A farmer, returning homeward from Southam market in Warwickshire, disappeared by the way. Next day a man presented himself at the farmhouse, and asked of the wife if her husband had come back.
"No," she replied; "and I am under the utmost anxiety and terror."
"Your terror," said he, "cannot surpass mine; for last night as I lay in bed, quite awake, the apparition of your poor husband appeared to me. He showed me several ghastly stabs in his body, which is now lying in a marl-pit."
The pit was searched, the corpse was found, and the stabs, in number and position, answered in every way to the description given by the ghost-seer, to whom the spectre had named a certain man as the culprit; and this person was committed to prison and brought to trial at Warwick for the crime, before a jury and the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Robert (afterwards Lord) Raymond, who was succeeded in 1733 by Sir Philip Yorke. The jury would speedily have brought in a verdict of guilty; but he checked them by saying,
"Gentlemen, you lay more stress on the allegations of this apparition than they will bear. I cannot give credit to these kind of stories. We are now in a court of law, and must determine according to it; and I know not of any law which will admit of the testimony of an apparition; nor yet if it did, doth the ghost appear to give evidence. Crier," he added, "call the ghost."
The farmer's spirit being thrice summoned in vain, Sir Robert again addressed the jury on the hitherto unblemished character of the man accused, and stoutly asserted a belief in his perfect innocence; adding, "I do strongly suspect that the gentleman who saw the apparition was himself the murderer, and knew all about the stabs and the marl-pit without any supernatural assistance; hence I deem myself justified in committing him to close custody till further inquiries are made."
The result of these was, that on searching his house sufficient proofs of his guilt were found; he confessed his crime, and was executed at the next assize.
In the list of the officers of the 33rd Regiment, when serving under Lord Cornwallis in America, and then called the 1st West York, will be found the names of Captain (afterwards Sir John Coape) Sherbrooke and Lieutenant George Wynward. The former had recently joined the 33rd from the 4th, or King's Own Regiment. These young men, being similar in tastes and very attached friends, spent much of their time in each other's society, and when off duty were seldom apart. One evening Sherbrooke was in Wynward's quarters. The room in which they were seated had two doors, one that led into the common passage of the officers' barrack, the other into Wynward's bedroom, from which there was no other mode of egress.
Both officers were engaged in study, till Sherbrooke, on raising his eyes from a book, suddenly saw a young man about twenty years of age open the entrance door and advance into the room. The lad looked pale, ghastly, and thin, as if in the last stage of a mortal malady. Startled and alarmed, Captain Sherbrooke called Wynward's attention to their noiseless visitor; and the moment the lieutenant saw him he became ashy white and incapable of speech, and, ere he could recover, the figure passed them both and entered the bedroom.
"Good God—my poor brother!" exclaimed Wynward.