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Apparition   Listen
noun
Apparition  n.  
1.
The act of becoming visible; appearance; visibility. "The sudden apparition of the Spaniards." "The apparition of Lawyer Clippurse occasioned much speculation in that portion of the world."
2.
The thing appearing; a visible object; a form. "Which apparition, it seems, was you."
3.
An unexpected, wonderful, or preternatural appearance; a ghost; a specter; a phantom. "The heavenly bands... a glorious apparition." "I think it is the weakness of mine eyes That shapes this monstrous apparition."
4.
(Astron.) The first appearance of a star or other luminary after having been invisible or obscured; opposed to occultation.
Circle of perpetual apparition. See under Circle.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Apparition" Quotes from Famous Books



... had originally written "impossible," but a critic of my "Riddle of Personality," in which this point was taken up, has convinced me that "absurd" is the better word. The critic in question writes: "what evidence has the author that an apparition of the living is not a spirit? Why may not the spirit of the living person have left his body and appeared to his friend? Such is the view of many people, and it coincides with certain phenomena ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... his hand to secure it, and the colossal figure imitated his action. Hane, noticing this, at once made a stooping movement, and this was also reproduced by the spectre. He then called another person to him, and placing themselves in the very spot where the apparition was first seen, the pair kept their eyes fixed on the Achtermannshohe, but saw nothing. After a short interval, however, two colossal figures appeared, which repeated the gestures made by them, and ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... is you, Violate! Good-day! Good-day, Amedee! You come at an unlucky time. It is shipping-day with us. I am in a great hurry—Eh! Monsieur Combier, by your leave, Monsieur Combier! Do not forget the three dozen of the Apparition de la Salette in stucco for Grenoble, with twenty-five per cent. reduction upon the bill. Are you working hard, Amedee? What do you say? He was first and assisted at the feast of St. Charlemagne! So much the better!—Jules, did you send the six chandeliers ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... like myself, had been so taken aback by the apparition of more than middle age which confronted him when the paper was lowered that for the moment he could say nothing; the other passengers were in an ecstasy of anticipation; the man himself, a formidable antagonist if he became nasty, waited for the reply with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various

... him, and stood staring with wide-open mouth and eyes; for there, full in the window, was an apparition that resembled a corpse more than a living being: its eyes were lifeless, its features distorted; even the mustache had assumed a ghastly whiteness in the final agony. The old woman was dumbfounded; forthwith she turned her back and marched off with ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various

... dismay, therefore, on learning the issue of the fatal conflict at Huarina, - that the royalists had been scattered far and wide before the sword of Pizarro, while their commander had vanished like an apparition, *1 leaving the greatest uncertainty ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... this point, ignorant of the charge then making against him, entered the tent. Appalled by the apparition of the injured man, and grasping at a glance the truth, all power of concealment was gone, conscious guilt was written in the color and in every line ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... the same day with this bright apparition one may greet a multitude of concurrent visitors, arriving so accurately together that it is almost a matter of accident which of the party shall first report himself. Perhaps the Dandelion should have the earliest place; indeed, I once found it in Brookline on the seventh of April. But ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... the sound in the hall of her mother's last words to Mrs. Heeny. Undine waited till their adieux were over; then, opening her door, she seized the astonished masseuse and dragged her into the room. Mrs. Heeny gazed in admiration at the luminous apparition in ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... was still sitting in the hut, where the woman was busy preparing the coffee, for she could smell the coffee-berries roasting. But suddenly it seemed to her that there stood on the threshold a beautiful young form, as beautiful as the count's child, and this apparition said to her, "The world is passing away; hold fast to me, for you are my mother after all; you have an angel in heaven, hold me fast;" and the child-angel stretched out his hand and seized her. Then there was a terrible crash, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... world: and it so happens that the above-mentioned hidden feeling acts as a great benefactor to man, for all that we may have gained, apart from occult training, in the matter of judgment, feeling and character, is insufficient to support us when confronted by our own being in its true form; its apparition would rob us of all feeling of selfhood, self-reliance and self-consciousness. And that this may not happen, provision must be made for cultivating sound judgment, good feeling and character, along with the exercises given for ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner

... the vision of this man without a face, resembling no other man, this apparition with nameless mask, its body like some statue cut from solid darkness, was yet so definite in its mystery that Bobinette, uttering the indescribable cry of some ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... sight had never been seen in Mentor village before. The people came running to their upper windows—their lower ones were for the most part buried in snow—and stared with all their eyes at the strange apparition. ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards

