The phantom Samson of Goresfield.
Flying washstand.
Family beaten at a game of draughts.
A correspondent wires: –
The Cambridgeshire village of Gorefield, a few miles from Wisbech, is disturbed by the activities of a ghostly agency in the house of a well-known resident. Accounts circulated of the happenings in the house have brought people from far and near, anxious to get further particulars and test the truth of the reports.
It is stated that furniture is moved and ornaments dashed to the ground, and if the articles are restored to their right places they are quickly upset again. Since Monday the House has been in complete disorder, the repetition of the mischievous doings have induced the occupants to take the attitude that it is useless to restore articles to their proper places, as the “ghost” is thereby only incited to greater assiduity in upsetting them.
Heavy articles of furniture, including a piano, have been moved several feet; a gramophone, standing on a small table at one end of the room, was mysteriously moved to a large table in the centre of the apartment; crockery in the pantry has been thrown down and smashed; while a small table in the kitchen has been seen turning round on the floor, and part of a washstand in a bedroom has been seen flying over the bed.
The disturbances occur at all hours of the day and night.
Pall Mall Gazette, 17th February 1923.
Ghost That Moves Furniture
Not afraid of the policeman.
Overtime.
£150 damage on day and night shifts.
From our own correspondent. Wisbech, Sunday.
A mischievous ghost is disturbing the even tenor of life at a house at Gorefield, four miles from here. It is a prosaic-looking house, occupied by an ordinary, inoffensive family. But this is no ordinary ghost; and his pranks are proving rather expensive. Most ghosts are content to flit about and show themselves occasionally to scared mortals who are up when respectable folk should be in bed.
Not so the Gorefield ghost. His methods are original, if somewhat iconoclastic. Apart from shifting pianos and things, showing that probably he was a furniture remover in the old days, he works by day as well as night, and takes a peculiar delight in the sound of crashing crockery. His taste in this direction has already cost the householder about £150.
He has some other funny little ways. For instance, this is how he started off. Mr Joseph Scrimshaw, who occupies the house with his mother, 82 years of age, and his daughter, aged 16, was called at midnight to his mother’s room, because her lace cap had been flying about the room. It was a singularly thoughtless joke at that time of night, but the ghost is evidently no respecter of age. Nor apparently was he fearful of discovery, for there was a fire in the room and the lamp was alight.
While Mr Scrimshaw was in the room a crash was heard – the ghost had started his favourite capers; a washstand in the next bedroom had crashed to the ground.
Neighbours were called in, and as the audience grew, so the program developed in liveliness. While they stood near the kitchen door, first a table in the hall fell over, then a heavy filter in the kitchen jumped off its stand, and a number of plates in the pantry went crashing to the floor. A barometer in another room and some lamp globes followed suit.
Police-Constable Hudson was called in, but even this failed to awe the ghostly mischief-maker, who promptly moved a pianola from its place against the wall.
The district nurse looked in, and a cupboard started coming towards her – but tripped and fell over before it got near.
So the performances have continued daily, with the inevitable china-smashing at each “house.” The result is that the place is in disorder. Articles restored to their proper niches are quickly upset again, so that the family have taken up the attitude that it is useless to put things back, as it only tempts the ghost to further frolics.
How do the occupants view this lively visitation? They are singularly undisturbed. Although offered other accommodation, the old lady strenuously refuses to leave the house. “It can’t go on for ever,” is Mr Scrimshaw’s philosophic view.
Every effort has been made to find a commonplace reason for the occurrences, but there is no trace of subsidence of the house- which was built in 1909 and stands 40 yards from the main road – and no vibration has been felt by those indoors at the time of activity.
The whole district has been stirred by the affair, and crowds visiting the house in the hope of seeing for themselves have had to be refused admission.
Another account says that the ghost moved a gramophone from a table at one end to another table in the centre of the room, and that part of a washstand has been seen flying over a bed.
Daily News (London), 19th February 1923.
Tales of a “Ghost”
Flying washstand and moving piano.
The activities of a “ghost” are disturbing the wonted peace of the Cambridgeshire village of Gorefield, a few miles from Wisbech. Alleged supernatural manifestations have made the house of Mr Joseph Scrimshaw, a well-known resident, a pandemonium. Heavy articles of furniture, including a piano, have been moved several feet, a gramophone standing on a small table at one end of a room was mysteriously moved to a large table in the centre of the apartment, crockery in the pantry has been thrown down and smashed, a small table in the kitchen turned round on the floor, and part of a washstand in a bedroom was seen flying over the bed.
The disturbances occur at all hours of the day and night, and if the articles are restored to their proper places the “ghost” is only incited thereby to greater activity. Mr Scrimshaw assured an interviewer that he was not nervous, and laughingly added: “It can’t go on for ever.” His remark was made just after a table had overturned for the third time that morning. The trouble, he said, started with lamps and candles refusing unaccountably to burn. Then disturbances were noticed in the bedroom occupied by Mr Scrimshaw’s mother, who is over eighty years of age, and from that time there has been a reign of confusion.
The house is not a moated grange, but was built so recently as 1909, and has been occupied ever since by the Scrimshaw family.
Nottingham Evening Post, 19th February 1923.
Ghost as heavy-weight lifter.
4-cwt. pianola that was shifted.
From our special correspondent, Wisbech, Monday.
The mystery of the Gorefield ghost deepens. A thin mantle of snow is spread over the Fens. A white mist reduces visibility, making it more difficult to catch this midnight apparition red-handed in his juggling acts with household furniture and crockery.
New Barn Farm, where Mr Scrimshaw, a fruit farmer, lives with his aged mother and 15-year-old daughter, Olive, is a substantial building of stone and bricks, and it overlooks a desolate stretch of the Fen country. A long wide dyke runs past the front garden.
This afternoon I visited the house and found Mr Scrimshaw ready to relate his story, with a generous flow of words and good deal of explanatory gesticulation. He is a lover of cats, and there are 14 in the house. His daughter Olive has a pet lamb, which was dozing in front of a roaring fire in the dining-room. The walls of the dining-room were bare, leaving just the nail holes where the pictures had hung.
“It was like guns going off,” was Mr Scrimshaw’s description of the uproar which the furniture-removing ghost is said to have made in one of his destructive moods. The ghost appears to be a heavy-weight lifter, for it has moved a pianola weighing 4cwt. two feet from the wall, besides upsetting tables, washstands, and knocking clocks and pictures off the walls and mantelpiece and sweeping crockery on to the floor. Although some of the neighbours and the village policeman were called in, I have discovered no one who actually saw the articles in their mysterious flights.
Mr Scrimshaw himself said quite candidly that he had not seen them actually move. “The whole thing is absolutely unaccountable,” said Mr Scrimshaw, who did not take off his clothes for several days and nights. “The heavy marble top of the washstand flew right across the bed and then the washstand itself was overturned. When it was replaced the same thing was repeated. I was asleep on the sofa during one of these visitations when a clock fell over the shoulder of a neighbour and dropped at his feet. Decanters and crockery in the pantry went with a crash, and a big filter in the kitchen also fell. Altogether I estimate the damage done at about £200. The marble clock on the mantelpiece that had not gone for years overturned and fell to the floor. Parts of it were smashed. It struck “seven” several times, but never struck any other hour but seven. One night, when the table was overturned, the oil lamp was swept off, and the glass chimney broke. We were in the dark, and we got candles, but somehow they refused to burn, and we could not get the wicks of the lamps to burn either.”
Olive corroborated her father’s story, and she told me that when she was lying down, under the doctor’s orders, because she was not feeling well, the books on the shelf fell on to the bed.
Mr Scrimshaw said that the last thing that happened in the house was the crash of a small framed photograph from off the piano, but he said, “I was asleep at the time, and one of the neighbours afterwards told me that Snowball, one of my cats, had done it.”
I have had long conversations with several villagers, including P.C. Hudson, who visited the house, and was in it when the pianola made its two-foot move, but he did not see it actually move.
Daily News (London), 20th February 1923 .
Mystery of a “haunted” house.
New Barn Farm House, Gorefield, near Wisbech (Cambs.). The occupier, Mr Joseph Scrimshaw (inset), tells a remarkable story of crockery and furniture being upset and smashed by some mysterious agency. Other strange disturbances are also reported.
Daily Mirror, 20th February 1923.
Haunted Farm House.
“Ghost’s” Weird Pranks in Fen Village.
Vicar’s Theory.
Pictures and crockery broken by ‘unseen hands’.
(From our special correspondent). Gorefield (Wisbech), Monday night.
Into the quiet of this little snow-covered Fenland village, a rackety ghost is playing havoc with the furniture of a farmhouse. Already the farmer, Mr Joseph Scrimshaw, has suffered damage, according to his estimate of nearly £200.
I saw Mr Scrimshaw in his dining room, late this afternoon. He was sitting brooding by the fire and a neighbour was sitting with him for company. Every picture on the wall had been thrown down by invisible hands and smashed. The chimney piece, too, had been swept bare, in the same weird fashion, of its marble clock and china ornaments. In the kitchen and the pantry, I was told most of the crockery and glass had been broken.
