II Being a Wonderful Discovery of Murder by an Apparition
About the year of our Lord 1632, near unto Chester in the street, there lived one Walker, a yeoman of good estate, and a widower, who had a young woman called Anna Walker to his kinswoman, that kept his house, who was by the neighbours suspected to be with child; and was, towards the dark of the evening, one night sent away with Mark Sharp, who was a collier, or one that digged coals under ground, and who had been born in Blackburn-hundred in Lancashire, and so she was not heard of for a long time, and no noise or little was made about her. In the winter time, one James Graham, being a miller, and living two miles from the place where Walker lived, was one night alone very late in the mill grinding corn; and about twelve or one o’clock at night he came down the stairs, from having been putting corn in the hopper, the mill-doors being shut, there stood a woman upon the midst of the floor, with her hair about her head, hanging down and all bloody, with five large wounds on her head. He being much affrighted and amazed, began to bless himself; and at last asked her who she was, and what she wanted? To whom she answered, “I am the spirit of such a woman, who lived with Walker; and being got with child by him, he promised to send me to a private place, where I should be well look’d to, until I was brought to bed, and well recovered, and then I should come home again, and keep his house. And accordingly,” said the apparition, “I was one night late, sent away with one Mark Sharp, who upon a muir (naming a plain which the miller knew) slew me with a pick, such as men dig coals withal, and gave me these five wounds, and after threw my body into a coal pit hard by, and hid the pick under a bank; and his shoes and stockings being bloody, he endeavoured to wash them, but seeing the blood would not wash out, he hid them there.” And the apparition further told the miller, “That he must be the man to reveal it, or else that she must still appear and haunt him.” The miller returned home, very sad and heavy, and spoke not one word of what he had seen, but shunned as much as he could to stay in the mill after night without company, thinking thereby to escape the seeing again that frightful apparition. But notwithstanding, one night when it began to be dark, the apparition met him again, and seemed very fierce and cruel; and threatened him, that if he did not reveal the murder, she would continually pursue and haunt him: Yet for all this, he concealed it, until some few nights before Christmas; when being, soon after sunset, walking in his garden, she appeared again, and then so threatened him, and affrighted him, that he faithfully promised to reveal in the next morning.
In the morning he went to a magistrate, and made the whole matter known, with all the circumstances: And diligent search being made, the body was found in a coal pit, with five wounds in the head, and the pick, and shoes and stockings yet bloody, in every circumstance as the apparition had related to the miller. Whereupon Walker and Sharp were both apprehended, but would confess nothing. At the assize following, viz. at Durham, they were arraigned, found guilty, condemned, and executed; but would never confess the fact. There are many persons yet alive that can remember this strange murder; and the discovery of it; for it was, and sometimes yet is, as much discoursed of in the North of England as any thing that almost hath ever been heard of, and the relation was printed, though now not to be gotten.