At the Police Office, at Stourbridge, only a few months ago, a woman named Wassall charged a Mrs. Cartwright, a poor woman afflicted with paralysis, with threatening to do her some bodily injury. The defendant alleged that the affliction under which she was suffering was caused by the complainant, who had bewitched her; and that when she begged her to remove the spell, complainant told her it had been upon her for twelve weeks, and it should continue six weeks longer. Finding entreaties vain, the defendant made use of some idle threat, which led to the summons. A "charm" was shown to the Court, which the deluded creature had worn by the advice of a "wise" man to remove the spell; it was a small black silk bag, containing pieces cut out from the Prayer Book and Bible, and some hair, evidently from a cat's back. The Bench endeavoured to assuage the fears of the poor woman, and told her not to impute her affliction to the evil machinations of any one, at the same time severely lecturing the complainant for practising such deceit upon an ignorant and afflicted fellow-creature. There were reputed witches at Malvern in the last generation; and at Colwall the common people are said even now to dislike peewits (lapwings) which visit that place, believing that their cry is "bewitch'd, bewitch'd;" and should any person capture one of these birds he is strongly recommended not to keep it for fear of misfortune or accident. Peewits are believed to be departed spirits who still haunt the earth in consequence of something that troubles them. GHOSTS. At Beoley, about half a century ago, the ghost of a reputed murderer managed to keep undisputed possession of a certain house, until a conclave of the clergy chained him to the bed of the Red Sea for fifty years. When that term was expired the ghost reappeared (two or three years ago), and more than ever frightened the natives of the said house--slamming the doors, and racing through the ceilings. The inmates, however, took heart, and chased him, by stamping on the floor from one room to another, under the impression that, could they once drive him to a trap-door opening into the cheese-room (for which, if the ghost happened to be a rat, he had a very natural _penchant_), he would disappear for a season. The beadle of the parish, who also combined with that office the scarcely less important one of pig-sticker, declared to the writer that he dared not go by the house now in the morning till the sun was up. (It was an ancient superstition that evil spirits flew away at cock-crowing.) The Droitwich Canal, in passing through Salwarpe, is said to have cut off a slice of a large old half-timbered structure supposed to have been formerly a mansion-house; and in revenge for this act of mutilation, the ghost of a former occupier revisits his old haunts, affrights the domestics, and may be seen on dark nights, with deprecatory aspect, glide down the embankment, and suicidally commit himself to the waters below.