... out of my bureau, and said, Here, sir, are fifty Louis, to quiet your alarms: He went out, after throwing himself at my feet." Madame exclaimed on the impropriety of having the King's bedroom thus accessible to everybody. He talked with great calmness of this strange apparition, but it was evident that he controlled himself, and that he had, in fact, been much frightened, as, indeed, he had reason to be. Madame highly approved of the gift; and she was the more right in applauding it, as it was by no means in the King's usual ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... One swung a weapon aloft. There was the scream as of a woman's cry—and the shrieking wind had swept the snow-clouds about us in a blind fury that blotted all sight. And when the combing billows of drift passed, the apparition had faded. We four stood alone staring in space ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... farms plundered and deserted; agitation, excitement, and utter insecurity everywhere, and the number of troops insufficient to compel peace and order. All this was not the worst, however. Deep in the background stood the sinister apparition of the Atchison cabal. "I find," wrote he, "that I have not simply to contend against bands of armed ruffians and brigands whose sole aim and end is assassination and robbery—infatuated adherents and advocates of conflicting political sentiments ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... island, in the midst of the solitude, was seen—so ran the tale—a colossal statue of a man on horseback, wrapped in a cloak, holding the reins of his steed in his left hand, and solemnly extending his right arm to the west. This gigantic and solitary apparition on a rock in the ocean was supposed to indicate the existence of a new world, and the direction in which it was to be sought, but it is probable that the shipwrecked Fleeting was quite innocent of any ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... drew back the iron bolt that fastened the trap-door, and slid down to where the prisoner was lying. He was sleeping. She touched him with her cold, clammy hand; and when he awoke, and beheld the disgusting creature, he shuddered as if he had seen an evil apparition. She drew her knife, severed his bonds, and beckoned to ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... half an hour longer, ascended quietly, the beginnings of great gratitude in her heart. They were feelings born but to die. Just at the head of the stairs she encountered Cally, emerging like an apparition from the door of the family sitting-room. The girl spoke in a ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... have waited so long! I wanted to see you to-night." She was exhausted with fatigue and distress, and still held his hands, as if needing their support. To Waymark, in his then state of mind, she came like an apparition. He could only look at her ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... of all composure at the apparition of the sleeping lady. He spoke eagerly to the Abenaquais in their own tongue, which was unintelligible to the Hurons. When he had listened to a few words of their explanation, he ran hastily to the lady, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... about the pristine purity of the structure given him by God, so, one by one, gaudy adornments and meretricious alterations arose to sully the once majestic basilica, until the threatening and reproving apparition of the pagan Julian, when both Church and churchmen received in their corrupt progress a sudden and ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... gentleman in Eastern costume, who appeared to find some difficulty in keeping his seat as his steed jogged along. Suddenly a spirit appeared, all in white, with long newspaper wings upon its back and golden locks about its face. Singularly enough, the beast beheld this apparition and backed instantly, but the rider evidently saw nothing and whipped up unmercifully, also unsuccessfully, for the spirit stood directly in the path, and the amiable beast would not budge a foot. A lively skirmish followed, which ended in the Eastern gentleman being ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... over Bermuda. The source for this account was the Bermuda Royal Gazette. This was in 1885. That same year, an astronomer and other witnesses reported a gigantic aerial object at Adrianople, Turkey. On November 1, the weird apparition was seen moving across the sky. Observers described it as round and four to five times the size ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe

... the right atmosphere is found, the right note is struck. All is vividly real, and yet, if you close the book, all melts into a dream again. Scott was almost equally successful with a described horror in "The Tapestried Chamber." The idea is the commonplace of haunted houses, the apparition is described as minutely as a burglar might have been; and yet we do not mock, but shudder as we read. Then, on the other side—the side of anticipation—take the scene outside the closed door of the vanished Dr. Jekyll, in Mr. Stevenson's ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... miraculous apparition, Cananus appeals to the Mussulman saint; but who will bear testimony for ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... adorn our Mother's tepee, We were talking of the danger From the foemen of the Northland, When a Maiden stood before us, Strangely fair, with golden tresses, Eyes of deep blue like the lupins, Dressed in garlands made of poppies. Hand in hand we stood and wondered, Till the lovely apparition Smiled and caused our fears to vanish. 'I am the Spirit of the Country,' Said the Maiden of the Poppies, 'And I choose you, my Twin Daughters, For the beauty of your bodies, And the worth of soul within you, As the saviors of your people, As the guardians of ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell

... remark, we ought to conceive how many questions a Paley would have wished to ask of Paul; and how many details Paley himself, if he had had the sight, would have felt it his duty to impart to his readers. Had Paul ever seen Jesus when alive? How did he recognize the miraculous apparition to be the person whom Pilate had crucified? Did he see him as a man in a fleshly body, or as a glorified heavenly form? Was it in waking, or sleeping, and if the latter, how did he distinguish his divine vision from a common dream? ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... apparition made me yearn. She undoubtedly was my neighbor, the aged English lady of whom our hostess ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... the questions of thought transference and of apparitions of the living, and in November, 1896, he commenced a series of experiments in conjunction with Mr. Vincey, of Staple Inn, in order to test the alleged possibility of projecting an apparition of one's self by force of ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... that they had parted, and that we were on our way to the bottom together. This could not have lasted above a minute or so; but it seemed to me like a year. I heard every voice that had ever sounded in my ear since childhood; I saw every apparition that had ever glided before my fancy: the Sea-Serpent twisted his folds round my neck, and the keel of the Flying Dutchman grated along my back. When the vessel rose at last, and I rose with her, the waters gurgling in my throat and hissing in my ears, I did not attempt ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... face of a corpse and the raiment of a bridegroom, sumptuous and resplendent, in his eyes that cold stare in the depths of which lurked The Horrible! They stood still as if turned into stone. The darkness surrounded them, and in the midst of this darkness flamed up the horrible apparition, the supernatural vision, of the one who for three days had lain under the measureless power of death. Three days he had been dead. Thrice had the sun risen and set—and he had lain dead. The children had played, the water had murmured ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... presentation, dressed in one of those triumphant robes which the women of the eighteenth century called 'robes of combat,' armed in that toilette in which the eyes of a blind woman (Mme. du Deffand) see the destiny of Europe and the fate of ministers; and it is an apparition so beaming, so dazzling, that, in the first moments of surprise, the greatest enemies of the favorite cannot escape the charm of the woman, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... amazing apparition go out of the room below. He was shaking with a chill born of no outside cold. First the shock of hearing that language, queerly accented as the words were, then that sharp contact, mind to mind. He was being clearly warned against ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... see the prodigal son feeding on the husks in the fair field no more his own, anon we raise the eyelids, heavy from bitter tears, to behold in him the radiant apparition of genius and love, demanding not less than the all of goodness, power and beauty. We see that in him the largest claim finds a due foundation. That claim is for no partial sway, no exclusive possession. He cannot be satisfied with any one gift of life, any one department of knowledge ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... into the Gulf of Mexico. Starting back before dawn in a little boat, I saw, just as the sun was coming up over the swamps where the river begins to divide, the hulk of a great seagoing vessel against the morning sky. It seemed then a gloomy apparition; but as I think of it now it was rather the presage of the new commerce than the ghost of that ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... a year had brought about, Spiggot pondered sadly, and was only roused from his dreamy mood by the sudden apparition of a traveller on horseback standing before him; for so long and so soft was the grass of the street that his approach had been unheard by the dreamer, whose mind was wandering after the departed glories of the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... shop, spied the beastie sitting upon the shelf girning at them, and putting out his tongue, and wiggle-waggling his walking-stick ower his left elbow, as if he had been playing upon the fiddle. Mr. Weft at this apparition set up a loud lauch; his passion left him in a moment, when he saw the ridiculous mistake that the Heelandman had fa'en into, and I thocht he would hae bursted his sides wi' evendown merriment. At first Donald lookit ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various

