Disorderly Ghosts.
Spiritual manifestations extraordinary.
Strange story from Brecknockshire.
A valued correspondent writes:
I have just been informed by the Rev. W.J. Davies, Calvinistic Methodist minister, of Lower House, near Trevecca, who was in a state of great excitement, that he and his family have been considerably troubled nightly during the present week by phenomena startling and inexplicable, which have taken place at his residence.
Each night before the family retire to rest the chairs in the house and other moveable objects are observed to suddenly leave their usual places, and hop in all directions. The coal, which is kept in a bucket close to the fire, is thrown all over the place, and the voice of human beings is heard at intervals upstairs. But when search is made nothing can be found to account for the singular and unnatural circumstance.
The theory given by Mr Davies is that the visitor must be a spirit, as no human being could possibly effect an escape through the doors, which are all locked, when search is made. So alarmed have the family become, as well as the residents in the immediate vicinity of Mr Davies’ residence, that two police-constables were told off to remain at the house one night, but without any desirable result. Naturally enough, the affair is exciting great interest in the neighbourhood.
South Wales Echo, 13th January 1888.
Supernatural manifestations.
The Cock lane ghost has, perhaps, set the worst example of all supernatural visitants. He was not the first or the worst of his kind, for we have the narrative of Colonel Somerville, one of Cromwell’s officers in Ireland, testifying to the very annoying and utterly inexplicable phenomena by which he and his family had been persecuted in Drogheda after that town has been taken by the Lord Protector, but the spiritual manifestations which will remain for ever a testimony to the superstition and simplicity of the “great lexicographer” have been since repeated in one form or other, and in instances too numerous to mention.
The latest example is reported from Brecknockshire, where the Rev. W.T. Davies, Calvinistic Methodist minister of Treveca, and the family of that afflicted divine have been of late sorely troubled by mysterious occurrences at their residence. We sceptics smile as a matter of course at the fatuity which believes that the dead like the drunkard, have a tendency to prove they are on the premises by smashing the furniture.
We have only to refer to such blood-curdling records as Mrs Crowe’s “Night side of nature” to see the “spirits”, ghosts, or spooks, as our Yankee friends call them, adopt very often apparently meaningless and absurd methods of signifying their presence. Throwing about the furniture, and flinging coals and other missiles are among their commonest devices, and these also have been the favourite practices of the mischievously-minded human being, who has usually proved the diabolus ex-machina in this so called supernatural manifestation. – London Correspondent.
Drogheda Conservative, 21st January 1888.