“There is not any explanation,” said Mr Scrimshaw to me. “It just happens. It beats everybody in this village. You see that large square table there, with all those books upon it. Three times it has been thrown over when there was nobody in the room, or pushed against the door. There are only three of us living in the house – my invalid mother, aged 82, my daughter of 16, and myself. On Monday last I was going to bed at about midnight when I heard a noise in my mother’s bedroom. I ran upstairs and she said that somebody was throwing her cap about. I saw it lying on the floor. My little daughter, who sleeps in the same room, said she had seen the cap flying about.
“As I was comforting my mother there was a crash in the unoccupied bedroom. I went inside this room and for no reason at all that I could discover the washstand had fallen over. Then another crash occurred in my own bedroom. The washstand had been thrown down and as I picked it up it fell over again. I fetched my foreman and left him in the house while I persuaded two neighbours to come back to the house with me. As we got to the front door we heard everything falling. We went in and picked up fallen articles but they fell down again. A heavy pianola had been pushed once or twice out of its position and we have heard it moving about the room.”
As I was coming away from this house of mystery I met the Rev. Hadley Rutter, vicar of the parish. “This afternoon I have received a telegram from the Psychical Research Society,” said Mr Rutter, “inquiring whether the reported phenomena warrants a scientific investigation. I replied by wire that I would make further personal investigation at the house and that I considered the whole strange affair ought to be probed by an expert. Since sending the telegram I interviewed Mr Scrimshaw again and questioned him and his little daughter very closely. I am convinced that trickery has nothing whatever to do with the incidents which have been related to me. Trickery, in the circumstances, is, I am sure, impossible. Not having sufficient knowledge of the subject, I hesitate to attribute the weird happenings to the supernatural. This is a matter for the Psychical Research Society.
“Therefore I must logically fall back upon natural causes for some reasonable explanation. Such an explanation may be found in the unprecedented amount of water out in the district. As a direct consequence our sub-soil is in a most peculiar condition. Nothing like it has been known for a very long period. Last summer a big dyke, which runs in front of the haunted house, if I may use the popular term, was dug out deeply for the first time in many years. This, coupled with the present phenomenal quantity of water, may have released certain gases which, in combination with other forces, has resulted in these strange phenomena.
“Until it is proved to me that supernatural agencies are at work, I shall hold the view that the solution of the mystery will be traced to a natural cause. Anyhow, I rule out the possibility of human agency. It is, perhaps, worth while to note that so many of the things which have been disturbed are made of wood.”
Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 20th February 1923.
“Fiend of the Fens.”
“Unseen Hand” that juggles with 5cwt. pianola.
Further frolics of the “fiend of the Fens” have occurred at New Barn Farm, Gorefield, where, it is related, for the past week furniture has been falling about and chairs have been leaping over bedsteads. The newest story is that last night two chairs fell over in the bedroom of Mrs Scrimshaw, 80 years old, mother of Mr Joseph Scrimshaw, the owner of the farm.
Like the pianola, the gramophone, the table, the washstand, the clock, the chest of drawers, and several other ornamental objects, the chairs fell over without being pushed, and when nobody was looking.
The farm, which stands in an extremely lonely spot in the Cambridgeshire fens, is a square-built building in the midst of a district which is full of legends and ghost stories. Nothing of this description, however, has ever happened there before, and one of the neighbours attributes the occurrence to “the unseen hand.”
Whatever the unseen hand may be it is certainly a particularly heavy one, for Mrs Scrimshaw related to a “Daily Mirror” correspondent how the pianola, which has been thrown over half-a-dozen times, weighs 5 cwt. It is old Mrs Scrimshaw who seems to be the chief victim of of the “Fen Fiend’s” pranks, for she has been continually bombarded with cushions, nightcaps, and bedroom slippers. Wherever she goes something is thrown at her and her nerves are beginning to feel the strain, for she cannot be sure that the ghost might not throw the pianola at her before long. A number of people, including experts in ghost lore, intend to wait for manifestations in the hope of clearing up the mystery.
Portsmouth Evening News, 21st February 1923.
Ghosts in charge of a farm.
Crockery gone mad.
How a gramophone started playing.
A “ghostly light” which mystified the inhabitants of Fenny Compton, Warwickshire, last week has been followed by reports of still weirder occurrences in a farmhouse in the Norfolk fens. the King’s Lynn correspondent of the “Daily Express” wired the following under date Sunday: –
A fifteen-year-old girl sitting beside her aged grandmother in a lonely farmhouse near the Fen village of Gorfield one night last week saw the old woman’s nightcap lifted from her head as if caught by a gust of wind and float about in the air. The girl called her father, Mr Joseph Scrimshaw, and when he rushed in the room the nightcap was darting about like a frightened bee. While Mr Scrimshaw was trying to seize the will-o’-the-wisp nightcap a loud crash sounded through the house, and it was found that a large wash-stand had toppled over in another bedroom. No sooner had Mr Scrimshaw reached this room than there was still another crash downstairs. A large dresser in the kitchen had fallen over.
These astonishing things happened just about the hour of midnight, and all through the long hours of early morning until daylight broke the usually quiet farmstead grew more eerie than the most hair-raising haunted chamber ever described.
Nearly every piece of furniture in every room seemed to have come alive, and either crashed to the floor or moved from one side of the room to the other. A massive pianola careered across the drawing-room, a gramophone suddenly began playing a lively tune without being touched, ornaments and crockery fell to the ground, and were smashed into hundreds of pieces.
On the night the strange happenings began the startled and mystiied Mr Scrimshaw called in his servant, named Murrick, who lives in a cottage a few yards from the farm, and he was sent to bring Mr G. P. Ward and Mr J. W. Masey from the village. They remained until daybreak, and solemnly confirm the most incredible story.
Every day and night since, at all hours, furniture has toppled over, pictures have fallen from the walls, still more ornaments and crockery have crashed to the floor, and the pianola persists in moving across the drawing-room, however many times it is replaced in its appointed spot.
The mantelpiece clock, which had not gone for years, fell down, righted itself, and struck seven.
Crowds have flocked to the farm of mystery. Omnibuses, crammed full with people bubbling over with curiosity, have stepped in a long procession on the road near the house.
The spectacle of undescribable havoc in the farmhouse is alone sufficient testimony to eerie happenings, but the strangest thing of all is that only one person – the district nurse – has seen any piece of furniture actually topple over. It is stated that she saw a cupboard in the kitchen slowly move from the wall and crash forward to the floor. Though many people have been in the house while these strange things have been going on, they have apparently always been in some other room when the noise of falling furniture and crockery has been heard.
The farmhouse is comparatively modern, and no structural defects can be discovered. It stands forty yards from the road in its own grounds.
Hampshire Telegraph, 23rd February 1923.
The Fenland “Ghosts.”
Whether the curious happenings in a cottage at Gorefield, near Wisbech, be attributable to the tiresome whimsicalities of a “poltergeist,” which being interpreted is “noisy ghost,” sometimes “knocker” in plain English, or whether, as seems more likely, they be more prosaically assignable to subsidences caused by cleaning out the Fenland “drains” in the vicinity, there will still remain people to stoutly defend against all comes the theory of a malevolent ghostly visitation.
When the local clergyman was asked to go to the cottage and exorcise the evil spirit we must not make the mistake of thinking that the suggestion, or request, was lightly made. There are many earnest Christians, not confined to the Roman Catholic Church, who genuinely believe in the priestly power of exorcism. I am not sure of the position of the Church of England in this matter. I believe that the earlier Anglian prayer-books contained an office for the exorcism of evil spirits, and I am not sure that some form for a similar function, but bereft of the picturesque appanage of “bell, book and candle,” has ecclesiastical sanction. The ancient rite of exorcism in connection with baptism is still retained in the Roman ritual, which also has a form of special service for the exorcism of “possessed persons.”
Nottingham Evening Post, 23rd February 1923.
What may prove to be yet another case of “Poltergeist” has been reported in many of the newspapers recently. According to the “Daily Mail” of February 18th, its correspondent writing from Wisbech (Cambridgeshire) on Sunday last, gives the following particulars –
A story of a series of mysterious incidents at New Barn Farm House, Gorefield, about four miles from here, was told to me by Mr. Joseph Scrimshaw, a fruit farmer, who lives there with his eighty-two years-old mother and his fifteen years-old daughter. The house, which has eight rooms, stands in a lonely position outside the village and is separated from the roadway by a broad ditch. The incidentsare the talk of the countryside, and hundreds of people from miles around have been to look at the house.
“About eleven last Monday night,”said Mr. Scrimshaw, “my mother called me and told me that her lace caps had been thrown, one at a time, from a side-table on to the bed. While she was speaking to me there was a loud crash in an unoccupied bedroom. I rushed in and found that a washstand had fallen over. Then the washstand in my own bedroom fell. As soon as we picked them up they fell over again.
“I fetched a neighbour. As we were approaching the house we heard furniture falling. My friend and I picked up the furniture, but as it soon fell again we left it.
“On Tuesday morning there was a crash in the dining room. There was no one in it, and we found that a big table had fallen over and that one end of the piano had moved two feet from the wall. Later there was a noise in my bedroom, and we found that the washstand had moved to the other side of the room. In the afternoon a cupboard, a weather-glass, and a filter were found to have fallen. That night a table and a gramophone in the dining-room fell and the washstand moved to the other side of the bed. All that night furniture in different rooms was thrown about.
