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303
The Book of Dreams and Ghosts
·
Andrew Lang
204
Cases
like
that
of
Mrs.
Shchapoff
really
belong
to
a
peculiar
species
of
haunted
houses.
Our
ancestors,
like
the
modern
Chinese,
attributed
them
to
diabolical
possession,
not
to
an
ordinary
ghost
of
a
dead
person.
Examples
are
very
numerous,
and
have
all
the
same
"symptoms,"
as
Coleridge
would
have
said,
he
attributing
them
to
a
contagious
nervous
malady
of
observation
in
the
spectators.
Among
the
most
notorious
is
the
story
of
Willington
Mill,
told
by
Howitt,
and
borrowed
by
Mrs.
Crowe,
in
The
Night
Side
of
Nature.
Mr.
Procter,
the
occupant,
a
Quaker,
vouched
to
Mrs.
Crowe
for
the
authenticity
of
Howitt's
version.
(22nd
July,
1847.)
Other
letters
from
seers
are
published,
and
the
Society
of
Psychical
Research
lately
printed
Mr.
Procter's
contemporary
journal.
A
man,
a
woman,
and
a
monkey
were
the
chief
apparitions.
There
were
noises,
lights,
beds
were
heaved
about:
nothing
was
omitted.
A
clairvoyante
was
turned
on,
but
could
only
say
that
the
spectral
figures,
which
she
described,
"had
no
brains".
After
the
Quakers
left
the
house
there
seems
to
have
been
no
more
trouble.
The
affair
lasted
for
fifteen
years.
Familiar
as
it
is,
we
now
offer
the
old
story
of
the
hauntings
at
Epworth,
mainly
because
a
full
view
of
the
inhabitants,
the
extraordinary
family
of
Wesley,
seems
necessary
to
an
understanding
of
the
affair.
The
famous
and
excessively
superstitious
John
Wesley
was
not
present
on
the
occasion.
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