Some Haunted Houses of England & Wales.

PART I. Technical Form of Apparition: Phantasm of Dead

Technical form of apparition: Phantasm of dead

Source of authenticity: Copied almost ad verbum from the above MS., lent me by a resident in Guilsborough, August 5, 1908

Cause of Haunting: Murder

PREFACE

The publication from which the following extracts are taken was printed at Northampton (where the original may still be seen, August 1908) in the year 1764.

It appears that the author, who was officiating there as temporary chaplain to the jail, was a man of indisputable and well-known integrity, and a very popular preacher throughout the county.

In order to render his work useful and instructive, innumerable references are made to the Scriptures, but his quotations are of too great a length for the following abridged tract, which is copied from the original and contains only the account of the interview the author had with Croxford’s Ghost.

THE GHOST

It appears from the account given in a pamphlet reprinted and sold by G. Henson, Letterpress and Copper-plate Printer, Bridge Street, Northampton, 1848, that on Saturday, August 4, 1764, John Croxford, together with three others of the names of Seamark, Deacon and Butlin were tried at the Assizes of Northampton and convicted of murder.

It came out at the trial that the unfortunate victim was a native of Scotland, travelling with goods, and that by chance he called at the house of Seamark, a shepherd’s hut in the parish of Guilsborough, Northamptonshire, where Croxford and his companions used to meet, where they robbed and afterwards cruelly murdered him, and in order to prevent a discovery consumed his body in an oven; which was proved on the evidence of one of Seamark’s children, who was an eye-witness to the transaction, by looking through the crevices of the floor from the room above.

They were all found guilty and executed on August 4, 1764, and Croxford’s body hung in chains on Hollowell Heath, in the parish of Guilsborough, near the spot where the horrid deed was perpetrated--(and no spot more suggestive of such a tragedy could be imagined).

The author of the work--at that time (1764) holding the appointment of chaplain to the Northampton Jail--after quoting passages from various writers to prove the reality of the subject, proceeds to give an account of the appearance of Croxford’s Ghost, as follows:

“I shall now proceed without further lett or impediment to a plain and conscientious account of the ghost or apparition which was the occasion of my troubling the world with this narrative; unless I first observe that the behaviour of the prisoners, one of whom is the subject of these pages, lately tried, condemned and executed at Northampton, for the murder of a person unknown, upon the evidence of Ann Seamark and her son, about nine or ten years old, was such as astonished every beholder....

“Clear and conclusive as the evidence was against them, no arguments, even after condemnation, though delivered and enforced with the utmost energy, precision and perspicuity by a learned and worthy divine, were able to reach their hardened hearts and prevail for an open and unreserved confession of their guilt. Even at the gallows, in their last addresses to the people, they insisted on their innocence in the strongest terms imaginable; wishing the heaviest penalties an offended God could inflict might be their portion in the next world, if they were guilty of the murder that was laid to their charge and for which they were about to suffer.

“Thus did they divide the sentiments of the crowd that many were brought over to a full persuasion of their innocence, while others were left halting between two opinions and severely agitated with conflicting doubts. But mark the event.

“After having instructed my people as a teacher in the knowledge of the Scriptures, I used to spend the superfluous hours of the Lord’s Day in perusing some part or other of the Old and New Testament.

“Accordingly, on August 12, 1764, being the Sabbath, I returned as usual into my study, the door of which is secured by a lock with a spring-bolt, and sat down to my accustomed evening devotion; the business of this day by rotation laying in the New Testament, and in that part of it where St. Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians proposes, maintains and proves the resurrection of the body. Struck with the sublimity of his thoughts, boldness of his figures, and energy of his diction, and convinced by the number and weight of his arguments, and looking with a pleasing foretaste of happiness into futurity, I was on a sudden surprised with the perfect form and appearance of a man, who stood erect at a small distance from my right side.

“Conscious that the door was locked and that there was no other means by which my visitor could have entered, I was considerably surprised--surprise turning into abject terror--when, glancing with irresistible fascination at the man, I perceived in him something indefinably but most unmistakably Unnatural.

“Feeling sure that I was in the actual presence of an apparition, I contrived, by an almost superhuman effort, I admit, to sum up sufficient courage to speak--my voice seeming dry and unrecognisable.

