to it, as I had determined with myself beforehand.  The evening of this day, the parents, the son, and myself, being in the chamber where I lay, I proposed to them our going altogether to the place next morning.  We accordingly met at the stile we had appointed; thence we all four walked into the field together.  We had not gone more than half the field before the ghost made its appearance.  It then came over the stile just before us, and moved with such rapidity that by the time we had gone six or seven steps it passed by.  I immediately turned my head and ran after it, with the young man by my side.  We saw it pass over the stile at which we entered, and no farther.  I stepped upon the hedge at one place and the young man at another, but we could discern nothing; whereas I do aver that the swiftest horse in England could not have conveyed himself out of sight in that short space of time.  Two things I observed in this day’s appearance:  first, a spaniel dog, which had followed the company unregarded, barked and ran away as the spectrum passed by; whence it is easy to conclude that it was not our fear or fancy which made the apparition.  Secondly, the motion of the spectrum was not gradatim or by steps, or moving of the feet, but by a kind of gliding, as children upon ice, or as a boat down a river, which punctually answers the description the ancients give of the motion of these Lamures.  This ocular evidence clearly convinced, but withal strangely affrighted, the old gentleman and his wife.  They well knew this woman, Dorothy Durant, in her life-time; were at her burial, and now plainly saw her features in this apparition.

“The next morning, being Thursday, I went very early by myself, and walked for about an hour’s space in meditation and prayer in the field next adjoining.  Soon after five I stepped over the stile into the haunted field, and had not gone above thirty or forty paces before the ghost appeared at the further stile.  I spoke to it in some short sentences with a loud voice; whereupon it approached me, but slowly, and when I came near it moved not.  I spoke again, and it answered in a voice neither audible nor very intelligible.  I was not in the least terrified, and therefore persisted until it spoke again and gave me satisfaction; but the work could not be finished at this time.  Whereupon the same evening, an hour after sunset, it met me again near the same place, and after a few words on each side it quietly vanished, and neither doth appear now, nor hath appeared since, nor ever will more to any man’s disturbance.  The discourse in the morning lasted about a quarter of an hour.

“These things are true,” concludes the Rev. John Ruddle, “and I know them to be so, with as much certainty as eyes and ears can give me; and until I can be persuaded that my senses all deceive me about their proper objects, and by that persuasion deprive me of the strongest inducement to believe the Christian religion, I must and will assert that the things contained in this paper are true.”