When investigating grave crimes, in particular murders, much depends on the testimony, because it is very important for justice that the killer is found and punished. However, it so happens that there are no witnesses to a crime, and then the investigation comes to the aid of … the dead themselves. It's about ghosts.
Annie Walker apparition
Often, the testimony of the victims of a crime - the dead - brings the case to court in the absence of any other evidence against the perpetrators. One of the first such trials took place in 1631 in England.
A poor young girl named Annie Walker ran the household of her distant relative, also Walker, and became pregnant by him in 1630. The rich cousin did not need this at all, and therefore, together with a certain Mark Sharpe, he lured Annie to a secluded place, where the latter killed her.
After that, 14 days passed. Late one night, the miller James Graham, who lived 6 miles from Walker's village in County Durham, came face to face with the creepy ghost of a young woman. She was all covered in blood, her dress was torn, and there were 5 open wounds on her head. Naturally, the miller knew nothing of the tragedy unfolding in Walker's house. The terrible ghost told the stunned Graham that her name was Annie Walker and that she had died from being hit with a pick by Mark Sharpe, acting at the instigation of her relative Walker. The ghost also told the miller that the girl's corpse was thrown into an old coal mine, and Sharpe hid the murder weapon - a pickaxe - under a bench in his home. The ghost asked Graham to tell the local authorities everything. The ghost also warned that if the miller did not do this, he would constantly haunt him. The stunned miller did not believe the ghost and did nothing for a while. He did this only after Annie's ghost appeared to him two more times, begging him to report the murder to the sheriff. In great excitement that he might be recognized as a madman, the miller Graham nevertheless went to the magistrate and told about the phenomenon of the ghost and its history. By this time, the missing girl was already unsuccessfully searched for by her closest relatives, complaining about the inaction of the authorities. By this time, the missing girl was already unsuccessfully searched for by her closest relatives, complaining about the inaction of the authorities. By this time, the missing girl was already unsuccessfully searched for by her closest relatives, complaining about the inaction of the authorities.
For lack of other clues, the constables decided to conduct a search, consistent with the ghost's story. Having examined the coal mine he indicated, they found Annie's dead body, and a pickax with blood stains - at home under Mark Sharpe's bench.
In August 1631, Walker and Sharpe were arrested on suspicion of murder, tried, and sentenced to be hanged. Since then, the avenged ghost of the villainously murdered girl stopped appearing and did not disturb anyone else.
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The Sergeant Davis case
The case of Sergeant Arthur Davis is especially noteworthy for the fact that it is documented - in the Central Archives of Edinburgh there are still court records for the years 1752-1754, from which it is clear that the ghost of a crime victim helped the investigation of his murder.
The thirty-year-old sergeant of the British troops stationed in the Scottish town of Dabrak left the unit on the morning of September 28, 1749, went into the mountains to hunt and did not return. The search for him continued for four days, but to no avail. They decided that an accident had happened to him - abysses, rockfalls, powerful mountain streams could hide his body forever without a trace.
In reality, Sergeant Davis was killed by the hunter Duncan Clerk and the forester Alexander MacDonald because of the age-old feud between the Scots and the British. They shot him on the slope of Christie Hill, took his watch, two gold rings and a wallet with money. Hunter Clerk, who had never had a penny before, bought himself two farms at once. However, without witnesses and without a corpse, the case could not be brought to court.
However, in June 1750, a young shepherd named Alexander MacPherson, who lived two miles from Dabrak in a hut on the slopes of Christie Hill, saw a terrible ghost one night. A hazy figure of a man in bruises suddenly loomed in front of his bed, who said: "I am Sergeant Davis." During a lengthy monologue, the ghost told the shepherd that he was killed by Duncan Clerk and Alexander MacDonald, and also described the place where his remains lay, and asked to contact his friend Donald Farquorzn to bring him up to date.
The frightened shepherd followed the ghost's instructions exactly. He told Farquorth about everything, and soon a skeleton was found in the indicated place. Arthur Davis was unmistakably identified by the remains of the body, hair and scraps of clothing.
