Supernatural (31 page)

Things got worse.
During the next two years lights were seen, doors slammed, unseen skirts rustled, and a Bible was burnt.
The creature purred like a cat, panted like a dog, and made the coins in a man’s pocket turn black.
One day, Mompesson went into the stable and found his horse lying on its back with its hind hoof jammed into its mouth; it had to be pried out with a lever.
The ‘spirit’ attacked the local blacksmith with a pair of pincers, snatched a sword from a guest, and grabbed a stick from a servant woman who was trying to bar its path.
The Reverend Joseph Glanvil—who wrote about the case—came to investigate, and heard the strange noises from around the childrens’ beds.
When he went down to his horse, he found it sweating with terror, and the horse died soon afterwards.

The phantom drummer seems to have developed a voice; one morning, there was a bright light in the children’s room and a voice kept shouting: ‘A witch, a witch!’—at least a hundred times, according to Glanvil.
Mompesson woke up one night to find himself looking at a vague shape with two great staring eyes, which slowly vanished.
It also developed such unpleasant habits as emptying ashes and chamberpots into the childrens’ beds.

In 1663, William Drury was arrested at Gloucester for stealing a pig.
While he was in Gloucester jail, a Wiltshire man came to see him, and Drury asked what was happening in Wiltshire.
When the man said ‘Nothing,’ Drury said: ‘What, haven’t you heard about the drumming in the house at Tedworth?’
The man admitted that he had, whereupon Drury declared: ‘I have plagued him, and he shall never be quiet until he has made me satisfaction for taking away my drum.’
This, according to Glanvil, led to his being tried for a witch at Salisbury and sentenced to transportation.
As soon as Drury was out of the country, peace descended on the Mompesson household.
But the drummer somehow managed to escape and return to England—whereupon the disturbances began all over again.
Mr Mompesson seems to have asked it—by means of raps—whether Drury was responsible, and it replied in the affirmative.

How the disturbances ended is not clear—presumably they faded away, like most poltergeists.
Certainly they had ceased by the time Glanvil published his account twenty years later.

The ‘ghost’ that caused these disturbances in the Mompesson household belongs to the class of phenomena known as the ‘poltergeist’.
The word is German, and means ‘noisy ghost’.
It is the commonest type of spirit on record, and unless you are in the middle of an ocean or a desert, there is probably a poltergeist haunting going on within ten miles of the place where you are now reading this book .
.
.

What is a poltergeist?
It is a ‘spirit’ that seems to specialise in mischievous tricks, such as making scratching or banging noises, and causing objects to fly through the air.
It would not be quite accurate to say that they ‘throw’ things, for the objects often have a strange habit of changing direction abruptly in mid-air, as if they are being carried rather than thrown.
Moreover, these objects have been known to go
through
walls, and to come out on the other side.
It is as if the poltergeist can de-materialise things and then materialise them again—either that, or the world of the poltergeist possesses an extra dimension to our three normal dimensions of length, breadth and height, so it can somehow ‘step over’ obstacles like walls.

Glanvil wrote his book on strange occurrences—
Saducismus Triumphatus
—just before the dawning of the 18th century, the age of reason.
Even in the 1660s, the magistrate Mompesson was widely suspected of somehow fabricating the story of the phantom drummer, and ‘he suffered by it in his name, in his estate, in all his affairs .
.
.’
A quarter of a century after its publication, Glanvil’s book was regarded as an absurd relic of an age of credulity.
The main reason was that the civilised world was finally—after four centuries—shaking off the belief in witchcraft.
In England, there had been no mass trials of witches since the death of Matthew Hopkins, the ‘witchfinder general’, in 1646; in America, the witch hysteria came to an end after the Salem trials in 1692.
The age of science had dawned; there was no room for books like
Saducismus Triumphatus
in the age of Newton and Leibniz.

One of the most remarkable cases of the early 18th century was investigated by the eminent scientist Joseph Priestley who, predictably, decided that the phenomena were caused by a hoaxer.
It began at the rectory of Epworth, in Lincolnshire, inhabited by the family of the Reverend Samuel Wesley, grandfather of the founder of Methodism.
On December 1, 1716, the Wesleys’ maidservant was in the dining-room when she heard appalling groans, like someone dying.
The family made a joke of it.
But a few nights later, they were awakened by loud knocking sounds, which usually seemed to come from the garret or nursery.
The only person who failed to hear them was the Reverend Wesley himself, and the family decided not to tell him in case he thought it was an omen of his death.
When they finally told him, he refused to believe them; that night, as if to convince him, there were nine loud knocks by his bedside.