“On Wednesday morning a clock fell off a nail and a heavy marble clock fell off the mantelpiece. Olive (Mr. Scrimshaw’s daughter) and her grandmother were so upset that they had to keep to their beds. When Olive was in bed books were thrown from a table on to her bed. During Wednesday nearly all the crockery and glassware in the pantry was smashed.
“Pictures and ornaments fell over. The string of the pictures was not broken. Twice during the week a pianola fell over. A constable who was watching with us helped to pick it up. During the time my mother and daughter were in bed things fell in downstairs rooms.
“I have not had my clothes off for a week. I have fourteen cats, but they could not throw heavy furniture about.”
I have talked to several people who watched in the house, but could not find one who actually saw any thing thrown over. All the rooms, excepting the kitchen and dining-room, are in a state of disorder. Olive, who is very small for her age, told me that the books seem to fly from the table to her bed. “I do not believe in ghosts,” she said, “but I cannot understand what has happened.”
Mr Scrimshaw estimates the damage in his house at more than £200.
Light, February 24th, 1923.
Ghost of the Fen Country.
Weird Antics with House Furniture.
Mystery Hour of 7.
From a special correspondent. Wisbech, Monday.
The mystery of the “Gorsefield ghost” [sic] deepens. The house where Mr Scrimshaw lives with his aged mother and 15-years-old daughter Olive overlooks a desolate stretch of the Fen Country. This afternoon, Mr Scrimshaw related his story with a generous flow of words and a good deal of explanatory gesticulation.
“It was like guns going off,” was his description of the uproar which the furniture-removing ghost is said to have made in one of his destructive moods.
The ghost appears to be a heavy-weight lifter, for it has moved a pianola, weighing a hundredweight, two feet from the wall, besides upsetting tables and washstands, knocking clocks and pictures off the walls and mantelpieces, and sweeping crockery on to the floor. Mr Scrimshaw said quite candidly that he had not seen them actually move.
“The whole thing is absolutely unaccountable,” he said. It seems that he did not take his clothes off for several days and nights. “The heavy marble top of the washstand flew right across the bed, and then the washstand itself was overturned. When it was replaced, the same thing was repeated. I was asleep on the sofa during one of these visitations when a clock fell over the shoulder of a neighbour and dropped at his feet. Decanters and crockery in the pantry went with a crash, and a big filter in the kitchen also fell. Altogether, I estimate the damage at about £200.
“The marble clock struck seven several times, but never any other hour but seven. One night, when the table was overturned, the oil lamp was swept off, and the glass chimney broke. We were in the dark, and we got candles, but somehow they refused to burn, and we could not get the wicks of the lamps to burn either.” Olive corroborated her father’s story.
There is village talk of “witchcraft” and “will o’ the wisp,” but none of the villagers is able to offer any explanations of these manifestations.
Sheffield Independent, 20th February 1923.
The Ghost Hunters.
New Shocks – Candle Jumps and Chairs Fall.
The spooks, after taking a night off, have renewed their antics in the lonely fenland farmhouse, and the occupant has now agreed to allow the Psychical Research Society to investigate the mystery, says the “Daily Express” special correspondent in a message from Wisbech yesterday.
“They are at it again!” Mr Joseph Scrimshaw, looking thoroughly scared, greeted me with this exclamation when I called at the house of mystery this morning. “When my mother was going to bed last night,” he said, “a chair by the side of the dressing-table fell over, and no sooner had she picked it up than another chair beside the bed fell down. Then, just as she turned round after picking it up, the chair by the dressing-table fell over again, and the candlestick jumped off the table. It was then I heard my mother shout for me. The room was in darkness when I rushed in with a lighted candle, and I found that the chair by the bed had again fallen down.”
I was in the farmhouse last night (continues the correspondent) until the family decided to go to bed. All was quiet then. Mr Scrimshaw told me that he almost hated spiritualists, and had slammed the door in the face of one of them, but after the strange capers of chairs and candlesticks in his mother’s bedroom he has decided to allow the Psychical Research Society to make investigation.
Dublin Evening Telegraph, 21st February 1923.
Mystery House.
Manifestations or ghosts?
Case for the Psychical Research Society.
The spooks, after taking a night off, have renewed their antics in the lonely Fenland farmhouse, and the occupant has now agreed to allow the Psychical Research Society to investigate the mystery.
On Monday night there were further weird manifestations, and Mr. Grimshaw, the tenant, now fears that these may, after the week-end lull, be the prelude to more serious developments. “It’s begun again,” Mr. Scrimshaw said. “While I was sitting in the dining-room late last night I heard a noise of falling furniture in my mother’s bedroom. As I was going upstairs to see what it was, there were several more noises of the same kind in quick succcession.
“My mother told me that, as she was standing undressing by the dressing-table, one of the chairs in the room fell over with a crash. As she picked it up another fell, and as fast as she picked up the chairs, one after the other, they fell down again. A lighted candle in a candlestick was also pushed off the mantel-shelf by some invisible agency.”
I was in the farmhouse on Monday night until the family decided to go to bed, says a “Daily Chronicle” writer. All was quiet then. Mr. Grimshaw told me that he almost hated spiritualists, and had slammed the door in the face of one of them; but after the strange capers of chairs and candlesticks in his mother’s bedroom, he has decided to allow the Psychical Research Society to make investigations.
The vicar, who, like everyone else, has been baffled by the uncanny occurrences, received a telegram from the society in London, asking if the reported phenomena were worthy of investigation. He submitted a full report, and said that he considered expert examination was justified. A room has been reserved at the vicarage in case the society decide to send a representative.
Mr. Grimshaw has received long letters from three people who say they can solve the mystery if he will pay their expenses! “One man wrote that it was due to an electrical current,” said Mr. Grimshaw, “and that if I would send my daughter Olive away, nothing more would happen. Just fancy suggesting that Olive has anything to do with it,” he added. “Everyone in the house has been in the dining-room when furniture has fallen over in one of the bedrooms, and if there had been anyone there it would have been impossible for them to escape without being seen.”
I have again talked to some of the prominent farmers in the district, who have been in the house when furniture was hurled over and crockery fell from shelves in the pantry. Mr. G.T. Ward, a breeder of shire horses, was called to the house when the weird commotion began a little more than a week ago. He has been there several nights since. “One night,” he said, “when I was sitting with Mr. Grimshaw in the dining-room, we heard a loud crash in the pantry. We rushed there and found that several dishes had fallen. Mr. Grimshaw’s mother and daughter were in bed at the time, and we searched the house thoroughly. Nobody could have come out of the pantry without being seen.”
Halifax Evening Courier, 21st February 1923.
Fen Furniture Fiend Has A Night Off.
No Moving Tricks for Disappointed Watchers
Earthbound spirit?
Neighbours’ belief that it can shift whole farm.
From our special correspondent. Wisbech, Wednesday [21st].
Whether the furniture-moving Fen fiend which has done so much havoc among the household goods of Mr. Joseph Scrimshaw, of New Barn Farm, Gorefield, has decided that there is nothing else worth breaking, or whether it is abashed at the excitement it has created, is not clear. Last night, however, in the presence of several newspaper representatives, Mr. Joseph Scrimshaw, his aged mother, his daughter, seven cats and a new-born lamb, the furniture in the farm remained unmoved.
Towards midnight three neighbours, a woman and two young men, joined us, and during the interval of waiting for manifestations we touched upon several subjects, including the appearance of a phophorescent owl which haunted the district a short time ago. Mr. Scrimshaw declared that he had never seen it, and old Mrs. Scrimshaw, who had been slumbering peacefully throughout the proceedings, woke up very suddenly and tearfully stated that she had suffered enough already.
At the request of Mr. Scrimshaw, we left the haunted farm about midnight, and to-day I was informed by a neighbour, who stayed there all night, that in the early hours of this morning a rumbling like the moving of heavy furniture was heard in one of the bedrooms, and that Olive, Mr. Scrimshaw’s sixteen-year-old daughter, was heard to utter a sharp cry. Olive has told me that she slept peacefully throughout the night.
Among a budget of correspondence that Mr. Scrimshaw has received is a catalogue from an enterprising firm of furniture makers who have been astute enough not to offer him anything on the hire system.
Another letter says:- “It is a case of an earthbound spirit trying to attract attention, and there are ways and means of getting to know what it requires. If the American prize of £500 can be scooped you would not mind the breakage of a little furniture. There are hundreds of scientific people willing to pay well for such demonstration, and what is now regarded as a curse may prove to be a blessing.”
With a house full of wrecked furniture, Mr. Scrimshaw can hardly be expected to agree that the Fen fiend’s visitations are a blessing, but he is anxious that representatives of the Psychical Research Society, who have decided not to make any investigations unless there are further manifestations, should come down to solve the mystery.
Meanwhile, the seven cats, the new born lamb and old Mrs. Scrimshaw continue to slumber round the fire. Neighbours think that the Fen fiend is capable of shifting the farm into another neighbourhood, in which case the nine of them will have a rude awakening.
Daily Mirror, 22nd February 1923.
Uncanny Happenings Near Wisbech.
