939. Evidence that the ideas composing the thoughts of sordid misers turn into sordid hallucinations can be seen in their hell, which is deep down under the feet. Out of it wafts a cloud of steam, like the steam from pigs being skinned in a trough. That is where misers' houses are. The people who go there are dark-looking at first, but when they have their hair scraped off, as pigs do, they seem to themselves and to each other to grow lighter in color. ¹ But the process still leaves a mark indicating that this is their nature, no matter where they go.

A dark-looking spirit who had not yet been shunted into his own hell (because he was to stay longer in the world of spirits) was sent down to that locale. He was not very miserly, but even so, while he lived he had harbored a malicious envy of others' wealth. When he arrived, the misers there ran away, saying that since he was dark, he was a robber and so would kill them. Misers flee such people in tremendous fear for their lives. Finally they discovered that he was not that lawless and told him that, if he wanted to turn lighter, all he had to do was to be stripped of his hair, as was happening to the pigs right there in plain view, and then his color would grow lighter. But he did not want this. He was taken up among the spirits.

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814. The Hells (Continued): The Hells of Those Who Spent Their Lives in Hatred, Revenge, and Cruelty

THERE are people who nurse a murderous hatred and therefore meditate revenge, seeking nothing short of their victim's death and not resting until they have achieved it. Spirits like this are kept in a deep, cadaverous hell — one that reeks with a stench like that given off by corpses. Strange to say, the people there enjoy the stench so much that they prefer it to the most pleasant smells; such is their horrendous nature and the crazy thinking it spawns. The odor described actually wafts from that hell. When the place yawns open — as it rarely does, and then just briefly — so foul a smell pours out that spirits cannot stay in the vicinity.

Some demons, or rather avenging furies, were let out of that hell in order for me to discover what they were like. They infected the air with such poisonous and pestilential fumes that the spirits around me could not remain. At the same time they affected my stomach in such a way that I threw up.

[2] They presented themselves in the form of a young child with a tolerably attractive face and a concealed dagger, whom they sent to me with a flask in hand. From this I learned that they had a taste for murder, by either dagger or poison, under the guise of innocence. The bodies of the spirits themselves were naked and quite black. ¹

Soon, though, they were sent back into their cadaverous-smelling hell, and then I was able to watch the path of their descent. They headed to the left, keeping level with my left temple and going quite a distance without moving downward. Later they did descend, traveling first into a fire that appeared, then into a cloud of fiery smoke like that from a furnace, and directly afterward to a point below the furnace and in front, where many dark and gloomy caves led farther down. Along the way, they were constantly devising evil plots and schemes. Their intended victims were primarily the innocent, whom they targeted without cause. While passing through the fire, they wailed loud and long.

When released from their hell, they take with them a kind of ring that allows others to identify where they come from and what they are like. The ring is set with spikes which are made of something like bronze and which they grip tightly and twist with their hands — a sign that they are this type of spirit and that they are under restraint. ²

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