... standing at the farther end of the room, with his face turned towards the entrance, he beheld the door noiselessly and slowly pushed open, by a pale, thin hand, and a figure dressed in a loose white robe, glide softly in. He stood for some seconds gazing upon this apparition, as it moved hesitatingly towards him from the dusky extremity of the large apartment, before he perceived that the form ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... listeners. In a word, he engaged in open warfare with the clergy on their own ground. But they of course proved too strong for him, and he was driven out of the city. He was a native of Siena, aged 30.[1] We may compare with this picturesque apparition of Jeronimo in Milan what Varchi says about the prophets who haunted Rome like birds of evil omen in the first years of the pontificate of Clement VII. 'Not only friars from the pulpit, but hermits on the piazza, went about preaching and predicting the ruin of Italy ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... popular belief, divine power in a man was like an epileptic and convulsive element. Continuing the above hypothesis, Jesus wished to see once more the man he had loved, and the stone having been rolled away, Lazarus came forth in his grave-clothes, his head bound with a napkin. This apparition naturally was looked upon by every one as a resurrection. Faith knows no other law than the interest of what it holds to be true." Does not such an explanation appear absolutely naive, when Renan adds the following opinion: "Everything seems to suggest that ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner

... burst into applause. The vivid imagination of those Southerners was fired with enthusiasm at the sudden apparition of this girl so nervously clasping their banner to her bosom. Shouts rose from ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... header into the stormy sea of American literature in order to find out what various wise heads had to say, consciously or unconsciously, in favour of our beloved Theosophical views. And all this, being interrupted every three minutes or so by some weary apparition from some workroom in the "World" with some such question: "Mr. Willson, how am I to find out the present whereabouts of this or that Russian man-of-war? Mr. Willson, what is the melting point of iron? Mr. Willson, when was 'H.M.S. Pinafore' ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson

... by a heavenly messenger. Hoping that 'the questionable shape' would not let him 'burst in ignorance,' but tell him why 'we fools of Nature so horridly shake our disposition with thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls,' he follows the spectral apparition. Good Horatio does his best to restrain his friend, who has waxed 'desperate with imagination,' from approaching the 'removed ground,' that might deprive him of the 'sovereignity of reason,' and whither ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... have seen several cases where the tree appeared announcing a death which was still far away; but in none of these was the person in a state of sin. No; the apparition was in these cases only a special grace; in place of deferring the tidings of that soul's redemption till the day of death, the apparition brought them long before, and with them peace—peace that might no more be disturbed—the ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... lang," he began wearily as soon as he realized her apparition. Baubie did not wait for him to finish: with a peremptory nod she signified her will, and he turned round and followed her a little way down Hanover street. Then Baubie selected a flight of steps leading to a basement store, and throwing him a look of command flitted down and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... and can understand what words are said by the shape of the mouth in uttering them. But the effect was to make the Senator buck like a man who was making grimaces, to wager, like those in Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame." As such the apparition was so over-powering that neither Buttons nor Dick dared to look up for some time. What made it worse, each was conscious that the other was laughing, so that self-control was all the more difficult. Worse still, each knew that this figure in the ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... round, perceived that abominable young Stanhope had pursued him. The dean stared at him, as though he was some unearthly apparition; so also did two or three prebendaries and minor canons. The ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... hitherto free from their ravages, denotes approaching mortality among its inhabitants. A mouse running over a person is considered to be an infallible sign of death, as is also the squeaking of one behind the bed of an invalid, or the appearance or apparition of a white mouse running across the room. To meet with a shrew-mouse, in going a journey, is reckoned ominous of evil. The country people have an idea that the harvest-mouse is unable to cross a path which has been trod by man. Whenever they ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various

... whole party. The greater number were already in the saddle. While Arthur and the two others had their feet in the stirrup, preparing to mount, the whole party were startled and amazed by the very novel and unlooked for apparition of a female figure, flying towards them, evidently in great terror and alarm. On reaching Carlton, who was the nearest to her, she bent forward with supplicating looks and clasped hands, passionately exclaiming, "Oh! for pity sake, ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest

... absurd! Then we were in the garden, and she was laughing at me. How like a dream it all is! It seemed as if she were always laughing, and that the birds might well stop singing to listen. Now she is crying here in my room. I half believe it's an apparition, and that if I speak it will vanish. Perhaps it is a warning that she's in trouble somewhere, and that I ought to go to her help. How lovely she looks, with her hands lying in her lap, forgetful of ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... choked voice, like that of a person in terror. An instant later she gave vent to a shrill scream, sprang into a sitting posture in her bed, and remained motionless, with starting eyes, and her hands pressed to her temples, as in the presence of a supernatural apparition. ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis

