Something like a ghost.
People pelted with coal.
Excitement was occasioned in Gravesend on Saturday by the report of an occurrence at 26, Wrotham-road, a street adjoining the Kent County Cricket Ground. The house is occupied by tenement lodgers. Mrs Beadle, one of the tenants, states that as she was sitting in her room in the evening she suddenly saw a “shoal” of cinders fall on the front of her window. Thinking that some of her children had thrown them, she went out, but they told her they had done nothing of the sort. As she was entering the door again she was startled considerably by a heavy lump of coal falling at her feet from upstairs.
Becoming alarmed at this extraordinary state of affairs, she went a neighbour on the matter. He armed himself with a revolver, and accompanied her to the house. He went upstairs to see if any coal was kept in the bedroom, and as he was mounting the first few steps, a lump fell heavily just behind him. This so startled him that he turned and fled.
Mrs Beadle then sought the advice of other persons living in the neighbourhood, who suggested that all the lodgers in the house should leave before anything else happened. One of the sons of Mr John Reed, a ticket collector on the South-Eastern Railway, and who is also a tenant of the house in Wrotham-street, said he would try and find the “ghost”. As soon as he started to go upstairs, however, he was pelted with coal, one nut striking him on the head.
Nothing daunted, the lad called in a couple of companions, but on opening the door leading to the stairs the candle he was carrying suddenly became extinguished. Reed addressed the “ghost” and asked him to throw the rest of the coal if there was any more left. Hardly were the words out of his mouth when a shower of coal was hurled at him, one lump striking him so heavily on the face that he fainted.
Although the house has been thoroughly searched no explanation can be given of the occurrences. Many put the manifestations down to practical joking. Hundreds of people visited the place on Sunday and order was maintained by the police.
Gloucester Citizen, 20th September 1897
The Gravesend Ghost
Rats suggested as the cause of the scare.
But the police attribute it to naughty boys.
A Morning reporter was sent down to Gravesend yesterday to arrest the ghost who had been throwing coal about at a little house in Wrotham-road, occupied by a ticket-collector of the South-Eastern Company. The spook, or whatever he is, commenced operating some days ago, producing by his agency of the spiritual world divers bumps and bangings and shrieks. It was said that the ghost – who by the way nobody has ever seen – had showered cinders and small pieces of Lord Londonderry’s best households on unoffending occupants of the house in Wrotham-road – a little tenement into which no really energetic ghost intent on business, would care to enter. The reporter alightted yesterday afternoon on two perspiring men who were engaged on the removal of the coals – all else had gone, or nearly so.
The one man who surrendered his occupation at once at the suggestion that there was something uncanny about the premises, showed the journalist over the premises. The man was convinced that “there was something in it”; but he could not account for the fact that there were no broken windows and no holes in the roof through which the “nubbles” could have been projected. But he rather pinned himself down to the statement that a boy belonging to the house had fainted in going up to engage the “ghost” in conversation having (as the boy said) been struck by one of the nubbles. He called his mate, mutually engaged in getting up the coal, “What about this ‘ere mystery? – Gen’leman wants to know.” “Well, sir, my idea it’s rats. Yes, rats. After we get out the ghost will do a guy. Don’t yer know that rats carry lumps of coal about with ’em, and whenever they hears a stamp of a foot they drops it? That’s what’s done it. Why, there’s a lot of rat holes down below, and that’s in my opinion where the ghost comes from. No I don’t think we shall be able to clear out altogether to-night.” “Well, then, the ghost will have at least another night for knocking about in the coal cellar.” “Maybe: but he won’t have much left except slack, and nobody to chuck at.”
The reporter then came across the small boy who fainted, and who, with a youthful friend, was vigorously puffing a cigarette. He was insistent as to the spook having hit him with a nugget of coal on the right jaw, just as he was going up to defy the mysterious personage. There was, however, no sign of damage to his outer cuticle; for which he could only account by the interposition of a merciful Providence. To show that there was no deception he produced from the mantelpiece a collection of small coal which he asserverated had been showered upon him. He didn’t say “rats” in parting to the reporter, but went away like the good boy that he seemed to be, smoking his cigarette and attending to the removal of the last part of his father’s effects.
The police have their own opinion of the whole proceedings. They say that “the boys” ought to be well birched. The affair is altogether ridiculed by Gravesend people as the outcome of a juvenile “game at ghosts,” but it comes none the less serious that landlords of houses should be made to suffer for the wicked enterprises of Young England.
South Wales Echo, 21st September 1897.
The Gravesend Ghost
An Australian correspondent suggests that the Gravesend coal-throwing ghost is reminiscent of the “Enmore ghost,” whose similar proclivities created a mystery of several days’ standing in Sydney a few years ago. In the Australian case a certain house received regularly at particular hours of the day a fusilade of stones from no ascertainable source. The scared inhabitants evacuated the house, the Sydney papers sent special reporters to the scene, and the curious flocked to the house in crowds. Some gentlemen of scientific renown examined the mysterious missiles, and one of them learnedly declared that the stones were “of meteoric origin,” while another hazarded the opinion that they emanated from the planet Mars. But there is nothing more obscure than the obvious, as some paradoxical philosopher has observed, and after all the stones were found to have no more mysterious origin than the topmost branches of a tree in the vicinity of the house, whence they were hurled by some mischievous urchins who had secreted themselves there.
Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 24th September 1897.
At last we hear of a ghost with a practical turn. He has been pelting Mrs Beadle and her family at Gravesend with lumps of coal. Mrs Beadle was alarmed, and a neighbour, though armed with a revolver, incontinently fled. But another visitor, with a praiseworthy commercial instinct, discerned the advantage to the Beadles of a ghost who replenished the family coals from stores which were either supernatural or the property of the lodgers upstairs. So he cheefully invited the ghost to throw down “the rest.” The response was a heavy shower of coal, one lump proving a rather ugly missile. A playful ghost evidently, who ought to be approached in future with an open umbrella. For Mrs Beadle’s sake, we hope nothing will be done to offend him. Jupiter wooed Danae in a shower of gold, but coal will answer the purpose in our less romantic age. It is possible, however, that some of the lodgers may break the charm by mounting guard over their scuttles.
Lincolnshire Chronicle, 24th September 1897.