“The room, I must here state, was lighted by a single, though rather powerful, double-wick oil lamp, which I had always deemed sufficient to illuminate the whole apartment, but which now—and I could not help noticing the phenomenon—did not extend its rays beyond the cadaverous face of my intruder, upon which the full force of its light seemed concentrated.
“Commencing in clear and solemn tones, the phantasm stated that it was one of the unhappy prisoners executed at Northampton on the 4th of August, 1764.
“A cold chill ran down my back at this announcement, which was intensified when I recognised for the first time that the figure confronting me bore a startling likeness to one of the prisoners it had been my unhappy lot to address prior to his execution: there was the same hair, brows and beard—black and stubby; the protruding forehead and retreating chin that had so repelled me, the malshaped head and the broken, unsavoury-looking teeth; it was indeed the ghost of one of those diabolical miscreants that stood before me, and, despite the fact that I was brought up in the strict Protestant faith, I inadvertently crossed myself.
“The spectre went on without apparently heeding my action.
“‘It had been,’ so it proclaimed, ‘the principal and ringleader of the gang, most of whom it had corrupted, debauched and seduced to that deplorable method of life, and it was particularly appointed by Providence to undeceive the world and remove those doubts which the solemn protestations of their innocence to the very hour of death had raised in the minds of all who heard them.’
“At this juncture, excitement overcoming fear and aversion, I hazarded to inquire of the phantasm its name.
“Its reply, delivered in the same slow, measured, almost mechanical tones (as if it were only the mouth-organ of some other and unseen agency) was to the effect that its name was John Croxford; that it had express directions to come to me—directions it could not disobey; it furthermore explained the reason the murderers had so persistently insisted on their innocence, lay in the fact, that, while the blood of their victim was still warm, they entered into a sacramental obligation, which they sealed by dipping their fingers in the blood of the deceased and licking the same, by which they bound themselves under the penalty of eternal damnation never to betray the fact themselves nor to confess, if condemned to die for it on the evidence of others, and that they were further encouraged to such measures, since, as Seamark himself was a confederate in the murder, they concluded the evidence of his wife would not be admitted; that as the child was so young, they presumed no judge or jury would pay the least regard to his depositions; that as Butlin had but lately entered into a confederacy with them, and no robberies could be readily proved against him, they thought it would appear impossible for one of his age to begin a career of wickedness with murder (it being observed in a proverb that no man is abandoned all at once); that if they could invalidate the evidence on behalf of Butlin it must be of equal advantage to them all; that though disappointed of this view in court and condemned to die upon the above evidence, they were still infatuated with the same notion even at the gallows, and expected a reprieve for Butlin when the halter was about his neck, and consequently, if such a reprieve had been granted, as the evidence was as full and decisive against Butlin as against them, the sentence for the murder must have been withdrawn from all, their execution deferred, and perhaps transportation only their final punishment.”
Though listening to every word with abnormal attention, I became at the same time aware of a strange and uncanny feeling that the identity of the phantasm was but partly revealed to me in the corpse-like figure opposite; what its true and entire nature might be I dared not even hazard a conjecture.
In the pause that followed its last speech, more to hear myself speak than anything else (I could not endure the silence of THIS THING), I asked if the evidence of the woman and child was clear, punctual and particular; to which it replied, “It was as circumstantial, distinct and methodical as possible; varying not in the least from truth in any one particular of consequence, unless in the omission of their horrid sacrament which she might possibly neither observe nor know.”