... seen the ghost to anybody, for fear of frightening them—some people are so nervous about ghosts,—but determines to wait for the next night, and see if the apparition appears again. ...
— Told After Supper • Jerome K. Jerome

... Bank crisis, came news of the failure of an American, Colonel Tate, with some 1,400 French gaol-birds, to make a raid at Fishguard in Pembrokeshire. A later legend sought to embellish this very tame affair by ascribing his failure to the apparition on the hills of Welsh women in high hats and scarlet cloaks, whom the invaders took for regulars. Unfortunately for lovers of the picturesque, the apparition occurs only in much later accounts.[453] Far more important ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... helping to shape modern journalism and modern every-day English style was large; but the achievement which has given him world-wide fame came late in life. In 1706 he had written a masterly short story, 'The Apparition of Mrs. Veal.' Its real purpose, characteristically enough, was the concealed one of promoting the sale of an unsuccessful religious book, but its literary importance lies first in the extraordinarily convincing mass of minute details which it casts about an incredible incident and second ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... to obtain possession of Kansas, and the exposure thereby of its marked inferiority as a colonizer in competition with modern industrialism; fifth, by the growing influence of the abolition movement, and, sixth, by those nameless terrors of slave insurrections, which were evoked by the apparition of John Brown at Harper's Ferry. This acute situation was finally rendered intolerable to the slave power upon the election of Abraham Lincoln on a sectional platform, pledged to a policy of uncompromising resistance to the farther extension of slavery ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke

... these, which Vanderlyn had never noticed before, was now suddenly flung open, and, outlined against a narrow winding staircase, stood a figure which appeared at once grotesque and menacing to the man and woman who stood staring at the unexpected apparition. It was Tom Pargeter, clad in a bright yellow dressing-gown, and holding a fork in his ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... or other, before the coming down of the agent, had found its way to the same provincial bank, and also being pronounced a forgery, it had speedily been traced to the person to whom I had paid it. It was owing to the apparition of this second note that the agent had determined, without further inquiry, to cause me to be summoned before the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... the Armentieres road. That mile is without any doubt the most excruciatingly painful pave in the world. We crossed the railway and raced south. The roads were good and there was little traffic, but the sudden apparition of a motor-lorry round a sharp corner sent that other despatch rider into the ditch. Estaires, as always, produced much grease. It began to rain, but we held on by La Gorgue and Lestrem, halting only once for the ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson

... She turns the key in the lock, with many efforts, but it is done. Fanfar enters, and in the pale morning light is confronted by this horrible apparition. He contemplates her with horror ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... "Gentlemen" having again predominated in reinforcements sent from England, the crops planted and gathered in Smith's absence had been meagre, while rats brought over in one of the vessels had wrought havoc with stored grain. Like an angel of mercy was the apparition of Pocahontas, at the head of a "wild train" of Indians laden with corn and game, approaching the fort. "Ever once in four or five days during the time of two or three years," the young princess, thus attended, visited the fort and succored the needy settlers. Smith declares that "next under God ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... stood by the broken window now, but the man he had expected to find was not there. The apparition had vanished as though fleeing into the ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton

... this apparition of Uncle Sam was received with cries, cheers, and loud clapping of hands. The Professor bowed repeatedly in response to this ovation, and it was a long time before he could make himself heard by the audience. At last he ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... Cerines,—had been in hiding in the palace of the Archbishop. And a tale was brought to Bernardini by a group of agitated peasants from the hamlet of Varoschia, that at early dawn a man fully armed, with the semblance of Rizzo—"not an apparition, Signore sa—but how could one know the face of him with his vizor down?—was riding like the wind to Famagosta, and with him a multitude of horsemen, coming very silently. We saw them from the vineyards high up on the hillside. ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... hour late headed a procession of inquiring friends, three of whom bore glasses of milk and plates of rolls to supply the dire omission. A succession of crescendo taps at her door was at length rewarded by a drowsy-eyed apparition in bath-robe ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... of night Bloomsbury Square is not much frequented; the increasing fog prevented the apparition of a female in classical garments from attracting the notice to which it might otherwise have been exposed, and they reached the shop without ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey

... in the profound silence occasioned by his apparition, "is there a traveller here named Jean Picot, who was in the diligence that was held up yesterday between ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... morbid, unstrung state that the least thing startled her. But imagine if you can her wonder and terror as she saw Dennis Fleet—the dead and buried, as she fully believed—enter, carrying a picture as of old, and looking as of old, save that he was paler and thinner. Was it an apparition? or, as she had read, had she dwelt so long on this trouble that her mind and imagination were becoming disordered and able to place their wild creations before ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... composed of laurel branches, the olive, and the rose, saying something respecting majesty, love, honour, &c., which I could not comprehend; but the sweet and silvery magic of her tones intoxicated my senses and my whole soul: it seemed as if some heavenly apparition were hovering over me. The chorus now began to sing the praises of a good sovereign, and the happiness of his subjects. All this, dear Chamisso, took place in the sun: she was kneeling two steps from me, and I, without a shadow, could not dart through the air, nor fall on my knees before ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.

