The Cock-Lane Ghost at Kempsey.
In the road leading down to the church stands, in a garden and alone, a small house tenanted by Benjamin Amphlett, butcher, with a wife and three children, and one evening about three weeks ago the woman rushed out in great alarm and trepidation. The neighbours enquired what was the matter, and she informed them that she had heard a most extraordinary and violent knocking in the wall of one of the front rooms.
People flocked to the place, and by and by the knocking was heard again. The house was examined inside and out, but nothing could be seen. Sometimes the noise was only a gentle rap of reminiscence, and then would come a thundering blow that jarred the whole house, and threatened to shake the windows out.
Next evening the same thing occurred, and it was bruited about that the house was haunted. More came to hear, and that a veritable ghost had taken up his quarters in their midst was a thing not to be doubted for a minute. Every evening from about seven till nine or ten o’clock he held a levee, and his reputation and auditors increased amazingly when it was discovered that he had the politeness to respond to the taps of any individual who was hardy enough to venture his knuckles against the wall.
Some evenings there would be as many as a hundred people round the house at once; gentlefolks visited the place, and everybody that did not go away impressed with the deepest awe, was declared to be a hard-hearted infidel, that never would come to any good.
Old women shut themselves up and said prayers, not a servant maid in all the village would venture out for a pound of butter after dark, every particular hair of the rustic who had to pass that way alone stood on end, and the panic became so general that it was seriously proposed to summon the whole spiritual posse comitatus to exorcise this unearthly intruder on the peace of the neighbourhood.
Some people suggested that the ghost should be undermined, and a deep trench was actually dug round the haunted portion of the premises by way, we suppose, of intercepting his passage to and from the limbo where these airy gentlemen are generally said to dwell by day.
At last there came to the spot a person very nearly interested in all these proceedings – to wit, the landlord. A ghost is at all times an undesirable tenant, and he determined on making a particular inquiry why it had come to his house, since there had been no deed of blood, except, perhaps, the killing of a pig, ever committed on the premises. Accordingly he applied to the policeman of the village, Teague, and the latter having armed himself with his bull’s eye, staff, and especially his handcuffs, for the purpose of securing the spirit if he should be seen, they both proceeded courageously to the house.
They entered the haunted room, and the inmates appeared to be half dead with fear. Rap, rap, rap, went the ghost, till the wall shook again, but not the ghost of a ghost was to be seen. The room was thoroughly searched, but no cause of disturbance could be discovered. They went up stairs, and in the room above that from which the noise seemed to emanate, were two children in bed, and very comfortable too, considering their nearness to a supernatural being. The landlord and the officer searched here also, but were going to leave without making any discovery, and the Kempsey ghost was about to be set down in history as a most undoubted verity, to be appealed to by all believers as a thing which none could gainsay or deny, when the policeman thought he saw something shining behind the bed-head. He turned on his bull’s-eye, and lo! there stood revealed – A POKER!
Here was a pretty substantial ghost; none of your transparent flyaway things, but a good solid metal ghost. The mystery was out. One of the youngsters in the bed had been well instructed, and when it was desirable to waken the supernatural noises, he, as he lay on his couch, knocked the poker violently against the wall, which being of but slender make, responded to the slightest blow. The landlord had threatened to raise the rent, and the trick had been got up by the tenants to give the place an unenviable notoriety, and diminish the value of the property.
However much we may be inclined to regret that so excellent a tale should have so impotent a conclusion, we cannot but be happy to hear that the good people of Kempsey have got such a load taken off their bosoms, and that they begin again to sleep o’nights with their usual comfortable snores. – Herald.
Worcestershire Chronicle, 24th October 1849.