Considerable sensation has been caused in Wisbech (says the “Eastern Daily Press”) by stories of mysterious happenings, during last week, at Garefield house, tenanted by Mr Joseph Scrimshaw, his mother, and daughter Olive. About midnight on Monday Mr Scrimshaw alleges that he was called to his mother’s bedroom, as her lace cap had been “flying about.” While there a crash was heard in another part of the house, and it was found that a washstand had fallen over. As soon as they went into one room they heard a crash in another. Mr Scrimshaw called up his foreman, Mr Marrick, and Mr Ward and Mr Maxey were fetched. They bear out the statement that various objects in the house fell down without being touched. Mr Scrimshaw says that he and others were in the hall when the hall table suddenly fell over, and as soon as that had been righted a heavy water filter fell from the stand in the kitchen, and then plates crashed down in the pantry. A barometer and lamp globes also fell and were smashed.
The most astonishing occurrence alleged is the moving of the pianola, which appears to have come away from the wall in the front room, worked towards the table, and then gone back to the wall. In another room a fairly large table is said to have moved towards the door. Broken ornaments are lying about all over the place and few of the pictures are left hanging. Damage done is estimated at £140, and is not, it is understood, covered by insurance.
The cause of the movement remains a mystery, as beyond the damage to the furniture no cracks appear in the walls, and there is no heavy traffic to cause vibrations. The police are making investigations, and it was apparently when Police-constable Hudson was in the room that the pianola moved about during the time his attention was directed elsewhere. The only person who, it is stated, actually saw any object move is the district nurse (Sister Heath), who was in the room and saw a cupboard fall over.
Diss Express, 23rd February 1923.
Elusive “Ghost.”
Still No Witnesses of Furniture-Moving.
From our Special Correspondent. Wisbech, Thursday.
For two whole days life in the Scrimshaw household at Gorefield has resumed its normal state of peace and quiet. As I have repeatedly pointed out, neither Mr Scrimshaw, his aged mother, his daughter Olive, nor any of his friends who have been present during the furniture-moving feats supposed to be performed by an invisible agency have actually seen the articles moved. They have seen the furniture a few minutes or seconds before it has moved, and again after it has moved.
After four days’ close personal investigation I have come across only one person who declares that he saw the invisible agency at work. I have examined the bracket from which this man says he saw an ornament fall. It is a small, frail affair within a foot or two of the front door. Light ornaments sometimes have a way of tumbling off brackets when doors are suddenly opened or banged. I do not attach the slightest importance to this incident.
I am convinced that the solution of this mystery is not to be found in any such “vapoury” outpourings as are suggested in the letter of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but in something much more commonplace and mundane.
Daily News (London), 23rd February 1923.
Dick Turpin as a Furniture Mover.
Wisbech Spiritualists Lay Farm Ghost.
London Searcher.
Expert Whose Report May be 50 Years’ Secret.
From our special correspondent. Wisbech, Friday.
While the rain poured down in torrents on the haunted farm at Gorefield last night, a seance conducted by local spiritualists took place inside it. Mr. Joseph Scrimshaw, although he has often expressed his disbelief in spiritualism, consented to a seance being held, in order to make every effort to clear up the mystery of the jumping furniture. The local spiritualists were Mr. Hugh Racey, of Emneth, Mr. Henry Stimpson and Mr. and Mrs. Taylor. They asked if they might sing a hymn. Then Mr. Stimpson stood up and requested the “Higher Powers” to communicate with us. We received no message.
Mr. Stimpson then shut his eyes and saw a couple of spirits hovering round one of the party. Apart from the mortals in the room there were at least half a dozen spirits, for two were discovered near Mr. Scrimshaw’s chair and two near another member of the party. One was a woman and the other was a tall, dark man with very black hair, clean-shaven, and of ruddy complexion, who was wearing bandages round his head. This apparition, which was seen by the three male members of the spiritualists’ party, is suspected of being the spirit who has been upsetting Mr. Scrimshaw’s furniture.
According to Mr. Lacey, the same spirit used to ride a magnificent coal black mare when alive, and when I asked Mr. Scrimshaw this morning if he thought that it was the ghost of Dick Turpin, he said, “It must be.”
Before leaving, Mr. Taylor told Mr. Scrimshaw that there would be no more manifestations.
This afternoon Mr. Dingwall, a representative of the London Psychical Research Society, arrived at the farm and made copious notes in a very large notebook. I accompanied him while he searched each room and asked Miss Olive Scrimshaw (Mr. Scrimshaw’s daughter) various questions as to when and how the pianola and gramophone and other articles of furniture had “frolicked.”
Hoping that Mr. Dingwall had found some solution to the mystery, I asked him if he had arrived at any conclusion. “No,” he said, “I have not. This case has all the characteristics I expected, and I think that Olive is probably a medium. I have not considered Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s letter, and I have not any theory of my own.” “When do you think you will be able to expound a theory?” I asked. “I shall make a secret report to my society, which may not be published for fifty years,” replied Mr. Dingwall.
Daily Mirror, 24th February 1923.
Destructive “Ghost” wrecks house furniture.
An English rural mystery.
The Garfield [Gorefield] ghost took a night off on Sunday, states a special correspondent of the “Daily Express” in a message from Wisbech.
The occupants of the New Barn House in that lonely Fenland village awoke on Monday morning to find the furniture unmoved, exactly as they left it when they went to bed. It was their first night in bed for a week. It was also the furniture’s first night’s rest after a riotous week of hurling itself about.
Nightmares as grotesque as the actual terrifying happenings have been visiting Mr. Scrimshaw, his eighty-two year old mother, and Olive, his daughter, aged fifteen. They awoke unrefreshed. Mr. Scrimshaw does not believe in ghosts, and he banged the door in the face of a spiritualist, who said he could clear up the mystery of the galloping furniture in an hour’s sitting. “I am a Christian,” said Mr. Scrimshaw. Many of the villagers, however, believe that a “Poltergeist” (destructive spirit), with a company of energetic friends, is responsible for the havoc of which I was a witness to-day.
I entered the house a sceptic and came away utterly baffled. Nearly every one of the eight rooms is wrecked. The walls are stripped of pictures which lie, glass shattered and moulding chipped, on a table in each room. Scarcely a piece of furniture is intact. The wreck of a marble clock which fell from the mantel lies in the dining room beside a barometer, which fell from the wall over the shoulders of a neighbour keeping watch before the dining room fire one night.
A great heap of broken crockery and ornaments is in the yard. It fell from shelves and ledges. “We were running from one room to another lifting up washstands, tables and chairs, and just as soon as we had lifted them up and turned our backs over they went again,” said Mr. Scrimshaw to me. “While we were upstairs doing this, all the crockery and glass in the pantry fell from the shelves and was smashed to atoms on the floor. Nothing was insured, and the damage is more than £200.”
I examined the pianola that had persisted in moving from its place. It seemed a tame instrument incapable of mischief. The gramophone which had suddenly jumped from its table-stand when nobody was looking was now quite still on the stand in the dining room. The washstands, tables and chairs in the bedrooms looked penitent and crestfallen with the pained expression of a dog after a good fight when the wounds begin to tingle.
I turned suspicious eyes on six large cats and eight kittens purring on the rug before the fire, but they looked me straight in the face and my doubts melted. I was not so sure of a young bottle-fed goat allowed only the fringe of the rug by the cat family, but he shook his head at me convincingly.
Policemen and villagers joined in the vigil last week and gave their solemn testimony of the uncanny happenings. They said that they were quite sure that the movements of everyone in the house were accounted for. A district nurse called in to attend Mr. Scrimshaw’s aged mother says she saw a dresser in the kitchen actually move forward and fall over. The wife of a neighbour walking through the front door saw a small statuette fall from a corner shelf in the hall and splinter on the stone floor. The house has been searched from top to bottom. The vicar, the superintendent of police, and prominent farmers for miles around tried to solve the puzzle and went away baffled.
Belfast Telegraph, 20th February 1923.
Haunted Farmhouse Problem.
Weird rumblings were heard after midnight in the haunted Fenland farmhouse by some young men who had arranged to sit up all night. The noises, they said, came from the upper part of the house (states the “Daily Express” correspondent at Wisbech).
The Psychical Research Society have asked the local vicar to advise them at once by telegram of any fresh phenomena in order that they can send a representative to investigate.
Mrs Scrimshaw received last night a letter from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who writes: – “You should send your daughter away for a rest and change, then open all your windows, ventilate well, and you will find the phenomena after a day or so will cease altogether. If your vicar said a prayer in each room, it would be well. It is not that your daughter plays any conscious part in this, but it is that at certain times some persons throw out an atmosphere or vapour which can be used in a material way by intelligent forces outside ourselves. These forces have not power to hurt mankind, although they break and move material objects. They can best be described as mischievous children of the psychic world. ‘Poltergeist’ is the name given to each of these. The medium who throws out this atmosphere is nearly always a child from ten to sixteen, and generally a girl.”
Belfast Telegraph, 22nd February, 1923.
The Poltergeist.
The Wisbech poltergeist, which has attracted the attention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and many other experts in psychical research, is thought to be an elemental earth spirit by the leading authorities. The theory is that these “elementals,” of which there are various types, appear in localities where excavation has taken place, and this condition seems to have been fulfilled on Mr Scrimshaw’s fenland farm. They appear as very tall, lean men – mere “rickles o’ banes,” to use a North Country description – with small triangular heads.