... for that. The young man, at first almost as much startled as his companion at the uncanny apparition, naturally experienced a revulsion of indignation at such an extraordinary interruption to his tete-a-tete, and stepped up to Mr. Morgan as if about to inflict summary chastisement. But perceiving that he had to do with an elderly ...
— A Summer Evening's Dream - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... thrill ran through the boy's frame. He had heard stories of ghostly visitants to these woods, some of which wore the garb of the monks of the neighbouring priory; but he had never seen any such apparition, and would not have thought of it now had it not been for the peculiar and unnatural quietude of this figure. As it was, he paused, gazing intently at it, wondering if indeed it were a being of flesh ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green

... her wrists; rings with bezels of priceless gems were on her fingers; and she hent in hand a long rod of rattan cane which she thrust into the frying pan, saying, "O fish! O fish! be ye constant to your covenant?" When the cookmaiden saw this apparition she swooned away. The young lady repeated her words a second time and a third time, and at last the fishes raised their heads from the pan, and saying in articulate speech "Yes! Yes!" began with one ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... paternal pride, as is the wont of such. A brown, parchment-hided old man of the geoponic or bucolic species, gray-eyed, we fancy, queued perhaps, with much weather-cunning and plentiful September-gale memories, bidding fair in good time to become the Oldest Inhabitant. After such hasty apparition, he vanishes and is seen no more.... Of "Rev. Homer Wilbur, A. M., Pastor of the First Church in Jaalam," we have small care to speak here. Spare touch in him of his Melesigenes namesake, save, haply, the—blindness! A tolerably caliginose, nephelegeretous elderly gentleman, ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... to halt, and they found themselves surrounded by a dozen troopers. Prescott recognized the faded blue uniform and knew at once that he was in the midst of Yankee horsemen. The girl beside him gave one start at the sudden apparition and ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... An apparition in evening dress with a long frock coat and a purple tie emerged from that grim chorus of spectators. It was Ito, the lawyer. The free and easy American manner was checked by the responsibility of those flapping coat-tails. He ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... prairie land was approaching him. This was obviously impossible in these arid wilds. As the whirl of dust drew nearer to the solitary bluff upon which the two castaways were reposing, the canvas-covered tilts of waggons and the figures of armed horsemen began to show up through the haze, and the apparition revealed itself as being a great caravan upon its journey for the West. But what a caravan! When the head of it had reached the base of the mountains, the rear was not yet visible on the horizon. Right across the enormous plain stretched the straggling array, waggons and carts, men on horseback, ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle

... from view, blotted out by an opaque body round which the moonlight showed like a rim of silver, tracing in outline the slender figure of the Boy. The Tenor had forgotten him for once, and was startled from his reverie by the unexpected apparition; but he did not alter his position or make any sign. The Boy preferred to come and go like that, ungreeted and unquestioned, and the Tenor of course humoured this harmless ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... touching the paper, and which thus become a true olian harp. Sometimes a kite of this kind is sent up at night, bearing a small lighted lantern of talc; and the sleepers awakened, called to their balconies by the unearthly music, gaze after the familiar apparition not ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers

... that in mountain districts, during unsettled weather, so frequently startle the night traveller, and that some peculiarity of form in the meteor had been exaggerated by the obscuring influence of the frost-rime and the briefness of the survey; but the apparition had filled his whole mind, as one of strange and frightful portent from the spiritual world. And often since that night has it returned to us in recollection, as a vision in singular keeping with the wild valley which it traversed, and the credulous ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... Roland felt, not his heart failing him, but the sweat pouring from his forehead. Making an effort over himself, he regained his voice and cried, menacingly: "For a last time, apparition or reality, I warn you that, if you do ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... suddenly, and composedly—a chubby female child, who could not possibly have been more than three years old. She had no hat or cap on her head. A dirty pinafore covered her from her chin to her feet. This amazing apparition advanced into the middle of the room, holding hugged under one arm a ragged and disreputable-looking doll; stared hard, first at Oscar, then at me; advanced to my knees; laid the disreputable doll on my lap; and, pointing to a vacant chair at my side, ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... aunts rose ceremoniously. Either their politeness sprang from their natural habit of good-breeding, or it was wrung from them by extreme surprise. The apparition before them—tall, graceful, and dignified—could by no means be mistaken for any thing but a lady—such a lady as Avonsbridge, with all its aristocracy of birth and condition, rarely produced. She would have been the same even ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... shapely head. No one would have looked twice at the plain little lawn, but it proved superior to some more pretentious gowns in that it set off the charms of the wearer, instead of distracting attention from them. The unlooked-for apparition brought Thad West to his feet, and so Youth and Beauty met as if ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... their own knowledge, to others living, as Augustine says in the same book. And so it may be said of Samuel that he appeared through Divine revelation; according to Ecclus. 46:23, "he slept, and told the king the end of his life." Or, again, this apparition was procured by the demons; unless, indeed, the authority of Ecclesiasticus be set aside through not being received by ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... Legazpi breaking the first ground, and "dedicating it to the most blessed name of Jesus." [60] The sites for the Spanish quarters and the church were chosen, and the town was called San Miguel, because founded on the day of this saint's apparition. That night the natives returned, setting fire to the remaining houses, so that the whole town was in danger of being burnt, with all the goods brought ashore from the ships. The site of the house wherein had been found the sacred ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair

... the last train—a rare, motionless blue gauze—gone to rest in the chill mid-air, he met a man who suddenly descended upon the track in front of him from higher up the mountain,—a great, lank mountaineer. And when Bonaventure asked the apparition the untiring question to which so many hundreds had answered No, the tall man looked down upon the questioner, a bright smile suddenly lighting up the unlovely ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... of his emotions he felt them mounting, growing more and more irrepressible. He slept in feverish snatches, with gaps in which he stared wide-eyed into the dark, trying to realize his coming joy, visualizing Ludowika, a brilliant apparition of flowing silk, on the night. He thought of the store house at the Furnace, of the rain beating on the roof, and Ludowika ... God, if that old man would only return, go, leave them! The clouds vanished and left the nights emerald clear, the constellations glittered in frosty immensities ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... a sharp spot of dazzling light sprang into being. It was an electric arc light! Somehow this apparition struck through the horror that saturated him, and he sighed as if his mind had ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... order!' 'Order, my Lords?' burst out Chatham, 'Order? I have not been disorderly, but I will be disorderly. I repeat again, I hope that his Majesty may be awakened from his slumbers, but that he may be awakened by such an awful apparition as that which drew King Priam's curtains in the dead of the night and told him of the conflagration of his empire.' Holland regretted much that he had never heard Lord North, whom he fancied he should have liked as much as any of his great opponents; his temper, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... had crept over to where Tyope was lying, and had reported to the commander the strange apparition. Tyope turned over so as to face ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... magpies, did not see that it was already occupied. When he was not more than ten feet away, I snatched off my sun hat and waved it before him, not wishing to make a noise. He stopped instantly, stared wildly for a moment, as if he had never seen such an apparition, then wheeled with a snort, flung out his heels in disrespect, and galloped off ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller

