e regarded there as simple visions, or
popular fancies. They afterwards bethought themselves of taking up the
corpses of those who came back in that way, of burning them, or of
destroying them in some other manner. Thus they delivered themselves
from the importunity of these spectres, which are now much less
frequently seen than before. So said that good priest.

These apparitions have given rise to a little work, entitled _Magia
Posthuma_, printed at Olmutz, in 1706, composed by Charles Ferdinand
de Schertz, dedicated to Prince Charles, of Lorraine, Bishop of Olmutz
and Osnaburgh. The author relates that, in a certain village, a woman
being just dead, who had taken all her sacraments, she was buried in
the usual way in the cemetery. Four days after her decease, the
inhabitants of this village heard a great noise and extraordinary
uproar, and saw a spectre, which appeared sometimes in the shape of a
dog, sometimes in the form of a man, not to one person only, but to
several, and caused them great pain, grasping their throats, and
compressing their stomachs, so as to suffocate them. It bruised almost
the whole body, and reduced them to extreme weakness, so that they
became pale, lean and attenuated.

The spectre attacked even the animals, and some cows were found
debilitated and half dead. Sometimes it tied them together by their
tails. These animals gave sufficient evidence by their bellowing of
the pain they suffered. The horses seemed overcome with fatigue, all
in a perspiration, principally on the back; heated, out of breath,
covered with foam, as they are after a long and rough journey. These
calamities lasted several months.

The author whom I have mentioned examines the affair in a lawyer-like
way, and reasons much on the fact and the law. He asks if, supposing
that those disturbances, those noises and vexations proceeded from
that person who is suspected of causing them, they can burn her, as is
done to other ghosts who do harm to the living. He relates several
instances of similar apparitions, and of the evils which ensued; as of
a shepherd of the village of Blow, near the town of Kadam, in Bohemia,
who appeared during some time, and called certain persons, who never
failed to die within eight days after. The peasants of Blow took up
the body of this shepherd, and fixed it in the ground with a stake
which they drove through it.

This man, when in that condition, derided them for what they made him
suffer, a