In the year 1770 the ford "had come to be of such ill repute that men feared to cross after dark and women refused to be taken that way," although as far as is known it was only men who came to harm from seeing Sarkless Kitty. The apparition was that of an exceedingly lovely girl who appeared "as a nude figure standing upon the opposite bank to that of the approaching wayfarer." Her beauty was so remarkable that those who had the ill-luck to come across the spectre could not refrain from gazing at it, and all who did so were believed to have died either at the same moment or soon afterwards. Calvert, however, tells us that one Roland Burdon, who possessed a "Holy Seal," came face to face with Sarkless Kitty, but fortified by its virtues he survived the vision; then he adds: "This same Roland did slay in single combat the great worm or Dragon which at one time did infest Beck Hole to the loss of many young maidens the which it did at sundry times devour. He slew it after a fierce battle lasting over half a day throw the great power of the Holy Seal being about his person. This worm did also infest Sneaton Moor." If we are to believe anything at all of this prodigious story we must place it among those which have been handed down from the time of the Danes and have become somewhat confused with later superstitions. Coming back to the story of the beautiful spectre we find that in 1782 a certain Thomas Botran wrote down all the information he could find out in his time concerning the story of Sarkless Kitty, and Mr Blakeborough has added to it everything else that he has discovered relating to it. It seems that there lived near Lastingham towards the close of the seventeenth century a girl named Kitty Coglan whose beauty was so remarkable that "folk at divers times come much out of their way in the pleasant hope of a chance for to look upon the sweetness of her face." She was, however, extremely vain, and her mother seems to have heard stories of her bad conduct, for she began to worry herself over her daughter's behaviour. Having had a curious dream she asked Takky Burton, the wise man of Lastingham, to tell her what it meant. He told her that the wonderful gem of her dream was her daughter Kitty, who like the gem had blemishes beneath the surface. Soon after this Kitty married the only son of a small farmer, but after they had lived together about four months he disappeared, and then Kitty seems to have gone from bad to worse. How long after this it was that the tragedy occurred is not known, but one day Kitty's naked dead body was found by the wath that her spirit afterwards haunted.