and women were also exhibited as if present, together with the places, conversation and purposes; and this as suddenly as when anything is presented to view. The manifestations sometimes continued for several hours.
There was one who had made light of the evil of backbiting. I heard his backbitings and defamations recounted in order, and in the very words he had used; the persons whom he had defamed, and those to whom he had defamed them, were also made known. All these things were produced, and at the same time exhibited to the life; and yet every particular had been studiously concealed by him when he lived in the world.
Another spirit who had deprived a relation of his inheritance by a fraudulent pretext, was convicted and judged in the same way; and, what was wonderful, the letters and papers which had passed between them were read in my hearing, and I was told that not a word was wanting. The same person also, shortly before his death, clandestinely destroyed a neighbor by poison, which crime was disclosed in this manner: he was seen to dig a hole in the ground, out of which when dug a man came forth as out of a grave, and cried out to him, What have you done to me? And then every particular was revealed; the friendly conversation of the poisoner with his victim; how he held out the cup to him; what he thought before, and what transpired afterward.
