THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

It is customary in Yorkshire for the common people to sit and watch in the church porch on St Mark’s Eve, from eleven o’clock at night until one in the morning.  The third year (for this must be done thrice) they are supposed to see the ghosts of all those who are to die the next year, pass by into the church, which they are said to do in their usual dress, and precisely in the order of time in which they are doomed to depart.  Infants and young children, not yet able to walk, are said to roll in on the pavement.  Those who are to die remain in the church, but those who are to recover return, after a longer or shorter time, in proportion to the continuance of their future sickness.  This superstition is in such force that, if the patients themselves hear of it, they almost despair of recovery.  Many are said to have actually died by their imaginary fears on the occasion; a truly lamentable, but by no means incredible, instance of human folly.

Ellis/Antiquities, 1841