Why it matters

Before there were ghost stories, there were ghost manuals. Noël Taillepied, a Capuchin friar of Pontoise, set out to answer a question his parishioners actually asked: when something walks at night, is it a soul from Purgatory, a demon in disguise, or a trick of melancholy? His Traité, first published in 1588, sorts apparitions into kinds. It catalogues the strange signs said to come before the deaths of great men, such as tolling bells, lights and voices, and it tells the faithful how to respond. It stands with Le Loyer’s Discours des spectres as one of the founding French texts on ghosts. Montague Summers thought enough of it to translate it into English in 1933 as A Treatise of Ghosts. This copy adds a bonus: it’s bound with François Poupart’s later dissertation on the apparition at Saint-Maur, a famous French haunting. A ghost book bound with a ghost case.

Why we're looking

This is the only original copy we could find on the market. Every other listing is a modern print-on-demand reprint at about $30. The nearest comparison is a 1606 Rouen edition in vellum, recently offered by Schilb Antiquarian at $1,500 and no longer listed. At about $2,100, this is a premium for a later Paris edition, though the bound-in Poupart tract helps justify it. Scarcity is doing most of the work in that price.

Watch out for

The condition grades don’t match. The listing’s grade says “fair to good,” but the description says “very good.” Ask for photos of the binding joints and the title page. The bound-in tract is from a later date. Poupart’s dissertation on Saint-Maur dates from the early 18th century, so the two works were bound together later. Confirm the binding is contemporary with the second tract, not the first. The price may differ in dollars. Pazzo is in Boston, so check the dollar asking price on AbeBooks.com. The €1,842 figure is a currency conversion on the French site. There’s only one small photo. Ask the seller for more before featuring it.