Macpherson declared that he had seen an apparition of a man in blue, who said, 'I am Serjeant Davies,' that he…
- Date of account
- Published 1894
- Source
- Cock Lane and Common-Sense
- Reference
- Cock Lane and Common-Sense · selected passage 225
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
Macpherson declared that he had seen an apparition of a man in blue, who said, 'I am Serjeant Davies,' that he at first took this man for a brother of Donald Farquharson's, that he followed the man, or phantasm, to the door, where the spectre repeated its assertions, and pointed out the spot where the bones lay
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyMacpherson declared that he had seen an apparition of a man in blue, who said, 'I am Serjeant Davies,' that he at first took this man for a brother of Donald Farquharson's, that he followed the man, or phantasm, to the door, where the spectre repeated its assertions, and pointed out the spot where the bones lay. He found them, and then went, as already shown, to Donald Farquharson. Between the first vision and the burying, the ghost came to him naked, and this led him to inter the remains. On the second appearance, the ghost denounced the prisoners. Macpherson gave other evidence, not spectral, which implicated Clerk. But, when asked what language the ghost spoke in, he answered, 'as good Gaelic as he had ever heard in Lochaber'. 'Pretty well,' said his counsel, Scott's informant, McIntosh, 'for the ghost of an English serjeant.' This was probably conclusive with the jury, for they acquitted the prisoners, in the face of the other incriminating evidence. This was illogical. Modern students of ghosts, of course, would not have been staggered by the ghost's command of Gaelic: they would explain it as a convenient hallucinatory impression made by the ghost on the mind of the 'percipient'.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis comes from historical psychical research. Methods, witness handling and standards of evidence differ from present-day research and should be assessed from the cited passage and edition.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThe passage can support a history of claims and recurring descriptions. It does not establish a paranormal mechanism, and competing psychological, social and physical explanations remain relevant.
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