Mary's Reflections on American Print Culture

One, "An Apparition" from Weekly Visitor or Ladies' Miscellany, July 30, 1803, tells the story of a young gentleman named Barbarosse who lived in France. After he has spent time with a family singing songs and listening to supernatural tales, he returns to his chamber for the evening...after midnight...and is disturbed by strange sounds and the appearance of a black robed stranger, he assumes to be a ghost. After being sent into convulsions, he realizes in the end that he had merely forgotten to shut a window and the ghost was only a black game cock.

The writer starts off rather tongue in cheek, saying, "Let the unbelieving skeptic say what he will concerning the reality of ghosts and apparitions...a man who doubts as to his own personal existence...cannot be expected to have faith in the more abstruse secrets of nature." He then dismisses those "skeptics" and invites the true "believers" to listen to the tale and come to assurance of the veracity of ghosts. Since the tale is obviously a spoof on ghost stories, the writer has no intention of claiming the veracity of ghosts. However, the language he uses against so-called skeptics (I am assuming he is one himself) is similar to the language I found about devils and ghosts in the Christian magazines.

Several pieces in a periodical called The Experienced Christian's Magazine and The Christian's Magazine discuss the battle for the soul that exists between angels and demons or spirits in general. Life here on earth is bound up in the state of the spiritual realm rather than the physical realm. I would assume that this debate over the veracity or truth of spirits was in large due to the beginnings of scientific reasoning and skepticism about faith and spirituality. Even in the language of the ghost story that doesn't even mention Christianity, I see an attack on what many who considered themselves more enlightened thinkers saw as silly or blind faith in the supernatural.