owed me, on two very dark nights, to take her from the
Castle of Reisenberg, where she was residing with my family, to the
cemetery of the neighboring village of Gruenzing.

"The result justified my expectation in the fullest measure. She saw,
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 afterwards 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 marvellous. We shall even see
that it was not so erroneous or absurd as has been supposed, when our
old women asserted, as every