The Hindus of the Malibar coast said they had ghosts, but they knew them to be bad spirits, for good ones can hardly ever appear at all. Apuleius says the human soul is a demon or genius, an immortal god. According to Philo Judaeus, the air is filled with an invisible host of spirits, the bad ones are mortal, and the good ones are immortal. The soul, upon the death of the body, transforms into a lemure (phantom). If it is wicked, it is called a larvae. The ghosts who, through vice, fearful crimes and animal passions, are confined to the eighth sphere immediately surrounding the earth, are the magnetic vampires and demons so well known to mediaeval ecstatics, nuns, monks and witches, the blood demons of Porphery. They may be cast out by powerful magicians, but if a sorcerer is not available, you can take a saucer containing two ounces of nitre and pour over it one ounce of vitrol and place it under the bed of the obsessed, and the devil will take to his heels.

Paracelsus says: “It is possible that my spirit, without the aid of the body and through a fiery will alone, and without a sword, can stab and wound others. I can also bring the spirit of my adversary into an image, and then double him up and lame him.” According to Cotton Mather some young girls had become mediums by sitting with a West Indian negro woman. They declared that the spectres of various witches appeared to them and bit and pinched and stuck pins into them. Some of the witches confessed that they did afflict these girls by sticking pins into manikins made of wax or rags, and by clutching and pinching their hands together and wishing in what part and after what manner they would have the girls afflicted, and it was done.

If you are haunted by an objectionable ghost, provide yourself with a sword or a dagger and stab him when he makes his appearance. They are awfully afraid of swords, although if you cut one in two, he will join together again, or if you cut his head off or leg off, he will put the member right on again. But he does not like it, and will thereafter leave you severely alone. Bodin says that in 1557 an elementary, thundering demon fell down with the lightning into the house of one Poudot and kept throwing stones all about the room for several days. The magistrate came to investigate, and the spirit knocked his hat off and drove him out of the house. At last Poudot got a sword and slashed all around the room, whereupon the spirit disappeared.

Where the ghosts are real troublesome, you can drive them away by distributing holy medallions around the house where the ghosts can see them. As the medallions have been blessed or magnetized, God has been injected into them, and they consequently are gods, and mischievous spirits who cut up capers around the house are afraid of these deities. I have a blessed idol of Buddha on my desk to keep the ghosts out of the office and prevent them from interfering with the composition of this pious work.

Modern spirits are often lying spirits. They are ever on hand to humor the respective hobbies of the persons who communicate with them at circles, and deceive them. When Luther, the sorcerer, evoked the demon, he was told that he should not worship the Virgin. But when St. Dominic called upon the devils, they told him that nobody was damned that persevered in her holy worship. The golden legend of James de Viragine shows that the Virgin gave to St. Dominic a miraculous rosary, by which he could perform greater miracles than Christ. But a certain abandoned sinner was bold enough to doubt the virtues of the rosary, and immediately fifteen thousand devils took possession of him, and being questioned by St. Dominic, they emitted flames from the nostrils, eyes and ears of the demoniac and certified to the virtues of the rosary. Over a hundred angels appeared in golden armor, together with the blessed Virgin herself bearing a golden rod, with which she administered a sound thrashing to the demoniac. The numerous theological truths uttered by St. Dominic’s devils were embodied in so many articles of faith, according to Isis Unveiled, 2-76.

One who is unprotected, the tricky powers of the air but too often delude with the semblance of voices. In all the Mysteries, strong drink or anaesthetics were administered to the initiates to sunder the soul from the body and produce visions. The Sankhya system teaches that the ghost, or astral body, can shrink to such a minute space that it can penetrate anything, or enlarge to a gigantic body, or float through space, or standing on the earth can reach the moon, that its will is irresistible, having dominion over all things and the ability to attain every desire.

It is claimed that phantom hands have appeared at seances under test conditions and written messages on a table in broad daylight, when the medium was six or eight feet away, but the theory is that the materialized hand is an emanation from the medium, the astral hand of the medium. Madam Blavatsky says that “this is the spiritual or astral body that is raised in incorruption. It is useless to argue that these are spirit hands. To make hands or faces objective, they are compelled to use either the astral limb of the medium, or material furnished by the elementals, or the aural emanation of all persons present. Pure spirits will not and cannot show themselves objectively. Those that do are elementary spirits.”

