The Wesley Ghost #5: Seeing the Ghost November 14, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Unusually for a poltergeist case – or is this actually a wider phenomenon? Drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com – Jeffrey was not just heard and felt. He was also seen. There were three occasions.
I) On the first Susanna Wesley (mother not Suky) saw a ‘headless badger’ (!) under her daughter’s bed after a fit of knocking.
‘Like a badger, only without any head that was discernible.’ And elsewhere a description of the same event.
Upon my looking under the bed, something ran out pretty much like a badger, and seemed to run directly under Emily’s petticoats, who sat opposite to me on the other side.
II) On another occasion:
The same creature [i.e. the headless badger] was sat by the dining-room fire one evening; when our man [almost certainly Robert Brown] went into the room, it run by him, through the hall under the stairs. He followed with a candle, and searched, but was departed.
III) Then, Robert Brown was in the kitchen
Something came out of the copper hold like a rabbit, but less, and turned round five times very swiftly. Its ears lay flat upon its neck and its little scut [tail] stood straight up. He ran after it with the tongs in his hands, but when he could find nothing, he was frighted, and went to the maid in the parlour.
Elsewhere we learn that it was ‘like a white rabbit’. So basically a small-tailed albino rat?
There is a long tradition in Britain of protean, amorphous solitary fairies shape-changing in the English countryside from calfs to cats and into rolls of wool and other indeterminate forms. These are frequently, perhaps even invariably, white. It is tempting to associate this bogey with that tradition: though Beach does not know any instance of such a thing being seen in a house. The idea of a headless badger sitting and warming itself in front of the fire perhaps has a frisson of the homely: the rest though is creepy as hell. Note that only mother and Robert seem to have seen the ‘thing’. However, in a letter from Sukey – aged then 21 – there is an aside that suggests she too may have seen something: or was she reacting to one of these three events described above?
‘To conclude this, it now makes its personal appearance; but of this more hereafter. Do not say one word of this to our folks, nor give the least hint.’ (Jan 24)
Jan 24 is the day that Jeffrey, after having been quiescent, started up his activities again. It also seems to have been the day of the ‘white rabbit’ in the kitchen. Perhaps Sukey, then, was referring to this.
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.
