817. A certain spirit from a room in hell that was off to the left side came to me and talked with me. I was allowed to perceive that he was a criminal type.

This is how his misdeeds in the world were exposed: he was sent fairly far down into the underground realm that was in front and a little to the left, and there he began to dig a hole, as people do for burying the dead. This made me suspect that he had committed some fatal deed during bodily life. Next there appeared a bier swathed in black, and soon a man rose off it and approached me. He told me with saintly restraint that he was dead, probably as a result of poisoning by that man. This had been his dying thought, although he did not know whether it was an unfounded suspicion. ¹

When the wicked spirit heard this, he confessed that he had done the deed. Punishment followed his confession. Twice he was rolled into the black grave he had dug and became as black himself in face and body as Egyptian mummies. In this condition, he was lifted up high and carried around in front of spirits and angels, while people shouted, "What a devil!" He also turned cold, so that he belongs among the cold in hell; and he was sent to hell.

Footnotes:

1260. Certain spirits overhead at the time, who are quite up-right, were wanting to pass judgment on him, but were not able because they did not know what he was like.

But it was then disclosed what he was like. He was let down into the lower earth, a little in front of the right foot, quite deeply. There he dug a ditch, like those burying dead people do to throw the dead into. So at once the suspicion arose that he had committed some lethal act in his lifetime.

Then a funeral bier appeared, covered with black cloth. The person placed on it did not show, but shortly afterwards, one arising from the bier came toward me, telling me earnestly that he had died, and judged that he had been killed with poison by that person. He had been with him in the evening and drunk wine, and as soon as he had arrived home, he labored with a deadly illness, and thought he had drunk poison there.

He explained that he had thought this at about the hour of death, yet not knowing whether it was just a suspicion. Speaking quite earnestly, he said that he had been a person of low condition, and that if the other person had done it, then he must have done it so as to try out the poison, with which he perhaps wanted to kill others. So he said nothing bad about him, but was content at being dead, because if he had lived longer, he probably would have committed more sins.