The Wesley Ghost #4: Hearing the Ghost November 9, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
The main feature of the Wesley haunting were the noises that the family heard. For the most part these were banal ghost knocks but there were lots of other more exotic sounds. The following could almost stand as a prose poem: the gobbling of a turkey, (142); dancing in a closed room (142); ‘tingling’ of the latch and warming pan (129); sound of a nightgown trailing past a bed (129, 136); someone stumbling over shoes, (142); coins jingling down (478); a man walking in jack boots; a key banging on the wall; an iron ball thrown among glass bottles (478); a great chain falling (159); huge piece of coal smashing after being dropped; pewter thrown around in the kitchen (478); a jack being wound up (121); ‘feeble squeaks’ (146); the rubbing of a beast against a wall (147); a carpenter plaining deals (121); deep groans (121); creaking of bed (137); the creaking of a saw (477); the hollow banging of a large stick on a chest (154); and best of all, ‘[the noise] of a windmill, when the body of it is turned about, in order to shift the sails to the wind’ (477). On the basis of this Jeffrey could go back to the spirit world with satisfaction at a job well done. But the family were most interested by the knocks that travelled around the house, but that seem to have centred on the nursery. The knock came from above, from the walls (in and outside rooms) and even outside the house: they often shifted wherever the human auditors were not.
[Hetty] ran into the kitchen where it was drumming on the inside of the screen. When she went round, it was drumming on the outside, and so always on the side opposite to her. (476)
Most interestingly knocks became a way to communicate between the family and the ghost. Samuel Wesley had, it transpires, a distinctive knock: 1 – 2 3 4 5 6 – 7 (145). This was presumably a code so that the family would know that this was pater at the gate. However, Jeffrey himself took up the knock and it is interesting that:
My sister, Kezzy says she remembered nothing else [she was only seven and this is thirteen years later], but that it knocked my father’s knock, ready to beat the house down in the nursery one night (164) [this in 1720].
Jeffrey did sometimes get angry. He was greatly provoked when a horn was blown through the house in an attempt to get rid of rats (151): an early explanation for the sounds. He also didn’t like being told he was a rat.
‘It was more loud and fierce if any one said it was rats, or any thing natural.’
He also was a Jacobite ghost in that he didn’t like prayers for King George!
There is a record of Samuel (the elder) trying to talk with Jeffrey through knocking. Samuel Wesley had wondered (as had other members of the family) whether Jeffrey was not the sign that one of their own family had died somewhere far away. This is John recording his father’s actions:
[Samuel the elder] said ‘If though art the spirit of my son Samuel, I pray, knock three knocks, and no more.’
There was nothing but silence. Could this be, in 1716/1717 the first attempt at using knocks to communicate with the spirit world? Drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com. If so this is a bit of history.
Anyone interested in the original documents they have been usefully put together in a single pdf document. There are about sixty pages and the file weighs in at about 15 mb.
The tag for these posts is Wesley Ghost: all comments collected on Wesley 1.
