and about twenty other persons, including two negroes, when, upon a
consultation with Parsons, they resolved to sit up the whole night, and
await the ghost's arrival. It was then explained by Parsons, that
although the ghost would never render itself visible to anybody but his
daughter, it had no objection to answer the questions that might be put
to it, by any person present, and that it expressed an affirmation by
one knock, a negative by two, and its displeasure by a kind of
scratching. The child was then put into bed along with her sister, and
the clergymen examined the bed and bed-clothes to satisfy themselves
that no trick was played, by knocking upon any substance concealed
among the clothes. As on the previous night, the bed was observed to
shake violently.
After some hours, during which they all waited with exemplary patience,
the mysterious knocking was heard in the wall, and the child declared
that she saw the ghost of poor Fanny. The following questions were then
gravely put by the clergyman, through the medium of one Mary Frazer,
the servant of Parsons, and to whom it was said the deceased lady had
been much attached. The answers were in the usual fashion, by a knock
or knocks:--
"Do you make this disturbance on account of the ill usage you received
from Mr. Kent?"--"Yes."
"Were you brought to an untimely end by poison?"--"Yes."
"How was the poison administered, in beer or in purl?"--"In purl."
"How long was that before your death?"--"About three hours."
"Can your former servant, Carrots, give any information about the
poison?"--"Yes."
"Are you Kent's wife's sister?"--"Yes."
"Were you married to Kent after your sister's death?"--"No."
"Was anybody else, besides Kent, concerned in your murder?"--"No."
"Can you, if you like, appear visibly to anyone?"--"Yes."
"Will you do so?"--"Yes."
"Can you go out of this house?"--"Yes."
"Is it your intention to follow this child about everywhere?"--"Yes."
"Are you pleased in being asked these questions?"--"Yes."
"Does it case your troubled soul?"--"Yes."
[Here there was heard a mysterious noise, which some wiseacre present
compared to the fluttering of wings.]
"How long before your death did you tell your servant, Carrots, that
you were poisoned?--An hour?"--"Yes."
[Carrots, who was present, was appealed to; but she stated positively
that such was not the fact, as the deceased was quite speechless an
hour before her death. This shook the faith of some of the spectators,
but the examination was allowed to continue.]
"How long did Carrots live with you?"--"Three or four days."
[Carrots was again appealed to, and said that this was true.]
"If Mr. Kent is arrested for this murder, will he confess?"--"Yes."
"Would your soul be at rest if he were hanged for it?"--"Yes."
"Will he be hanged for it?"--"Yes."
"How long a time first?"--"Three years."
"How many clergymen are there in this room?"--"Three."
"How many negroes?"--"Two."
"Is this watch (held up by one of the clergymen) white?"--"No."
"Is it yellow?"--"No."
"Is it blue?"--"No."
"Is it black?"--"Yes."
[The watch was in a black shagreen case.]
"At what time this morning will you take your departure?"
The answer to this question was four knocks, very distinctly heard by
every person present; and accordingly, at four o'clock precisely, the
ghost took its departure to the Wheatsheaf public-house, close by,
where it frightened mine host and his lady almost out of their wits by
knocking in the ceiling right above their bed.
The rumour of these occurrences very soon spread over London, and every
day Cock Lane was rendered impassable by the crowds of people who
assembled around the house of the parish clerk, in expectation of
either seeing the ghost or of hearing the mysterious knocks. It was at
last found necessary, so clamorous were they for admission within the
haunted precincts, to admit those only who would pay a certain fee, an
arrangement which was very convenient to the needy and money-loving Mr.
Parsons. Indeed, things had taken a turn greatly to his satisfaction;
he not only had his revenge, but he made a profit out of it. The ghost,
in consequence, played its antics every night, to the great amusement
of many hundreds of people and the great perplexity of a still greater
number.
Unhappily, however, for the parish clerk, the ghost was induced to make
some promises which were the means of utterly destroying its
reputation. It promised, in answer to the questions of the Reverend Mr.
Aldritch of Clerkenwell, that it would not only follow the little Miss
Parsons wherever she went, but would also attend him, or any other
gentleman, into the vault under St. John's Church, where the body of
the murdered woman was deposited, and would there give notice of its
presence by a distinct knock upon the coffin. As a preliminary, the
girl was conveyed to the house of Mr. Aldritch near the church, where a
large party of ladies and gentlemen, eminent for their acquirements,
their rank, or their wealth, had assembled. About ten o'clock on the
night of the 1st of February, the girl having been brought from Cock
Lane in a coach, was put to bed by several ladies in the house of Mr.
