The Epworth Rectory Poltergeist, "Old Jeffrey" (1716-1717)

Epworth sits on the Isle of Axholme in Lincolnshire. In 1716 its rectory was a new Queen Anne brick house. The old wooden one had burned on 9 February 1709, in suspicious circumstances. The rector, Samuel Wesley, was 54. He was a Tory who preached against folk belief and against consulting "cunning men." He was not popular in the village.

That winter the house was full. Samuel and his wife Susanna Wesley. Seven daughters, from Emilia, 23, down to Kezia, 6. A manservant, Robert "Robin" Brown, and a maid, Nanny Marshall. The sons were away. Samuel Jr. was in London. John and Charles were at school.

Saturday, 1 December 1716. A maid heard groans at the dining-room door. Susanna wrote of "several dismal groans, like a person in extremes, at the point of death." Molly heard "several groans in the hall, as of a dying man." Emily called them "like the groans of one expiring."

The next night Robin Brown heard "the gobbling of a turkey-cock, close to the bed-side," then "the sound of one stumbling over his shoes and boots." He watched a hand-mill nearby whirl "about very swiftly." His only complaint. "Nought vexed me, but that it was empty." Then came the knocking. Molly and Suky heard "three loud knocks, immediately after other three."

Through December the noises spread. Footsteps overhead, "as if several people were walking, then running up and down stairs." The "tingling of the latch and warming pan." A sound like "a bag of money emptied at my feet." Suky heard "something walk by my bedside, like a man in a long nightgown." Some accounts tell of a badger-like creature scurrying across the floor, and of a white rabbit. Emily put it simply. "There was no quiet after ten at night."

Samuel had doubted. Then, Susanna wrote, "It knocked loudly nine times, just by his bedside." He began a journal. In Christmas week the Rev. Joseph Hoole came and heard sounds like "the winding up of a jack" and like "a carpenter planing deals." The family called their visitor Jeffrey. Susanna was "entirely convinced that it was beyond the power of any human creature to make such strange and various noises." Most accounts say it faded in January 1717. Others say it lingered for months.

Samuel Jr. cross-examined the family by letter and suggested "cats, or rats, or dogs." Their replies, written in January 1717, survive. In 1726 John Wesley gathered written statements from his mother, his sisters and Robin Brown. He published his "Account of the Disturbances in my Father's House" in the Arminian Magazine in October 1784. Joseph Priestley printed the family letters in Birmingham in 1791.

Emilia blamed witchcraft. Samuel saw politics, because the knocking grew louder during the prayers for the King. Others pointed at hostile villagers. Samuel Taylor Coleridge suggested nervous contagion. In 1908 H. Addington Bruce argued that the earliest records describe only "creaking noises, knocks, footsteps or groaning sounds," and that memory had exaggerated the rest. He suspected the daughter Hetty. Trevor H. Hall favoured natural causes in 1965. Matt Arnold proposed a house shifting as drained land settled, plus rodents, pets and "a story being crafted."

Thirty-four years later Emily still wrote of "that wonderful thing called by us Jeffrey." The house is now Epworth Old Rectory, a museum owned by the Methodist Church, attic included. Because of the family who lived there, and the rise of Methodism, Old Jeffrey became one of the best-known poltergeists in England.