First Published: 1875
SPOILERS!!!
Peter Parley tells us how in his village there are rumours of ghosts in the Owl Abbey. One day he comes across a group of villagers talking to a stranger. The man asks them whether they believe the abbey is haunted, and everybody tells him stories about people seeing the ghost of an Irish man or a lady in white. When the stranger asks the men if they ever walk through the abbey, they all say no. However, the stranger says that he will, and then he is found scared to death after seeing the ghost.
The next day the bank is robbed and several people find that some of their things have been stolen. This happens the next day too. Then Parley goes to visit his uncle, and when he is leaving, he realises that it is too late and night has already fallen. He uses a lantern to go through the forest, and when he reaches the village, he decides to go through the abbey. The light has gone, and when he is inside the abbey yard, he hears some voices and a horse neigh. At first, he is scared, thinking of the ghosts, but the sound of the horse makes him think that there is no ghost as he has never heard of a horse ghost. He approaches the spot where the voices come from, and he sees the stranger that he saw two days ago with someone else, and the horse belongs to a villager who was robbed of his horse. From the conversation Parley discovers that the stranger used the villagers' superstition for his criminal activities and he and his accomplice kept the stolen things in the abbey.
The two men are arrested, and the villagers realise that their superstitions were all fantastic tales.
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