The late Mr Hesketh Prichard, a great authority on occult subjects, as well as a famous fast bowler, told the writer that, according to mediaeval witnesses, the destructive physical power of these vistants was exactly proportioned to the amount of fear in the minds of those who met them. They had been known to throw a horse-and-cart over a hedge, the animal being terrified and its driver in a blue funk. On the other hand, a fearless three-year-old child could put an “elemental” to shameful flight with a willow switch. – “Morning Post” to-day.
Hull Daily Mail, 27th February, 1923.
Laying “Fen Ghost.”
Open Window and Prayer.
Quiet on Wednesday Night.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s suggestions for quieting the turbulent ghost which is causing such havoc in the remote farmhouse of the Fens has not impressed the occupant, states a special correspondent of the “Daily Express” in a message from Wisbech. Sir Arthur advised that his fifteen-year-old daughter Olive should be sent away for a rest and change, as he considered that the girl was an unconscious medium of the mysterious spirit.
“I do not think much of that, and I am not going to send my daughter away,” said Mr. Scrimshaw. He has, however, acted on some of the other advice. The windows were flung open on Thursday morning, and the vicar has prayed in the house. Perhaps the invisible furniture wrecker has taken the chance and darted out of its safe hiding place and departed through one of the open windows, or it may be that it has already rolled away with the thunder that rumbled eerily through the upstairs rooms in the early hours of Wednesday.
The lights in the farmhouse were put out shortly after eleven o’clock on Wednesday night, and I kept watch outside the house until the inky blackness was broken by the first grey streaks of dawn. The hooting of owls in the stunted willow trees, the squealing of cats and the plaintive bleating of early lambs were the only sounds that broke in on my lonely vigil.
“It looks as though they had finished now,” said Mr. Scrimshaw to me, who, like his aged mother and young daughter, had slept peacefully through the night. He is still a little doubtful, however, and thinks he will wait a few days longer before repairing the pictures and hanging them on the wall.
Though the spooks have ceased to worry Mr. Scrimshaw, his troubles are by no means over. It seems that everyone in the country who is interested in spiritualism has written to Mr. Scrimshaw, and letters are pouring in by post. Enterprising furniture firms are sending in catalogues. Hair-raising experiences described in some of the letters are frightening Mrs Scrimshaw’s family alwmost as much as the fox-trotting escapades of the ghost did in their house.
The local spiritualists are making efforts to pursuade Mr. Scrimshaw to allow them to hold a seance in the house. They assure him with great solemnity that the ghost is the spirit of his father, who died twelve months ago, and which is trying to communicate with him. “Not likely,” is Mr. Scrimshaw’s terse reply to all this advice.
Belfast Telegraph, 23rd February 1923.
Turpin’s Ghost With Bandaged Head.
Solving the mystery of the haunted farm.
While the rain poured down in torrents on the haunted farm at Gorefield last night, a seance conducted by the local Spiritualists took place inside it. Mr. Joseph Scrimshaw was having his supper when we arrived, and, although he has often expressed his disbelief in Spiritualism, he consented to a seance being held, in order to make every effort to clear up the mystery of the jumping furniture. The local Spiritualists were Mr. Hugh Racey, of Emneth, Mr. Henry Stimpson, and Mr. And Mrs. Taylor. When Mr. Scrimshaw had finished his chop the Spiritualists asked if they might sing a hymn. Then Mr. Stimpson stood up and requested the “Higher Powers” to communicate with us. We received no message. Mr. Stimpson then shut his eyes and saw a couple of spirits hovering round Mr Ward. Mr. Ward said he did not recognise them from the description given, says a “Daily Mirror” correspondent, and after observing two more near another member of the party Mr. Stimpson concentrated on Mr. Joseph Scrimshaw.
Apart from the mortals in the room there were at least half a dozen spirits, for two more were discovered standing near Mr. Scrimshaw’s chair. One was a woman and the other was a tall, dark man with very black hair, clean-shaven, and of ruddy complexion, who was wearing bandages round his head. This apparition, which was seen by the three male members of the spiritualists’ party, is suspected of being the spirit who has been upsetting Mr. Scrimshaw’s furniture.
After the seance I asked Mr. Taylor why he thought the tall, dark man was the responsible spirit. “He was grinning at us,” replied Mr. Taylor, “and made movements with his hands as if to show us that he had been doing something with them.” According to Mr. Lacey, the same spirit used to ride a magnificent coal black mare when alive, and when I asked Mr. Scrimshaw if he thought it was the ghost of Dick Turpin, he said, “It must be.”
During the seance Mrs Taylor said to Mr. Scrimshaw, “Do you know a woman named Elizabeth?”
“Hundreds of them,” he replied.
Before leaving, Mr. Taylor told Mr. Scrimshaw that there would be no more manifestations. “The mischievous spirit,” he said, “has learned the error of his ways, and will trouble you no more.”
“Good!” said Mr. Scrimshaw. “I’m glad to hear it.”
Liverpool Echo, 24th February 1923.
Lone Farm Seance. Ghost who flung furniture about. Eerie midnight scene.
“I have been present at what must rank as the most extraordinary seance in the records of spiritualists. It was held in the lonely fenland farm at Gorefield, near Wisbech, where ghosts have flung furniture about, and the mediums who held it claim to have ‘laid’ the spirit who has caused the trouble. He is a tall dark spirit of about 30, they say, and on earth was fond of practical jokes. All along Mr Scrimshaw, the farmer, has refused to allow spiritualists to hold a seance, but last night they persuaded him to yield to them – and I spent one of the most dramatic half-hours of my life,” says a special correspondent of the “Daily Sketch.”
Heedless of the pouring rain the leader of the local spiritualists drove round the countryside collecting mediums. He brought them all to the farmhouse. At first Mr Scrimshaw was adamant. Saying, “I am Church of England, and don’t hold with it,” he refused to give way, but convinced of the enthusiasm of his visitors, one of whom was a woman medium, he at last consented, and the seance opened.
It was one of the strangest I have ever seen. Crowded in the tiny front room of the farmhouse were Mr Scrimshaw, quietly smoking his clay pipe throughout the proceedings, his 82-year-old mother, out of bed for the first time for a fortnight, crooning over the fire, little Olive, frequently lifting her arms high with excitement, a neighbour, the spiritualists and myself.
On the hearthrug, lay Barbara, Mr Scrimshaw’s pet lamb. Most of the 14 cats which also belong to th ehouse were there, and a dog or two lay on the sofa. Hymns and prayers came first, then spirits began to “come through,” according to the spiritualists. There was a dramatic scene when the woman medium declared that she saw the spirit of Mr Scrimshaw’s wife. “Is my description of her right?” Mrs Taylor asked. Leaping from her armchair by the fire, old Mrs Scrimshaw interposed with heat: “It’s all foolishness, Joe. Don’t say anything.”
“You are not being frank with us,” the woman medium said to Mr Scrimshaw. “Tens of thousands of people will prove my honesty,” he rejoined, still smoking peacefully. “Foolishness, foolishness,” old Mrs Scrimshaw muttered. But by now the atmosphere had become too tense, and, as Mrs Scrimshaw seemed on the verge of a breakdown, the spiritualists agreed to withdraw.
Outside in the hall Mr Racey and Mr Taylor declared to Mr Scrimshaw that they had visualised the spirit which was causing all the mystery. “It is a tall dark man, of about 30,” they said. “He is a close connection of yours, and met his death years ago by falling from a big, black, fiery horse. While on the earth plane he was full of practical jokes, always up to mischief. We distinctly saw him. He looked in our direction and grinned at us several times.”
Mr Scrimshaw denied all knowledge of such a relative or acquaintance. After the seance Mr Taylor assured me that the spirit was laid. “I am satisfied,” he said, “that the mischievous fellow sees the error of his ways, and will no longer go about smashing the furniture.” Mr Scrimshaw, while still unconvinced, thanked the spiritualists for their trouble in coming. The only disturbance yesterday was the mysterious fall of several slates from the roof o f the house next door.
Today I talked with Mr EJ Dingwall, who came down from the Psychical Research Society to investigate. He was shown round the farm by Olive and made copious notes. “I can say very little at present,” Mr Dingwall told me afterwards. “What I have seen does not surprise me. In all the ‘poltergeist’ cases children are concerned. From what I have heard of the case, the girl Olive coincides with the impressions I had formed of her. My report is not for the world, but will be made in secret, filed and classified, then 50 years hence will be considered in relation to other reports.”
Portsmouth Evening News, 24th February 1923.
Furniture Moved and Crockery Smashed in the Night.
At this time of the year the Fen Village of Gorefield, near Wisbech, is usually a very dull place, but at the present moment a diversion has arrived in the shape of a ghost. It is no ordinary ghost either. Of considerable strength apparently, it easily moves the furniture about in the house of Mr Joseph Scrimshaw, and it also has a voice, for the wife of a local spiritualist declares she distinctly heard it say “Boo!”.
“While I was sitting in the dining room late at night,” explained Mr Scrimshaw, I heard a noise of falling furniture in my mother’s bedroom. As I was going upstairs to see what it was, there were several more noises of the same kind in quick succession. My mother told me that, as she was standing undressing by the dressing table, one of the chairs in the room fell over with a crash. As she picked it up another fell, and as fast as she picked up the chairs, one after the other, they fell down again. A lighted candle in a candle-stick was also pushed off the mantel-shelf by some invisible energy. I am no believer in ghosts, but I am ready to do anything to get to the bottom of this.”
