Saducismus Triumphatus: Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions

Dr. Henry More's Letter.

Chapter 16, Page 298

...directly from the writer himself, though it occurred sometime around the year of our Lord 1632 (as nearly as I can remember, having lost my notes and the copy of the letters to Sergeant Hutton original: "Serjeant Hutton," a high-ranking judge or legal official, but I am sure that I remember the substance of the story perfectly). Near Chester-le-Street original: "Chester in the Street," a town in County Durham, there lived a man named Walker, a yeoman original: "Yeoman," a farmer who owns and cultivates his own land of good estate and a widower. He had a young woman, a relative of his, who kept his house. She was suspected by the neighbors to be pregnant, and one night toward the dark of the evening, she was sent away with one Mark Sharp, a collier original: "Collier," a coal miner who had been born in the Blackburn Hundred original: "Blakeburn Hundred," a traditional administrative division of Lancashire in Lancashire. After that, she was not heard of for a long time, and little or no fuss was made about it.

The following winter, one James Graham (or Grime, as they call them in that part of the country), a miller living about two miles from where Walker lived, was alone in the mill very late one night grinding corn. Around twelve or one o'clock at night, as he came down the stairs after putting corn in the hopper, with the mill doors shut, a woman stood in the middle of the floor. Her hair hung down around her head and she was covered in blood, with five large wounds on her head.

Being greatly frightened and amazed, he began to cross himself original: "bless himself," a protective religious gesture and at last asked her who she was and what she wanted. To which she replied, "I am the spirit of the woman who lived with Walker. Having become pregnant by him, he promised to send me to a private place where I would be well cared for until I had given birth original: "brought in Bed" and recovered, and then I was to return and keep his house. And accordingly," said the apparition, "I was sent away late one night with one Mark Sharp, who, on a moor"—naming a place that the miller knew—"killed me with a pickaxe original: "Pick," a tool for digging coal. He gave me these five wounds and then threw my body into a nearby coal pit and hid the pickaxe under a bank. Since his shoes and stockings were bloody, he tried to wash them, but seeing that the blood would not come out, he hid them there."

The apparition further told the miller that he must be the one to reveal the crime, or else she would continue to appear and haunt him. The miller returned home very sad and heavy-hearted, but he spoke not a single word of what he had seen. He avoided original: "eschewed" staying in the mill at night without company as much as he could, thinking that by doing so he might escape seeing that frightening apparition again. Nonetheless, one night when it began to grow dark, the apparition met him again. She seemed very fierce and cruel, and threatened him that if he did not reveal the murder, she would continually pursue and haunt him. Yet despite all this, he still concealed...