{"product_id":"2940016084480","title":"Witch Stories: A Short Story Collection, Occult Classic By Elizabeth Lynn! AAA+++","description":"Excerpt:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn offering the following collection of witch stories to the public, I do not profess to have exhausted the subject, or to have made so complete a summary as I might have done, had I been admitted into certain private libraries, which contain, I believe, many concealed riches. But I had no means of introduction to them, and was obliged to be content with such authorities as I found in the British Museum, and the other public libraries to which I had access. I do not think that I have left much untold; but there must be, scattered about England, old MSS. and unique copies of records concerning which I can find only meagre allusions, or the mere names of the victims, without a distinctive fact to mark their special history. Should this book come to a second edition, any help from the possessors of these hitherto unpublished documents would be a gain to the public, and a privilege which I trust may be afforded me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNeither have I attempted to enter into the philosophy of the subject. It is far too wide and deep to be discussed in a few hasty words; and to sift such evidence as is left us--to determine what was fraud, what self-deception, what actual disease, and what the exaggeration of the narrator--would have swelled my book into a far more important and bulky work than I intended or wished. As a general rule, I think we may apply all the four conditions to every case reported; in what proportion, each reader must judge for himself. Those who believe in direct and personal intercourse between the spirit-world and man, will probably accept every account with the unquestioning belief of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; those who have faith in the calm and uniform operations of nature, will hold chiefly to the doctrine of fraud; those who have seen much of disease and that strange condition called \"mesmerism,\" or \"sensitiveness,\" will allow the presence of absolute nervous derangement, mixed up with a vast amount of conscious deception, which the insane credulity and marvellous ignorance of the time rendered easy to practise; and those who have been accustomed to sift evidence and examine witnesses, will be utterly dissatisfied with the loose statements and wild distortion of every instance on record.\u003cbr\u003eE. LYNN LINTON.","brand":"BDP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47071242387696,"sku":"2940016084480","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940016084480_p0.jpg?v=1763628843","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940016084480","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}