From Poltergeist to Preacher:

Abstract The paper discusses alleged apparitions of ghosts in Southwest Germany from the late 16th to the 19th century. It will try to answer the question how the ghosts were supposed to communicate with the living. As a rule, ghosts manifested as poltergeists, i.e. as purely audible phenomena. At times, they assumed a visible shape (as an animal, a shadow, or a human figure), too. However, until the end of the 17th century, in most cases, the ghosts did not communicate in any way. They did not seem to have any needs or messages they wanted to convey. Only occasionally did the ghosts address certain individuals with concrete messages. These messages usually dealt with personal religious needs or with hidden treasures. Only in exceptional cases did mediums in the full sense of the word begin to emerge in the 18th century. Some claimed that they received messages from ghosts that essentially concerned everybody: new religious revelations that challenged the doctrines of the established churches. However, there was no clear evolution that really changed the nature of ghostly apparitions. At the end of the period under consideration here, most people did not expect ghosts to have any meaningful messages to communicate.