A Grammatical Ghost.
For some time past, the inhabitants of Sheepshead have been greatly alarmed – not at the armed Chartists, but at something more etherial, though, by the way, most persons are of opinion, that the “awful preparations” of the Radicals, exist only in the imagination of sundry alarmists.
This new cause of terror is a ghost – a real ghost – and a grammatical ghost too – one that comes and knocks double raps at the windows, in broad daylight, with half the population of Sheepshead assembled to “see what they can see” without perceiving anything.
No doubt the Chartists are at the bottom of this (the double knock being symptomatic of the raps they are about to give the government,) and yet neither the cavalry nor the regular troops have been called out to check the pranks of their ghost! What is the Solon of Ravenstone about? Why does he not send “a paper,” as he did to the prize fighters, stating that he would come “if he were wanted?” It is hinted that he is too frightened to interfere, but this can hardly be the case after his “vigilant and determined perseverance” (vide Leicester Journal).
Some persons being of opinion that the ghost would not come again if once spoken to, the owner of the haunted house was asked why he did not challenge it, to which he replied that he would have spoken to it, had he not been unable to do so grammatically! Under these lamentable circumstances, a pious priest was requested to exorcise this grammatical ghost, but though the holy father attended day after day, the perverse spirit made a point of keeping quiet so long as the priest was near!
However, the last accounts state that the village is somewhat recovering from its alarm, it being fevently hoped that the ghost – from its non-appearance for some days past – has been laid in the Red Sea – or somewhere else.
Some of these interesting particulars came to our knowledge last week, but as we feared – from our informant ascribing to the sprite (for it had been seen then) all the properties of the chamelion, and otherwise talking largely of “black spirits and white, red spirits and grey” – there was a leetle exaggeration, we preferred waiting for “further particulars.”
Should any more important intelligence arrive, we shall of course stop the press to record it.
Leicestershire Mercury, 16th March 1839.