Briggs’s evidence may be condensed very much, as the learned Mrs. Crowe quotes it correctly in her Night Side of Nature.  In March, 1791, about nine a.m., Briggs was riding a horse that had belonged to Harris.  In a lane adjoining the field where Harris was buried, the horse shied, looked into the field where the tomb was, and ‘neighed very loud’.  Briggs now saw Harris coming through the field, in his usual dress, a blue coat.  Harris vanished, and the horse went on.  As Briggs was ploughing, in June, Harris walked by him for two hundred yards.  A lad named Bailey, who came up, made no remark, nor did Harris tell him about the hallucination.  In August, after dark, Harris came and laid his arms on Briggs’s shoulder.  Briggs had already spoken to James Harris, ‘brither to the corp,’ about these and other related phenomena, a groan, a smack on the nose from a viewless hand, and so forth.  In October Briggs saw Harris, about twilight in the morning.  Later, at eight o’clock in the morning, he was busy in the field with Bailey, aforesaid, when Harris passed and vanished:  Bailey saw nothing.  At half-past nine, the spectre returned, and leaned on a railing:  Briggs vainly tried to make Bailey see him.  Briggs now crossed the fence, and walked some hundreds of yards with Harris, telling him that his will was disputed.  Harris bade Briggs go to his aforesaid brother James, and remind him of a conversation they had held, ’on the east side of the wheat-stacks,’ on the day when Harris’s fatal illness began.  James remembered the conversation, and said he would fulfil his brother’s desire which he actually did.  There was a later interview between Briggs and Harris, the matter then discussed Briggs declined to impart to the court, and the court overruled the question.  ’He had never related to any person the last conversation, and never would.’

Bailey was sworn, and deposed that Briggs had called his attention to Harris, whom he could not see, had climbed the fence, and walked for some distance, ’apparently in deep conversation with some person.  Witness saw no one.’

It is plain that the ghost never really understood the legal question at issue.  The dates are difficult to reconcile.  Thomas Harris died in 1790.  His ghost appeared in 1791.  Why was there no trial of the case till ‘about 1798 or 1799’?  Perhaps research in the Maryland records would elucidate these and other questions; we do but give the tale, with such authority as it possesses.  Possibly it is an elaborate hoax, played off by Nicholson, the plaintiffs’ counsel, on the correspondent of The Opera Glass, or by him on the editor of that periodical.

The hallucinations of Briggs, which were fortunate enough, it is said, to get into a court of justice, singularly resemble those of M. Bezuel, in July and August, 1697, though these were not matter of a sworn deposition.  The evidence is in Histoire d’une Apparition Arrivee a Valogne. {267} The narrator of 1708, having heard much talk of the affair, was invited to meet Bezuel, a priest, at dinner, January 7, 1708.  He told his one story ‘with much simplicity’.