The Phantom Battle of Edgehill

A pamphlet published on 23 January 1643 told how, at Christmas time, shepherds and countrymen near Kineton heard drums and the groans of dying soldiers, and then saw the battle of Edgehill, fought two months before, refought in the air between midnight and three in the morning. The justice and the minister came out the next night with the chief men of the parishes and saw it again, and it was seen on following weekends. The king sent officers from Oxford, who swore they had seen it too and knew some of the slain by their faces, among them Sir Edmund Verney.