“The Ghost of Aspenshaw.”
Believers in witchcraft and other kinds of mysterious agencies to bring various causes into effect, are happily not so numerous as evidently they were some 50 or 60 years, although there are many believers in spiritualism, table turning, spirit rapping, etc. A more enlightened race have been led to look upon these things as an absurdity, and the idea of an old woman riding astride a broomstick, and performing various sorceries upon both man and beast, would be scorned with that derision which it deserves.
The following story related by a farmer of this neighbourhood, whose acquaintance with the ancient and baronial looking residence, Aspenshaw Hall, near New Mills, has been very lengthy, and whose honesty and intelligence may be relied upon, will, no doubt, be of some interest to the lovers of ghost stories and the like: –
“Some 50 years ago a well-to-do farmer named Sidebottom held that mansion, but only occupied a portion of the building, leaving certain rooms unoccupied. Tradition says that a celebrated lawyer, of a date previous to this period, held the estate, as well as owned the property it consisted of, and he, on his decease, left a large number of books of different value strewn and laid about in one of the spare rooms.
As the story goes, first one and then another of the volumes were destroyed, or mutilated, and immediately after, those sleeping in another room, had fallen into a quiet slumber, they were sure to be disturbed by loud noises of tumbling stones, or reports varying in character, and tending to shatter the nerves of any but those acquainted with the place, and of stronger nerves than those who occasionally slept there.
Every time a book or paper in the room mentioned was torn or destroyed a repetition of the hideous noises followed, and the bedclothes gradually moved to the floor of the room. For a long time the place was declared “haunted,” and many refused to sleep there – for fear – though upon investigation nothing to produce any alarm could be found.”
The story is often repeated, amid the hearty laughter of the company, at many a cottage of farm house fireside. – Com.
Glossop-dale Chronicle and North Derbyshire Reporter, 7th March 1874.