name, he replied, "I was born
at Rutsingen, and my name is George Raulin," which was false. As he
was going down stairs he said to the cure in German, in a menacing
tone, "I will show you who I am."

He passed all the rest of the day in the village, showing himself to
everybody. Towards midnight he returned to the cure's door, crying out
three times in a terrible voice, "Monsieur Bayer!" and adding, "I will
let you know who I am." In fact, during three years he returned every
day towards four o'clock in the afternoon, and every night till dawn
of day. He appeared in different forms, sometimes like a water-dog,
sometimes as a lion, or some other terrible animal; sometimes in the
shape of a man, or a girl, when the cure was at table, or in bed,
enticing him to lasciviousness. Sometimes he made an uproar in the
house, like a cooper putting hoops on his casks; then again you might
have thought he wanted to throw the house down by the noise he made in
it. To have witnesses to all this, the cure often sent for the beadle
and other personages of the village to bear testimony to it. The
spectre emitted, wherever he showed himself, an insupportable stench.

At last the cure had recourse to exorcisms, but they produced no
effect. And as they despaired almost of being delivered from these
vexations, he was advised, at the end of the third year, to provide
himself with a holy branch on Palm Sunday, and also with a sword
sprinkled with holy water, and to make use of it against the spectre.
He did so once or twice, and from that time he was no more molested.
This is attested by a Capuchin monk, witness of the greater part of
these things, the 29th of August, 1749.

I will not guarantee the truth of all these circumstances; the
judicious reader will make what induction he pleases from them. If
they are true, here is a real ghost, who eats, drinks, and speaks, and
gives tokens of his presence for three whole years, without any
appearance of religion. Here follows another instance of a ghost who
manifested himself by actions alone.

They write me word from Constance, the 8th of August, 1748, that
towards the end of the year 1746 sighs were heard, which seemed to
proceed from the corner of the printing-office of the Sieur Lahart,
one of the common council men of the city of Constance. The printers
only laughed at it at first, but in the following year, 1747, in the
beginning of January, they heard more noise than before. There was a