OLD BOOTY'S GHOST.

Golden Bay Argus, Volume XIII, Issue 50, 12 May 1910, Page 2

OLD BOOTY'S GHOST.

A CASE WITHOUT A PARALLEL. As a circumstantial ghost story, and one that stood the cold scrutiny, of a court of law, Booty's case is without a parallel. The date given is 1688, when Mrs. Booty brought an action for slander against one Captain Barnaby for what he had said of her late husband.

According to an extract from a journal produced in court, dated Friday, May 15, 1687, the captain on that day went ashore with a large party of friends to shoot rabbits on Strombolr, the island off Italy, which from its ever-burning crater,, is called "the lighthouse of the Mediterranean." I

At about 3.30 in the afternoon two men were seen running towards the volcano, which was emitting flames. Captain Barnaby then exclaimed, "Lord bless me, the foremost is old Booty, my next-door neighbour." They then vanished in the flames, a fact of which everyone present took a note.

Upon Captain Barnaby's return to England he learned that " old Booty" had died just about the time of the strange occurrence at Stromboli. He then made the remark which was the subject of the action, that he "had seen old Booty running into the flames of Hell pursued by the devil."

Mrs. Booty claimed £IOOO as damages, and the case came on in the King's Bench before the Chief Justice, Sir Robert Wright. For the defence, in addition to the testimony of Captain Barnaby and his friends, Old Booty's clothes were brought into court and identified by several witnesses as being similar to those worn by the foremost man who ran into the crater—even to the peculiar, buttons on the coat. The judge was so impressed by this evidence that he said, "Lord have mercy upon me and grant that I may never see what you have seen. One, two, or three may be mistaken, but not thirty." And so Booty's widow lost the day and the case remains, perhaps, as the only judicially accepted ghost story on record.—'"Chronicle."