from:  Scenes Beyond the Grave, by  Marietta Davis (1865)

“I was welcomed with gay and sportive sounds. The beings whom you behold in the distance rushed forward to embrace me. They shouted, ‘Welcome! Welcome!’
I was awed, bewildered, and yet mentally quickened and energized by the atmosphere of this abode. I found myself endued with the power of strange and restless motion. Every organ sent forth and every pore emitted a phosphorescent illumination, which condensed about the head and formed the appearance of a brilliant diadem and reflected on the countenance a wild, unearthly glow. The exhalation as it extended became a flaming robe, enveloping my form and causing it to conform in appearance to the invariable likeness of my spirit associates. I became conscious of a strange pervasion of the brain, and the cerebral organs became subject to a foreign power, which seemed to operate by an absolute possession.”

Hell’s Revelry Palls but Does Not Appease

“I abandoned myself to the attractive influences that were around me, and sought to satisfy my craving desires for pleasure. I reveled, I banqueted, I mingled in the wild and voluptuous dance, I plucked the shining fruit, I plunged in the ardent streams, I surfeited my nature with that which externally appeared delicious and inviting to the sight and to the sense. But when tasted, all was loathing and a source of increasing pain. And so unnatural are the desires perpetuated here that what I crave I loathe and that which delights tortures me. My tortures create within me a strange intoxication. My appetite is palled, and yet my hunger is unappeased and unappeasable. Every object which I perceive I crave, and I grasp it in the midst of disappointment and gather it with increased agony. With every new accession of experience I am immersed in some unknown fantasy, delirium and intoxication. New and strange phenomena are continually manifested and add delirium to delirium, and fear to fear. I seem to myself to become part of that which is about me. The voices which fall upon my ear, again burst from me in uncontrollable utterances. I laugh, philosophize, jeer, blaspheme and ridicule by turns, yet every epithet, however impure, sparkles with wit, glows with metaphor, and moves adorned with every rhetorical embellishment. The metallic ores, the waving trees, the shining fruit, the moving phantasms, the deluding waters, seem to form a dazzling and mocking spectacle, which is ever before my eyes, and every subject of reflection, as its fellow in my heart, from which, in its mocking scenery, it meets a response. I inwardly crave to satisfy my hunger and my thirst, and the desire appears to create without and around me a tantalizing illusion of cool waters I may never drink, and grateful fruits I may never taste, and refreshing airs I never feel, and peaceful slumbers I may never enjoy. I know that the forms around me are fantastic and delusive, yet every object appears to hold controlling power, and to domineer with cruel enchantment over my bewildered mind.”

The Law of Evil Attraction

“I experience the power of the law of evil attraction. I am the slave of discordant and deceptive elements and of their presiding vice. Every object by turns attracts me. The thought of mental freedom dies within the dying will, while the idea that I am a part and an element of the revolving fantasy takes possession of my spirit. This realm, curtained with a cloud of nether night, is one sea of perverted and diseased magnetic element. Here lust, pride, hate, avarice, love of self, ambition, contention, and blasphemies, reveling in madness, kindle into a burning flame. And that speciality of evil which does not belong to and unfold from one spirit, belongs to and unfolds from another; so that the combined strength of the aggregate of all, is the prevailing law. By this strength of evil I am bound, and in it I exist. Here are those who oppressed the poor; who robbed the hireling of his wages, and bound the weary down with heavy burdens; the false in religious faith; the hypocrite; the adulterer; the assassin; and the suicide, who, not satisfied with life in the external form, has hastened its close.”

[to be continued]

from Scenes From Beyond the Grave , first published in 1865 by Marietta Davis.

“My life on earth was suddenly brought to a close; and as I departed from the world, I moved rapidly in the direction prompted by my ruling desires. I inwardly desired to be courted, honored, admired—to receive universal adulation, and to be free to follow the perverted inclinations of my proud, rebellious, and pleasure loving heart—a state of existence where all should be pleasure without restraint—where each should be free to obey the promptings of every passion, and where every indulgence should be permitted to the soul, where prayers and religious instructions should find no place—where the Sabbath should not be known—where no rebuke of sin should ever fall—where existence should be spent in gay and festive sports, with no superior and restraining power to molest or interfere. With these desires I entered the spirit world, and passed to the condition adapted to my inward state. I rushed in haste to the enjoyment of the glittering scenes which you now behold. I was welcomed as you have not been, for at once I was recognized as a fit associate by those who here abide. They do not welcome you, for they discern in you an interior desire, adverse to the ruling passions which here prevail.”

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Sounds of mingled import—bursts of laughter—utterances of revelry, of gay sport and witty ridicule, and polished sarcasm, and obscene allusions and terrible curses broke upon my ear. These again were intermixed with impure solicitations and backbitings, and hollow compliments, and feigned congratulations, and all in one sparkling brilliancy, agitated the pained, bewildered sense.
As I advanced, I walked as upon scorpions, and trod as amid living embers. The trees that seemed to wave about me were fiery exhalations, and their blossoms the sparklings and the burnings of unremitting flames. Each object I approached by contact created agony.

Realm of Illusion

The phosphorescent glare that surrounded the various objects burned the eye that looked upon them. The fruitage burned the hand that plucked and the lips that received it. The gathered flowers had emitted a burning exhalation, whose fetid and noisome odor, inhaled in the nostrils, caused excruciating pain. The fiery atoms of the atmosphere burned as they were wafted by me. The air and the blast that moved it, alike were burdened with the very elements of disappointment and wretchedness.

Upon turning to see if I could discover a single drop’ of water to allay the fierce and intolerable thirst; fountains appeared, and rivulets flowed amid the herbage, and lay in calm and placid pools. Soon, however, I discovered that these corresponded with the former illusions, and the drops of spray from the sparkling fountains fell like drops of molten lead upon the shrinking form. The flowing rivulets were like the molten river of metallic fire that streams from a furnace seven times heated; and the deep still pools were as the white and waveless silver in some glowing crucible, when every atom is burning with a fierce, intolerable glow.

A Lost Spirit Speaks

When in solemn contemplation of these fearful scenes, a spirit approached me whom I had known on earth. This being appeared externally far more brilliant than when in the body. The form, the countenance, the eyes, the hands, appeared endued with a metallic lustre that varied with every motion and every thought. Accosting me the spirit said:

“Marietta, we are again met. You see me a disembodied spirit, in that abode where those who inwardly deny the Savior find their habitation when their mortal day has ended. Strange emotions agitate your bosom. Thus I felt, looked, wondered, and moved in sad and bewildered anxiety in the hour when my being here discovered the theatre of its present existence. But I experienced that which you have never yet realized in the interior principles of mind. Strange and incontrollable are the emotions causing me to relate that inward sorrow which this brilliant exterior would, if it were possible, conceal.”

[to be continued]