Madam Blavatsky tells of the following wonderful manifestations that occurred in Thibet. A body of traveling Bikshus, or monks, claimed the power to reincarnate the Buddha in any infant. A child four months old was brought to their cave and set down in the middle of the room, while the monks sat in a circle around it at some distance. A skeptic minister sat close to the child to expose the trickery. The chief Pase Budha went into a trance, and his astral and spiritual body took possession of the child and made it walk and talk, saying “I am Buddha, I am the old Lama, I am his spirit in a new body.” The minister said: “The baby looked at me with an expression of intelligence that was simply awful. It sent a chill through me, I felt a real terror, my hair rose upon my head, and my blood ran cold. The eyes seemed to search my very soul with an expression that made me think that it was the face of the Superior himself, his eyes, his very look that was gazing upon me.”

If you wish to conjure up or materialize a spirit, purchase from the Yogis some ancient blood of a black cat, which comes in powdered form. This, together with a sparrow’s brain, burnt upon the altar will produce a smoke or vapor of peculiar odor and a color unknown and unnamed by human beings, being a combination of many colors. From the smoke of this magic altar it is possible for spirits to materialize, so that even persons without the astral vision can see them.

Sometimes a band of occultists will meet around their altar fire, which is kindled between the horns of the goat and fed with the ancient blood of a black cat and other material from which ghosts can materialize. The occultists stand in a row hand in hand, the Grand Master at the head by the altar, and all strongly command that a spirit shall manifest. As the command passes from one brother to another it gains force, and the power of the will is enormously augmented, and after a time there issues from the floor a thread of astral matter, which ascends perpendicularly and widens out as it ascends, assuming a human form, but weak, wavering and limp, bending this way and that on every breath of air. But after the circle has pumped the power into him for a while, he becomes sufficiently strong to walk or glide about and take a seat in the circle and talk to the members. The materialized body is soft and moist and cold as a corpse. When they wish him to disappear they stand again hand in hand, the Grand Master next to the spirit, and send the command from one to the other ordering the ghost to depart, and he will again become weak and wabbly and sink down to the floor and disappear through the same nail hole from which he emerged.

If the company wishes to engage in a dangerous experiment, one half of them will occupy one side of the hall and the other half the other side. They must first erect between them a circle of sheet lead, over which the devil cannot jump to attack any of the members. Then each bunch will think evil vindictive and murderous thoughts of the other bunch, and conjure up dire monsters to attack them, and soon a horrible, gigantic and vicious thought-monster, part beast, part devil and part human, will materialize and rush at the members and endeavor to attack them, but fortunately for them, he cannot pass the leaden circle, for if he could reach those that made him, he would strike them dead with a charge of electricity through the heart. In order to lay this devil they have conjured up, they have to clothe themselves entirely in silver-colored garments. They then enter the circle from both sides and close in on the monster. These silver-colored beings scare the devil to death, and he crawls back in his hole.

A man, named B, built a house with second-hand lumber from an old building that had been torn down. The old building was reputed to be haunted by the former owner, who was murdered there. The ghost was very mad because B took his lumber, and, in order to be revenged, he went with the lumber to the new house and haunted that. B says that the ghost would appear to him when he was going to sleep and jab him in the eye with his finger and seize his arm and hurl it against the wall. When B was half asleep one night, the ghost appeared with a pail of water and threw it all over him. The dog could see the ghost even when B could not, and would bark and show his teeth and propose to fight the phantom. B sold the house to some colored folks. They were scared white by the skilligin, gave up the property and demanded their money back, because the ghost was an incumbrance on the estate and a legal defect in title, he being in possession, claiming ownership.

St. Clemens Romanus says that Simon Magus (Paul), of the New Testament, could make himself invisible when and to whom he pleased. He created a man out of air, who passed through the rocks and mountains and flew along through the air. He threw himself from precipices without being injured and flung himself into the fire without being burned, he animated statues, he walked through the streets attended by strange figures, which he said were the souls of people departed.