From The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict, a memoir by Austin Reed, published this month by Random House. Likely completed in 1858, the manuscript was discovered at an estate sale, acquired by Yale in 2009, and authenticated by Caleb Smith, a professor there. Reed was an African-American freeman born circa 1823 in Rochester, New York. The events described below took place when he was around ten years old.

I had been with Mr. Lad three days when he one morning, being a little angry, ask me if I was ready now to go to work and…