Modern HauntingsThe Shchapoff Story of a Peculiar Type. "Demoniacal Possession."Story of Wellington Mill briefly analysed. Authorities for the Story.Letters. A Journal. The Wesley Ghost. Given Critically and Why.Note on similar Stories, such as the Drummer of Tedworth. Sir WallerScott's Scepticism about Nautical Evidence. Lord St. Vincent. Scottasks Where are his Letters on a Ghostly Disturbance. The Letters arenow Published. Lord St. Vincent's Ghost Story. Reflections.Cases like that of Mrs. Shchapoff really belong to a peculiar speciesof haunted houses. Our ancestors, like the modern Chinese, attributedthem to diabolical possession, not to an ordinary ghost of a deadperson. Examples are very numerous, and have all the same "symptoms,"as Coleridge would have said, he attributing them to a contagiousnervous malady of observation in the spectators. Among the mostnotorious is the story of Willington Mill, told by Howitt, andborrowed by Mrs. Crowe, in The Night Side of Nature. Mr. Procter, theoccupant, a Quaker, vouched to Mrs. Crowe for the authenticity ofHowitt's version. (22nd July, 1847.) Other letters from seers arepublished, and the Society of Psychical Research lately printed Mr.Procter's contemporary journal. A man, a woman, and a monkey were thechief apparitions. There were noises, lights, beds were heaved about:nothing was omitted. A clairvoyante was turned on, but could only saythat the spectral figures, which she described, "had no brains".After the Quakers left the house there seems to have been no moretrouble. The affair lasted for fifteen years.Familiar as it is, we now offer the old story of the hauntings atEpworth, mainly because a full view of the inhabitants, theextraordinary family of Wesley, seems necessary to an understanding ofthe affair. The famous and excessively superstitious John Wesley wasnot present on the occasion.
