The Stockwell Ghost (Stockwell poltergeist)

Stockwell in 1772 was a village in the parish of Lambeth, in Surrey. Mrs Golding lived there, an elderly and pious widow. She had just hired a new maid. Her name was Ann Robinson. She was about twenty years old.

Monday 6 January 1772. Twelfth Day. About ten o'clock in the forenoon, Mrs Golding was sitting in her parlour when she heard china and glasses fall and break in the back kitchen. Ann Robinson came in to say the stone plates were falling from the shelf. Mrs Golding went to look. They were broken.

A clock tumbled down and the case broke. A lantern on the staircase was thrown down and the glass broke to pieces. The maid advised her mistress not to be alarmed, as these things could not be helped. Mr Rowlidge, a local carpenter, inspected the house. The foundations, he thought, were giving way.

Mrs Golding fled to her neighbour, Mr Gresham, and fainted. Her belongings were carried after her. So was the trouble. Gresham's china basin broke, and his bottle of rum. By two in the afternoon she had moved to her niece, Mrs Pain, at Rush Common near Brixton Causeway. Around eight that evening it began again. Pewter dishes fell from a shelf and, once quiet, turned upside down. A glass tumbler jumped about two feet and broke. A pestle and mortar jumped about six feet. A cup flew across the kitchen, ringing like a bell. An egg flew off a shelf, crossed the kitchen, and struck a cat. Somewhere in those hours, a pail of water boiled like a pot.

At about ten that night Mrs Golding and Ann Robinson returned to Stockwell with a neighbour, Richard Fowler. The breakage went on. Near one in the morning Fowler fled in terror, urging Mrs Golding to consider whether she had not been guilty of some atrocious crime.

At five on Tuesday morning Mrs Golding woke her niece at Rush Common, and it continued. Between six and seven, Ann Robinson was sent out on an errand. The house went quiet. Suspicion fell on her and she was dismissed. The disturbances immediately ceased, and were never afterwards renewed. Within days a pamphlet appeared, signed by Mrs Golding, John and Mary Pain, Richard and Sarah Fowler, and Mary Martin.

In 1825 William Hone reprinted the narrative in The Every-Day Book. An informant, Mr J. B., later named as the Rev. Mr Brayfield, said Ann Robinson had confessed. She had fixed long horse hairs to some of the crockery and put wires under others. She dexterously threw many things down. A paper of chemical powders made the pail seem to boil. Later accounts give her motive as a clear house in which to meet her lover. Hone hinted at a love story whose details were never published.

The confession is second hand, set down about fifty years later. Some flights, like the mortar's six foot leap, are hard to explain with hair and wire alone.

Catherine Crowe told the story as genuine in 1848 and left the confession out. Household Words used it in 1850 to argue for rational explanations. Charles Mackay retold it in 1852, and Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable points readers to the Cock Lane Ghost. The Stockwell Ghost remains a textbook poltergeist case. No apparition. No lights. Only a young servant, a frightened household, and twenty hours of breaking china.