... again on the road to St. Affrique before the heat of the day had passed. Another toilsome trudge, during which I met an English threshing-machine being dragged along by bullocks, and the familiar words upon it made me feel for awhile quite at home. The apparition, however, gave me a shock, for the antique flail is still the instrument commonly used for threshing in the ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... passenger followed him instanter, Jasper, who had recovered from his first astonishment at the apparition, being not far from their heels; but when the two gained the deck, the confusion that was reigning there, and the perilous position of the ship, made them forget for the while the object that had ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... does rise, As to the miraculous operation of Posthumous Rumor and Wonder; and Whether there was any "miracle of heroism," or other miracle at all, and not rather a poor nocturnal accident,—poor sentry in the edge of the wood, shrieking out, on apparition of the stealthy English, "Ho, Auvergne, help!" probably firing withal; and getting killed in consequence? NON NOSTRUM EST.] It is certain, Auvergne gave fire; awoke Castries bodily; and saved him from what was otherwise inevitable. Surprise now there was none farther; but a complex Fight, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... Phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely Apparition sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair; Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful Dawn; A dancing Shape, an Image gay, To haunt, to ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... corridor which opened into the wide entrance-hall. Groups of girls were standing about. They stared as the wild-looking apparition rushed past them: Prissie was blind to their puzzled and curious glances. She wanted to see Miss Heath. She had a queer kind of instinct, rather than any distinct impression, that in Miss Heath's presence she would be protected, that Miss Heath would know ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... court. It was likewise affirmed that a familiar spirit or demon abode behind the blackness of the picture, and had shown himself at seasons of public calamity to more than one of the royal governors. Shirley, for instance, had beheld this ominous apparition on the eve of General Abercrombie's shameful and bloody defeat under the walls of Ticonderoga. Many of the servants of the province-house had caught glimpses of a visage frowning down upon them at morning or evening twilight, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of apparition, of which I have met with two instances, one among pure Negroes (Okyon); the other among pure Bantu (Kangwe). I will give the Bantu version of the affair, because at Okyon the incident had happened a good time before the details were told me, and in ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... fine, found Elizabeth-Jane again in the churchyard, but while looking for the lady she was startled by the apparition of Farfrae, who passed outside the gate. He glanced up for a moment from a pocket-book in which he appeared to be making figures as he went; whether or not he saw her he took no ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... poor kindred pictured him to themselves seated in high places, clothed in purple and fine linen, and hand and glove with the givers of gifts and dispensers of patronage. Accordingly, he was one day surprised at the sudden apparition, in his miserable lodging, of his younger brother Charles, a raw youth of twenty-one, endowed with a double share of the family heedlessness, and who expected to be forthwith helped into some snug by-path to fortune by one or other of Oliver's great ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... The sudden apparition of his youngest sister considerably startled him, and he sat up in his ragged night-shirt and stared at her where she stood in ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... unbroken. The men fell back with white, scared faces to let her pass. McGaw cowered in his chair. Dempsey's eyes glistened, a half-sigh of relief escaping him. Crimmins had not moved; the apparition stunned him. ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith

... my naked eye, and to appear twinkling like the ordinary visible Stars; nay, in examining some very notable parts of the Heaven, with a three foot Tube, me thought I now and then, in several parts of the constellation, could perceive little twinklings of Starrs, making a very short kind of apparition, and presently vanishing, but noting diligently the places where they thus seem'd to play at boe-peep, I made use of a very good twelve foot Tube, and with that it was not uneasie to see those, and several other degrees of smaller Starrs, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... citing the pale hue of the apparition as against the fact that all our island pigs ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... will," said Ezekiel. He walked towards the cactus; there was nothing to be seen but its thorny spikes. He was confronted, however, by the sudden apparition of Joan from behind the manzanita at its side. She looked up and glanced from Ezekiel to Dona Rosita ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte

... the fire dressed to go out, waiting for Fritzing, and she stared at this apparition in great and unconcealed surprise. What business, said Priscilla's look more plainly than any words, what business had people to walk into other people's cottages in such a manner? She stood quite ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim

... came upon a sight I would gladly have spared her—the spectacle of some wrinkled hags strangling a dog by the light of a fire. The girl at my side stifled a cry at the apparition. ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... curtains move and then separate. A pale face appeared for a moment between the blue folds, like an angel who peeps through the sky to gaze upon the earth. Gerfaut raised himself on his stirrups so as to drink in this apparition as long as possible, but he dared not make one gesture of adieu. As he was still endeavoring to obtain one more glance, he saw that the Baron ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... together in a wild hurly- burly. Sergius Thord suddenly left his companion's side, and springing on a small handcart that stood empty near the centre of the square, his tall figure rose up all at once like a dark apparition above the heads of the assembled crowd, and his voice, strong, clear, and vibrating with passion, rang out like a deep alarm bell, through all the noise of ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... under folds of old lace. Her fair hair fell upon her velvet collar, and surmounting this strange costume, her pale face against the background of the red-draped salon assumed the disturbing charm of an apparition. ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... any definite object in putting out his head, it was instantaneously productive of a good effect. The lady, as we have alreaded stated, was near the door. She must pass it, to reach the staircase, and she would most undoubtedly have done so by this time, had not the sudden apparition of Mr. Pickwick's nightcap driven her back, into the remotest corner of the apartment, where she stood, staring wildly at Mr. Pickwick, while Mr. Pickwick, in his turn, stared wildly ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald

