All these curious legal cases were, no doubt, familiar to Sir Walter Scott.  He probably had no access to an American example which was reprinted four years after his death, by a member of the club which he founded, the Bannatyne Club, {263} in 1836.

The evidence of the ghost-seer was republished by Mrs. Crowe, in her Night Side of Nature.  But Mrs. Crowe neither gives the facts of the trial correctly, nor indicates the sources of the narrative.  The source was a periodical, The Opera Glass, February 3, 1827, thirty years after the date of the trial.  The document, however, had existed ‘for many years,’ in the possession of the anonymous contributor to The Opera Glass.  He received it from one of the counsel in the case, Mr. Nicholson, afterwards a judge in Maryland, who compiled it from attested notes made by himself in court.

The suit was that of James, Fanny, Robert, and Thomas Harris, devisees of Thomas Harris, v.  Mary Harris, relict and administratrix of James Harris, brother of Thomas, aforesaid (1798-99).  Thomas Harris had four illegitimate children.  He held, as he supposed, a piece of land in fee, but, in fact, he was only seized in tail.  Thus he could not sell or devise it, and his brother James was heir in tail, the children being bastards.  These legal facts were unknown both to James and Thomas.  Thomas made a will, leaving James his executor, and directing that the land should be sold, and the money divided among his own children.  James, when Thomas died, sold the land, and, in drawing the conveyance, it was discovered that he had no right to do so for Thomas, as it was held by Thomas in tail.  James then conveyed his right to the purchaser, and kept the money as legal heir.  Why James could sell, if Thomas could not, the present writer is unable to explain.  In two years, James died intestate, and the children of Thomas brought a suit against James’s widow.  Before James’s death, the ghost of Thomas had appeared frequently to one Briggs, an old soldier in the Colonial Revolt, bidding James ‘return the proceeds of the sale to the orphans’ court, and when James heard of this from Briggs he did go to the orphans’ court, and returned himself to the estate of his brother, to the amount of the purchase money of the land’.

Now, before the jury were sworn, the counsel, Wright and Nicholson for the plaintiffs, Scott and Earle for the defendant, privately agreed that the money could not be recovered, for excellent legal reasons.  But they kept this to themselves, and let the suit go on, merely for the pleasure of hearing Briggs, ’a man of character, of firm, undaunted spirit,’ swear to his ghost in a court of law.  He had been intimate with Thomas Harris from boyhood.  It may be said that he invented the ghost, in the interest of his friend’s children.  He certainly mentioned it, however, some time before he had any conversation with it.