Ursula Hibbeln: a Freemason relative "in the deepest pool of flames"; souls burn in the members that sinned; a suicide with fire coming from his mouth; a loveless wife detained a year; her husband's single sight of a soul; many until the end of the world; her director doubted her for ten years

Read it in the books

Page numbers refer to the edition named in the source list.

The Church’s teaching on this

• Question: Someone I love died by suicide. Is there hope, and can I pray for them?
• Chapter: Levels and Degrees
• Chapter: The Witnesses’ Map of Purgatory
• Question: Are there levels or regions in Purgatory?
• Question: Do the souls in Purgatory suffer?
• Chapter: The Fathers and Tradition
• Chapter: The Saints and Mystics
• Question: Do the souls appear to the living? What about “ghosts”?

What the witnesses report on this

• Theme B: Levels and degreesRegions, stages and degrees of Purgatory — and why no two witnesses layer it alike.
• Theme D: How the souls appear and communicateIn flames, as light, as voices, burn marks — and what they ask for.
• Theme G: Durations and intensityFrom a quarter of an hour to “until Judgment Day” — and why no figure is a fact.
• Theme J: Discernment — soul, demon, or imaginationHow witnesses and clergy tested apparitions, and what the Church leaves free.

About the witness

Von der Leyen, Hibbeln and “Ruth”20th century · T4 (unapproved) — visions and the collections that retell them