in a place called
Chester-in-the-Street, in the County Palatine of Durham, one Mr. Walker,
a yeoman of good fortune and credit. He was a widower and kept a young
woman, one Ann Walker, a relation of his, in his house as housekeeper.
It was suspected, it seems, by some of the neighbours, that she was with
child, immediately upon which she was removed to one Dame Cair's an aunt
of hers in the town of Lumley, hard by. The old woman treated her with
much kindness and civility, but was exceedingly earnest to know of her
who was the father of the child with which she went, but the young woman
constantly avoided answering that question. But at last, perceiving how
uneasy the old woman was because she could get no knowledge how the poor
babe was to be provided for, this Ann Walker at last said that he who
got her with child would take care of both her and it, with which answer
her aunt was tolerably satisfied.

Some time after, of an evening, her old master Walker, and one Mark
Sharp, with whom he was extraordinarily intimate, came to her aunt's
house and took the said Anne Walker away. About a fortnight passed
without her being seen or heard of, and without much talk of the
neighbourhood concerning her, supposing she had been carried somewhere
to be privately brought to bed, in order to escape her shame. But one
James Graham, a miller, who lived two miles from the place where
Walker's house was, being one night between the hours of twelve and one,
grinding corn in his mill, and the mill door shut, as he came downstairs
from putting corn into the hopper, he saw a woman standing in the
middle of the floor, with her hair all bloody, hanging about her ears,
and five large wounds in her head. Graham, though he was a bold man, was
exceedingly shocked at this spectacle. At last after calling upon God to
protect him, he, in a low voice, demanded who she was, and what she
wanted of him. To which the woman made answer, _I am the spirit of Anne
Walker, who lived with Walker at Chester-in-the-Street, and being got
with child by him, he promised to send me to a private place, where I
should be well looked to until I was brought to bed, and well again, and
then I should come to him again and keep his house. And I was
accordingly, late one night, sent away with Mark Sharp, who upon the
moor, just by the Yellow Bank Head, slew me with a pick, an instrument
wherewith they dig coals, and gave me these five wounds, and afterwards
threw me into