ULSTER GHOST STORIES. MRS LOSLIN'S GHOST.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2149, 17 April 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

ULSTER GHOST STORIES. MRS LOSLIN'S GHOST.

Not many years after the data of the fore* going circumstance there was another cm* of alleged spiritual manifestation in the neighbourhood of Belfast, and it also ii a curious one. Baxter again it our printed authority in his work above referred to. Living in England, Baxter could, of course, have no personal knowledge of the facts of the case ; but these facts were communicated to him by two highly respectable local correspondents. One ot these correspondents was the well-known Mr Robert Emlyn (afterwards of Dublin, who was then living at Belfast as chaplain to the Countess of Doneg.Ul. Baxter's other informant respecting this case was Mr Claudius Gilbert, \icar of Jself«tst. From tho statements made to Baxter by these two gentlemen, it appears about the year 108> Sirs Charles Loslm, the wife of a farmer, who lived in the parish of Drumbeg, received some violence at tbe hands of officers of Archdeacon Mathews when serving a warrant upon her husband for tithes, in consequence of which violence ■he died. Shortly after her death she appeared several times to a man called Thomas Donelson, who had witnessed the treatment she had received, and urged him to prosecute a man named Robert Eccleson, by whom the outrage upon her had been committed. This Donelson was unwilling to- do, but the apparition was most urgent in her entreaties, and visited Donelson's house several times to induce him to comply with her reijuest. On one Sunday she went thrre several times, and on each occasion, as stated by Mr Emlyn, " she fetched Donelson with a strange force out of his house into the yard and field adjacent. Before her coming," continues Mr Emlyn, "several neighbours were called, to whom Donelhon gave notice that she was again coming, and beckoning him to come out, upon which the neighbours went to shut the door, but Donleson forbade it, saying that she looked at him with a terrible aspect when they offered to do so. His friends, however, laid hold on him, and embraced him that he might not again go out. Notwithstanding which (a plain evidence, say« Mr Emlyn, of some invisible power) he was drawn out of their hands in a surprising manner, und carried out into the field and yard as before, she charging him to prosecute justice, which voice, as well as Donele3on'« reply, the people heard, though they saw no shape. Upon which the said Donelson deposed what he knew of the violence perpetrated upon Mrs Loslin, before Mr Rendle Brice, a neighbouring justice, and confirmed all at the aisizes, at Down in the year 1685, where the several witnesse* were •worn and heard, and their examinations were entered in the record of the Avsizes, to the amazement and xatisfaction of the county, and of the judge whom I have heard speak of it at the time with so much wonder, insomuch that the wild Eccleson hardly escaped with hi* life, but wa§ burned in his hand. All this (concludes Emlyn) I heard spoken of myself with universal amazement at the tare when trainacted, living in Belfast at that time, and I should not have been beholden to any to have believed tins relation, that had been there, and at the trial at Down." So far Mr Emlyn. To this Mr Gilbert, the vicar of Belfast, writing to Baxter about thisca.se, adds— "The matter was notoriously known and believed through the whole country. Nor was there any cause of suspecting any fraud therein, they being all pious, honest neighbours, well known to me and my parishioners in the parish of Drumbeg, in the County of Down, and province of Ulster." When we consider the character and local knowledge of the men who thus testify to the truth of the facts alleged in this case, especially when we remember the character of Mr Emlyn, whose subsequent history proved him to be the reverse of superstitious, it is difficult to avoid coming to the conclusion that a better authenticated ghost story could hardly be conceived of than the one which we have now told, and of which Mrs Jamei Loilin, of Drumbeg, was the heroine. — Banbridge Almannc. {Concluded )