Aldritch; a strict examination having been previously made that nothing
was hidden in the bedclothes. While the gentlemen, in an adjoining
chamber, were deliberating whether they should proceed in a body to the
vault, they were summoned into the bedroom by the ladies, who affirmed,
in great alarm, that the ghost was come, and that they heard the knocks
and scratches. The gentlemen entered accordingly, with a determination
to suffer no deception. The little girl, on being asked whether she saw
the ghost, replied, "No; but she felt it on her back like a mouse." She
was then required to put her hands out of bed, and they being held by
some of the ladies, the spirit was summoned in the usual manner to
answer, if it were in the room. The question was several times put with
great solemnity; but the customary knock was not heard in reply in the
walls, neither was there any scratching. The ghost was then asked to
render itself visible, but it did not choose to grant the request. It
was next solicited to give some token of its presence by a sound of any
sort, or by touching the hand or cheek of any lady or gentleman in the
room; but even with this request the ghost would not comply.
There was now a considerable pause, and one of the clergymen went
downstairs to interrogate the father of the girl, who was waiting the
result of the experiment. He positively denied that there was any
deception, and even went so far as to say that he himself, upon one
occasion, had seen and conversed with the awful ghost. This having been
communicated to the company, it was unanimously resolved to give the
ghost another trial; and the clergyman called out in a loud voice to
the supposed spirit that the gentleman to whom it had promised to
appear in the vault, was about to repair to that place, where he
claimed the fulfilment of its promise. At one hour after midnight they
all proceeded to the church, and the gentleman in question, with
another, entered the vault alone, and took up their position alongside
of the coffin of poor Fanny. The ghost was then summoned to appear, but
it appeared not; it was summoned to knock, but it knocked not; it was
summoned to scratch, but it scratched not; and the two retired from the
vault, with the firm belief that the whole business was a deception
practised by Parsons and his daughter. There were others, however, who
did not wish to jump so hastily to a conclusion, and who suggested that
they were, perhaps, trifling with this awful and supernatural being,
which, being offended with them for their presumption, would not
condescend to answer them. Again, after a serious consultation, it was
agreed on all hands that, if the ghost answered anybody at all, it
would answer Mr. Kent, the supposed murderer; and he was accordingly
requested to go down into the vault. He went with several others, and
summoned the ghost to answer whether he had indeed poisoned her. There
being no answer, the question was put by Mr. Aldritch, who conjured it,
if it were indeed a spirit, to end their doubts-make a sign of its
presence, and point out the guilty person. There being still no answer
for the space of half an hour, during which time all these boobies
waited with the most praiseworthy perseverance, they returned to the
house of Mr. Aldritch, and ordered the girl to get up and dress
herself. She was strictly examined, but persisted in her statement that
she used no deception, and that the ghost had really appeared to her.
So many persons had, by their openly expressed belief of the reality of
the visitation, identified themselves with it, that Parsons and his
family were far from being the only persons interested in the
continuance of the delusion. The result of the experiment convinced
most people; but these were not to be convinced by any evidence,
however positive, and they, therefore, spread abroad the rumour, that
the ghost had not appeared in the vault because Mr. Kent had taken care
beforehand to have the coffin removed. That gentleman, whose position
was a very painful one, immediately procured competent witnesses, in
whose presence the vault was entered and the coffin of poor Fanny
opened. Their deposition was then published; and Mr. Kent indicted
Parsons and his wife, his daughter, Mary Frazer the servant, the
Reverend Mr. Moor, and a tradesman, two of the most prominent patrons
of the deception, for a conspiracy. The trial came on in the Court of
King's Bench, on the 10th of July, before Lord Chief-Justice Mansfield,
when, after an investigation which lasted twelve hours, the whole of
the conspirators were found guilty. The Reverend Mr. Moor and his
friend were severely reprimanded in open court, and recommended to make
some pecuniary compensation to the prosecutor for the aspersions they
had been instrumental in throwing upon his character. Parsons was
sentenced to stand three times in the pillory, and to be imprisoned for
two years: his wife to one year's, and his servant to six months'
imprisonment in the Bridewell. A printer, who had been employed by them
to publish an account of the proceedings for their profit, was also
fined fifty pounds, and discharged.
The precise manner in which the deception was carried on has never been
explained. The knocking in the wall appears to have been the work of
Parsons' wife, while the scratching part of the business was left to
the little girl. That any contrivance so clumsy could have deceived
anybody, cannot fail to excite our wonder. But thus it always is. If
two or three persons can only be found to take the lead in any
absurdity, however great, there is sure to be plenty of imitators.
Like sheep in a field, if one clears the stile, the rest will follow.
