# Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror/Volume 2/Number 3/Ghost Vengeance

Ghost Vengeance
Comparative folklore shows how universal is the belief that the spirit of those who have suffered a violent death are malicious beings.
The spirit is kept from its desired rest and is required to flit about the haunts of the living, and, by its unearthly molestation, compel them to make every possible reparation for the wrong done. This must go on till the crime is expiated. Attempts to lay such a ghost are ineffectual; no art of exorciser is able to induce it to stop its visits.
Ghosts are sometimes seen as white spectres in churchyards, where they terrify people and make a general disturbance, and sometimes as executed criminals who haunt the place of their execution by moonlight with their heads under their arms. In some countries they are said to pinch people while asleep, and the black and blue marks thus made are called ghost-spots or ghost-pinches. In Sweden the belief exists that the spirits of little children who have been murdered wander about wailing for as long a time as their lives would normally have lasted on earth, had they not been destroyed. Their sad cry of "Mama! Mama!" is a terror for unnatural mothers who destroy their offspring. Sometimes when travelers pass by them at night they will hang onto the vehicle, and then the horses will sweat as if they are dragging too heavy a load, and before long come to a dead stop.
The buccaneers who used to kill the men who helped them bury their treasure often did so not only to keep its location their own secret, but to provide ghosts that would haunt the spot and keep away treasure seekers.
Sir Walter Raleigh quotes an incident of a captain who killed one of his crew in a fit of anger, and, because the man had threatened to haunt him, cooked his body in the stove kettle. But the ghost of the man followed the ship, and, according to the crew, took his place at the wheel and the yards; and the captain was so troubled by it that he finally jumped overboard, where, as he sank under the water, he threw up his arms and was heard to exclaim, "Bill is with me now!"
There are thousands of old houses that have a haunted room in which the unhappy ghost of a murdered person is supposed on certain occasions to appear. For generation after generation do these troubled spirits return to the scene of their lives on their long wait for someone bold enough to stay in the haunted room and question them as to the reason for their periodical visits.
Ghosts do not go about their business of obtaining justice like human beings. Where there has been a murder the ghost never goes and lays its information before the nearest justice of the peace, or to a near relation, but it seems to prefer to appear to some poor laborer who knows none of the parties, or to some old nurse or other innocent, or else to hover about the place where its body is deposited.
There is an account of a person being tried in England on the pretended evidence of a ghost. A Warwick farmer on his return from market was murdered. The next morning a man called on the farmer's wife and related how on the previous night her husband's ghost had appeared to him and, showing him several stabs on his body, told him that he was murdered by a certain person and his corpse thrown into a marl-pit. After a search the body was found in the pit, and it bore wounds exactly as described by the informer.
The person accused was brought to trial on the charge of murder; and the jury would have convicted him as rashly as the magistrate had committed him had not the judge interfered and said that he did not put any credence on theghost dream, since the prisoner was a man of unblemished reputation and no ill-feeling could be shown to have existed between him and the deceased. He added that he knew of no law that admitted the evidence of a ghost in court, and that even if there were, the ghost had not appeared in his court; so the crier was ordered to summon the ghost, which he did three times; and, the ghost not appearing, the judge acquitted the prisoner and caused the accuser to be detained and his house searched.
Strong proofs of the man's guilt were discovered. He confessed the crime and was executed for murder shortly after.