SPIRIT-LED QUEST FOR A WILL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1037, 10 December 1912, Page 4

SPIRIT-LED QUEST FOR A WILL.

CLUE AT A SEANCE

A romance which would provide any novelist with a plot is revealed in a strange spiritualistic quest for a long-lost will now being undertaken most hopefully by a London lady in a remote Lancashire village. At the urgent request, so she tells her friends, of a remorseful “spirit” which cannot rest, Mrs J. Anderson, of Lyumoutb, Whitehall Gardens, Guuuersbury, has personally supervised a search in the village of Bradley Fold, three miles south-east of Bolton, which if successful may prove her claim to estates, now in Chancery, worth many thousands of pounds. The story of this search is given as follows:

In the troubled days of the Cavalier and Roundhead a certain John Bradley in his old age hid his will, which disposed of much valuable property and estates on the Lancashire moors in the district to which his homestead has given the name of Bradley Fold. Old John Bradley was a stern, uncompromising Puritan, like Cromwell. He rarely conversed with anyone—and in his old age seldom spoke even to his wife. When he drew up bis will disposing of his property he hid it, and local legend has it that he revealed the secret of its hiding place to one person only—his wife. This he did with the stipulation that she was not to tell anyone—not even the members of his family —where it was hidden until he was dead.

He died, and then his widow, with something of her late husband’s sterness of will, refused to tell where it was buried, and after many family squabbles his descendants scattered, all their searches for the will having been fruitless. The widow promised that when she was dying she would reveal the secret —but not before. Then suddenly she was stricken with paralysis, and thus the only one who held the secret was dumb.

The villagers of Bradley Fold, among whom dim echoes of the story had passed down from grandfather to grandson, had almost forgotten the mystery of “old John Bradley’s will” when recently it was revived in dramatic fashion by the appearance of Mrs Anderson from lyoudou.

Mrs Anderson, who claims to have papers proving her to be a lineal descendant of John Bradley, had been sent on her quest by a strange series of events.

She in not a spiritualist, but attended a seance out of curiosity. While there, she received a message through a “medium” that a certain spirit desired to communicate with her, as it could gain no rest until a great wrong had been redressed. At first she was not convinced, but at a later meeting the “medium” announced to her the very same message, and gave a description of the heighbourhood of Bradley Fold and certain landmarks to help her in the search.

When Mrs Anderson’s revival of the search was made known, many of the oldest inhabitants of the village volunteered informa’tiou, and adventurous minds have been conducting excavations around “The Homestead,” where John Bradley lived.

Mrs Anderson is now back at her home, but she declined to tell what progress, if any, she bad made in her search.

“It is a remarkable ‘spirit’ message,” said a friend of the family. “AH we can say at present is that Mrs Anderson has not given up hope of finding the longlost will.”