Another statement, regarding another apparition in the same part of the Tower, stated by Mr. Offor to have been produced by some instrument, but which latter assertion is pronounced impossible by Mr. Lenthal Swifte, also sufficiently illustrates the facts embodied in it:—

“Before the burning of the armouries there was a paved yard in front of the Jewel House, from which a gloomy and ghost-like doorway led down a flight of steps to the Mint. Some strange noises were heard in this gloomy corner; and on a dark night at twelve the sentry saw a figure like a bear cross the pavement and disappear down the steps. This so terrified him that he fell, and in a few hours after, having recovered sufficiently to tell the tale, he died. It was fully believed to have arisen from phantasmagoria.... The soldier bore a high character for bravery and good conduct. I was then in my thirtieth year, and was present when his body was buried with military honours in the Flemish burial ground, St. Catherine’s.

“George Offor.”

On this, however, Mr. Swifte thus writes:—

“When on the morrow I saw the unfortunate soldier in the main guard-room, his fellow sentinel was also there, and testified to having seen him on his post just before the alarm, awake and alert, and even spoken to him. Moreover, as I then heard the poor man tell his own story, the figure did not cross the pavement and disappear down the steps of the sally-port; but issued from underneath the Jewel Room door—as ghostly a door, indeed, as ever was opened to or closed on a doomed man; placed, too, beneath a stone archway as utterly out of the reach of my young friends’ apparatus (if any such they had) as were my windows. I saw him once again on the following day, but changed beyond my recognition; in another day or two—not ‘in a few hours’—the brave and steady soldier, who would have mounted a breach or led a forlorn hope with unshaken nerves, died at the presence of a shadow, as the weakest woman might have died.

“Edmund Lenthal Swifte.”

The case of a Haunted House in Northamptonshire may now follow:—

“A house at Barby,[35] a small village about eight miles from Rugby, was reputed to be haunted, and this under the following circumstances:—An old woman of the name of Webb, a native of the place, and above the usual height, died on March 3, 1851, at two A.M. aged sixty-seven. Late in life she had married a man of some means, who having predeceased her, left her his property, so that she was in good circumstances. Her chief and notorious characteristic, however, was excessive penuriousness, being remarkably miserly in her habits; and it is believed by many in the village that she thus shortened her days. Two of her neighbours, women of the names of Griffin and Holding, nursed her during her last illness, and her nephew, Mr. Hart, a farmer in the village, supplied her temporal needs; in whose favour she had made a will, by which she bequeathed to him all her possessions.

“About a month after the funeral Mrs. Holding, who, with her uncle, lived next door to the house of the deceased (which had been entirely shut up since the funeral), was alarmed and astonished at hearing loud and heavy thumps against the partition wall, and especially against the door of a cupboard in the room wall, while other strange noises, like the dragging of furniture about the rooms (though all the furniture had been removed), and the house was empty. These were chiefly heard about two o’clock in the morning.

“Early in the month of April a family of the name of Accleton, much needing a residence, took the deceased woman’s house, the only one in the village vacant, and bringing their goods and chattels, proceeded to inhabit it. The husband was often absent, but he and his wife occupied the room in which Mrs. Webb had died, while their daughter, a girl about ten years of age, slept in a small bed in the corner. Violent noises in the night were heard about two o’clock, thumps, tramps, and tremendous crashes, as if all the furniture had been collected together, and then violently banged on to the floor. One night at two A.M. the parents were suddenly awakened by the violent screams of the child, ‘Mother, mother, there’s a tall woman standing by my bed, a-shaking her head at me!’ The parents could see nothing, so did their best to quiet and compose the child. At four o’clock they were again awakened by the child’s screams, for she had seen the woman again; in fact she appeared to her no less than seven times, on seven subsequent nights.