Mr George T Ward, of the Decoy Farm, a leading shire horse breeder, and Mr John Fennelow, a retired fruit farmer, have seen queer happenings at the farmhouse. “I cannot explain it,” said Mr Ward. “I was sitting up one night with Mr Scrimshaw. We were on the watch, and had the dining-room door open, when we heard a crash of crockery coming from one of the pantries. We rushed out, and I was just in time to see the pieces of a large dish settling down on the floor. The only persons downstairs were Scrimshaw and myself. Old Mrs Scrimshaw and her grand-daughter Olive were asleep in the same bedroom upstairs. We four were the only people in the house.”
Mr Fennelow said, “I have lived 40 years in this district, and have never known anything like it before. They talk about ghosts, but there may be such a thing as witchcraft. There are certain people in these parts who have influence over evil spirits in the unknown, and they say they are able to direct them to carry out their bad wishes or work off grudges on people they hate.”
Mr Langley, a local Spiritualist, who says he has seen the ghost of Mr Scrimsahw’s father in the farm, said the apparition passed him by the kitchen door when he called to investigate the mysterious furniture removals. “It was a little old man with white hair, and he was carrying a little brown jug in his hand,” said Mr Langley. “I recognised him immediately as Mr Scrimshaw’s father.” Mrs Langley has also seen the ghost, and said that on one occasion it came up to her kitchen table and said “Boo!” in her face. They both remember that Mr Scrimshaw’s father used frequently to carry a little brown jug when alive.
Two letters have reached Mr Scrimshaw. One signed “Arthur Conan Doyle” on the notepaper of the Victoria and Albert Hotel, Torquay, says:- As I have made a study of such cases, I will advise you what to do. You should send your daughter away for a rest and change. Then open all your windows, ventilate well and you will find the phenomena after a day or so cease altogether. It is not that your daughter plays any conscious part in this, but it is that at certain times some persons throw out an atmosphere or vapour which can be used in a material way by intelligent forces outside ourselves. These forces break and move material objects. They can best be described as mischievous material children of the psychic world. The “medium” who throws out this atmosphere is nearly always a child from 10 to 16 and generally a girl.
Mr Nevill Maskelyne’s View of the Mystery.
Mr Nevill Maskelyne, of the Maskelyne Hall of Mysteries, told a representative of “The People” he had little doubt that the remarkable series of manifestations at Gorefield were due merely to a mischievous human agent. He had a shrewd idea who that agent was.
“Motive other than notoriety was, for instance, entirely lacking int he recent case of a mysterious oil find in the Midlands, where the supposed ‘miracle’ was traced to a servant girl who had deluged the walls of a house with oil supposed to come from an undiscovered well. Otherwise, natural causes will generally account for these phenomena. Not so very long ago I myself, by invitation, lived for a time in a London house supposed to be haunted. There were certainly disturbing sounds by night. There were pattering sounds along the corridors. Utensils would fall off the kitchen walls, and at times one would hear a groan. Before I had been in the house more than an hour or two I discovered the cause. The whole house was slowly subsiding – on a ‘gravelly’ soil! During the day, by reason of traffic, one could not normally hear the sounds, but by listening carefully to the walls one could get the same distinct noises – one could hear timbers ‘groaning’ as they subsided. I left the house – not because of the ‘spooks’ – but because I thought it was none too safe!”
Captain Clive Maskelyne, son of Mr Nevill Maskelyne, said that in his opinion someone was playing the fool at Gorefield. “I would undertake,” he said, “to produce most of the remarkable manifestations on a slightly darkened stage. It is wonderful what you can do with a few bits of stout thread when the lights are low. Of course some of these phenomena are not due to human agency. I remember a good tale of my grandfather’s of a haunted house mystery in a remote country district which he was asked to investigate. Terrifying sounds were heard in the house. Chairs danced and crockery fell from the kitchen walls, and ‘ghosts’ were heard chasing one another round the corridors of the ground floor. No one would live in the house for love o money. After my grandfather had been there a little while he sent for a few men with spades, who unearthed a large rabbit warren under the old mansion! I believe many of the ‘ghosts’ were subsequently eaten.”
The People, 25th February 1923.
Farm Ghost in Fenland.
Psychical Society’s Investigations.
Witch Beliefs.
From our special correspondent, Wisbech, Saturday.
The strange happenings – flying crockery and jumping furniture – at Mr. Scrimshaw’s New Barn Farm at Gorefield are to be the subject of a special report to the Society for Psychical Research.
Mr. J.E. Dingwall, the research officer of the society returned to London to-day and made the following statement:-
“This is an important case which may help considerably the science of psychical research. It presents features of extreme interest, features common to such cases throughout the world. One of the most important factors is that all the furniture has dropped straight to the ground like a log and has not hovered. Another is that nobody has seen the furniture move. These things seem to occur in nearly all poltergeist (racketty ghost) cases.
“It is quite possible,” he continued, “that Olive (Mr. Scrimshaw’s 15-years-old daughter) is mediumistic. It is unlikely that the disturbances will break out again. Usually they last for a few days. Some day we may have instruments that will record the sound and photograph such moving objects.”
I never before knew that so many people believed in witchcraft and black magic. In one hotel dining-room crowded with visitors to the local market I was able to get the names of quite a dozen in these parts. I approached them and while they declined to give their views for publication they would not recant the belief ascribed to them.
Weekly Dispatch (London), 25th February 1923.
The Gorefield Spook
Snatch seance broken-up
A “white witch” arrives to break the spell
Some interesting interviews
(By our special correspondent).
Everything is very quiet and in order at New Barn Farm House now, and there has been no more furniture moving or crockery thrown around. So that one would conclude that the Ghost has decided to leave the house alone, or that if It has been paying visits It has not been in Its most energetic moods, for tere has been absolutely no repetition of the silly happenings of some ten days or so ago. But there is still an enormous amount of interest taken in the case near and afar, and there seems to be a diversity among the locals as to what are the means to be adopted to stop recurrence. And since my visit here last week many strange things have happened – a spiritualist seance in one of the rooms of the house, at which some of the spiritualists claim to have seen the Spirit; or I should say, Spirits, for apparently they saw more than One, and to have communicated with them and set them at rest; the visit of an exorcist and an effort by her to break “the spell of an ill tongue”; and an examination by one of the leading officers of the Society for Psychical Research, are among them.
One of the most amazing things, and, to me one of the most interesting, which has arisen out of this extraordinary affair and its sequel, is the discovery of the enormous number of people in this district who still believe in witches and black magic. They really do believe it, and many have put it forward that in their opinion Mr Scrimshaw and his household have been bewitched. I thought all such nonsense had gone out of fashion long ago; but it is not so. The belief is neither dead nor forgotten. Many people I have met openly confess it, and others have a secret and sneaking belief in it, and go in fear of being “witched,” as they colloquially put it.
As reported last week, Mr Scrimshaw received a letter from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in which he suggested that the farmer’s 15-years-old daughter, Olive, was unconsciously playing the part of a medium, and “drawing out an atmosphere or vapour which can be used in a material way by intelligent forces outside ourselves… which have no power to hurt mankind, but do break more material things… and can be described as mischievous children of the psychical world, known as ‘poltergeists’.” Sir Arthur in his letter also advised that Olive should be sent away for a rest and change, and all the windows of the house opened to ventilate the place well, and that the Vicar should say a prayer in each room. Nothing seems to have been done to follow this advice.
I saw Mr Scrimshaw just after dinner to-day. He received me in his usual jovial manner, but seemed to be a bit annoyed at the unlimited pesterings of the spiritualistic element for permission to hold a seance in the house. This he flatly refuses to give and explained that those who did get in got in almost by false pretences. His mother, who is 82 years old, is still very much upset over the affair, and the state of her nerves, he says, has been made worse by some of the things which had been done as an effort to solve the mystery. She has declared that all such things are against her creed, and she will have nothing to do with them.
I found Mr Scrimshaw with two farmer friends – one from the rich potato lands of Crowland. They were discussing the weird happenings at Gorefield, and Mr Scrimshaw consistently interspersed the conversation with witty references to the condition of things in farming. After agreeing with a remark that the Spook seemed to have “had a high old time of it,” he turned to his Crowland friend and said “Trade’s really bad for white potatoes, isn’t it? You want one or two of my ghosts into it! They’ll move it along for you!”
I managed to get him alone at last, and he gave me his own rough-and-ready description of what had taken place. “Well, let me see,” he said. “Everything was all right on the Tuesday, and the Wednesday, and the Thursday. Then these blooming spiritualist people came. I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of letters from all parts of the country from these people wanting to hold some sort of seance in the rooms, but I won’t have anything of the kind. We’ve been Church of England all our lives, and we won’t have anything to do with Spiritualism. We don’t believe in it any more than we believe in ghosts! But these people came up to the front door late on Thursday evening, and I didn’t know who they were. They came in the front room, frightened my poor old mother by turning the light down, and then two or three of them sat down and started moving their hands about in front of their faces. Then they started asking a lot of silly questions.
