A Carlton-Street “Ghost.”
About the year 1837 a crowd of people might have been seen on several occasions gazing at a house in Carlton-street. Some were watching eagerly, desirous of detecting any possibility of fraud, and others were alarmed at what they saw. In the house in question, a man of the name of Bob Emmett used to reside. He was a bachelor, and a well-known character of the time. He was imprisoned in the old Fleet-street Gaol, London, for debt, and one night, being tired of his incarceration in the cell, he ended his life by hanging.
After his departure from the Carlton-street house, in which it was generally supposed a child had been murdered, strange visitations were made by a ghost, supposed to be the spirit of Emmett, and these formed the centre of attraction to the crowds mentioned. People came from all parts of the country in coaches to see and bear the uncanny things for themselves.
The truth of these statements can be vouched for by persons living to-day, and at the time a pamphlet was published dealing with the doings of this unwelcome guest. The blinds of the house would work up and down, accompanied by a great noise as if a load of stones was being tumbled down the steps. In the cellar kitchen there was frequently heard the crying of a child. Hence the supposition that a child had been murdered there.
A respectable local family had become residents in the house after Emmett’s death, and time after time they were scared by the ghost. Numbers of people used to visit them, and ministers of various denominations went repeatedly to pray in order to “lay the ghost.” A son of the family coming home from school at Christmas boasted that he was not afraid of the ghost and would sleep anywhere. During the first night he slept there the room which he occupied became illuminated, and on looking up he was terrified to behold the figure of a child in the centre of the blind. That was sufficient – the young man slept in that room no more!
On another occasion, when two ministers one evening were assembled with the heads of the family, two girls in bed upstairs were heard to scream. The company immediately went to their assistance, and found that they had been taken out of bed. Their night-caps and night-dresses were twisted together and placed on the bed near where the girls had been recently resting. The chairs in the room were all standing on one leg. Later, when peace had been restored, efforts were made to induce the chairs to repeat the one-legged performance, but the problem by human agency was impossible of solution.
Several other freaks of the “ghost” might be mentioned, but it is sufficient here to state that the residents became tired of the disturbing influences, and removed to a house where no ghost was accustomed to be.
In the course of time, largely it was thought through the prayers of the ministers, the ghost was “laid,” and was seen no more.
Halifax Evening Courier, 16th December 1905.