_Ghost--Evidence of one not received._--In Ackerman's _Repository_, Nov.
1820, is a short account of a remarkable instance of a person being
tried on the pretended evidence of a ghost. A farmer on his return from
the market at Southam, co. Warwick, was murdered. The next morning a man
called upon the farmer's wife, and related how on the previous night, as
he lay in bed, quite awake, her husband's ghost had appeared to him, and
after showing him several stabs on his body, had told him that he was
murdered by a certain person, and his corpse thrown into a certain
marl-pit. A search was instituted, the body found in the pit, and the
wounds on the body of the deceased were exactly in the parts described
by the pretended dreamer; the person who was mentioned was committed for
trial on violent suspicion of murder, and the trial came on at Warwick
before Lord Chief Justice Raymond. The jury would have convicted the
prisoner as rashly as the magistrate had committed him, but for the
interposition of the judge, who told them that he did not put any credit
in the pretended ghost story, since the prisoner was a man of
unblemished reputation, and no ill feeling had ever existed between
himself and the deceased. He said that he knew of no law which admitted
of the evidence of a ghost; and if any did, the ghost had not appeared.
The crier was then ordered to summon the ghost, which he did three
times, and the judge then acquitted the prisoner, and caused the accuser
to be detained, which was accordingly done, and his house searched, when
such strong proofs of guilt were discovered, that the man confessed the
crime, and was executed for murder at the following assizes.
Could any of your readers inform me when this remarkable trial took
place, and where I could meet with a more detailed account?