Mysterious tappings.
Sir, For the last ten or fourteen days, my daughter and myself have been almost terrified by mysterious tappings on the wall of our bedroom at certain times in the early morning. We have tapped on the wall ourselves and have always received the same number of taps in answer to it. I called out “Who is it?” and “What do you want?” The answer was two tremendous bangs on the wall. The other morning this tapping went on for an hour or more, and it is getting on our nerves and making us ill. My parents have lived in the house for over twenty years, so it is not like a strange place, and the house is quite detached. If anyone will throw any light on this strange happening we should be grateful.
Hornsey Rise, N. – Troubled.
Evening News (London), 21st December 1915.
The Hornsey Ghost Story.
Water pipes? Trickery? or Interned Germans?
Many letters.
The spook that knocked on doors at Southampton.
The Evening News has received a great many letters with theories about the ghost of Hornsey Rise. Numbers contain suggestions how to lay it. Following up a letter to this paper, our representative called at the house concerned yesterday and described what he saw and was told there. Books, hair-brushes, even a step-ladder had been thrown down by some unseen agency, and there had been loud wall-tappings, in some cases answering counted knockings on the part of the people in the house – an elderly couple, a son, two daughters, and one granddaughter of thirteen years.
A writer who signs himself “Had Some” advises a report being made to the police. “I should like to investigate,” he says. “I have yet to find the ‘ghost’ I cannot lay with a good healthy bludgeon.”
“Suspicious” suggests that the mysterious tappings are caused by interned Germans tunnelling under the house, “as Alexandra Palace is quite close.”
Then comes “Sympathiser” who thinks the trouble is due to the hot and cold water pipes. “The same thing has happened in my own house; at times the noise resembled that of a horse kicking. Consult a plumber.”
“Thankful” states with perfect confidence: “The mysterious tappings are the works of spiritualism and the workings of Satan,” and offers “Troubled” (the widow daughter who wrote to the Evening News) a small free book on the matter.
Mr Charles Green says the full account in last night’s Evening News recalls to him his recollection of similar happenings at Splotlands, Cardiff. “I saw a large crowd of grown-up people and children gathered round a house. I inquired what was wrong, and was told things were moving about the house. Furniture moved from one room to another. Lamps tumbled down, and the crockery smashed from the dresser. A little girl living in th ehouse got a sound smacking from her mother, and was then taken to a neighbour’s house for her misdeeds to be expatiated upon. Immediately things began to tumble about in the neighbour’s house. The police arrived, and I walked about the house with them. We saw the wreckage, but could find no explanation: and the people decided that the little girl had ‘got electricity.’ They decided they could not stay in their house, so went to some relations, and there the strange things happened again.”
A correspondent at Hampton Wick relates similar mysterious tappings which started a month ago, and always occur between 3 and 5 a.m. Unlike ‘Troubled,’ she says, “I have not thought of tapping back, but will certainly do so next time I hear it.”
Another at West Hampstead considers that “Troubled” or her daughter have developed mediumistic tendencies. “I and my family have been used to things like those related at Hornsey Rise. I have always found that when they become very annoying the phenomena always cease when I say, ‘In the name of God I command this to stop.’ ‘Troubled’ should try it.”
Mr H.H. Hitchcock remarks that ‘Troubled’ is not the only person who “entertains angels unawares.” “I speak from experience,” he adds, “for I too have raps in my bedroom and occasional voices and lights. But my visitors I await in gladness, secure in the knowledge that they bring me only what is good. ‘Troubled’ should consult a reliable medium.”
‘Nothing Doubting’ writes: – “On Sunday last a few friends and myself were given the explanation of a much more mysterious and alarming experience, which recently took place at Southampton. During the past summer strange and imperative knockings came on each bedroom door in turn, and continued even when the doors were held in the hand. After rousing everyone in this way the ‘ghost’ concluded his visit with a sudden and tremendous fall, exactly like that of a dead body flung over the banisters. Everything was carefully examined and the building half pulled to pieces in the attempt to account for the strange noises. The elucidation of the mystery came in a vivid dream by one of the family. A strange man appeared and announced that he had a message to deliver. Before leaving, the ghost told my friend that he would repeat his message, and there and then it was vividly flashed on the wall. The purport of it was a warning against levity.”
