In the parish of Hovingham, North Yorkshire, in March 1707, something was amiss. The household of John Fawcet was suffering a haunting that was causing a ‘great disturbance’ to the family, disrupting their sleep and upsetting the servants. Every night for three weeks a knocking sound had been heard echoing through the house. On some occasions the knocking was uncomfortably close to the hearers, sometimes at the head of a bed, sometimes at the feet, sometimes on a table, or emanating from the ceiling. The source of the noise could not be found, and there seemed to be no natural explanation.
Unsure what to do, the family sensibly sought out the advice of the minister of their church, Reverend William Wood. Wood advised that the Fawcets should attempt to communicate with the knocker. The family did as Wood suggested, telling the knocker to respond by knocking if the answer to a question was yes, and to refrain from knocking if the answer to a question was no. This tactic was successful, and by these means the knocker affirmed that it was the ghost of John Fawcet’s grandmother-in-law, one Madam Savage.
The spirit appeared to be relatively benign, but it came with a purpose. Further questioning revealed that Savage had left certain things to her grandchildren in her will, but that after her death these had not been passed on to them as she had requested. The ghost indicated that it would only stop disturbing the family once these bequests had been fulfilled. John Fawcet therefore set off for Leeds, where his father-in-law Mr Johnson resided, to retrieve the properties and to hand them over to Savage’s grandchildren. Some gold rings, linen, a gold watch, and several drinking vessels were duly located and passed on.
However, though the household had been quiet whilst Fawcet was on his mission, on returning to Hovingham the disturbances began again and further questioning of the ghost revealed that this time Mr Johnson was to blame. The ghost then made its first, and apparently only, visual appearance. It manifested before a maidservant, taking the shape of ‘an ancient Gentlewoman grey-headed.’ The spirit spoke to the servant, saying that her name was Savage, that Johnson had ‘unworthily defrauded her Grandchildren,’ and mentioning further properties that had been withheld from the orphans by Johnson. Despite these clear instructions on how to rid the household of the ghost, Johnson proved obdurate, and the spirit became more troublesome, ‘taking the bed staves and throwing them about’ and ‘putting off the bedclothes’ of the family.
News of the ghost spread throughout the Fawcet’s hometown of Scackleton and beyond, and many witnesses outside of the family were ready to testify to the authenticity of the haunting. Eventually the spirit proved so bothersome that an observer noted the family themselves began to resemble the ghost that troubled them so.
[…] this story of the ghost of Madam Savage has been reconstructed from two accounts of the haunting that survive in the papers of the Leeds antiquarian and pious diarist Ralph Thoresby (1658-1725). It is part of a distinctive set of manuscript sources relating to the appearances of apparitions in late seventeenth and early eighteenth century England. the collection was gathered together by Thoresby, and includes letters, written accounts, and brief notes on a range of different supernatural encounters, many of which took place in and around Yorkshire, Thoresby’s home county. […]
In ‘The Social, Personal and Spiritual Dynamics of Ghost Stories in Early Modern England’ by Laura Sangha, The Historical Journal, v.63, March 2020.