In 1695, when about fifteen, Bezuel was a friend of a younger boy, one of two brothers, Desfontaines.  In 1696, when Desfontaines minor was going to study at Caen, he worried Bezuel into signing, in his blood, a covenant that the first who died should appear to the survivor.  The lads corresponded frequently, every six weeks.  On July 31, 1697, at half-past two, Bezuel, who was hay-making, had a fainting fit.  On August 1, at the same hour, he felt faint on a road, and rested under a shady tree.  On August 2, at half-past two, he fainted in a hay-loft, and vaguely remembered seeing a half-naked body.  He came down the ladder, and seated himself on a block, in the Place des Capucins.  Here he lost sight of his companions, but did see Desfontaines, who came up, took his left arm, and led him into an alley.  The servant followed, and told Bezuel’s tutor that he was talking to himself.  The tutor went to him, and heard him asking and answering questions.  Bezuel, for three-quarters of an hour, conversed, as he believed, with Desfontaines, who said that he had been drowned, while bathing, at Caen, about half-past two on July 31.  The appearance was naked to the waist, his head bare, showing his beautiful yellow locks.  He asked Bezuel to learn a school task that had been set him as a penalty, the seven penitential psalms:  he described a tree at Caen, where he had cut some words; two years later Bezuel visited it and them; he gave other pieces of information, which were verified, but not a word would he say of heaven, hell, or purgatory; ’he seemed not to hear my questions’.  There were two or three later interviews, till Bezuel carried out the wishes of the phantasm.

When the spectral Desfontaines went away, on the first occasion, Bezuel told another boy that Desfontaines was drowned.  The lad ran to the parents of Desfontaines, who had just received a letter to that effect.  By some error, the boy thought that the elder Desfontaines had perished, and said so to Bezuel, who denied it, and, on a second inquiry, Bezuel was found to be right.

The explanation that Bezuel was ill (as he certainly was), that he had heard of the death of his friend just before his hallucination, and had forgotten an impressive piece of news, which, however, caused the apparition, is given by the narrator of 1708.  The kind of illusion in which a man is seen and heard to converse with empty air, is common to the cases of Bezuel and of Briggs, and the writer is acquainted, at first hand, with a modern example.

Mrs. Crowe cites, on the authority of the late Mr. Maurice Lothian, solicitor for the plaintiff, a suit which arose out of ‘hauntings,’ and was heard in the sheriff’s court, at Edinburgh, in 1835-37.  But we are unable to discover the official records, or extracts of evidence from them.  This is to be regretted, but, by way of consolation, we have the pleadings on both sides in an ancient French case of a haunted house.  These are preserved