Londoners have had many creepy spells with ghostly happenings. There was the ghost of Chelsea: an alarming apparition that terrified, night after night, the occupants of an old house in Whitehead’s-grove, formerly the Brompton County Court. The visitant used to bang the front door between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m., run upstairs after the occupants, making a stamping noise, and then appear, “a black, cloudy-looking figure, with face and shoulders showing plainly, hanging from the ceiling.”
There was the ghost in a West End house that was investigated by Dr MacDonald, and at first beat a Scotland Yard detective. The house was handed over to the detective to watch for the ghost. But when on the first night the ghost boxed the detective’s ears with his (the detective’s) own slippers he retired and refused to resume his vigil.
The editor of Light, to whom the Hornsey Rise correspondence has been shown, states that the case is apparently one of many recorded in the literature of psychic research. “Hammering accompanied by disturbances of physical objects, appear to be of more than one kind,” he said. “There are many recorded cases in England and on the Continent where articles have been hurled about, windows smashed, stones thrown and other mischief done by invisible agencies for no apparent reason. A spiritualistic authority on these matters claims that these meaningless outbreaks are sometimes due to disturbed electrical conditions of a rare kind. Theosophists attribute them to elementary spirits, non-human beings, on another plane of evolution. Nevertheless, there have been cases in which the disturbing agency has claimed to be the spirit of some person formerly resident in the locality, and who, troubled in mind, wishes to make some communication.
“There is one recorded in Light this week as related by Miss Violet Tweedale, the novelist, concerning a General who after his death, being troubled about a sum of money he owed to a brother officer, returned and communicated a method by which the repayment could be made. so far we can only proceed by hypotheses and experiment. One thing is certain, hauntings are very real things, whatever the attributed cause.”
Evening News (London), 23rd December 1915.
The Hornsey Ghost.
It is only natural at this season of the year that London is taking the liveliest interest in the doings of a Hornsey ghost. In the course of the coming week a well-known member of the Psychical Research Society is to investigate the affair, and his decision will be awaited eagerly. Meanwhile hosts of Londoners are offering their services to lay the ghost, which is said to manifest his or her presence by tapping, crashes, and other sinister noises. Ornaments have been knocked from the mantelpiece; a shut knife snatched from a child’s hand was found with the open blade buried in the doorway.
In some ways the manifestations of the Hornsey ghost resemble those of the Cock Lane spook, which divided London into two parties in 1762. This ghost was finally laid by Fanny Parsons, the child supposed to be haunted, being caught in the act after she had persuaded a representative gathering to go down to the vaults of St Sepulchre and hear it rap on its own coffin.
Visiting Hornsey to investigate London’s mystery, I learned that the house is not far removed from an old priory. This is a coincidence, inasmuch as another district on the south side of the river which is supposed to have several haunted houses, is built on the grounds of an old religious house. In this district the houses are very frequently in the market. One of them was inhabited by an assistant, now dead, of the late Sir Henry Littlejohn, who told me he had to give up a good practice because the place got on his nerves.
Sunday Post, 26th December 1915.
Strange ghostly doings.
From Hornsey Rise – one of London’s northern suburbs – comes the ghost story of the season. The haunted house is a detached one of ten rooms. Six people live there – an elderly couple who have been in it for 25 years, a son about 30 years old, and two daughters. One of the daughters is a widow.
“On Monday morning,” said this widow, “I was awakened at four o’clock by loud knockings on the wall. They went on for three hours. On Wednesday and Thursday night there was more knocking. We knocked back. The number of knocks we gave was repeated. But once I knocked six times and only four knocks came back. On Sunday morning the knocking came to my bed. I felt a distinct push against the mattress from underneath. As I dressed I felt a hand gently clasp my foot. Then it clasped my wrist. It felt like a gloved hand. Then reels of cotton began to tumble about. A box of matches jumped from the mantelpiece and knocked my foot as I was sitting in a chair. On Tuesday cloth-covered books began to fly about the room. My hairbrush jumped off the dressing-table on to the bed. Pillows from underneath the bedclothes were flung about the floor. Our black cat jumped on the bed and lay down. Suddenly she ‘meeowed,’ and I saw her put her ears back as if frightened or hurt. She jumped down and ran out of the room. Latterly I got cross and called out loudly, ‘Oh, go away for goodness’ sake.’ It stopped then for about fifteen minutes.”
At this moment there was a loud crash downstairs. All the party went down. The mother of the house said that was the second time the steps had been thrown on to the floor.
Auckland Star, 19th February 1916.