by Colin Wilson
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’.
On February 25, 1762, there appeared a pamphlet entitled: The Mystery Revealed; Containing a Series of Transactions and Authentic Testimonials respecting the supposed Cock Lane Ghost, which have been concealed from the Public—the author was probably Johnson’s friend Oliver Goldsmith. A satirical play called The Drummer or the Haunted House was presented at Covent Garden. And William Kent began legal proceedings against Richard Parsons. In July 1762, Mr and Mrs Parsons, and a woman called Mary Frazer—who had often acted as ‘questioner’ to the ghost—appeared before magistrates in the Guildhall. Parsons was charged with trying to take away the life of William Kent by charging him with murder. The judges remained unconvinced by the evidence of neighbours who had heard raps resounding from all over the room, and who were certain that Elizabeth could not have made them. And finally, Parsons was sentenced to two years in prison, and to stand three times in the pillory; his wife was sentenced to one year, and Mary Frazer to six months. The Reverend Moore and one of his associates had to pay out £588 in damages to Kent. There was universal sympathy for Parsons, and when he stood in the pillory, the mob took up a collection for him—an unusual gesture for a period when malefactors were often badly injured in the pillory. (Later in the year a man convicted of sodomy was stoned to death in the same pillory.)
For more than two centuries, the Cock Lane ghost became a synonym for an imposture. When Andrew Lang wrote about it in 1894, he began his chapter: ‘If one phantom is more discredited than another, it is the Cock Lane ghost.’ Yet for anyone studying the case today, this view seems absurd. Nothing could be more obvious than that the Cock Lane ghost was a poltergeist like the hundreds of others that have been recorded down the ages. Unfortunately, it is now too late for us to discover certain essential facts that might help to explain it. For example, what kind of a girl was Elizabeth Parsons? She was rather younger than most poltergeist-children, but she may well have been sexually mature for her age. If her father was something of a drunkard and a spendthrift—as the records indicate—then it seems fairly certain that the Parsons household was not a happy one. The father of Christine Beauchamp—Morton Prince’s famous case of multiple personality—was a similar type of person, and his daughter had severe psychological problems as a consequence. We know that Christine Beauchamp became fixated on her father’s closest friend William Jones, and transferred to him all her adoration. It is conceivable that Elizabeth Parsons felt the same about William Kent. In which case, sleeping in his bed while he was away must have aroused morbid emotions—especially if she was aware that Kent and Fanny were ‘living in sin’. The convulsions that began a year after the disturbances certainly suggest she was passing through a period of emotional upheaval. But since we know so little about Elizabeth, all these things must remain a matter for speculation.
Only one thing seems fairly certain: that the spirit itself was neither that of Elizabeth Kent nor of Fanny Lynes; it was the usual mischievous poltergeist, bent on creating as much havoc and confusion as possible. It seems to confirm Chesterton’s remark that the only definite thing that can be said about such spirits is that they tell lies.
; The Epworth poltergeist and the Cock Lane ghost confined themselves to rappings (although the Cock Lane ghost seemed to be attempting more ambitious phenomena towards the end). A poltergeist that haunted a farm in Stockwell, London, in 1772 showed altogether less restraint. It began by throwing rows of plates off the kitchen shelf and smashing them. When the owner of the house, Mrs Golding, fainted, the doctor bled her; the blood had only just congealed when it leapt out of the basin, and the basin smashed in pieces. When Mrs Golding offered some of the assembled guests a drink of wine or rum, these bottles also shattered. Joints of ham leapt off their hooks on the ceiling and fell to the floor. The racket was so tremendous that they were afraid the house would fall down, and the children were sent off to the barn. The maid, Ann Robinson, went with them, and as soon as she was out of the house, the disturbances stopped. The moment she returned, they started again. The coal scuttle overturned, candlesticks flew through the air, a nine-gallon cask of beer was turned upside down, and a bucket of cold water ‘boiled like a pot’—as in the Amherst case of a century later. Mrs Golding decided to sack the maid, and the uproar promptly ceased.
This case attracted little attention at the time—if Dr Johnson heard of it, he no doubt dismissed it as another fraud. Catherine Crowe unearthed it a century later for her book The Night Side of Nature. And in her chapter on the poltergeist, she makes some sensible and pertinent suggestions. She discusses the case of a French girl called Angélique Cottin, who was weaving silk gloves on January 15, 1846, when the loom began to jerk violently. The other girls were terrified, and retreated to the far end of the room; then, one by one, they went back to examine the loom, which had a heavy oak frame. As soon as Angélique approached, it began to dance again.
From this time on, Angélique developed the power of giving people violent electric shocks—she was, in fact, a ‘human electric eel’. Objects laid on her apron flew off violently, and the power was strong enough to raise a heavy tub with a man sitting on it. Oddly enough, metals were not affected, indicating that this form of ‘electricity’ was not the usual kind. When Angélique was tired, the current would diminish. It also diminished when she was on a carpet, but was most powerful when she was on bare earth—another indication that the force seems to come from the earth, and is probably connected with the force that convulses some dowsers. She had to sleep on a stone covered with a cork mat. The phenomena continued for four months, and were widely studied by men of science; then they ceased.
Mrs Crowe makes the reasonable suggestion that poltergeist phenomena may be electrical in nature, and cites a number of other cases, including a Mlle. Emmerich, sister of the professor of theology at Strasbourg, who became a human electric battery after receiving a severe fright, the nature of which is not specified. (We have already noticed that many mediums seem to develop their powers after accidents.) The interesting thing about Mlle. Emmerich was that she could give people shocks even when they were not touching her. She gave her brother a shock when he was several rooms away; when he rushed to her bedroom, she laughed and said: ‘Ah, you felt it, did you?’
