The haunting was punctual. Every Christmas Eve the family left the front and back doors open, and at midnight exactly the black beast came through the house from one door to the other. It was believed to be connected with "some unknown crime of a former proprietor", although nobody could say what the crime was. Eventually the owner called in the clergy. Their prayers and exorcisms quieted the phantom, and on their advice he set up the annual dole of bread to the poor.
The trouble came back once. An owner, pushed by a mean wife "who would sooner have seen all the poor in the parish die of hunger than bestow a crust on them", held back the dole. That Christmas the spectre came again, this time as "a gigantic black sow, accompanied by a numerous litter of pigs, all grunting and clamouring for food". The owner restored the dole at once, and his wife is said never to have got over the fright.
Another story tells of a year when the poor heard the dole would not be given. They gathered at night, formed a procession, and marched in through the front door and out through the back, as the beast had done. The mistress watched from behind a door. One poor woman asked another whether she was "one of us", and was told no: the ribbon on her cap gave her away. MacCulloch had these stories from John de Garis and Mrs Savidan. The house is not publicly identified today, so the map point is placed at parish level in St Pierre du Bois.
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