4102. CONCERNING THE SPEECH OF SPIRITS. The spirits round about me, wherever they were, kept up a conversation respecting some matter known to me during the whole night, so that there was a kind of unceasing chat embracing ratiocinations. The effect was to awaken me repeatedly from sleep, and their speech flowed into certain representations made in dreams. They then said to me that they could talk in a continued stream, and that they had at command such a multitude of arguments and reasonings on the subject as would be incredible. I perceived that there was with them such an indefinite series of reasonings on one topic as would exceed all belief. It was perceived also and said that evil spirits frame various shadowy things which do not truly relate to the subject in hand, and these they connect with numerous other shadows and phantasies of the subject of discourse and which can only be taken as the imagery of dreams just spoken of, and so on. - 1748, November 30. On other occasions, they seem to converse with each other altogether as men, for they do not reflect that it is through ideas. With me, however, the interaction was wholly like that of one man with another.