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.
a man on four hundred square feet of surface for some hours in the light of day, and the darkness of night, and that with pencils of rays of light invisible from artificial sources of illumination. Neither is the phosphorus theory of any avail. One would require an immense amount of phosphorus to daub the whole gable of a church with it. The phosphorus would ignite in the daytime in the hands of any unskilled, nay, the most cautious artist. Then, again, the light of phosphorus could not be seen distinctly thirty yards off; especially it could not be seen at daytime. Again, it could not present, with its ever-fitful flame, accurately and minutely defined features. Some of the witnesses testify that they beheld the very eye-balls of the figures, which, as Patrick Hill testifies, appeared to him to be those of living beings; he saw, he says, not only the eyes, but the iris and the pupil. Although some of the witnesses have described the figures as statues, yet they assert that those they saw were like living beings, as their eyes, and the brightness of their eyes, ever showed. They were statue-like only in this respect, that the figures did not speak. It is in that respect the witnesses bear testimony to their statue or ghost-like appearance. Phosphoric light is ever fitful and fluctuating, like the light of a reflected moon on the disturbed surface of a rippling lake. It is never even, nor at rest. But in the Apparition there was no rippling, or ever and constant changing of light. The figures and likenesses that were seen were settled; they presented an accurate outline, and were constant and continuous in their pose for two hours and a half. Add to all this that the lights were beheld at a distance of over half a mile; phosphoric lights cannot be seen thirty yards off—above all, they cannot be seen in daylight. But this is certain, that while water is being poured on a surface on which phosphorus is being rubbed, no light
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.