Mysterious Britain summarises the chapbook. The ghost asked Ogilvie to visit his widow and demand repayment of several sums, including 500 pounds Scots owed to Provost Crosby by way of a forged discharge, 190 pounds sterling taken from Robert Kennedy's estate, 36 pounds sterling from Thomas Greer's account, 200 pounds Scots taken from unnamed creditors, and 2,000 merks borrowed from a tenant named Homer Maxwell whose bond had been hidden, leaving nine orphaned children destitute.
Mysterious Britain says the manuscript is said to have come from Collector Hamilton's papers and was published in 1750, and that the minister asks for written proof before he will act. The text ends without resolution. That, and the print date, raise the possibility that the tale is a moral pamphlet, not a witnessed haunting. The Cuil of the story is in Galloway, where the parish of Buittle is named, though the minister served in East Lothian.
The pin is set at Innerwick as the minister's parish. The manse where the encounters are said to have happened is not identified in the source.
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