One of ’em tackled me, and said ‘Did I know anyone named Lizzie?’ I said, ‘Yes, I did, hundreds of ’em down here in the summer time fruit picking, but they had gone back to London now.’ Then Mr Ward, my neighbour from the Decoy Farm, came in, and they asked him a question, and he told me they were Spiritualists. That upset my mother, so I bundled the lot of them off out quick. One of ’em said he could see a spirit! Well, I looked very hard, but I couldn’t see anything. To tell the truth, I wish I could have seen some spirits.”
The seance, it would seem, was conducted by local spiritualists, who were introduced to the house by two young men, who were immensely keen on reconstructing the whole of the mysterious affair. It was a dramatic surprise visit to the haunted house just before midnight, and the mediums were Mr H Racey (President of the local Society), Mr and Mrs H Taylor, and Mr H Stimpson (Secretary). They crowded themselves into one of the front rooms, which had been visited by the Ghost, and turned the lamp low. There were in the room, beside the Spiritualists, Mr Scrimshaw sitting complacently in a cosy armchair by a log fire; he had got his famous pipe well going, and was contemplating the whole affair with much amusement.
On the other side of the armchair sat his 81-year-old mother, a dear fine old lady with a pale intellectual face, and not at all the sort of person a discriminating ghost should choose to bombard with mob caps. Squatted on a stool at her feet was Olive, the 15-year-old daughter of the house. And on the right sat a black bonnetted pale-faced woman Spiritualist. All was quiet in the dim light, but presently the mediums started to sing a hymn and a prayer of invocation was offered. The mediums sat with drawn faces waiting, waiting. Someone spoke. “May we smoke?” I think it was Mr Scrimshaw, for he can’t bear to have his pipe out of his mouth or unlighted for two minutes together. The spokesman of the seance said: “Yes, but please keep quiet.” Mr Ward, a neighbour, came in and joined the party, and a second or so later oneof the male spiritualists, pointing at Mr Ward, said slowly and solemnly, “I see an old, old lady. She is standing close to you. She nearly touches your feet. Her age may be about 70. Her hair is grey, neatly parted in the centre, she is broad across the shoulders, which are covered by a lace shawl. It is open at the breast, and unclasped by any brooch. They are bringing to her a little child. Do you know them, Mr Ward?”
It was an exciting moment; the spirits had begun to work; had they found the ghost? But Mr Ward answered quickly “No, definitely , no!” Then one of the young men came in for it. He was told that standingn before him was a tall old lady with white hair, faintly pink cheeks, and a calm face, a rounded chin and slightly aquiline nose. She might be an aunt or a mother, perhaps? But no, the Spiritualists must once more be disappointed. The young man did not know the spirit. Again he was visited. This time, said the medium, by one who called himself Charles. His hands were on the young man’s shoulders, and he was looking into his eyes. But no, there was nothing doing. The young man could not claim him as a relative, and volunteered that Charles was not a family name. And then things began to move pretty quickly. The woman spiritualist exclaimed excitedly “Mr Scrimshaw! Mrs Scrimshaw! Do you remember a woman named Lizzie?” The jolly old farmer laughed heartily, “Yes,” he said, “lots of ’em, hundreds of ’em.When the fruit-picking season is over they go back to London, though.” But the woman wasn’t satisfied; she felt she had found the spirit, and who it recognised. “Somebody closer, to you than a worker,” she said; “Somebody perhaps with two children. A woman with black hair.”
But at this point Granny Scrimshaw took a hand in the game. “Joe, Joe,” she interrupted, “don’t listen to such foolishness. We’ve always belonged to the Church. It isn’t right! It is all silliness. Don’t answer any more questions.” She refused to be quieted, and the meeting came to an abrupt end, and the Spiritualists left the house. Afterwards two of their number told Mr Scrimshaw they also had seen a vision – making the fourth one, and all different.
They said they sensed that all the trouble had been caused by a jolly larky young man of about 20 years of age. “He was a man fond of practical joking all his life,” they added. “While he was riding a tall black mare he was thrown to the ground. We saw his head swathed in bandages. Now that he has passed over he has just been carrying on the pranks he practised in life.” They concluded by assuring Mr Scrimshaw that there would be no more pranks in his house. They had quieted his spirit. And so the Spiritualists take the credit for having “laid the ghost,” and restored the household to its former peaceful and orderly state.
Mr Scrimshaw laughed heartily when I discussed the seance with him. “I don’t take much notice of it,” he said; “it’s all bunkum! Of course it is.” “Well, what about this man on a tall black mare? Do you know who that would be.” His eyes sparkled merrily, as he answered: “I expect the young devil’s Dick Turpin, and Bonny Black Bess, don’t you?” I admitted the similarity of descriptions, and he added, “Yes, that’s who that would be, without a doubt. But how the Dickens he got here I don’t know. He ought not to be in this district.” And that’s what Mr Scrimshaw thinks of Spiritualism.
Friday was an important day. Mr E.J. Dingwall, Secretary of the Society of Psychical Research, came down. He spent a long time at the farm, and took copious notes in a large book. Olive took him over the premises, and he expressed himself as not surprised at what he had seen. While declining to give an intimation as to the nature of the report he was making, he made the following statement on the affair:-
“This is an important case which may help considerably the science of psychical research. It presents features of extreme interest, features common to such cases throughout the world. One of the most important factors is that all the furniture has dropped straight to the ground like a log and has not hovered. Another is that nobody has seen the furniture move. Those things seem to occur in nearly all poltergeist (racketty ghost) cases.”
“It is quite possible,” he continued, “that Olive is mediumistic. It is unlikely that the disturbances will break out again. Usually they last for a few days. Some day we may have instruments that will record the sound and photograph such moving objects.”
Sunday saw the strangest thing of all – an experiment in exorcism over spirits was conducted in the house. The people in the district, in honest faith, say that “Joe Scrimshaw is under an ill-tongue”; that was their firm belief as to the cause of the many strange happenings, and in consequence well-wishers who desired to do anything they possibly could to help neighbour Scrimshaw, as they know this jovial fen farmer, sought the use of charms to break the spell. And on Sunday a woman who was born in chime-hours – 12, 3, 6, or 9 – deliberately employed magic and charms in the assurance not of laying any fool ghost, but of unweaving and casting off the unholy spells laid upon the Scrimshaw household.
Mr James Garner, a wealthy farmer, of Wisbech St Mary’s, was the instigator of this effort. His story briefly was that he was convicned that Joe Scrimshaw was “witched” like he (Mr Garner) was many years ago. “As a young man,” he said, “I was so ill with body pains that I had to be taken to hospital at Manchester. The doctor could do nothing for me. At certain hours of the day I was doubled up with pain. Then one day an Irish doctor came into the ward, and as soon as he looked at me, he said, turning to the other doctors, ‘This man is under an ill-tongue.’ He was right, too. Still, uncured, I left the hospital, went to the cottage of an old woman named Nannie, who said she knew I was coming long before she saw me. She concocted a fire charm, which broke the evil spell a woman enemy had cast over me. What cured me will cure Joe Scrimshaw. He is not haunted. Joe is witched like I was.”
Mr Garner was quite prepared to stand by his views, and so much faith had he that he motored over to Gorefield to a Mrs Holmes, who knew how to use the charm, and brought her to Mr Scrimshaw’s house. Telling Mr Scrimshaw she had come to help him out of his troubles, she took parings of the nails of each member of the household, and a snip of a hair of their heads. Going into the kitchen, she produced an empty bottle, and put into it the pips from six apples, which she had obtained before leaving her home. With them she put the nails and hair of three generations, and strangest of all things, two black hairpins.
Cautioning Mr Garner not to speak a word lest he break the spell, she crossed the kitchen and put the bottle in the centre of the fire, and quickly nipped back into the other side of the room. A moment’s wait, and then a bang. The bottle had burst. “There,” said the amateur exorcist, “the spell is broken, and the ill tongue can do no more evil.”
And that is all that has happened up to the time of writing.
But my interest and curiosity in the matter had been roused to an amazing degree. I never knew that so many people believed in witchcraft and black magic, but upon inquiry I was surprised at the number who do. I might almost say that at least 60 per cent. of the population of the Fens seem to have a tendency that way. Of course, practical men like Mr Scrimshaw and Mr G.T. Ward, the shire horse breeder, scout all this as nonsense. But I pursued my inquiries.
I tackled Mrs Holmes first. Here again I got a suprise! She was not at all the sort of woman I should expect to have to do with charms and magic. She was a fine healthy, buxom woman, and her house was beautifully furnished and spotlessly clean. She told me that she didn’t believe in witches! Another suprise! Her story was that some years ago, when she and her husband lived at Wisbech St Mary’s, they had a lot of horses die. A woman at Outwell gave her some charms, which she put in a bottle with clippings of the horses’ tails and manes, and placed the bottle in the fire. “No horses died after that,” she said, “and when I heard about the trouble at neighbour Scrimshaw’s, I thought that someone might have cast a spell over him just as someone was said to have done over us. So when Mr Garner came down, I willingly went with him, and did what I could.”
“You see,” she continued, “I was born in chime hours, and I can always see things which other people can’t. I can always tell if anything is going to happen, because I have a vision two or three days beforehand. I never dream these things, I am awake when I see them. And when the bottle burst if there had been anything I should have seen it.” “Did you?” I asked. “No,” she said, “nothing at all. I don’t guarantee anything, but only carried out what was told me by the woman who cured us.” “Well, do you really think it was witches in Mr Scrimshaw’s case?” I enquired. “No,” she said, “No. I don’t believe in witches, but I think it was some evil doer.”
