there still on the steps of the piazza at
Orange Grove, waving his blood-stained cutlass fiercely about his
head, and setting his foot contemptuously on Mr Dupuy’s prostrate
and bleeding body, Harry Noel tore up the path that led from Dick
Castello’s house at Savannah Garden, and halted suddenly in blank
amazement in front of the doorway—Harry Noel, in evening dress,
hatless and spurless; just as he had risen in horror from his dinner,
and riding his new mare without even a saddle, in his hot haste to
see the cause of the unexpected tumult at the Dupuys’ estate. The
fierce red glare of the burning cane-houses had roused him
unawares at Savannah Garden in the midst of his coffee; and the
cries of the negroes and the sound of pistol-shots had cast him into a
frantic fever of anxiety for Nora’s safety. ‘The niggers have risen, by
Jove!’ Dick Castello cried aloud, as the flames rose higher and
higher above the blazing cane-houses. ‘They must be attacking old
Dupuy; and if once their blood’s up, you may depend upon it, Noel,
they won’t leave him until they’ve fairly murdered him.’
Harry Noel didn’t wait a moment to hear any further conjectures of
his host’s on the subject, but darting round to the stables
bareheaded, clapped a bit forthwith into his mare’s mouth, jumped
on her back just as she stood, in a perfect frenzy of fear and
excitement, and tore along the narrow winding road that led by
tortuous stretches to Orange Grove as fast as his frightened horse’s
legs could possibly carry him.
As he leaped eagerly from his mount to the ground in the midst of all
that hideous din and uproar and mingled confusion, Delgado was
just calling on his fellow-blacks to follow him boldly into the house
and to ‘kill de missy;’ and the Orange Grove negroes, cowed and
terrified now that their master had fallen bodily before them, were
beginning to drop back, trembling, into the rooms behind, and allow
the frantic and triumphant rioters to have their own way unmolested.
In a moment, Harry took in the full terror of the scene—saw Mr
Dupuy’s body lying, a mass of hacked and bleeding wounds, upon
the wooden floor of the front piazza; saw the infuriated negroes
pressing on eagerly with their cutlasses lifted aloft, now fairly drunk
with the first taste of buckra blood; and Delgado in front of them all,
leaping wildly, and gesticulating in frantic rage with arms and hands
and fingers, as he drove back the terrified servants through the
heavy old mahogany doorway of the great drawing-room into the
room that opened out behind toward Nora’s own little sacred boudoir.
Harry had no weapon of any sort with him except the frail riding-whip
he carried in his hand; but without waiting for a second, without
thinking for one instant of the surrounding danger, he rushed up the
piazza steps, pushed the astonished rioters to right and left with his
powerful arms, jumped over the senseless planter’s prostrate body,
swept past Delgado into the narrow doorway, and there stood
confronting the savage ringleader boldly, his little riding-whip raised
high above his proud head with a fierce and threatening angry
gesture. ‘Stop there!’ he cried, in a voice of stern command, that
even in that supreme moment of passion and triumph had its full
effect upon the enraged negroes. ‘Stop there, you mean-spirited
villains and murderers! Not a step further—not a step further, I tell
you! Cowards, cowards, every one of you, to kill a poor old man like
that upon his own staircase, and to threaten a helpless innocent
lady.’
As he spoke, he laid his hand heavily upon Louis Delgado’s bony
shoulder, and pushed the old negro steadily backward, out of the
doorway and through the piazza, to the front steps, where Mr
Dupuy’s body was still lying untended and bleeding profusely. ‘Stand
back, Delgado!’ he cried out fiercely and authoritatively. ‘Stand back
this minute, and put down your cutlass! If you want to fight the
whites, you cowardly scoundrels you, why don’t you fight the men
like yourselves, openly and straightforward, instead of coming by
night, without note or warning, burning and hacking and killing and