... upon the rock, a vivid, charming, disquieting apparition, with his wild red hair and fluttering scarlet cloak. The arch-hypocrite wears always a consummately artless air. He comes near winning us by a bright perfect good-humour, which is as of the quality of an intelligence without a heart. The love of mischief for its own sake, which is one of ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... stretched out his arms, hardly knowing whether he were warding off an apparition or reaching out to the woman he was ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... agreed that it was a huge creature, luminous, ghastly, and spectral. I have cross-examined these men, one of them a hard-headed countryman, one a farrier, and one a moorland farmer, who all tell the same story of this dreadful apparition, exactly corresponding to the hell-hound of the legend. I assure you that there is a reign of terror in the district, and that it is a hardy man who will cross ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle

... day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition. I listened, I looked round me, but I could hear nothing, nor see anything; I went up to a rising ground to look farther; I went up the shore and down the shore, but it was all one; I could see no other ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... On Mrs Ford the apparition had a different effect. The rather foolish smile of welcome vanished from her face as if wiped away with a sponge. Her eyes, fixed and frightened like those of a trapped animal, glared at the intruder. She ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... Commandant of Paris, on French Finance, in riot of Rue St. Antoine, on corruption of Guards, at Champ-de-Mars, apparition to, decamps, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... with the English government, he said: "Do not send to me any of your agents, for I trust neither their words nor their treaties. But send to me the missionary of whose character I hear so much from every one; him will I receive and trust." That was the electrifying, vivifying effect of the apparition of such an one as Paul—"a man who had indeed done nothing worthy of bonds or of death"—a man in whose entire disinterestedness and in whose transparent honor the image and superscription of his Master was written so that no one could mistake it. "In every nation, he that feareth ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... was surprised at a visit at such an hour, but it may be said that when he read the inscription—Cavaliere Giuseppe Giacosa—his surprise declined. He had had an unformulated conviction that there was to be a sequel to the apparition at Madame Grandoni's; the Cavaliere had ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... bois brules, who had never seen a picture in their lives except in the cathedral of St. Boniface, at Fort Garry. "Mon Dieu! La Sainte Vierge!" And they fell on their knees before this apparition of the Blessed Virgin, and crossed themselves ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... Wilks stood gazing at this unexpected apparition and trying to collect his scattered senses. Its face was pale and flabby, while its glassy eyes, set in rims of red eyelids, were beginning to express unmistakable signs of suspicion and wrath. The shock was ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... and we justly surrender ourselves to him. The Master of Ravenswood after the insult received from Lady Ashton wanders round the Mermaiden's Well on his way to Wolf's Crag and sees the wraith of Alice. Scott makes horse as well as man afraid so that we may not immediately dismiss the apparition as a mere ordinary product of excitement. Alice at that moment was dying, and had "prayed powerfully that she might see her master's son and renew her warning." Observe the difference between this and any vulgar ghost story. From the very first we ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... in behind him, and sit meekly down by the door; and when she saw how his character was appreciated by the cattle-dogs, one of whom had his head in the lad's lap, while the other was licking his face—when she saw, I say, the little blue and gold apparition, her heart grew pitiful, and, turning ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... Walter grasped at the apparition that was being borne away towards the moon in a cloud of stockings, socks, ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli

... must be a wrongful ghost at all," the apparition continued, "it would be much pleasanter to be the ghost of some man other than John Hinckman. There is in him an irascibility of temper, accompanied by a facility of invective, which is seldom met with. And what would happen ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... Then out walks the Ghostly Nun with her Lamp and dagger: She descends the staircase of the Eastern Tower; and crosses the great Hall! On that night the Porter always leaves the Gates of the Castle open, out of respect to the Apparition: Not that this is thought by any means necessary, since She could easily whip through the Keyhole if She chose it; But merely out of politeness, and to prevent her from making her exit in a way so derogatory to the dignity ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... go at once to the cottage with my burthen. How they will look at me, and wonder what could induce me to bring this away. I can hardly help smiling at the thought of how they will look at the apparition I shall make." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... mad, or worse, because a day in western Thebes meant a picnic: magical apparition at the right moment, in a convenient tomb, of smiling Arabs and Nubian men with baskets of food and ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... had never known the like! And taking Dolores by the hand, she led the wrathful and indignant girl back into her bedroom, untied and tied, unbuttoned and buttoned, brushed and combed in spite of the second bell ringing, the general scamper, and the sudden apparition of Mysie and Val, whom she bade run away and tell her leddyship that 'Miss Mohoone should come as soon as she was sorted, but she ought to come up early to have her hair looked to, for 'twas shame to see how thae fine London servants ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... kindness stole over me. For here indeed was a very different figure from what, in my first shock of surprise, I had expected to see. No common intruder this. In fact, who could have dreamed of coming upon so incongruous an apparition as this in an American woodland? How on earth did this picturesque waif from the Quartier Latin come to stray so far away from the Boul' Miche! For the little boyish figure of a man that sat sketching in my place ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... firmament; that, on the third day, the waters drew away from the dry land, and upon it a varied vegetable life, similar to that which now exists, made its appearance; that the fourth day was signalised by the apparition of the sun, the stars, the moon, and the planets; that, on the fifth day, aquatic animals originated within the waters; that, on the sixth day, the earth gave rise to our four-footed terrestrial creatures, and to all varieties of terrestrial animals except birds, which had appeared ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley

