Catholic Widow's Experience with a Priest's Account of Her Husband's Spirit

“In traveling in Europe I found in one of the Cantons of Switzerland, a place almost removed from civilization, this idea prevailing to a very marked extent, and was illustrated in an incident which was described by a family who afterwards joined the Church. A man who was considered an infidel, and upon whom the priest had operated for many years previous to his death, happened to pass away. He left behind him a widow, with several grown-up daughters. Some little means was left to them, and after the death and burial of this man, the priest came around to visit the family. He told the woman, who was a devout Catholic, that the night before he had been visited by the spirit of her dead husband. He had seen her husband clothed in black raiment, his countenance lowering because of his misery, and said he, “Your husband told me that I should come to you and ask that I be paid to say mass for his soul.” The poor widow accepted the statement of the priest and gave of her means so that her husband might be redeemed, as she believed, from the great misery in which he was placed because of his unbelief while in the flesh. After two weeks the priest again came, and said he had another visit from her husband. He said his countenance had brightened somewhat, and he had noticed that one half of his body was white and the other half was black; that he was only half redeemed, and with the expenditure of a little more money he could be fully redeemed. So she gave him some more money. The third time he came with the same excuse and extracted from the widow a little more means. His fourth appeal, however, so disgusted the lady that she told him her husband would have to suffer if the payment of money was necessary to his redemption. — Millennial Star 57:29”