ly knows.

I never had any idea of treating profoundly the matter of apparitions;
I have treated of it, as it were, by chance, and occasionally. My
first and principal object was to discourse of the vampires of
Hungary. In collecting my materials on that subject, I found many
things concerning apparitions; the great number of these embarrassed
this treatise on vampires. I detached some of them, and thus have
composed this treatise on apparitions: there still remains a large
number of them, which I might have separated for the better
arrangement of this treatise. Many persons here have taken the
accessory for the principal, and have paid more attention to the first
part than to the second, which was, however, the first and the
principal in my design. For I own I have always been much struck with
what was related of the vampires or ghosts of Hungary, Moravia, and
Poland; of the vroucolacas of Greece; and of the excommunicated, who
are said not to rot. I thought I ought to bestow on it all the
attention in my power; and I have deemed it right to treat on this
subject in a particular dissertation. After having deeply studied it,
and obtaining as much information as I was able, I found little
solidity and certainty on the subject; which, joined to the opinion of
some prudent and respectable persons whom I consulted, had induced me
to give up my design entirely, and to renounce laboring on a subject
which is so contradictory, and embraces so much uncertainty.

But looking at the matter in another point of view, I resumed my pen,
decided upon undeceiving the public, if I found that what was said of
it was absolutely false; showing that what is uttered on this subject
is uncertain, and that one ought to be very reserved in pronouncing on
these vampires, which have made so much noise in the world for a
certain time, and still divide opinions at this day, even in the
countries which are the scene of their pretended return, and where
they appear; or to show that what has been said and written on this
subject is not destitute of probability, and that the subject of the
return of vampires is worthy the attention of the curious and the
learned, and deserves to be seriously studied, to have the facts
related of it examined, and the causes, circumstances, and means
sounded deeply.

I am then about to examine this question as a historian, philosopher,
and theologian. As a historian, I shall endeavor to discover the truth
of the fact