Bodmin.
Superstition.
At Halgavon, one mile distant from the town, there lives an elderly man named Clymo. He is a mason by trade, and his house is said to have been haunted with the spirit of some evil one. Chairs were, it is said, to be seen dancing about the room; flowers, put into a pan of water would immediately, by some mysterious and unaccountable agency, appear in another pan of water; rapping and tapping in different parts of the house were to be heard, but the cause was not to be ascertained.
It was also said that a ghost, appearing one moment, would disappear the next, and as often reappear.
However ridiculous may seem such absurd reports, there were many of the town, amongst them not a few respectable persons, who put some credence in the imposture. The occupier of the house invited many of the wisdom-seekers to enter, and afterwards related the strange story. With a view to verify that witchcraft existed, the Bible, it is said, was introduced, and some passages of scripture quoted by Clymo, who, for many years past, has been a devotee.
On Friday last the visitation was by hundreds of persons, and a curious sense of awe, pusillanimity, and incredulity was witnessed. It is needless to say that the curiosity of the crowd was not appeased by any ghostly or infernal manifestation, though, from what passed to and from many lips, it was evident not a few of these innocent Cornish folk believed that they had come to see with their own eyes, and hear with their own ears, something little short of the devil himself – Western Daily Mercury.
The Cornish Telegraph, 22nd February 1871.