... Erminie Smith supplies information about the crystal. 'Placed in a gourd of water, it could render visible the apparition of a person who has bewitched another.' She gives a case in European times of a medicine-man who found the witch's habitat, but got only an indistinct view of her face. On a second trial he was successful.[2] One may add that treasure-seekers among the Huille-che ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... "plerosque tranare Visurgim conantes, injecta"; this sound occurs four times consecutively, in the last part of the Annals, when Bracciolini is speaking of Curtius Rufus fulfilling by his death the fatal destiny prognosticated to him by a female apparition of supernatural stature: "defunctus fatale praesagium implevit" (An. XI. 21). Sometimes this very abominable monotony is accompanied by most horrible assonances, as in one of his letters (Ep. III. 23) "errorum tuorum certiorem"; —we catch it again, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... content with "existing beautifully," the more so as a second footman, with powdered hair, plush breeches, and unimpeachable calves, rushed forward to our assistance. He was such a magnificent and unexpected apparition that I gazed in ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various

... moderate estimate of flight, and whilst, probably, it is often much less, it is sometimes much more. Their height of flight has been variously estimated at from forty to two hundred feet. "A dropping from the clouds" is a common expression used by observers when describing the apparition ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... procession, which was crossing our road with astonishing rapidity, seemed made up of unassigned and unassorted units, out of which some imaginative god might be about to create a world of giants, ready supplied with some of the appliances of a high civilization. Yet the whole apparition had so shadowy and spectral a look that the terror it inspired was itself vague and indefinite, like the terror of a dream. It affected our horses as well as ourselves; they extended their necks and threw forward their ears. For some moments we sat in our saddles surveying the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... grew impatient. He was occasionally betrayed into a deceitful hope that the end of his journey was near, by the apparition of a twinkling light or two; but, as he came up, he was disappointed to find that the gleams proceeded from some of those farm-houses which occasionally ornamented the surface of the extensive bog. At length, to complete his perplexity, he arrived at a place where the road divided ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... Phrygian youth, beloved by Cybele, who turned him into a pine, after she had, by her apparition at his marriage to forbid the banns, driven ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... caused the public notary to read the royal order in presence of the astonished alcaldes, regidors, and alguazils; but it is difficult to conceive the consternation that must have been struck into so remote a little community, by this sudden apparition of an entire stranger among them, bearing a command that they should put their persons and ships at his disposal, and sail with him away into the unknown ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... turned pale at such an apparition in so lonely a place, but Flower had seen bushmen in her day, and did not perceive anything barbarous or ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade

... his head he wore one of the long many-coloured woollen caps usually worn in this country, with two tassels depending from it, which nearly reached his knees. I had full time to examine the appearance and costume of this strange apparition as he stood before me, bowing profoundly, and looking as if fright and wonder had deprived him of speech. As soon as I had recovered from my first amazement, I replied to every low bow, by as low a courtesy, and waited till it should please ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... almost paralyzed with wonder and awe before this dread apparition of another age. My uncle, who on almost every occasion was a great talker, remained for a time completely dumfounded. He was too full of emotion for speech to be possible. After a while, however, we raised up the body to which the skull belonged. We stood it on end. ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... earlier in the term until sternly repressed by Miss Beasley, suddenly revived. Daphne remembered the magazine article she had read entitled "The Borderland of the Spirit World," and cold thrills passed down her spine. Veronica ventured the suggestion that the apparition might be an astral body or an ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... his brow darkened, as he caught at a glance the contents of the proclamations contained in Petion's packet. A glance was enough. Before the eyes of the company had returned from the window, whither they had followed the apparition of Aimee, he had folded up the papers. His secretary's hand was ready to receive them: but Toussaint put them into ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... remain there after that, and spoil the effect? No, indeed! I took my charming little Capri maiden—my capricious little Capri maiden, I should say—on my arm; took one quick turn round the room; a curtsey on either side, and, as they say in novels, the beautiful apparition disappeared. An exit ought always to be effective, Mrs. Linde; but that is what I cannot make Nora understand. Pooh! this room is hot. (Throws his domino on a chair, and opens the door of his room.) Hullo! it's all dark in here. Oh, of course—excuse me—. (He ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen

... describe the apparition of bygone persons, and lo! when the figure vanishes, a letter is left behind! Some such experience seemed to be mine when, on my return, I found a packet of letters on the hall table—letters not addressed to me, but to some unknown Miss Belsham, and signed and sealed by Mrs. Barbauld's hand. They ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)

... aloud again with hate, he called down curses upon the head of the growing one-eyed apparition. And the water broke into his mouth and stopped him. It called him to his senses for a moment. His present peril overcame the hideous recollection of the past. That water was rising still. Great God! At last he prayed. Lips that had only cursed shaped themselves ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... largely tinged with the supernatural. One in particular who had been wrecked there, and had taken refuge for the night in a hut built by the British Government for wrecked sailors, told some wild story about the apparition of a negro who waked him up at dead of night and nearly killed ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... the savages with the sudden apparition of me and my horse, that I had struck one fellow to the ground before he had time to defend himself. Ned took aim at a third, and wounded him; but the savages, rendered more furious, still came on with menacing gestures. Manco had during the interval reloaded his rifle, ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston

... the locked gate—with perhaps the apparition following him? or forward past IT to the open door? Which was it to be? In these moments there can be no reason to guide the course; but there is instinct; and instinct took that ill-fated child to ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood



Words linked to "Apparition" :   disembodied spirit, spirit, wraith, specter, flying saucer, spook, unidentified flying object, phantom, illusion, phantasm, UFO, shade, ghost



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