5 Bizarre Trials That Called Ghosts Into Court

Although it is not that often the paranormal and legal Intersecting, the line between prosecutions and hearings was sometimes blurred. After all, every trial needs a good witness, even if he’s not dead. These five cases used “spectral evidence” to make their rulings.

1. Greenbrier’s ghost
2. John Treygill’s deal with the devil
3. Salem Witch Trials (and similar proceedings)
4. Ouija board game
5. Teresita Bassa solves her own murder

Greenbrier’s ghost

In October 1896, he was 23 years old and newly married Zona Hester Shaw She was found dead in her home in Greenbrier CountyWest Virginia. The coroner listed Zona’s cause of death as heart disease.

Shortly thereafter, Zona’s mother, Mary Jane Hester, claimed that her daughter’s spirit visited her on four consecutive nights. The ghost told her that Edward Shaw, Zona’s husband, was her real killer, and Mrs. Hester convinced the local prosecutor to reopen the case. An order was issued to exhume Zona’s body for re-examination. The pathologist who performed the original autopsy then admitted that Edward had interfered with the thorough examination of the body.

The second time, her body was found with a broken windpipe and a broken neck, indicating that the real cause of her death was suffocation, not heart disease. Edward was arrested for the murder of his late wife, and Zona’s mother testified to her spectral visions, leading to a guilty verdict in the case and Edward being sentenced to life in prison. The ghost tale was not the only piece of evidence pointing to Edward’s guilt, but it is one of the only known legal cases in which the spirit’s testimony helped secure the killer’s conviction.

John Treygill’s deal with the devil

John TregelCornish lawyer in seventeenth-century England, It was rumored that he had committed an unholy act Dealing with the devil In exchange for abundant wealth. He was a harsh judge, accused of everything from tricking an orphan out of an inheritance to murdering his wife. He allegedly sought absolution for his evil ways, but died and was buried in Wadebridge, Cornwall, before he could escape the Faustian bargain.

Tregeagle – or rather his ghost – reappeared a short time later when his name was called during an ongoing lawsuit. According to legend, the defendant called the now-deceased Tregeagle as a witness in a last-ditch effort to win the case, and the judge’s ghost materialized on the stand to be cross-examined by the judge. After the ghost’s testimony is over, it is the responsibility of the local clergy to send his soul to the afterlife. Legend has it that they devised a series of impossible tasks for Tregeagle’s ghost to toil at while awaiting doomsday.

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Salem Witch Trials (and similar proceedings)

In 1692, a group of young girls in Salem, Massachusetts, complained that they were being tortured by ghostly entities, leading to one of the most famous and documented conflicts in history. Witch hunt. The girls made statements in which they claimed they had been tortured and possessed by agents of Satan controlled by witches hidden among their fellow villagers, and their testimonies were accepted in court as “Spectral evidence“(Testimony resulting from paranormal visions, messages, or dreams.) Multiple trials of women and men accused of witchcraft resulted in the execution of 19 people.

While Salem may be the most famous example, the persecution of people as witches It happened regularly Throughout Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many of these trials relied – only occasionally – on spectral evidence to convict the accused.

Ouija board game

In late 1994, Stephen Young, a 35-year-old insurance broker, was convicted of the murders of Harry and Nicola Fuller after a scathing double murder trial. Young was motivated by mounting personal debts and broke into the newlyweds’ cabin to rob them before shooting and killing the couple.

The UK Court of Appeal overturned Young’s conviction and life sentence when a group of jurors found that… Consult him A Ouija board During an overnight stay at Brighton Old Ship Hotel. After forming a personalized Ouija board using a piece of paper and a wine glass, four jurors attempted to enlist the spirit of Harry Fuller to guide them in their impending deliberations. Harry’s ghost, after successfully identifying himself, allegedly told them that Young had shot him and encouraged them to convict him the next day.

When the juror’s unauthorized spiritual counseling became public, the Fullers had to endure a weeks-long retrial of Young. He was again convicted of the murders and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Teresita Bassa solves her own murder

On the evening of February 21, 1979, residents of a Chicago apartment building reported a fire in one of the units. The police investigating the incident then found a respiratory therapist Teresita Witt Dead with a stab wound to her chest, under a partially burned mattress. Without any viable leads, the case quickly went cold.

Remy Chua, Basa’s colleague at the hospital where she worked, then called officers and claimed that the spirit of the dead woman had contacted her through a series of dreams shortly after the murder. Chua had dictated the visions to her husband. Bassa’s spirit allegedly told her she had been killed by another colleague, an organizer named Alain Choueiri.

Despite deep suspicion of Chua’s provenance, investigators in the case followed up on the allegations and discovered that Choueiri was in possession of jewelry stolen from Basa’s home. Authorities interrogated Choueiri and eventually obtained his confession to the crime as well as sentencing him to 14 years in prison. While Chua’s sworn testimony was not the only evidence used to convict Choueiri, it played a key role in pointing authorities towards the perpetrator.