From then on, the house was in a constant state of disturbance, with footsteps in empty rooms and up and down the stairs—often more than one set of footsteps at a time—noises like smashing bottles, and a curious sound which was compared to the ‘winding up of a jack’ or someone planing wood.
When Mrs Wesley heard knocking noises from the nursery, she tried repeating them, and the poltergeist then made the same knocks resound from the floorboards under her feet.
When she looked under the bed, an animal like a badger ran out.
A manservant who saw the animal sitting by the dining-room fire said it looked like a white rabbit.

The family were at first afraid that it portended someone’s death, either that of the Reverend Samuel Wesley or of his elder son (of the same name).
When nothing of the sort occurred, they decided that they were dealing with witchcraft—against which the Reverend Samuel had preached.
Yet they also noticed that the disturbances seemed connected with the 19-year-old Hetty Wesley: she often trembled in her sleep before the sounds began.

After two months, the poltergeist went away, although it is said to have made occasional brief reappearances in later years.
The family came to refer to it as ‘Old Jeffrey’.
And Mrs Wesley remained convinced that Old Jeffrey was the spirit of her brother, who worked for the East India Company, and who vanished without a trace.
She could well have been right.
In some respects, the poltergeist behaved like a ghost.
Its activities always seemed to begin at a quarter to ten every night (few poltergeists keep to an exact timetable)—and the very first sounds heard were groans and heavy breathing, not the usual raps.
Poltergeist disturbances usually—almost invariably—occur in a certain sequence.
The earliest stage is usually some kind of scratching noise like rats; then raps and bangs, then flying stones or other small objects, then larger objects, then other forms of physical mischief—moving furniture, blankets pulled off beds.
If voices occur, they usually occur after this stage—as we shall see in the case of the Bell Witch.
It is almost unknown for phenomena to occur in a different order.
So in that respect, the Wesley case is unusual, starting with what is usually one of the later developments.
The chief objection to Mrs Wesley’s theory is that if the spirit of her dead brother was behind the disturbances, then why did he not try to communicate—for example, when the Reverend Samuel tried to get him to answer questions by means of raps?

One of the more obvious features of the Epworth case is that there were none of the usual physical phenomena—falling stones, dancing furniture.
The explanation, presumably, is that there was not enough energy available for the poltergeist to do anything more spectacular than make noises.
This is also true of the most notorious poltergeist of the 18th century, the ‘Cock Lane ghost’.
This began with knocking noises in the house of Richard Parsons, clerk of St Sepulchre’s church in Smithfield, London, in November 1759.
One night, a woman named Fanny Lynes, who was lodging in the house, asked 10-year-old Elizabeth Parsons, the eldest daughter, to sleep with her while her common-law husband was away on business.
All went well for a few nights; then the two were kept awake one night by scratching and rapping noises from behind the wainscot.
When they told Richard Parsons about it, he said it was probably the cobbler next door.

Soon afterwards, Fanny became ill with smallpox; she was six months pregnant, and her ‘husband’ was understandably anxious.
He and Fanny were unmarried only because she was his deceased wife’s sister.
William Kent had married Elizabeth Lynes two years earlier, but she had died in childbirth; now it looked rather as if the story was repeating itself.
He moved Fanny into a house nearby, where, on February 2, 1760, she died of smallpox.

Meanwhile, the rappings in Richard Parsons’ house were continuing; Parsons actually called in a carpenter to take down the wainscotting, but nothing was found.
Meanwhile, the knockings got louder, and the story of the ‘haunted house’ spread throughout the neighbourhood.
They seemed to be associated with Elizabeth; they came from behind her bed, and when they were about to begin, she would begin to tremble and shiver—like Hetty Wesley in the Epworth case.
Later that year, Elizabeth began to suffer from convulsions.

Like so many victims of poltergeist phenomena, Richard Parsons decided to call in a friend, the Reverend John Moore, assistant preacher at St Sepulchre’s.
And the Reverend Moore proceeded to communicate with the ‘spirit’, asking it to answer his questions in the usual manner—one rap for yes, two for no.
(They added a scratching noise to indicate it was displeased.)
By this means the spirit told its upsetting story.
It was, it declared, the ghost of Fanny Lynes, returned from the dead to denounce her late ‘husband’, William Kent, for killing her by poison.
He had, it seemed, administered red arsenic in her ‘purl’, a mixture of herbs and beer.

