The story
“A drama, powerful as it is uncanny, is The Phantom Witness, in which the double exposure is used to simulate an apparition from the Invisible World. Like a story of Edgar Allan Poe’s is the scene in the court room when Lilavan, supposedly a suicide, first appears to her lover and reveals to him the true history of her tragic death. Edwin Stanley impersonates the young lawyer who wins justice for his lost sweetheart. Kathryn Adams is both girl and ghost. And the crabbed old criminal exposed by Stanley is appallingly life-like as portrayed by William Burt.
“Jacob Weiner (William Burt), the story shows, as the legal guardian of Lilavan MacLeod, has come to think of Lilavan’s fortune as his own. He cannot endure the thought of giving up the girl’s money when she marries David Thayer, the young district attorney to whom she is engaged. Thayer notices that his sweetheart is growing more and more despondent. She complains to him of constantly hearing the pattering of rats. Once she burst out with, ‘If I thought I would become an invalid and a burden to you, I would rather die.’ A few days later, she is found dead. Circumstances point strongly to suicide. Prostrated by his loss, the young attorney leaves town. He is ill for many weeks. On his return he buries himself in his work. The first day he again enters the court room, he sees, sitting in a chair which she was accustomed to occupy in life, his dead sweetheart. Turning to an attendant, Thayer asks the man if he sees anybody in the room. The other shakes his head. Court adjourns—and as the attorney sits alone in the deserted chamber, the form and features of Lilavan once more manifest themselves to him. From her lips he learns the true story of her death.
“Jacob Weiner had played upon his ward’s sensitive nerves by imprisoning rats beneath the flooring. Their pattering about at night had driven the girl almost frantic. She had readily accepted the old man’s suggestion that she go to the drug store and buy a poison to put an end to these tormentors. He had contrived to slip part of the drug into a glass of water which Lilavan had poured out for herself. So cleverly had the guardian worked the thing that suicide seemed the only plausible verdict. Thayer lost no time in putting Weiner on the witness stand. His merciless cross-examination soon brought the old scoundrel to his knees. Weiner goes to prison. That same night, the lover succumbs to the superhuman strain of weeks. In the Invisible World he is reunited with the spirit of Lilavan.”
Summary from Reel Life · 15 January 1916