The Rev. Hagley Rutter, the Vicar of Gorefield, confirmed the information I had obtained in regard to witches and the fact that the belief in them is by no means dead. “Such belief,” he said, “is far more generally held than would be credited. I know for a fact that within 24 hours of Mr Scrimshaw’s strange experiences, a very God-fearing man called upon him and, sadly shaking his head, said: ‘Someone’s witching you, Joe.’ When I was in charge of a Somerset parish. I knew six witches – at least they enjoyed that reputation. But they were white witches. The difference between white witches and black is that white witches never do harm to people – they only undo spells – and the black witches are supposed to put spells upon people and be in communication with evil spirits. White witches were often called in to cure illnesses in animals. They often have simples for that purpose and very often for curing human beings. These simples have been handed down and carefully and jealously preserved from one generation to another in much the same way as gipsies had down their secrets. These simples often cure cattle and even men.
In human beings, a notable form of witchery is an attack of colic – and when you roll on the floor with pains in your stomach, it’s like being bewitched. I must confess to being surprised when I read of actual experiments in spell breaking taking place in my own parish, but I believe it is frequently done in such cases in other parts of the country, and there is a special form of doggerel verse to be recited with the charms.”
I questioned the worthy Vicar about the visit of Mr Dingwall, and he told me that gentleman collected a lot of evidence and went away on Saturday. “He expressed the strong opinion that the manifestations are ended,” said Mr Rutter, “and are not likely to recur. He said that with this kind of phenomena it is always so. He had a similar case at Oban and another in New York. When he used the word poltergeist, he was particular to emphasise that it did not imply any actual living spirit or any intelligent agency in the matter. It is simply a convenient term for any of the disturbances. It is usual, too, in these cases, that no one sees the beginning. Sometimes they are seen in motion and the result is always seen, but never the beginning. His supposition, although perhaps I ought not to interpret it, is that there is an unconscious exercise of psychic power by a medium who may be entirely unaware of the influence he or she is exerting. He does not agree with Conan Doyle’s theory, and I have not used prayer as an exorcism in each of the rooms, but from the very first I used prayer for them whenever I went in the house! I have not formed any theory myself yet, but am trying to feel my way to one, but I think there may be something in my first idea and a hypothesis such as Sir Arthur puts forward about vapoury atmosphere. But Mr Dingwall is not at all inclined to agree with me. Mr Dingwall,” concluded the Vicar,”does not say that the thing is supernatural. He describes it as super-normal.”
So there, I think, things must rest. I doubt very much whether any more will ever be heard of the “Fen Fiend,” and after spending nearly forty hours on the business, I am convinced that the solution of the mystery will not be found in “vapoury outpourings,” but in something much more commonplace and mundane.
K.P.
Spalding Guardian, 3rd March 1923.
Return of the “spook”.
More manifestations at Haunted Farm.
After a holiday of nearly three weeks, the erratic spook, whose hobby is breaking furniture, has returned, refreshed, to the attack at Mr. Joseph Scrimshaw’s lonely fenland farmhouse at Gorefield, near here.[sic]
The new incidents include the mysterious falling of ornaments from the mantel-shelf in the bedroom of Mrs Scrimshaw, the farmer’s 82-year-old invalid mother. This has been followed by the crashing of a pitcher to the ground while Mr Scrimshaw and his daughter were sitting at breakfast in the kitchen.
“I can’t understand it,” was Mr Scrimshaw’s comment to a “Daily Sketch” correspondent yesterday, on the fresh outbreak. “All I can say is that those Spiritualists seem to have failed me.”
Coincident with these new developments is the sudden death of Mrs Holmes, who lived a mile or so from Mr Scrimshaw. In company with a local farmer, Mrs Holmes visited the house and there conducted an extraordinary experiment with a view to exorcising the witch, who, she was confident, had “placed Mr Scrimshaw under an ill tongue,” or cast a spell over him. On this occasion she cast a collection of apple-pips, hat-pins, and hair and nails and cut from Mr Scrimshaw and his mother and daughter on to the fire, declaring that she had broken the spell. Mrs Holmes is stated to have suffered from fits.
Portsmouth Evening News, 10th March 1923.
The Alleged Poltergeist Disturbances at Gorefield.
About February 17th, 1923, accounts began to be received by the Society of a series of violent disturbances in the house of a Cambridgeshire fruit farmer at Gorefield, near Wisbech. The Research Officer communicated with the vicar, the Rev. J.H. Rutter, on the subject of the occurrences and acting on the report received visited the scene of the disturbances. No phenomena occurred during his presence in the house, and although they have a good deal in common with similar occurrences elsewhere, no definite evidence was obtained for their supernormal origin. Later information seemed to indicate that the young girl of the family was observed trying to produce “phenomena” herself, but an attempt to substantiate these reports has not been successful. A more detailed report can be seen in the Society’s files on application.
…
While the work of the Research Department of the Society shows no striking feature for 1923, much work has been done and many minor experiments have taken place. On February 23rd the Research Officer went to Gorefield, near Wisbech, to make enquiries into the alleged poltergeist disturbances which were reported as occurring in the house of a local farmer. Much assistance was given in the case by the Rev. J.H. Rutter, Vicar of Gorefield; but the disturbances had ceased when the Research Officer, Mr. Dingwall, arrived, and all that could be done was to obtain interviews with the principal witnesses and compare the accounts received. It appeared that the phenomena centred round the person of a young girl. No convincing evidence was obtained that the occurrences were in any way supernormal; but later accounts, received after Mr. Dingwall left the village, suggesting that the child had been observed producing “phenomena” in a normal way were equally without real confirmation.
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, vol 21, 1923-4.
Evil Spell in the Haunted Farmhouse.
In a previous issue we reproduced from the London Daily Chronicle an account of strange doings in a farmhouse in Wisbech, England – happenings of an extraordinary character that puzzled the wits of investigators. Something that followed shows that belief in witchcraft has not died out in the fenland country. The story is told by the correspondent of the Chronicle as follows: –
“Under an ill tongue is Joe Scrimshaw.” These words were offered to me in honest faith as the solution of the strange hauntings of the inmates of the Gorefield farmhouse. I have seen magic and charms deliberately employed during this weekend, employed by those “born in church chime hours” – 12, 3, 6, 9 – in the assurance, not of laying any fool ghost, but of unweaving and casting off the unholy spells laid upon “neighbour Joe Scrimshaw,” his house, and his household.
In this Fen country the belief in witchcraft is neither dead nor forgotten. Some openly admit it, others speak of it in secret and go in fear of being “witched.”
Here is the gist of a conversation I had with Mr Garner, a wealthy Wisbech farmer, who has given me permission to mention his name, and will stand by his views.
“We hereabouts know what is the matter with Joe Scrimshaw,” said Mr Garner. “He is witched like I was years ago. As a young man, I was so ill with body pains that I had to be taken to hospital at Manchester. The doctor could do nothing for me. At certain hours of the day I was doubled up with pain. Then one day an Irish doctor came into the ward and as soon as he looked at me he said, turning to the other doctors, ‘This man is under an ill-tongue.’ He was right, too. Still uncured, I left the hospital, went to the cottage of an old woman named Nannie, who said she knew I was coming long before she saw me. She concocted a fire charm, which broke the evil spell a woman enemy had cast over me. What cured me will cure Joe Scrimshaw. He is not haunted. Joe is witched like I was. I will go to Mr Scrimshaw’s house with Mrs Holmes, a woman who knows how to handle the charm better than I do. Come with me, and see for yourself. She lives in Gorfield, and is a near neighbour of Scrimshaw.”
“You see, I was born in chime-hours,” said Mrs Holmes to me,”and can see things that others cannot.”
“I was born in chime-hours, too,” said Mr Garner.
“I sometimes know things that are going to happen two or three days before they come about,” went on Mrs Holmes. “I will do what I can to help neighbour Scrimshaw. If they are witching him I can stop them.” Then Mrs Holmes retired into her pantry, and came back with half a dozen apples, which she rolled on to the American cloth-covered table. “Will you gentlemen cut the pips out of the apples, while I bustle myself to get ready,” said Mrs Holmes.
Five minutes later, Mrs Holmes was ready. After putting the apple pips into an envelope she provided herself with an empty medicine bottle, a pair of scissors and two black hatpins. Mr Scrimshaw welcomed us as we got out of the taxi-cab. “We are going to help you out of your trouble,” said Mrs Holmes. “Now be a good man and let me have a paring from one of your finger-nails.”
Mr Scrimshaw good-naturedly complied. Then, pushing up his cap unceremoniously, she snipped a bit of hair from his head, repeated the process on Grannie Scrimshaw, and Olive, and then went into the kitchen, taking us with her. On the rest of the household she promptly locked the door. Out came the medicine bottle, into which the apple pips were popped. Then the nail parings and hair clippings of three generations were put in, last of all the two black hatpins.
“Now you must not speak a word,” said Mrs Holmes. “Watch.” She walked across the kitchen, put the bottle into the fire, and nipped back quickly to the far side of the kitchen table. “There,” she said, as the bottle burst with a little bang, “the spell is broken and the ill-tongue can do no more evil.”
Dunstan Times (a newspaper in New Zealand), 25th June 1923.