But several of the company still remained at the house. To them Mrs. Butler complained of the unjust reproach which encompassed her. “What have I done,” said she, “that I must suffer all this.” “Nothing, dear, you have done nothing,” answered a voice immediately in the vacant space of the room. Then about fourteen persons, by the direction of the Spectre, went into the cellar. As soon as they were there, the Spectre said to Mrs. Butler, “Go up and sit with others on the kitchen hearth,[20] that this company may know that it is not you who speaks.” After she was gone up the ghost conversed with the company on several topics, suited to authenticate her mission. She mentioned several incidents of her past life, known only to her husband, as he declared, and asked him if he remembered them. He said, yes: she asked him if he had told them. He answered, no: and of such a nature were those incidents as to render it utterly improbable that he ever should have mentioned them before. This was at the time when he attempted to handle the apparition. It is objected against her, that she told who was in heaven and who was in hell. She indeed mentioned the world of misery, as the eternal portion of the finally impenitent; but I find not the least evidence of her particularizing any person, or persons as being in that miserable state. She indeed mentioned several deceased persons as being in a state of happiness: and who can prove the impropriety of this? though indeed it is not what we should have expected. Once when she conversed with about fourteen persons, Mr. Blaisdel having heard that his father was sick, asked the Spectre whether she knew any thing or not, concerning him? “Your father,” she replied, “is in heaven, praising God with the angels.” He afterwards found that his father, two hundred miles distant, died seven days before this answer of the ghost. True, the news might come from thence in that interval. But his friends at York, where his father lived, utterly deny that they sent the news in the course of these days. Suppose however, the news did some way or other come: could any deceiver, improving the circumstance, know what questions Mr. Blaisdel would ask, so as to be sure they could all be answered? Or was Mr. Blaisdel himself in the plot? “No,” say our opponents, “his piety, his veracity, and his utter aversion to the purpose of it, forbid the suspicion.” It is therefore _probable_ that the same creature, who appeared and disappeared so often in the view of the people, and could tell them where they should be and what they would say and do in future time, was the true author of this information.