A Ghost at Port-Glasgow.
A gentleman was kind enough to leave a communication at our office on Monday, acquainting us that during the past few weeks a family residing in an appartment in a house in Scott’s Lane, Port-Glasgow, had been subjected to great annoyance by mysterious rappings, and other sounds and appearances tending to impress them with a belief that the house was haunted by something supernatural.
It was said that the supposed ghost, first appeared from under a bed, in the shape of a rabbit, then of a rat, and then of a small dog; that a large brawny hand and part of an arm had been seen pressed forward from under the bed, and had actually been used in pelting the inmates with potatoes, which were stored there.
In these days of modern scepticism such a statement was calculated to excite our curiosity, and feeling that it was something even to see a person who had seen a ghost, we despatched a messenger to the scene of the ghost’s operations, but he returned not much the wiser of his mission. The following, however, are given forth as the facts of this mysterious affair: –
Scott’s Lane runs from south to north, at Port-Glasgow, terminating at the steeple. Half-way down the lane, and on the east side, is a small stone tenement of two stories and attics. The street floor is occupied as a coalree, stable, and store, by Mr Clements, carrier, who rents besides the whole flat overhead, which is reached by a straight wooden stair, passing up at right angles from the lane. Immediately over this stair is a bed in an apartment, which Mr. Clements has sublet to Hugh Carl, labourer, who, with his wife and three young children, and his mother, occupies the same. Carl’s house is the one said to be haunted, and the bed over the stair is the immediate place at which the singular rappings are said to take place, and from which the other mysterious phenomena have originated.
The grandmother speaks distinctly of having often heard the sounds of scraping and knocking under the bed within the last six weeks, and of having seen many unaccountable appearances. She says that her son and daughter-in-law have heard the same. She believes that some one has thrown a magic spell over the house, and she wonders how it can be removed. She gravely says she thinks the sounds cannot come from an evil spirit, or they woud then only be heard at night, whereas they are heard in the mornings as well.
She and her daughter-in-law rose a few mornings ago about daylight, while the rapping was going on. She had been sleeping on a shake-down on the floor, determined that she would defy the worse. She went to the bed whence the knocks were proceeding, in which were a boy of 12 years of age and a girl of about 4 years. She knelt at the bed-stock, and having said her prayers, she addressed an interrogatory to the ghost. Immediately the knocking ceased, and she turned and began to lift her bed off the floor, when she was struck with a potato. She looked round, thinking the boy in bed had thrown the potato, but he directed her attention to what he said had been a large hand he had just seen thrust out from under the bed, and which had thrown the potato at the old woman.
The story of the ghost having got wind, the apartment for several nights back, has been crowded with visitors to hear and see for themselves what was going on, and numbers are said to have been fully gratified. Hugh Carl himself has actually been to the priest of the district, asking him to interpose his saintly authority. The priest is said to have laughed at the affair, to the great indignation of Hugh, who has ample proof of the mysterious cantrips carried on in his domicile.
The affair, as might be expected, has been the means of attracting crowds of people to the locality in the evenings, and the police have been obliged to order the curious to move on. Hints are thrown out that the thing has its origin in a landlord being anxioius to get rid of a tenant; but if any one visits the scene, he will have no difficulty in meeting and conversing with half-a-dozen gossiping females, who all concur in saying that they heard the mysterious knockings, and some of them go much further, and are quite willing to keep up the excitement by detailing stories of ghosts and spirits to any extent, with a view to account for the ghost of Scott’s Lane. How and when the affair may end remains to be seen.
The mysterious rappings in the house of Hugh Carl, Scott’s Lane, continue to attract attention. On Tuesday night several respectable inhabitants attended, and after sitting for a considerable time they distinctly heard, first scratching as if of a rat, about the bed, and then rappings. Two gentlemen set to work and examined the bed thoroughly, to try to account for the knockings. One got on his knees and crept under the bed, and managed, it is alleged, to come to a preliminary understanding with “the ghost” as to how they were to interpret each other. One rap was to signify an affirmative, and two a negative. The gentleman seemed to indicate that he was able to hold intelligible communication with the ghost.
He crawled under the bed and whistled “Kelvin Grove” and the rather appropriate air in the circumstances of “There’s nae luck aboot the house,” to both of which the ghost is said to have rapped good time. There was a number of people, including two policemen, in the apartment; the lobby, the stair under the bed, and the lane opposite to the house were thrownged with curious visitors; and care was taken that no one rapped from the stair.
The ghost is said to have made some strange revelations – one being that it was the restless spirit of one who had died about King Street some months ago. Whether the ghost or the visitors tired first is not said, but the seance was adjourned about eleven o’clock, the ghost promising to meet some of those present on the following evening. We would not give currency to what ust seem to be childish absurdity were it not that the gentleman who is our informant was himself present, and distinctly states that he heard all that we have above described.
Glasgow Free Press, 23rd April 1864.
(as above until last paragraph)
The ghost is said to have made some strange revelations – one being that it was the restless spirit of a female who had resided at the head of King Street. The ghost promised to meet some of those present on the following evening. On Wednesday night a medium was brought down from Glasgow, but the ghost did not keep its appointment, thus proving itself to be a lying spirit.
Latest Particulars
The two gentlemen who, on Tuesday night, boldly ventured to the house of Carl in the hope of having an interview with the ghost, had no idea that they were to be any extent successful. They looked on the whole affair as a hoax. They took with them two policemen.
Hearing the raps or knockings about the bed, they with a pick-axe opened up part of the flooring under the bed and over the outer staircase at the place whence the mysterious sounds issued. They also cut open a small press at the head of the bed. They examined minutely the floor, walls, roof, &c. They had the children lifted out of the bed, and with their own hands threw aside the bed clothes and mattress, and lifted out the bed bottom without discovering anything to account for the ghost, or rather the sounds from the ghost.
They were even disposed to do further damage to the house, guaranteeing the proprietor repair of the same. With this view they left off on Tuesday night, on a promise by the ghost (so say these gentlemen, founding upon their own interpretation of the knockings), to return on the following (Wednesday) night. The gentlemen returned with various additional means and appliances to probe the thing to the bottom, but the ghost failed to keep its appointment. This made some sceptical, while others held that the fault lay with the ghost’s visitors, who had wrongly interpreted the rappings.
And here we are entitled to give these gentlemen credit for the trouble to which they put themselves with the view to expose what they regarded, and what, at least, one of them still regards as a deception. True, one whistled popular airs to the ghost, and the ghost rapped time, but this was only indulged in in the hope of more effectually finding out whether the rapping was caused by wires operated on by some one from the outside, or by some one in the house.
At length on Thursday night Carl and his family were removed by aid of the police into another apartment, adn the men in blue set themselves to listen carefully for the knockings, but the ghost did not seem to possess courage sufficient to make it encounter these unceremonious matter-of-fact officials, for it never even rapped.
Under the altered circumstances, people are beginning to give some credit to the hints that have been thrown out ascribing the mysterious rappings to a difference about the occupancy of the haunted house.
Greenock Telegraph and Clyde Shipping Gazette, 23rd April 1864.