A Ghost or something else!!
A respectable farmer and his family, at Holme, near Burton-in-Kendal, have for some weeks back, been much annoyed and disturbed in the night, by a strange kind of noise, as of a person knocking, which was for long attributed to the rats: however, from recent circumstances, it plainly appears, that rats are not the cause. This knocking, with other singular and unaccountable noises, often begins in the evening and continues till nearly day-light.
The farmer (whose name we shall at present conceal), says, the knocking is sometimes as loud as the report of a gun; every means have been used to discover this nocturnal disturber, but hitherto without effect. We should not have offered this article to the notice of our readers, had it not been for the respectability of the parties, upon whom we can rely; indeed, it is the common conversation of the neighbourhood.
We recollect once to have heard of a similar circumstance happening in a farmhouse, in the neighbourhood of Sedbergh; the family had long been affrighted with the most tremendous noise and uproar in an appartment over-head, as if the whole fabric would at times tumble to the ground; at length they were prevailed upon to place a steel trap in the haunted chamber, though they were convinced that no rats were about the premises; however, the very first morning a large foulmart was caught within the iron jaws of the trap, and the house was no more haunted.
Westmorland Advertiser and Kendal Chronicle, 8th March 1823.