A Ghost Mystery
has now been solved here. In a house in Alfred-street in this town strange noises had been heard, furniture displaced, and others of the vagaries practised in which disembodied spirits are supposed to delight. A gentleman who had a desire to ascertain for himself what ghosts were really like, asked and obtained permission to enter and remain in the haunted chamber.
As he was ascending the stairs a large tin pot was hurled at him by some invisible hand, and afterwards, on his entering the room, he was assailed by hideous noises, followed by the falling through the skylight of a stone of considerable size. Starting suddenly from the room the would-be ghost-layer came upon and seized a youth, who, after some hesitation, admitted that he had been employed to throw the missiles, and that the other spiritual “phenomena” were produced by beating an old mopstick against the under part of the staircase. Alas, poor ghost.
Western Gazette, 16th October 1868.