Research source

One can only surmise the identity of such phantasms, after becoming acquainted with the history of the locality…

Date of account: Published 1911
Source: Byways of Ghost-Land
Reference: Byways of Ghost-Land · selected passage 41
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

One can only surmise the identity of such phantasms, after becoming acquainted with the history of the locality in which such manifestations appear

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 only

One can only surmise the identity of such phantasms, after becoming acquainted with the history of the locality in which such manifestations appear. The case to which I referred in my previous works, _Some Haunted Houses of England and Wales_, and _Ghostly Phenomena_, namely, that of the apparition of a nude man being seen outside an unused burial-ground in Guilsborough, Northamptonshire, furnishes a good example of alternatives. Near to the spot, at least within two or three hundred yards of it, was a barrow, close to which a sacrificial stone had been unearthed; consequently the phantasm may have been a barrowvian; and again, as the locality is much wooded and but thinly populated, it may have been a vagrarian; and again, the burial-ground being in such close proximity, the apparition may well have been the phantasm of one of the various personalities of a human being interred there.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

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Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

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