The stories in Volume 1 centre on dreams, psychic presentiments, traces, wraiths, doppelgängers, apparitions, and imaginings of the after-life. Crowe's vivid tales, written with great energy and imagination, are classic examples of nineteenth-century spiritualist writing and strongly influenced other authors as well as providing inspiration for later adherents of ghost-seeing and psychic culture.

There is, as the Scriptures say, but one way to salvation, though there are many to perdition—that is, though there are many wrongs, there is only one right; for truth is one, and our true liberty consists in being free to follow it; for we can not imagine that anybody seeks his own perdition, and nobody, I conceive, loves vice for its own sake, as others love virtue, that is, because it is vice: so that, when they follow its dictates, we must conclude that they are not free, but in bondage, whose ever bond-slave they be, whether of an evil spirit, or of their own organization; and I think every human being, who looks into himself, will feel that he is in effect then only free when he is obeying the dictates of virtue; and that the language of Scripture, which speaks of sin as a bondage, is not only metaphorically but literally true.

The warning a person of an impending danger or error implies no constraint; the subject of the warning is free to take the hint or not, as he pleases; we receive many cautions, both from other people and from our own consciences, which we refuse to benefit by.

With regard to the second objection, it seems to have greater weight; for although the instances of presentiment are very numerous, taken apart, they are certainly, as far as we know, still but exceptional cases. But here we must remember that an influence of this sort might be very continuously, though somewhat remotely, exercised in favor of an individual, without the occurrence of any instance of so striking a nature as to render the interference manifest; and certain it is that some people—I have met with...