s a night in it.
He now begged this favor might be granted him.

As he had opened this subject, an evident cloud, and something of an
unpleasant surprise, had fallen on the countenances of both man and
wife. It deepened as he proceeded; the farmer had withdrawn his pipe
from his mouth, and laid it on the table; and the woman had risen, and
looked uneasily at their guest. The moment that he uttered the wish to
sleep in the haunted room, both exclaimed in the same instant against
it.

"No, never!" they exclaimed; "never, on any consideration! They had made
a firm resolve on that point, which nothing would induce them to break
through."

The guest expressed himself disappointed, but did not press the matter
further at the moment. He contented himself with turning the
conversation quietly upon this subject, and after a while found the
farmer and his wife confirm to him every thing that he had heard. Once
more then, and as incidentally, he expressed his regret that he could
not gratify the curiosity which had brought him so far; and, before the
time for retiring arrived, again ventured to express how much what he
had now heard had increased his previous desire to pass a night in that
room. He did not profess to believe himself invulnerable to fears of
such a kind, but was curious to convince himself of the actual existence
of spiritual agency of this character.

The farmer and his wife steadily refused. They declared that others who
had come with the same wish, and had been allowed to gratify it, had
suffered such terrors as had made their after-lives miserable. The last
of these guests was a clergyman, who received such a fright that he
sprang from his bed at midnight, had descended, gone into the stable,
and saddling his horse, had ridden away at full speed. Those things had
caused them to refuse, and that firmly, any fresh experiment of the
kind.

The spirit visitation was described to be generally this: At midnight,
the stranger sleeping in that room would hear the latch of the door
raised, and would in the dark perceive a light step enter, and, as with
a stealthy tread, cross the room, and approach the foot of the bed. The
curtains would be agitated, and something would be perceived mounted on
the bed, and proceeding up it, just upon the body of the person in it.
The supernatural visitant would then stretch itself full length on the
person of the agitated guest, and the next moment he would feel an
oppression at