The Tower Monster #9: The Sexual Predator Ghost July 23, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Chris from Haunted Ohio Books a world authority on ghosts (and urban legends, and fairies and…) has written in with an extract from a book entitled Familiar Spirits: Sexual Hauntings Through the Ages, Colin Waters, Robert Hale,1993, (for pdf extract click here) sexual hauntings. CW reviews the evidence but then reveals a new source ‘another nineteenth century book, Fantasms of Old London.’ Here is an extract from this book that CW quotes:
we arrived in the room to find Mr Swifte in much agitation, ushering his son and his sister-in-law out of the room, telling them to wait in the children’s room upstairs. Mrs Swifte lay upon the floor, her whole bodice agape and her breast bare, showing red risen teeth marks upon them, which were repeated upon her shoulders and neck. She was thrashing around as if engaged in close relations with a lover, but these movements quickly subsided upon our arrival. Shortly she came fully round, adjusted her clothing and calmly began to tell us what she had perceived in the moments before.
It would seem that a kind of spirit or ghost had come upon her in the shape of a glass roll which swirled within with strange gasses or clouds. Though she could not see him or hear him, she perceived in her mind, non the less, a bluff, hearty man, behind her who told her he must have her body, despite the company of her family. Within seconds he had seized her shoulder and pulled open her bodice, all the while biting passionately at her skin. Though Madam went on to tell us in immodest fashion of all that took place, she begged that nothing should be repeated to others for fear her husband’s and her own honour be at stake. I can only now tell you this which is common knowledge, save that Mrs Swifte appeared to be completely normal and suffered no ill effects or further visits from the wild spirit.
Beach has some serious problems with this passage.
(i) The style sounds cod Victorian: the sexual details particularly, ‘bodice agape’ etc.
(ii) A mistress would not be so indiscreet as to tell her servants, sexual facts but then beg not the to tell anyone else.
(iii) Something of this, ‘marks on her body’ say, would have appeared in Swifte’s account.
(iv) There are inconsistencies with Swifte’s account.
(v) when was this written? Swifte’s account comes out in 1860, were there even any servants still alive at this date? Or was it published before?
And a small detail
(vi) No book called Fantasms of London appears in any library catalogue.
Beach would love to be corrected: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
