From Orb to Woman?

At this link you can read "Immortality Proved by the Testimony of Sense" by Abraham Cummings, which has some astonishing testimony. On page 38 Cumming gives the following story of an orb "in the air" turning into the form of a woman:

"Sometime in July, 1806, in the evening, I was informed by two persons that they had just seen the Spectre in the field. About ten minutes after, I went out, not to see a miracle, for I believed that they had been mistaken. Looking toward an eminence, twelve rods distance from the house, I saw there, as I supposed, one of the white rocks. This con­tinued my opinion of their spectre, and I paid no more at­tention to it. Three minutes after, I accidentally looked in the same direction, and the white rock was in the air ; its form a complete Globe, white with a tincture of red, like the damask rose, and its diameter about two feet. Fully satisfied that this was nothing ordinary, I went toward it for more accurate examination. While my eye was constantly upon it, I went on four or five steps, when it came to me from the distance of eleven rods, as quick as lightning, and instantly assumed a personal form with a female dress, but did not appear taller than a girl seven years old. While I looked upon her, I said in my mind, 'you are no tall enough for the woman who has so frequently appeared among us.'  Immediately she grew up as large and as tall as I considered that woman to be. Now she appeared glorious. On her head was the representation of the sun diffusing the luminous, rectilinear rays every way to the ground."

Many of the testimonies in this case are dated, particularly following page 41, where we have dated witness statements from quite a few people who give their names. On page 31 we read this summary about the same apparition:

"Sometimes she appeared to two or three ; then to five or six ; then to ten or twelve ; again to twenty, and once to more than forty witnesses. She appeared in several apartments of Mr. Blaisdel’s house, and several times in the cellar. She also appeared at other houses, and several times in the open field, as already observed. There, white as the light, she moved like a cloud above the ground in personal form and magnitude, in the presence of more than forty people. She tarried with them till after day-light, and vanished : not because she was afraid of the sun : for she had then several times appeared when the sun was shining." 

A Brown University professor of philosophy (Curt John Ducasse) said this about the case, mentioning some experience of his own:

"Several of the witnesses report, as does the Rev. Mr. Cummings, that the apparition begins as a formless small luminous cloud, which then grows and in a moment takes the form of the deceased Mrs. Butler. (This incidentally, was what occurred when; over fifty years ago in New York, the present writer witnessed in red light but not under test conditions a purported gradual materialization of a man’s body.)"