A GHOST AT NOONDAY.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3242, 21 November 1881, Page 4

A GHOST AT NOONDAY.

(From the Pall Mall Gazette.)

We have received the following extraordinary narrative from a correspondent for ■whose good faith and professional acuteness of observation we can vouch. He substantiates his story with full details of dates, names, and places, which, however, for the eate of the survivors, he does not wish to be published. Without any further preface, we lay his letter before our readers : — As my wife and I were sitting at breakfast with a guest whom I will call Mr A.then on a visit for the first time to our house and neighbourhood—our maid-servant paseed out of the room on her way to the kitchen. As she closed the door Mr A startled me by saying, ' I saw a spirit of a. man following that woman, who, as he passed, said distinctly in my hearing, " God judgeth not as man judgeth. I was innocent of the murder for which I have been hanged. I was there, but I did not strike the b10w. , " "What is it like?" I asked. He replied by describing a young Irishman ■whom I recognized at once as the husband of my domestic, who a year or two before had been executed on the charge of murder. Mr A., a complete stranger to the locality, had only met me for the first time two days before, and he was totally ignorant of the crime in which my servant was so deeply interested. For obviou3 reasons the subject was 1 never alluded to in our household, where , the widow was regarded with feelinga of sympathy, which led ns to avoid as muefr as possible all reference to her husbands fate , . I had previously good reason to doubt whether the evidence against him justified his execution. He had died protesting his innocence. Hie wife and friends were fitml'y cOTrvinced that although he had been in the'fight, it was not by his hand the fatal Wow had'beeh dealt, In _ addition to this, I had good I'eason to believe that the real murderer , -wtts' still at large. You can easily imagine my alst'onishment when Mr A. thus" suddenly tentured tipon forbidden ground, and abruptly' declared that the spirit of a man who ha<3 suffered the capital penalty, and whose pSrtfofial appearance exactly coincided Wlto that of the unfortunate Irishman, was" actually following the servant about the house , proclaiming his innocence in accents which, although inaudible to me, my guest declared were perfectly audible to him. I had heard j that Mr A. had been a ' seer,' but I was not a little startled at this striking illustration of his peculiar faculty. I remarked that it was very strange, and informed him that the woman whom he had just seen for the first time with her ghostly companion was really the widow of an executed felon. Some time afterwards he exclaimed: "There he is again, repeating the same words ! Intensely interested by this sudden and apparently supernatural confirmation of my suspicions, I determined to put the seership of my guest to what I regarded as a crucial test. I told Mr A. that shortly afterwards I was going into , the town, and as I should be passing the spot' where the murder was committed perhaps his ghostly visitant might indicate the place where the dead man lay. S6md time afterwards we started for the fowh. When we left the house Mr A. remarked, c There he is following us,' alluding to the ' spirit.' WMdh; we had proceeded part of the way along the' road,, which was quite imknown to my friend,,, I made a detour to make a business edit alid ! went along another street, Mr A. following' me. Just as, without a word on my part, wtfwett) turning out of the main road, Mr A. said, ' The spirit is standing at the corner. He* says we are not going the right way towards the place where the murder was committed, and which he has promised to points out to me.' I replied, ' Oh, we shall come out in the mam road again by-and-by before we reach the spot.' We proceeded on about a quarter of a mile, and having done my business and struck the main road again— which differed, I may remark, from none of the other roads we had traversed—Mr A. soon after declared,' There is that man just on there, waiting for us.' As we continued our walk, I purposely refrained from uttering a word, or even from thinking, as far as I could, about the murder, so as to prevent any possibility of my companion obtaining any clue. As we were jmssing through one of the lowest parts of the town Mr. A. suddenly exclaimed : —' He tells me that it was here the murder was committed. It was just there (pointing to the place in the road where the murdered man fell). I see the hubbub and confusion rise up before me|as a picture, with the people round. He, however again tells me that he did not strike the fatal blow. He does not excuse himself from being morally guilty as being mixed up with those who accomplished the death of the rnan,but strongly maintains that he was not the murderer. , I will only add in relation to the last incident that Mr. A. described the exact spot where the murder was committed, and the circumstances in connection therewith. How can you account for that ? Mr. A. had never been in town before • he had never lived within a couple of hundred miles of it ; he did not know till within a day or two before he arrived that he would ever visit it; he could not by any possibility have known that the poor women in my employ was the widow of a man who was hanged. He had no conceivable interest in deceiving me, nor was he concerned to prosecute the matter any further. I have in vain attempted to account for his story, nor can I on any of the popular hypotheses explain to ray own satisfaction how he saw that ghost at noonday. That he did see it he assured me, much to my surprise, when no one expected any such revelation ; and whatever he saw, it ceitainly led him to the exact place where tho murder was committed.