Was it a ghost? The murders in Bussey's wood

by Henry Johnson Brent

“Johnny was dead, and the man went off after I died. He went down the other way to Boston. He will be found.”

We have nothing more from the spirit of the girl (I speak now without entering into any question of the authenticity of these communications, leaving my reader to dispose of that enigma, as may best suit his temper and convenience), but the father makes his appearance on the scene and endorses his daughter’s testimony; but singularly neither witness offers to give the name of the designated soldier. The spiritualistic theory is that they could not do so, because he was a stranger to both of them, and consequently while they could see his face and clothes, they could not tell his name. The case is similar to our own daily experience in our transient meeting with people on the street,—a passing and silent interview, in which nothing is discovered save the recognition of a person and no more.

The revelation of the father is to the effect that he knows where the man is, and will follow him to the end.

One part of his statement I suppress, because it comes directly within the province of the law officers, and might direct suspicion upon a possibly innocent man.

Three years ago, it is asserted by those who believe in this extraordinary doctrine of the power of the dead to express themselves through the living, this man, Stephen Joyce, declared that by the fifth of the month of July, eighteen hundred and sixty-five, the murderer would be in the hands of justice; and how many months have come and gone since that spirit entered the mystic witness-box, and foretold such sequence to the tragedy, and yet without fulfilment? I am sorry that he was no true prophet,—no wiser in a ghostly form than in the fleshly substance. He is not half so good a ghost as Hamlet’s father was. The Dane went straight to the point, and told the truth and nothing but the truth, while here we have the spirit of the girl upon the stand, and she rambles in her talk without the aid of the great legal screw of cross-questioning, designating nothing that is tangible, indeed giving false clues to the murderer, and screaming, “Mother! Mother!” as if she would pour into the listener’s ear some faint echo of those dread cries that rang amid the gloomy woods when the soul of her was stabbed out of her.

The ghost of the murdered King of Denmark spoke the truth, as other ghosts by judicial testimony have done; but they were the old-fashioned ghosts, standing by themselves without the aid of human machinery, without the table or the easily assimilated trance, responsible for their coming and for what they told or what they desired to be done by their informing. They came and made short work of it, impressing belief by solemn utterances or majestic gestures. In this case again, the man, who should have been interested more than any other man, comes through the arm and fingers of a stranger, a living being, and is assumed to have written out, at that solemn investigation, a deposition,—not made upon the Holy Book, holier than all books, but with lips sanctified by the kiss of death,—and vaguely points to some unfortunate, and declares with all the potency of his supernal condition that ere the fifth of the approaching month the discovery would be made, and the hands of the law laid upon the person of the murderer of his children; and the fifth of that long-passed month lies strewn with the leaves of several autumns, buried far back in the dead annals, and no revelation has confirmed his prophecy. How is this? Or was it, as I have said before, left to these pages to revive that miserable event, and glare it to those eyes that have so often seen the vision of the dead; to awaken in that drowsing conscience the phantoms that he had half lulled to sleep, and force him to some act by which the law may be able to read, without the farther aid of business mediums, the mark of Cain that God has put upon his brow?

Who knows, and who can tell as yet, the meaning of my ghost that came to me upon the hill?

It was not with any sinister design that the doctrine of spiritualism, or its practices, has been introduced into my narrative. It formed no portion of my original intention; but I found it impossible to refrain from giving publicity to documents that had been found of sufficient importance to attract the attention of the authorities. The spiritualist is able to take care of himself and his belief. Such communications might be used to a fearful and fatal purpose. The criminals engaged in the perpetration of a crime could, if such testimony was of any judicial weight, arrange a circle, produce the manifestations, or the similitude of manifestations, and direct attention to certain innocent parties, when suspicion would give time for the real culprits to escape. Every one knows how easy it is to work through the agency of a religious sentiment, and a very large class of people, habituated to the belief in spiritual revelations as inculcated by the spiritualists, receiving impressions in that way, would be hard to believe otherwise than as the spurious spirits asserted. Crime would thus become more dramatic, and the consequences of such interference on the part of a religious organization might lead to the overthrow of all the purposes and powers of civil authority. Happily, I am confident no such construction can be placed upon the operations and revelations of the authorized spiritualistic media. I do not know exactly what view they take of the knowledge presumed to be possessed by the murdered regarding the murderer. To reveal simply the name of the person, taking for granted that the power exists according to the doctrine of spiritualism, would be of no use, unless a train of circumstantial evidence could be intimated, by which the law could develop a legal connection between the accused and the crime. There have been several instances, in this country, in which testimonious ghosts have enacted important parts. Some of these are upon the public record; others in private circulation. There was a case some fifty years ago in Virginia, when, if I recollect correctly, the ghost of a Mr. Clapham met a man upon the path in the mountain, nearly opposite to the famous Point of Rocks, on the Potomac, and told him where his will could be found,—the absence of which had involved his widow in vexatious and tedious litigation. The will was found and the question of right established in her favor; and I myself have partaken of the hospitality of that generous lady in the years gone by, when peace and plenty abounded in those beautiful valleys. As a matter of curiosity, I will give in brief, a singular case that happened in Scotland, and which goes to establish my theory of the injustice that may be perpetrated by the assertions of persons using the simulated spiritualistic agency for the detection of crime. The Scotch rebellion of 1745 compelled a larger amount of vigilance in preventing its recurrence than it possibly had taken to subdue it in the first instance. Troops were scattered among the highlands, for the purpose of arresting all persons using arms, and enforcing the orders of the British authorities against the wearing of the clan tartans. Among these troops was Sergeant Arthur Davies, who is described as a bold and reckless man, careless in exposing himself openly in those wild and hostile glens, and among a people conquered but not won. Davies was in command of a squad of four men, and was stationed at Dubrach, near Braeman, then a desolate and dangerous district.

On the 28th of September, 1749, Davies left his barracks, with his command, to meet the troops posted at Glenshee. The sergeant never returned from that expedition; for, wandering off alone to hunt in his usual careless and defiant mood, he was murdered.

Two men Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bain MacDonald were suspected, but, for five years, owing to the disaffected temper of the people toward the foreign troops, no steps were taken to arrest these suspected men; but at length on the 3d of June, 1754, nearly five years afterwards, Clerk and MacDonald were tried at Edinboro’ for the murder of the sergeant. This singular evidence was adduced upon the trial.