The Apparition of Mrs. Veal, Canterbury 1705

Mrs. Bargrave lived in a house of her own in Canterbury, facing the beast-market. The pamphlet that made her famous describes a pious woman with a "very wicked husband". She had not seen her friend Mrs. Veal for about two and a half years.

Mrs. Veal was an unmarried gentlewoman of "about thirty years of age". She kept house for her only brother at Dover and suffered fits. On Friday, 7 September 1705, she died at Dover. "At twelve o'clock at noon."

The next day was market day. Mrs. Bargrave was sitting alone with her sewing when she heard a knocking at the door. It was Mrs. Veal, in a riding-habit. "At that moment of time the clock struck twelve at noon." She was going a journey, she said, and had a great mind to see her friend first.

Mrs. Bargrave offered to kiss her, and their lips almost touched. Mrs. Veal drew her hand across her own eyes and said, "I am not very well." She sat in the elbow-chair Mrs. Bargrave had just left. They talked of friendship and forgiveness, of a cruel marriage, and of Drelincourt's Discourse against the Fear of Death. Fearing a fit, Mrs. Bargrave sat just before her knees to keep her from falling, then handled the gown that her visitor called a "scowered silk, and newly made up".

Then came instructions. Write to her brother about rings for such and such, a purse of gold in her cabinet, and two broad pieces for her cousin Watson. Mrs. Veal asked for Mrs. Bargrave's daughter, and Mrs. Bargrave went to a neighbour's to fetch her. Mrs. Veal stepped into the street, stood ready to part, and walked away in her friend's view till a turning hid her. It was three quarters after one in the afternoon.

On Sunday, Mrs. Bargrave went to Captain Watson's. There she learned that Mrs. Veal was dead. Mrs. Watson confirmed the strangest detail. "You have seen her indeed, for none knew but Mrs. Veal and myself, that the gown was scowered."

No court or coroner looked into it. The story travelled by letter. A Canterbury resident signing as "E.B." wrote it down five days later. I. Lukyn wrote another account in October. The letters reached John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, who showed them in London. Dr. John Arbuthnot, physician to Prince George of Denmark, wrote that "a very great person" had asked about it. Stephen Gray, a Canterbury freeman dyer, interviewed Mrs. Bargrave himself and concluded that "the Arguments for the truth of it are of much Greater validety then those against it."

Mr. Veal did all he could "to null or quash the story" and said "a bad husband has crazed her". The gold was not found when the cabinet was opened, and nobody reported seeing the two women in the street on a market day. From 1706 the pamphlet prefaced editions of Drelincourt's book, and later readers called it clever marketing. Yet scholars showed the story existed in manuscript well before any book tie-in. Hallucination and local gossip have been suggested, but nothing has been proved.

In July 1706 the account appeared in London as A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal. It was long credited to Daniel Defoe, though George Starr argued in 2003 that Defoe probably did not write it. It is often called the first modern ghost story. It remains a classic crisis apparition. A friend seen, heard and touched, a day after her death.