“That about six or seven years past, being in bed on a Lord’s-day night, he heard a scrambling at the window, and saw Susanna Martin come in at the window, and jump down upon the floor.  She was in her hood and scarf, and the same dress that she was in before, at meeting the same day.  Being come in, she was coming up towards this deponent’s face, but turned back to his feet, and took hold of them, and drew up his body into a heap, and lay upon him about an hour and a half or two hours, in all which time this deponent could not stir nor speak; but, feeling himself beginning to be loosened or lightened, and he beginning to strive, he put out his hand among the clothes, and took hold of her hand, and brought it up to his mouth, and bit three of the fingers (as he judges) to the breaking of the bones; which done, the said Martin went out of the chamber, down the stairs, and out of the door.  The deponent further declared, that, on another Lord’s-day night, while sleeping on the hay in a barn, about midnight the said Susanna Martin and another came out of the shop into the barn, and one of them said, ‘Here he is,’ and then came towards this deponent.  He, having a quarter-staff, made a blow at them; but the roof of the barn prevented it, and they went away:  but this deponent followed them, and, as they were going towards the window, made another blow at them, and struck them both down; but away they went out at the shop-window, and this deponent saw no more of them.  And the rumor went, that the said Martin had a broken head at that time; but the deponent cannot speak to that upon his own knowledge.”

Any one who has had the misfortune to be subject to nightmare will find the elements of his own experience very much resembling the descriptions given by Kembal, Downer, Ring, and Peach.  The terrors to which superstition, credulity, and ignorance subjected their minds; the frightful tales of witchcraft and apparitions to which they were accustomed to listen; and the contagious fears of the neighborhood in reference to Susanna Martin, taken in connection with a disordered digestion, an overloaded stomach, and a hard bed, or a strange lodging-place,—­are wholly sufficient to account for all the phenomena to which they testified.]

We are all exposed to the danger of confounding the impressions left by the imagination, when, set free from all confinement, it runs wild in dreams, with the actual experiences of wakeful faculties in real life.  It is a topic worthy the consideration of writers on evidence, and of legal tribunals.  So also is the effect, upon the personal consciousness, of the continued repetition of the same story, or of hearing it repeated by others.  Instances are given in books,—­perhaps can be recalled by our own individual experience or observation,—­in which what was originally a deliberate fabrication of falsehood or of fancy has come, at last, to be regarded as a veritable truth and a real occurrence.