Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1865

Dr. Woetzel published a book with the title – Real apparition of my wife after her death – Chemnitz, 1804 that caused great sensation in the first years of this century. The author was attacked in several publications, particularly the Wieland that ridicules him in the Euthanasia. During his wife disease Woetzel had asked her that would come back and show up to him after her death. However, after a few weeks after her death a strong wind seemed to blow in the bedroom, although it was closed; the light was almost extinguished; a small window in the room opened and with the dimly lit ambient Woetzel saw the shape of his wife that told him in a sweet voice: Charles, I am immortal. One day we will meet again. The apparition and those reassuring words took place again later on. The woman showed up in a white dress with the appearance that she had before her death. The dog that had not moved during the first apparition was then agitated and moved around a circle as if going around a known person.

In a second work about the same subject (Leipzig, 1805) the author speaks of invitations that had been sent to him to belie the matter because otherwise many scientists would be forced to resign to what up until that moment they had considered like true and fair opinions and because superstition would find food for thought there. However, he had already requested the Council of the University of Leipzig to allow him to take a legal oath. The author develops his theory. According to him the soul, after death, would be surrounded by an ethereal, luminous body, through which it could become visible; that she could use other garments on top of that luminous envelope; that the apparition had not acted upon his interior feelings but exclusive upon the exterior senses.

As it can be seen the only missing word is perispirit. However, Woetzel is wrong when he believes that the apparition only acted upon the exterior senses and not onto the interior. Today we know that it is the opposite that happens. But he may have meant that he was awaken and not in a dreaming state that would have made him think that he had perceived the apparition only by the corporeal sight for he did not know the properties of the perispiritual fluid nor the mechanism of spiritual vision.

As a matter of fact, reading the scientific work of Mr. Pezzani about the Plurality of the existences one has the proof that the knowledge about the spiritual body goes back to the high antiquity and that only the name perispirit is modern. St. Paul described it in his first epistle to the Corinthians, chapter XV. Woetzel only recognized it by the force of the reasoning. Having studied them in the numerous facts that were observed, modern Spiritism described its properties and deduced the laws of its formation and manifestations.

With respect to the part that refers to the dog there is nothing special there. Several facts seem to demonstrate that certain animals feel the presence of the Spirits. In the Spiritist Review, June 1860 (The Spirit and the little dog) we cite an example that has remarkable analogy with that of Woetzel. It is not positively proven that they cannot see the Spirits. It would not be impossible that under certain circumstances, for example, the horses that show fear and adamantly refuse to move forward without an apparent reason may suffer the influence of a hidden influence.