“I addressed it in the power and spirit of the Gospel; inquiring on what errand it was sent; what was intended by such an application, and what services could be expected from a person of so little note and mean abilities as myself.

“I must here state that although the spectre had inspired me with so much awe, I did not associate it with anything EVIL.

“Every second tended to strengthen my composure, and when it spoke in a voice rather more hollow and intense, perhaps, than that of a human being, my fears were instantly dissipated. I was now able to take a close stock of it, and observed that in features, general appearance, and clothes it closely resembled any ordinary labouring man; it was in expression and colouring, only it differed--its eyes were lurid, its cheeks livid.

“Raising one extremely white and emaciated hand, it desired me to compose myself, saying that as it was now strictly limited by a Superior Power, and could do no one act but by the permission of God, I had no reason to be afraid, abrupt as was its appearance, and that if I would endeavour to overcome the visible perturbation I was in, it would proceed in the business of its errand.

“At this announcement my heart fluttered with an excitement I found difficult to control. Was the wonderful mystery that had hitherto enshrouded the existence and composition of the Unknown about to be revealed to me--was I going to be initiated into those secrets heretofore denied to man? Eagerly promising to compose myself, and lost to all else save the fascinating presence of my guest, I settled down to listen to anything the phantasm might have to say.

“The room, I must here state, was lighted by a single, though rather powerful, double-wick oil lamp, which I had always deemed sufficient to illuminate the whole apartment, but which now--and I could not help noticing the phenomenon--did not extend its rays beyond the cadaverous face of my intruder, upon which the full force of its light seemed concentrated.

“Commencing in clear and solemn tones, the phantasm stated that it was one of the unhappy prisoners executed at Northampton on the 4th of August, 1764.

“A cold chill ran down my back at this announcement, which was intensified when I recognised for the first time that the figure confronting me bore a startling likeness to one of the prisoners it had been my unhappy lot to address prior to his execution: there was the same hair, brows and beard--black and stubby; the protruding forehead and retreating chin that had so repelled me, the malshaped head and the broken, unsavoury-looking teeth; it was indeed the ghost of one of those diabolical miscreants that stood before me, and, despite the fact that I was brought up in the strict Protestant faith, I inadvertently crossed myself.

“The spectre went on without apparently heeding my action.

“‘It had been,’ so it proclaimed, ‘the principal and ringleader of the gang, most of whom it had corrupted, debauched and seduced to that deplorable method of life, and it was particularly appointed by Providence to undeceive the world and remove those doubts which the solemn protestations of their innocence to the very hour of death had raised in the minds of all who heard them.’

“At this juncture, excitement overcoming fear and aversion, I hazarded to inquire of the phantasm its name.

“Its reply, delivered in the same slow, measured, almost mechanical tones (as if it were only the mouth-organ of some other and unseen agency) was to the effect that its name was John Croxford; that it had express directions to come to me--directions it could not disobey; it furthermore explained the reason the murderers had so persistently insisted on their innocence, lay in the fact, that, while the blood of their victim was still warm, they entered into a sacramental obligation, which they sealed by dipping their fingers in the blood of the deceased and licking the same, by which they bound themselves under the penalty of eternal damnation never to betray the fact themselves nor to confess, if condemned to die for it on the evidence of others, and that they were further encouraged to such measures, since, as Seamark himself was a confederate in the murder, they concluded the evidence of his wife would not be admitted; that as the child was so young, they presumed no judge or jury would pay the least regard to his depositions; that as Butlin had but lately entered into a confederacy with them, and no robberies could be readily proved against him, they thought it would appear impossible for one of his age to begin a career of wickedness with murder (it being observed in a proverb that no man is abandoned all at once); that if they could invalidate the evidence on behalf of Butlin it must be of equal advantage to them all; that though disappointed of this view in court and condemned to die upon the above evidence, they were still infatuated with the same notion even at the gallows, and expected a reprieve for Butlin when the halter was about his neck, and consequently, if such a reprieve had been granted, as the evidence was as full and decisive against Butlin as against them, the sentence for the murder must have been withdrawn from all, their execution deferred, and perhaps transportation only their final punishment.”

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