This volume is an edition and translation of a late seventeenth-century manuscript from the municipal library of Dole in the Franche-Comté, ‘The history of the appearance of a spirit which happened in the city of Dole’, itself a copy of an original account penned by the Discalced Carmelite, Christophe Mercier, in 1628, shortly after the events it describes. The spirit appeared over a period of around two months to a new mother, Huguette Roy, the only townsperson able to see or hear it. It assisted Huguette and her new baby in practical domestic ways and, overcoming her suspicions that it might be an evil spirit, eventually revealed itself as the soul of her aunt, Leonarde Colin, who had been suffering in purgatory for seventeen years for some (actually rather banal) sins committed during her lifetime. At the ghost's request, Huguette eased her passage to heaven by undertaking a mini-pilgrimage to various local shrines. The tale thus underscored official Catholic doctrine in a stridently orthodox region at the height of the Counter-Reformation. In fact, the episode – despite the intentions of its clerical scribe – is rather more complex, with strange folkloric elements, hints of intense local anxiety and conflict, and the controlling hand of an uneducated young woman, not afraid to gainsay the clerical experts. Edwards and Sutch wisely allow this strange document to speak for itself, while contextualising it in a useful and lively introduction. Historians of Catholic Reform, of popular belief and of gender, will find it an intriguing and challenging source.