EXTRACT FROM THE REGISTER IN BRISLEY CHURCH, NORFOLK.

“December 12, 1706.—I, Robert Withers, M. A., vicar of Gately, do insert here a story which I had from undoubted hands; for I have all the moral certainty of the truth of it possible:—

“Mr. Grose went to see Mr. Shaw on the 2d of August last. As they sat talking in the evening, says Mr. Shaw: ‘On the 21st of the last month, as I was smoking a pipe, and reading in my study, between eleven and twelve at night, in comes Mr. Naylor (formerly fellow of St. John’s college, but had been dead full four years). When I saw him, I was not much affrighted, and I asked him to sit down, which accordingly he did for about two hours, and we talked together. I asked him how it fared with him. He said, “Very well.”—“Were any of our old acquaintances with him?”—“No!” (at which I was much alarmed), “but Mr. Orchard will be with me soon, and yourself not long after.” As he was going away, I asked him if he would not stay a little longer, but he refused. I asked him if he would call again. “No;” he had but three days’ leave of absence, and he had other business.’

“N. B.—Mr. Orchard died soon after. Mr. Shaw is now dead: he was formerly fellow of St. John’s college—an ingenious, good man. I knew him there; but at his death he had a college-living in Oxfordshire, and here he saw the apparition.”

An extraordinary circumstance occurred some years ago, in which a very pious and very eminent Scotch minister, Ebenezer Brown of Inverkeithing, was concerned. A person of ill character in the neighborhood having died, the family very shortly afterward came to him to complain of some exceedingly unpleasant circumstances connected with the room in which the dissolution had taken place, which rendered it uninhabitable, and requesting his assistance. All that is known by his family of what followed, is that he went and entered the room alone; came out again, in a state of considerable excitement and in a great perspiration; took off his coat and re-entered the room; a great noise and I believe voices were then heard by the family, who remained the whole time at the door; when he came out finally, it was evident that something very extraordinary had taken place; what it was, he said, he could never disclose; but that perhaps after his death some paper might be found upon the subject. None, however, as far as I can learn, has been discovered.

A circumstance of a very singular nature is asserted to have occurred, not very many years back, in regard to a professor in the college of A⁠——, who had seduced a girl and married another woman. The girl became troublesome to him; and being found murdered, after having been last seen in his company, he was suspected of being some way concerned in the crime. But the strange thing is, that, from that period, he retired every evening at a particular hour to a certain room, where he stayed a great part of the night, and where it was declared that her voice was distinctly heard in conversation with him: a strange, wild story, which I give as I have it, without pretending to any explanation of the belief that seems to have prevailed, that he was obliged to keep this fearful tryst.

Visitations of this description—which seem to indicate that the deceased person is still, in some way incomprehensible to us, an inhabitant of the earth—are more perplexing than any of the stories I meet with. In the time of Frederick II. of Prussia, the cook of a catholic priest residing at a village named Quarrey, died, and he took another in her place; but the poor woman had no peace or rest from the interference of her predecessor, insomuch that she resigned her situation, and the minister might almost have done without any servant at all. The fires were lighted, and the rooms swept and arranged, and all the needful services performed, by unseen hands. Numbers of people went to witness the phenomena, till at length the story reached the ears of the king, who sent a captain and a lieutenant of his guard to investigate the affair. As they approached the house, they found themselves preceded by a march, though they could see no musicians; and when they entered the parlor and witnessed what was going on, the captain exclaimed: “If that doesn’t beat the devil!” upon which he received a smart slap on the face, from the invisible hand that was arranging the furniture.

In consequence of this affair, the house was pulled down, by the king’s orders, and another residence built for the minister at some distance from the spot.

Now, to impose on Frederick II. would have been no slight matter, as regarded the probable consequences; and the officers of his guard would certainly not have been disposed to make the experiment; and it is not likely that the king would have ordered the house to be pulled down without being thoroughly satisfied of the truth of the story.

One of the most remarkable stories of this class I know—excepting indeed the famous one of the Grecian bride—is that which is said to have happened at Crossen, in Silesia, in the year 1659, in the reign of the Princess Elizabeth Charlotte. In the spring of that year, an apothecary’s man, called Christopher Monig—a native of Serbest, in Anhalt—died, and was buried with the usual ceremonies of the Lutheran church. But, to the amazement of everybody, a few days afterward, he, at least what seemed to be himself, appeared in the shop, where he would sit himself down, and sometimes walk, and take from the shelves boxes, pots, and glasses, and set them again in other places; sometimes try and examine the goodness of the medicines, weigh them with the scales, pound the drugs with a mighty noise—nay, serve the people that came with bills to the shop, take their money and lay it up in the counter: in a word, do all things that a journeyman in such cases used to do. He looked very ghostly upon his former companions, who were afraid to say anything to him, and his master being sick at that time, he was very troublesome to him. At last he took a cloak that hung in the shop, put it on and walked abroad, but minding nobody in the streets; he entered into some of the citizen’s houses, especially such as he had formerly known, yet spoke to no one but to a maid-servant, whom he met with hard by the church-yard, whom he desired to go home and dig in a lower chamber of her master’s house, where she would find an inestimable treasure. But the girl, amazed at the sight of him, swooned away; whereupon he lifted her up, but left a mark upon her, in so doing, that was long visible. She fell sick in consequence of the fright, and having told what Monig had said to her, they dug up the place indicated, but found nothing but a decayed pot with a hemarites or bloodstone in it. The affair making a great noise, the reigning princess caused the man’s body to be taken up, which being done, it was found in a state of putrefaction, and was reinterred. The apothecary was then recommended to remove everything belonging to Monig—his linen, clothes, books, &c.—after which the apparition left the house and was seen no more.