About ten years afterwards, London was again alarmed by the story of a
haunted house. Stockwell, near Vauxhall, the scene of the antics of
this new ghost, became almost as celebrated in the annals of
superstition as Cock Lane. Mrs. Golding, an elderly lady, who resided
alone with her servant, Anne Robinson, was sorely surprised on the
evening of Twelfth-Day, 1772, to observe a most extraordinary commotion
among her crockery. Cups and saucers rattled down the chimney--pots and
pans were whirled down stairs, or through the windows; and hams,
cheeses, and loaves of bread disported themselves upon the floor as if
the devil were in them. This, at least, was the conclusion that Mrs.
Golding came to; and being greatly alarmed, she invited some of her
neighbours to stay with her, and protect her from the evil one. Their
presence, however, did not put a stop to the insurrection of china, and
every room in the house was in a short time strewed with the fragments.
The chairs and tables joined, at last, in the tumults, and things
looked altogether so serious and inexplicable, that the neighbours,
dreading that the house itself would next be seized with a fit of
motion, and tumble about their ears, left poor Mrs. Golding to bear the
brunt of it by herself. The ghost in this case was solemnly
remonstrated with, and urged to take its departure; but the demolition
continuing as great as before, Mrs. Golding finally made up her mind to
quit the house altogether. She took refuge with Anne Robinson in the
house of a neighbour; but his glass and crockery being immediately
subjected to the same persecution, he was reluctantly compelled to give
her notice to quit. The old lady thus forced back to her own house,
endured the disturbance for some days longer, when suspecting that Anne
Robinson was the cause of all the mischief, she dismissed her from her
service. The extraordinary appearances immediately ceased, and were
never afterwards renewed; a fact which is of itself sufficient to point
out the real disturber. A long time afterwards, Anne Robinson confessed
the whole matter to the Reverend Mr. Bray field. This gentleman
confided the story to Mr. Hone, who has published an explanation of the
mystery. Anne, it appears, was anxious to have a clear house, to carry
on an intrigue with her lover, and resorted to this trick to effect her
purpose. She placed the china on the shelves in such a manner that it
fell on the slightest motion, and attached horse-hairs to other
articles, so that she could jerk them down from an adjoining room
without being perceived by any one. She was exceedingly dexterous at
this sort of work, and would have proved a formidable rival to many a
juggler by profession. A full explanation of the whole affair may be
found in the "Every-day Book."
The latest instance of the popular panic occasioned by a house supposed
to be haunted, occurred in Scotland, in the winter of the year 1838. On
the 5th of December, the inmates of the farm-house of Baldarroch, in
the district of Banchory, Aberdeenshire, were alarmed by observing a
great number of sticks, pebble-stones, and clods of earth flying about
their yard and premises. They endeavoured, but in vain, to discover who
was the delinquent; and the shower of stones continuing for five days
in succession, they came at last to the conclusion that the devil and
his imps were alone the cause of it. The rumour soon spread over all
that part of the country, and hundreds of persons came from far and
near to witness the antics of the devils of Baldarroch. After the fifth
day, the shower of clods and stones ceased on the outside of the
premises, and the scene shifted to the interior. Spoons, knives,
plates, mustard-pots, rolling-pins, and flat-irons appeared suddenly
endued with the power of self-motion, and were whirled from room to
room, and rattled down the chimneys in a manner which nobody could
account for. The lid of a mustard-pot was put into a cupboard by the
servant-girl in the presence of scores of people, and in a few minutes
afterwards came bouncing down the chimney to the consternation of
everybody. There was also a tremendous knocking at the doors and on the
roof, and pieces of stick and pebble-stones rattled against the windows
and broke them. The whole neighbourhood was a scene of alarm; and not
only the vulgar, but persons of education, respectable farmers, within
a circle of twenty miles, expressed their belief in the supernatural
character of these events, and offered up devout prayers to be
preserved from the machinations of the Evil One. The note of fear being
once sounded, the visiters, as is generally the case in all tales of
wonder, strove with each other who should witness the most
extraordinary occurrences; and within a week, it was generally believed
in the parishes of Banchory-Ternan, Drumoak, Durris, Kincardine-O'Neil,
and all the circumjacent districts of Mearns and Aberdeenshire, that
the devil had been seen in the act of hammering upon the house-top of
Baldarroch. One old man asserted positively that, one night, after
having been to see the strange gambols of the knives and mustard-pots,
he met the phantom of a great black man, "who wheeled round his head
with a whizzing noise, making a wind about his ears that almost blew
his bonnet off," and that he was haunted by him in this manner for
three miles. It was also affirmed and believed, that all horses and
dogs that approached this enchanted ground, were immediately
affected--that a gentleman, slow of faith, had been cured of his
incredulity by meeting the butter-churn jumping in at the door as he
himself was going out--that the roofs of houses had been torn off, and
that several ricks in the corn-yard had danced a quadrille together, to
the sound of the devil's bagpipes re-echoing from the mountain-tops.
