A killer was terrified when the ghost of his victim appeared out of the ground and beckoned to him. After that he couldn’t confess his guilt fast enough.

George Redding probably had a lively imagination because he was a failed playwright and actor. Desperate for money so that he could marry his girl friend, he lured Morris Greenberg, a dealer in farm produce, into woods at New Haven, Connecticut, on the promise of setting him up in a lucrative deal involving an apple crop, and shot him dead.

Arrested on suspicion, Redding denied all knowledge of the crime – until Greenberg’s ghost appeared to him one night. Whether it was superstition or supernatural, he was hanged on Friday, November 1st, 1912.