- 163 - Accompanied by them he went to the house one evening. While he remained in the sitting room in order to observe Gottliebin, the others spread out by twos inside and outside the building. On this evening these seven men were witnesses to the fact that within three hours, 25 blows were struck at a certain point in the bedroom, so violently as to cause an empty chair that stood there to leap clear off the floor, the windows to rattle and the plaster to fall from the ceiling. These terrific blows, which sounded in the street like the discharge of firearms at a New Year’s celebration, were heard by all the inhabitants of the village. When Gottliebin, to whom the vision of the woman carrying the dead child had appeared again, asked Blumhardt whether she should tell him the woman’s name, he emphatically declined. The following day Blumhardt was informed that Gottliebin was in a state of deep unconsciousness and on the point of death. He hastened to her and found her stretched out rigidly on the bed, the outer skin of her head and arms aglow and shaking; besides that, she seemed to be choking. The room was packed with people, among them a physician from a neighbouring village who happened to be in town and tried to restore her to life, but who went away shaking his head, obviously at a loss. Half an hour later she awoke, and told Blumhardt that she had again seen the figure of the woman with the dead child, but that she had fallen down unconscious the instant the vision had appeared. Blumhardt now took the girl out of the house and had her move into the home of a responsible family, where no one was allowed to visit her, not even her own brothers and sisters. Blumhardt relates his personal feelings in the following words: “I had a particular dread of somnambulistic apparitions, which so often give rise to most unpleasant notoriety and which, heretofore, have been of so little benefit to anyone. Since, in any event, the field that opened up here was a mysterious and a dangerous one, I could not refrain from laying the matter before the Lord in solitary prayer, begging Him to preserve me and others from any folly and error into which we might be led. It distressed us deeply to feel that the Devil should still be so powerful and should be able to spread such hitherto unrecognized diabolical nets over mankind. Our heartfelt sympathy extended not only to the poor woman, whose pitiful state we could see, but to the millions who have departed from God and who have become enmeshed in the secret bonds of magic. We prayed that, in this instance at least, God might grant us victory, and trample Satan underfoot.” Presently, however, the matter began anew in the quarters into which Gottliebin had moved. As soon as the din and blows were heard, Gottliebin would fall into violent convulsions, which kept increasing in intensity and duration. One day, when these spasms were so violent that the bedstead fell apart, Dr. Späth, who was in attendance, remarked, as the tears rose to his eyes: “One would think that there is no clergyman in this village from the way this sick girl is left lying there. This is nothing natural.” Blumhardt took the physician’s words to heart and visited Gottliebin more often. One day when both he and Dr. Spaeth were with her, her whole body began to tremble, while every muscle in her head and arms twitched feverishly, although otherwise her body lay there stiff and rigid. Meanwhile there were frequent emissions of foam from her mouth. The physician, who had never before seen anything of the kind, seemed at a loss. Suddenly she awoke and was able to sit up and drink some water; one could hardly believe that she was the same person. Day by day Blumhardt grew more convinced that something demonic was at work here. One day, as though by inspiration, he therefore stepped up to the patient on the occasion of one of her attacks, forcibly folded her rigidly cramped hands for prayer, and, calling her name loudly into her ear
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