As mentioned, a valuable discussion of Goethe’s fixation on the occult in the Unterhaltungen can be found in Söring, “Die Verwirrung und das Wunderbare.”
39 Support for this claim can be found in Goethe’s Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten, a text that evinces a fascination with rationally inexplicable, occult phenomena. In his correspondence with Schiller leading up to the composition of the novella “Die Sängerin Antonelli” that he included in the Unterhaltungen, Goethe calls the underlying anecdote a “ gespenstermäßen Mystifikationsgeschichte.” See Goethe, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 9, 1514. As mentioned, a valuable discussion of Goethe’s fixation on the occult in the Unterhaltungen can be found in Söring, “Die Verwirrung und das Wunderbare.”