midnight
The first information concerning this dreadful obsession arose from a fisherman , who , coming into the harbor of a nightfall after a stormy day , had , as he affirmed , beheld the old meeting-house all of a blaze of light . Some time after , a tinker , making a short-cut from Stapleton by way of the old Indian road , had a view of a similar but a much more remarkable manifestation . This time , as the itinerant most solemnly declared , the meeting-house was not only seen all alight , but a bell was ringing as a signal somewhere off across the darkness of the water , where , as he protested , there suddenly appeared a red star , that , blazing like a meteor with a surpassing brightness for a few seconds , was presently swallowed up into inky darkness again . Upon another occasion a fiddler , returning home after midnight from Sprowle 's Neck , seeing the church alight , had , with a temerity inflamed by rum , approached to a nearer distance , whence , lying in the grass , he had , he said , at the stroke of midnight , beheld a multitude of figures emerge from the building , crying most dolorously , and then had heard a voice , as of a lost spirit , calling aloud , `` Six-and-twenty , all told ! '' whereat the light in the church was instantly extinguished into an impenetrable darkness . It was said that when Captain Obadiah himself was first apprised of the suspicions entertained of the demoniacal possession of the old meeting-house , he had fixed upon his venturesome informant so threatening and ominous a gaze that the other could move neither hand nor foot under the malignant fury of his observation . Then , at last , clearing his countenance of its terrors , he had burst into a great , loud laugh , crying out : `` Well , what then ?