The Phantom World: The History and Philosophy of Spirits, Apparitions, Etc, Etc

What It's About

Calmet sets out to examine, methodically and at length, whether the dead can truly appear to the living. He works through accounts of angels, demons, ghosts, and spirits drawn from the Bible, classical antiquity, and more recent European history, before turning to the case that made the book famous: the wave of reported vampire, or "revenant," sightings in Hungary, Moravia, and Silesia. Rather than simply cataloguing the marvellous, he weighs each report as a scholar and churchman, testing what can be explained by natural causes, superstition, or fraud against what tradition and scripture seem to require he take seriously.

Key Concepts

The book distinguishes between categories of apparition — angelic, demonic, and the souls of the dead — and applies a consistent, skeptical-but-not-dismissive method to evaluating testimony. Its most enduring contribution is the extended treatment of Eastern European vampire folklore, which introduced the "revenant" phenomenon to English-speaking readers and became a key source for later vampire fiction.

About the Author

Augustin Calmet was a French Benedictine monk who rose to become Abbot of Senones. A biblical scholar and historian, he was known for his careful, methodical approach to scripture and church history, and this work sits alongside that scholarly output as his best-known excursion into the supernatural.

About This Edition

This is an 1850 translation by Henry Christmas.