The women in the family of the persecuted farmer of Baldarroch also
kept their tongues in perpetual motion; swelling with their strange
stories the tide of popular wonder. The good wife herself, and all her
servants, said that, whenever they went to bed, they were attacked with
stones and other missiles, some of which came below the blankets and
gently tapped their toes. One evening, a shoe suddenly darted across a
garret where some labourers were sitting, and one of the men, who
attempted to catch it, swore positively that it was so hot and heavy he
was unable to hold it. It was also said that the bearbeater (a sort of
mortar used to bruise barley in)--an object of such weight that it
requires several men to move it--spontaneously left the barn and flew
over the house-top, alighting at the feet of one of the servant maids,
and hitting her, but without hurting her in the least, or even causing
her any alarm; it being a fact well known to her, that all objects thus
thrown about by the devil lost their specific gravity, and could harm
nobody, even though they fell upon a person's head.
Among the persons drawn to Baldarroch by these occurrences were the
heritor, the minister, and all the elders of the Kirk, under whose
superintendence an investigation was immediately commenced. Their
proceedings were not promulgated for some days; and, in the mean time,
rumour continued to travel through all the Highlands, magnifying each
mysterious incident the further it got from home. It was said, that
when the goodwife put her potato-pot on the fire, each potato, as the
water boiled, changed into a demon, and grinned horribly at her as she
lifted the lid; that not only chairs and tables, but carrots and
turnips, skipped along the floor in the merriest manner imaginable;
that shoes and boots went through all the evolutions of the Highland
fling without any visible wearers directing their motions; and that a
piece of meat detached itself from the hook on which it hung in the
pantry, and placed itself before the fire, whence all the efforts of
the people of the house were unable to remove it until it was
thoroughly roasted; and that it then flew up the chimney with a
tremendous bang. At Baldarroch itself the belief was not quite so
extravagant; but the farmer was so convinced that the devil and his
imps were alone the cause of all the disturbance, that he travelled a
distance of forty miles to an old conjuror, named Willie Foreman, to
induce him, for a handsome fee, to remove the enchantment from his
property. There were, of course, some sensible and educated people,
who, after stripping the stories circulated of their exaggeration,
attributed all the rest to one or other of two causes; first, that some
gipsies, or strolling mendicants, hidden in the neighbouring
plantation, were amusing themselves by working on the credulity of the
country people; or, secondly, that the inmates of Baldarroch carried on
this deception themselves, for some reason or other, which was not very
clear to anybody. The last opinion gained but few believers, as the
farmer and his family were much respected; and so many persons had, in
the most open manner, expressed their belief in the supernatural
agency, that they did not like to stultify themselves by confessing
that they had been deceived.
At last, after a fortnight's continuance of the noises, the whole trick
was discovered. The two servant lasses were strictly examined, and then
committed to prison. It appeared that they were alone at the bottom of
the whole affair, and that the extraordinary alarm and credulity of
their master and mistress, in the first instance, and of the neighbours
and country people afterwards, made their task comparatively easy. A
little common dexterity was all they had used; and, being themselves
unsuspected, they swelled the alarm by the wonderful stories they
invented. It was they who loosened the bricks in the chimneys, and
placed the dishes in such a manner on the shelves, that they fell on
the slightest motion. In short, they played the same tricks as those
used by the servant girl at Stockwell, with the same results, and for
the same purpose--the gratification of a love of mischief. They were no
sooner secured in the county gaol than the noises ceased, and most
people were convinced that human agency alone had worked all the
wonder. Some few of the most devoutly superstitious still held out in
their first belief, and refused to listen to any explanation.
These tales of haunted houses, especially those of the last and present
century, however they may make us blush for popular folly, are yet
gratifying in their results; for they show that society has made a vast
improvement. Had Parsons and his wife, and the other contrivers of the
Cock Lane deception, lived two hundred years earlier, they would not,
perhaps, have found a greater number of dupes, but they would have been
hanged as witches, instead of being imprisoned as vagabonds. The
ingenious Anne Robinson and the sly lasses of Baldarroch would,
doubtless, have met a similar fate. Thus it is pleasant to reflect,
that though there may be as much folly and credulity in the world as
ever, in one class of society, there is more wisdom and mercy in
another than ever were known before. Lawgivers, by blotting from the
statute-book the absurd or sanguinary enactments of their predecessors,
have made one step towards teaching the people. It is to be hoped that
the day is not far distant when lawgivers will teach the people by some
more direct means, and prevent the recurrence of delusions like these,
and many worse, which might be cited, by securing to every child born
within their dominions an education in accordance with the advancing
state of civilization. If ghosts and witches are not yet altogether
exploded, it is the fault, not so much of the ignorant people, as of
the law and the government that have neglected to enlighten them.