The spirits’ little bundles

At night candles lit themselves on the altar in the Church of Saint Gall, and the apparition of a priest appeared, touching his forehead to the altar as he prayed. One morning the sacristan found the body of a long-dead priest before the altar. Its head was severed with a shovel and placed beneath its left arm; the body was carried out through a hole broken through the wall beside the door. (According to demonological practices, such a body must not be removed through either a door or a window.) When the cemetery at Saint Gall’s was closed and the remains transferred to a new cemetery, the souls of those whom they had neglected to rebury appeared as little bundles and sat around the church at night.