aw,
very soon, a light, and perceived, on one of the grave mounds, along its
whole extent, a delicate, fiery, as it were a breathing flame. The same
thing was seen on another grave, in a less degree. But she met neither
witches nor ghosts. She described the flame as playing over the graves in
the form of a luminous vapor, from one to two spans in height.

"Some time afterward I took her to two great cemeteries, near Vienna,
where several interments occur daily, and the grave mounds lie all about
in thousands. Here she saw numerous graves, which exhibited the lights
above described. Wherever she looked, she saw masses of fire lying about;
but it was chiefly seen over all new graves, while there was no appearance
of it over very old ones. She described it less as a clear flame than as a
dense, vaporous mass of fire, holding a middle place between mist and
flame. On many graves this light was about four feet high, so that when
she stood on the grave, it reached to her neck. When she thrust her hand
into it, it was as if putting it into a dense fiery cloud. She betrayed
not the slightest uneasiness, as she was, from her childhood, accustomed
to such emanations, and had seen, in my experiments, similar lights
produced by natural means, and made to assume endless varieties of form. I
am convinced that all who are, to a certain degree, sensitive, will see
the same phenomena in cemeteries, and very abundantly in the crowded
cemeteries of large cities; and that my observations may be easily
repeated and confirmed." These experiments were tried in 1844. A
postscript was added in 1847. Reichenbach had taken five other sensitive
persons, in the dark, to cemeteries. Of these, two were sickly, three
quite healthy. All of them confirmed the statements of Mademoiselle
Reichel, and saw the lights over all new graves more or less distinctly;
"so that," says the philosopher, "the fact can no longer admit of the
slightest doubt, and may be every where controlled."

"Thousands of ghost stories," he continues, "will now receive a natural
explanation, and will thus cease to be marvelous. We shall even see that
it was not so erroneous or absurd as has been supposed, when our old women
asserted, as every one knows they did, that not every one was privileged
to see the spirits of the departed wandering over their graves. In fact,
it was at all times only the sensitive who could see the imponderable
emanations from the chemical change going on in