Antoine Augustin Calmet

(1672 - 1757)

Antoine Augustin Calmet was ordained as a priest in 1696 and lectured on the Old and New Testaments at the abbey of Münster in Alsace in the early 1700s, eventually composing a twenty-three-volume exegesis of the Bible, published between 1707 and 1716. For his book on the occult, The Phantom World, Calmet compiled newspapers, travelogues, and official reports. Among his chapter titles are “Of Specters which Haunt Houses,” “Ghosts in Lapland,” and “Instances of Women Thought Dead Who Came to Life Again.”