Soon the ghost of the sergeant appeared to the shepherd a second time. He asked to bury his body in the ground as it should be, in compliance with all Christian rituals, and again called the names of his killers. Due to the fact that the political situation between England and Scotland was tense, as well as the improbability of the appearance of the ghost of the murdered sergeant, it was decided not to publicize the case, but to quietly bury Davis, writing everything off as an accident. This was done even despite the fact that Farquorzn noticed on the hand of the Clerk's mistress Sergeant Davis's rings.
The case for the murder of Sergeant Davis would never have been initiated if this story had not had an unexpected continuation. The same shepherd MacPherson soon took a job with Duncan Clerk. Once, during some quarrel, the shepherd threatened the owner that he would hand him over to the authorities as the murderer of Sergeant Davis. To his great surprise, the employer offered him to pay £ 20 for his silence, an unheard-of sum for a poor man!
The shepherd was not slow to tell the villagers about this, and rumors about the alleged murderers of the sergeant again spread in the vicinity of the town of Dabrak. The authorities had no choice but to start an investigation. Hearings in this case began on June 10, 1752 in Edinburgh. The main witness for the prosecution was Shepherd MacPherson. He described in detail to the jury the appearance of the ghost of Sergeant Davis, cited his story, and also reported on the attempt to bribe him by the Clerk (it turns out that he even wrote a corresponding receipt about this). The court also took into account the fact that two rings belonging to Davis were found in the possession of the Clerk's mistress. When news of the trial of the Clerk and MacDonald, which lasted two years, spread throughout the district, there were also two witnesses who saw the murder of the sergeant,but they were afraid to turn to the authorities because of the threats of the hunter and the forester. Based on these facts, a Scottish court sentenced them to death by hanging.
Ghost of the Countess
Another incredible case of the appearance of the dead with the subsequent punishment of the murderer was at one time described by an associate of Peter I, Jacob Bruce.
In one of the towns in Southern France, there was a house in which no one could live for a long time, since everyone was disturbed by some kind of noise, sometimes coming from the basement. The dungeons were repeatedly examined by worried residents, and each time they found nothing there, however, noise and groans were heard from there almost every night. The owner of the house was desperate and did not know what to do. He ended up leasing this house to some naturalist. He immediately moved there and in the evening, as usual, went deep into reading his thick books. About midnight he was about to go to bed when his attention was attracted by the noise and moans that were heard below. The naturalist, who did not believe in mysticism, tried to find some natural explanation for this phenomenon, attributing it to the noise of the wind. This went on for about half an hour, and the noise and moans grew louder. Soon the sound of the door being opened was heard, someone's footsteps were heard … Suddenly the door of the office opened abruptly, and a tall, pale figure of a woman with a child in her arms appeared on the threshold. A rope dangled around her neck, and the child had terrible wounds on her head.
Stopping, the woman gazed at the scientist with an intense, suffering look. Then she turned and began to walk away slowly. The naturalist followed her down to the lower floor and then to the basement. He stopped at the place where the woman pointed to the wall, and then, moving to the corner of the room, suddenly disappeared.
The perplexed naturalist immediately reported everything he saw to the authorities, on whose orders an inspection of the house and the adjacent yard was carried out, where they found an old filled well. When they cleared it, they found a half-rotten box at the bottom, in which lay a woman's and a child's skeletons with pieces of rope around their necks. It was not known who these remains belonged to, but no one doubted that they were victims of some terrible crime. When they began to dismantle the part of the basement wall, which the ghost pointed to, they found in the cache a bunch of old documents and banknotes issued by the Lyon bank in the name of Countess Eleanor de Tromel. It was now easier for justice to establish the truth. It turned out that this house once had a hotel. On her way to visit her mother, this countess, a young rich widow, stopped here for the night. The owner of the establishment,seduced by her wealth, he killed the countess and her little son at night and received all the money from the bank, and hid the registered tickets in a cache.
Soon this man was found and brought to justice.
Based on these examples, the killers should know that sometimes their victims come to the aid of the investigation, and therefore the punishment for what they did is inevitable.