Research source

I will now proceed in Mr. Davies' words, heading each incident with the title given it in the collec

Date of account: Published 1911
Source: Stranger Than Fiction: Being Tales from the Byways of Ghosts and Folk-lore
Reference: Stranger Than Fiction: Being Tales from the Byways of Ghosts and Folk-lore · selected passage 114
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

And towards the time at which the Toili was seen, there was the real funeral in the cemetery, exactly in the same way as the phantom one was seen

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

And towards the time at which the Toili was seen, there was the real funeral in the cemetery, exactly in the same way as the phantom one was seen. Everything was the same, even to the white pall thrown over the coffin. So the reapers of Birch Hill were quite satisfied that it was the Toili of this funeral they saw, and no other. Here was an example of the Toili seen by a crowd of people in the broad light of noonday, each individual seeing it exactly in the same form in which the real funeral presently took place. Their eyes did not deceive them, because so many eyes perceived the same occurrence at the same moment, and moreover, the testimony of the sexton was certain proof that there was no burial in the churchyard that day.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

Lattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.

Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.