Witches/Goblins/Evil

This world of ours is a world of opposites. There is light and shade, there is heat and cold, there is good and evil, there is God and the Devil

A comprehensive history, full of delightful anecdotes, of the types, uses, and abuses of poison. Illustrated with photographs. Sample contents: Poisons used by ancient and primitive races; Superstitions connected with poisonous plants; Some classical poisons and their histories; The Italian school of poisoners; The mystery of Amy Robsart's death; Poisons in fiction; and poison mysteries, which are details of 23 criminal poisonings. This facsimile reprint is from the 1923 original edition. 33 illustrations, many added by TGS Publishing

IN all the darkest pages of the malign supernatural there is no more terrible tradition than that of the Vampire, a pariah even among demons. Foul are his ravages; gruesome and seemingly barbaric are the ancient and approved methods by which folk must rid themselves of this hideous pest. Even to-day in certain quarters of the world, in remoter districts of Europe itself, Transylvania, Slavonia, the isles and mountains of Greece, the peasant will take the law into his own bands and utterly destroy the carrion who--as it is yet firmly believed--at night will issue from his unhallowed grave to spread the infection of vampirism throughout the countryside.

When first projected it was the writer's purpose to take up the subject of English witchcraft under certain general political and social aspects. It was not long, however, before he began to feel that preliminary to such a treatment there was necessary a chronological survey of the witch trials. Those strange and tragic affairs were so closely involved with the politics, literature, and life of the seventeenth century that one is surprised to find how few of them have received accurate or complete record in history. It may be said, in fact, that few subjects have gathered about themselves so large concretions of misinformation as English witchcraft.

I knew Russia from her Western confines right to the Pacific and the Pamir, and I think I understand the psychology of the peoples of that vast, mysterious land, where modern civilization of the West and the ideology of Mongolian nomads, the asceticism of orthodox Christianity and heathenism exist together in weird confusion to this very day.

The Russian intelligentsia, spiritualized and rising to the loftiest idealism, has long ago cut adrift from the people; it could not understand the great mass and contemptuously disdained to notice its qualities, hostile and dangerous to mankind, which nevertheless remained.

In the mind of the mariner, there is a superstitious horror connected with the name of Pirate; and there are few subjects that interest and excite the curiosity of mankind generally, more than the desperate exploits, foul doings, and diabolical career of these monsters in human form. A piratical crew is generally formed of the desperadoes and runagates of every clime and nation. The pirate, from the perilous nature of his occupation, when not cruising on the ocean, the great highway of nations, selects the most lonely isles of the sea for his retreat, or secretes himself near the shores of rivers, bays and lagoons of thickly wooded and uninhabited countries, so that if pursued he can escape to the woods and mountain glens of the interior.

Forgotten stories, legends, and myths of other worldly characters that have terrorized and entertained mankind for thousands of years.