Documents / Document
This is an 1880 book, The Apparitions and Miracles at Knock, prepared and edited by John MacPhilpin of Tuam and published in Dublin by M. H. Gill and Son. The Internet Archive holds a Google scan of the Harvard College Library copy. It reprints Tuam News accounts and the official depositions of eye-witnesses to the apparition of 21 August 1879 on the sacristy gable of Knock Church, County Mayo. It argues that natural light could not have caused the apparition and lists cures recorded in Archdeacon Cavanagh's diary.
“Hill”15 pages
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
story when singly examined regarding the vision, the time, place, and circumstances? They differ, it is true, in minor and special outlines, as all men will, in giving an account of the same event; but they tell in substance and in integrity of detail the same story. No other conclusion can, therefore, be arrived at regarding the first Apparition than that it actually has occurred. Let men of learning account for it as they like. ## Other Conjectures groundless. The non-believing individuals describe the appearance, either as (1) a miracle; or (2) the effect of reflected light; or (3) some kind of magic-lantern proceeding; or (4) the effect of phosphorus; or of (5) electric or magnetic currents; or (6) natural miasmatic gustations from the earth below, arising perhaps, from a stratification of coal or of petroleum some thirty or fifty feet under the surface. The vision, or the luminous appearances, could not come from reflected lights; for, as a rule, and as a matter of science, mirages are seen in the clouds, and not at the gables of a house, and they never continue longer than a few moments, like a rainbow, just only while the sun is shining on a certain point. Now, in the first vision at Knock, the Apparitions continued for hours, and was seen both before the sun had fully gone down, and after it had set, in day time and in night time, and that for a lengthened period. What regarding the effects of a magic lantern? Anyone who has seen the place can behold at a glance that to produce images on the wall at Knock Chapel by magic lanterns is simply impossible. The nearest point at which a performer could stand is distant thirty yards from the gable, and no lens and no electric light known to scientists at the present day can cast fully defined likenesses the size of
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 91 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.