Richard Parsons was not entirely displeased to hear this story, for he was nursing a grudge against his late tenant.
William Kent was a fairly rich man, having been a successful innkeeper in Norfolk, and he had lent Parsons £20, on the understanding that Parsons should repay it at a pound a month.
Parsons, who seems to have been a drunkard, had failed to repay anything, possibly because he had discovered that Kent and Fanny were not married, and hoped to blackmail Kent into forgetting the loan.
Kent had put the matter into the hands of his attorney.

If Parsons had been less anxious to believe the worst of his ex-tenant, he might have suspected the ghost of untruthfulness.
To begin with, the knocking had begun while Fanny Lynes was still alive.
And a publican named Franzen swore that he had seen a spirit in white one evening in December 1759, when Fanny had just moved from the Cock Lane house.
Parsons apparently found it easier to believe that the earlier knockings had been caused by Kent’s first wife Elizabeth—who was presumably also trying to denounce him for murder.

Throughout 1761, the house in Cock Lane acquired an increasing reputation for its ghosts, and the tale about Kent’s supposed murders gained wide currency in the area.
Kent himself heard nothing about it until January 1762, when he saw an item in the
Public Ledger
about a man who had brought a young lady from Norfolk and poisoned her in London.
A few days later, another item about the Cock Lane ghost and its revelations led Kent to go along to see the Reverend John Moore.
Moore, a respectable and well-liked man, could only advise Kent to attend a seance in Elizabeth’s bedroom, and see for himself.
Kent did this, taking with him the doctor and apothecary who had attended Fanny in her last illness.
The small bedroom was crowded, and Elizabeth and her younger sister lay side by side in the bed.
At first the ‘ghost’ declined to manifest itself; but when the room had been emptied, Moore succeeded in persuading it, and they all trooped back.
Now Kent listened with something like panic as he heard Moore asking the spirit if it was Kent’s wife—one knock—if it had been murdered by him—one knock—and if anyone else was concerned in the murder plot—two knocks.
Kent shouted indignantly, ‘Thou art a lying spirit!’

Now, suddenly, the ghost was famous all over London, and Cock Lane was crowded with carriages.
In February, a clergyman named Aldrich persuaded Parsons to allow his daughter to come to his vicarage in Clerkenwell to be tested.
An investigating committee, including the famous Dr Johnson, was present.
Inevitably, the ghost declined to manifest itself.
Nor would the ghost rap on the coffin of Fanny Lynes in the vault of the church.
Dr Johnson concluded it was a fraud.
And this was the opinion of most of London.

On the day following this fiasco, Elizabeth was staying at the house of a comb-maker in Cow Lane when the bell of Newgate Prison began to toll—a sign that someone was to be hanged.
The comb-maker asked the ghost whether someone was about to be hanged and whether it was a man or woman; the ghost answered both questions correctly.
Later that day, a loose curtain began to spin on its rod—the only physical manifestation in the case.

The following day, as Elizabeth lay asleep, her father heard whispering noises; he carried a candle over to her bed, but she seemed to be asleep.
The whispering continued, although the child’s lips were plainly closed.
In fact, the poltergeist seemed to be increasing in strength.
Two nights later, the noises were so violent that their host asked them to leave.
(Presumably she was sleeping away from home to avoid crowds.) Elizabeth and her father moved to the house of a Mr Missiter, near Covent Garden, and the manifestations continued, even when a maid lay in bed beside Elizabeth and held her hands and feet.

By now, the unfortunate Kent was determined to prove his innocence through the law; so the burden of proof now lay on Parsons and his daughter.
Elizabeth was told that unless the ghost made itself heard that night, her father and mother would be thrown into prison.
Naturally, she made sure something happened.
The servants peered through a crack in the door, and saw her take a piece of board and hide it in the bed.
Later, when there were people in the room, the knocking noises sounded from the bed.
In fact, the listeners noticed that the knocks were coming from the bed and not, as usual, from around the room.
The bed was searched and the board found.
And the next day, the newspapers published the story of the ‘fraud’.