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Updated: May 4, 2025
One morning she awoke in a high fever that lasted a fortnight and was followed by convulsive spasms, during which she beheld at the bedside the image of her grandmother Schmidgall, who, it subsequently developed, was at that moment dying in distant Löwenstein.
With awe, not unmixed with satisfaction, Schmidgall remembered that he had once seen the self-same apparition; but he prudently endeavored to convince her that she had been dreaming and sent her back to her room, which, thenceforward, he never allowed her to leave at night. In this way Frederica Hauffe's mediumship began.
It was his belief that the ghosts were robbing her of her vitality, and earnestly but vainly he strove to banish them. She herself declared, with a tone of indescribable relief, that she knew the end was near, and that she welcomed it, as she longed to attain the quiet of the grave with her father and Grandfather and Grandmother Schmidgall.
This last trait received a sudden and unexpected development when, at the age of twelve or thirteen, she was sent to the neighboring town of Löwenstein to be educated under the care of her grand-parents, a worthy couple named Schmidgall.
If anything affected her painfully, if her mind was excited by reproof, she had instructive warning, or prophetic dreams. While yet quite young, her parents let her go, for the advantages of instruction, to her grandfather, Johann Schmidgall, in Löwenstein.
Grandfather Schmidgall was an exceedingly superstitious old man, with a singular fondness for visiting solitary and gloomy places, particularly churchyards; and he soon began to take the little girl with him on such strolls.
The weird and uneasy ideas and feelings which thus early took possession of her were given firmer lodgment by her unfortunate sojourn with grave-haunting Grandfather Schmidgall. After this, it seems, she suffered for a year from some eye trouble, and every physician knows how close the connection is between optical disease and hallucinations.
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