Mrs Crowe adds the interesting remark: ‘Many somnambulistic persons [she means persons under hypnosis] are capable of giving an electric shock; and I have met with one person, not somnambulistic, who informs me that he has frequently been able to do it by an effort of will.’
Clearly, if someone was able to produce electric currents at will, he or she might be in a position to cause poltergeist phenomena—perhaps even at a distance, like Mlle. Emmerich; in that case, we might have some kind of explanation for the magical powers of the drummer of Tedworth. But although the theory is attractive, it could only explain the least spectacular abilities of the poltergeist—like causing raps and smashing plates. How, for example, could it account for the extraordinary case that has become known as the Bell Witch, in which a poltergeist mistreated its victim until he died?
This case, as the paranormal investigator Nandor Fodor pointed out, took place at an interesting time when Americans had ceased to believe in witchcraft, and had not yet discovered Spiritualism. As a result, there was no proper investigation. It is fortunate that the records that have survived are so detailed.
In 1817, a farmer named John Bell lived with his family in Robertson County, Tennessee, with his wife Lucy and nine children. One of these, Betsy, was a girl of twelve.
At first, the disturbances were so slight that no one paid much attention. There were knocking and scraping noises, and sounds like rats gnawing inside the walls. As usual, nothing could be found to account for these sounds. They seemed to be mostly the kind of noises that might be made by animals, and so did not cause a great deal of excitement. An invisible dog seemed to be clawing at the floor, an invisible bird flapped against the ceiling, then two chained dogs sounded as if they were having a fight. When lamps were lit and people got out of bed to search, the noises stopped—poltergeists seem to have an odd dislike of being observed. Then the entity started pulling the clothes off beds, and making various ‘human’ noises—choking and gulping sounds followed by a gasping noise as if someone was being strangled. Next, stones were thrown and chairs turned upside down. Slowly, the poltergeist began to get into its stride. The girl Betsy—Elizabeth—seemed to be the focus; things only happened when she was around.
When the disturbances had been going on for roughly a year, the household was in permanent chaos. They seldom got a good night’s sleep; the house often shook with the noises. The thing seemed to be able to be in several places at once—one night, Richard Williams Bell was awakened by something pulling his hair so hard that he thought the top of his head would come off; as he yelled with pain, Betsy, on the floor above, also began to scream as something pulled her hair.
Like the Fox family thirty years later, the Bells decided to ask the advice of neighbours. A friend named James Johnson came to the house. When the ‘ghost’ made a sound like sucking air in through the teeth, he told it to be quiet, and it obeyed him. But poltergeists dislike being given orders (they seem to react best to a friendly approach), and this one redoubled its persecution of Betsy; there would be a sharp slapping noise and her cheek would go red from a blow, or her hair would be grabbed by an invisible hand and pulled. At least, Johnson had discovered that the entity understood English; so he advised Bell to invite in more neighbours. At this stage, he still seems to have entertained the obviously absurd idea that the children might be responsible. They tried sending Elizabeth to stay with a neighbour; the disturbances in the Bell household stopped, but Elizabeth continued to be persecuted with blows and scratches.
Poltergeist phenomena always work their way up from small effects to larger ones—from scratches or raps to flying stones and furniture; it never happens the other way around. The ‘Bell Witch’ seemed to take pleasure in developing new ways of upsetting everybody. Strange lights flitted about the yard after dark. As the children came home from school, stones and chunks of wood were thrown at them. These were usually thrown from a particular thicket, and (as usual in such cases) never hurt anyone; if the children threw them back, they were promptly thrown again. But visitors to the house received stinging slaps—as did the children if they tried to resist when the covers were dragged off their beds.
The next stage was a whistling sound, which gradually changed to a voice. Poltergeist voices do not sound at all like ordinary human voices; at least, not to begin with. It seems as if the entity is having to master a strange medium, to form sounds into words. (Even the rapping noises are probably ‘manufactured’ sounds, not genuine raps made by hard objects.) Most talking ghosts and poltergeists begin in a guttural voice that sounds as if it is made up from grunts or groans; the Bell witch made gasping, whispering noises more like an asthmatic cough. Gradually, the voice developed until it was a low but audible whisper. It made such remarks as ‘I can’t stand the smell of a nigger’. And Betsy undoubtedly provided the energy for these demonstrations; she became fatigued and miserable, short of breath, and
subject to fainting spells. Whenever she was unconscious, the voice ceased, which led some neighbours to suspect that she was a ventriloquist. But, as Nandor Fodor has pointed out, it sounds much more as if she slipped into mediumistic trance. At the same time, John Bell himself began to suffer. His tongue swelled, and his jaw felt stiff as if someone had pushed a stick inside his mouth, pushing on both sides of the jaw. It gradually became worse, until he was often unable to eat for a day at a time. The ‘witch’ also seemed to direct more and more of its malice towards ‘old Jack Bell’, declaring that he would be tormented for the rest of his life.
Meanwhile, the voice had graduated from a whisper to a normal voice; it used to repeat bits of the sermons of various local parsons. Then it began using bad language—again, a common characteristic of ‘talking ghosts’. In fact, ‘it’ talked in several voices. One of its earliest utterances in a normal voice was: ‘I am a spirit who was once very happy, but have been disturbed and am now unhappy.’ And it stated that it would torment John Bell and kill him in the end. It identified itself as an Indian whose bones had been scattered, then as a witch called Old Kate Batts. Then four more voices made their appearance—the ‘family’ of the witch; they identified themselves as Blackdog, Mathematics, Cypocryphy and Jerusalem. Blackdog had a harsh, masculine voice, Jerusalem a boy’s voice, while the other two sounded ‘delicate and feminine’. They apparently indulged in debauches, talking drunkenly and filling the house with the smell of whisky.
