Tale of a Fen Ghost.
Mysterious Rappings.
Some strange phenomena have been startling the huge district of the Great Fen Level of Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire. It appears that in Tick Fen a Ramsay magistrate has a farm, at the extremity of which, far away from any other buildings, live a housekeeper named Rowthan, his wife, and a bed-ridden daughter. The cottage is a typical fen shanty of wood and thatch, and adjoining it is a similar tenement, occupied by the farm foremann, Levitt, and his wife.
Miss Rowthan, who is eighteen years of age, and has been confined to her bed for nearly twelve months, slept in a room near the thatch, her bedstead resting against the gable-end of the roof. On Monday week, at midnight, gentle rappings against her bed were heard, and as the walls are wooden the noise was more apparent. At first the sounds came in sequences of three and four, increasing to six or seven at a time, and growing louder as they proceeded. Then they ceased for a space, and recommenced more vigorously, until they were heard by the next-door neighbours – according to one report, at a farmhouse 500 yards off.
The mother and father, at rest in the same room, were also alarmed, but for a time did nothing, thinking the manifestations would cease. These instead increased until the “ghosts,” as if angered at being pooh-poohed, became so noisy as almost to threaten a terrific crash. Nothing was to be seen, though it was clear and starlight and the disturbances continued to ring out across the fens. The rappings recurred at intervals until the advent of dawn seemed to drive the malicious “spirits” before it.
On the following night, though at a different time, a repetition of the phenomena occurred. Meanwhile, the inmates, who had suffered the mysterious affair in silence, had determined upon decisive action. On the third night the father, taking a loaded gun, went outside the building, but the rappings against the gable were renewed more vigorously than ever. Search parties were organised, but everyone remained baffled.
The countryside began to talk, according to a lengthy report in the Peterborough advertiser, and watch parties assembled in the cottages until morning. No timid ghost was this, for the pulsations continued whilst eyes were fixed on the very spot on which the invisible blows were given. The landlord’s estate bailiff, together with a companion, took pains to keep vigil in the “haunted house” from midnight till three. The noises were repeated with the greatest freedom. He drove back to Ramsey at three in the morning, admitting that he was baffled even in the cleverest of the theories he had in his own mind conjured up to account for the mystery.
Hundreds of people have visited the place, and solicitors, merchants, farmers, and others from the surrounding district have made critical examination of the house. The girl has been removed into the adjoining house, where the rappings are not so audible nor so frequent.
Grantham Journal, 15th May 1897.
(no Peterborough advertiser for 1897 currently)
… Just about this time too, came the Ramsey scare, which for some weeks attracted a great deal of attention throughout the district. The gable end of a cottage in the fens was constantly thundered at by mysterious knockings. People who went to try and solve the mystery, either went away frightened or acknowledged themselves baffled. On one occasion “something” – no one seemed quite clear what – was seen to enter an adjoining window, but there was no real evidence of this. Newspaper reporters and others, visited the house and did all they could to solve the mystery, but without avail. Gradually the manifestations ceased, and nothing more was heard. …
Peterborough Express, 5th May 1898.