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Old Jeffrey

It was after the famous founder of Methodism, John Wesley, had already left home that his parents, the Rev. Samuel Wesley and Susanna Wesley, reported a series of poltergeist hauntings at Epworth Rectory in Lincoinshire. Samuel Wes]ey wrote ‘An Account of noises and disturbances in my house at Epworth, Lincoinshire in December and January 1716’.

‘One night when the noise was great in the kitchen, and on a deal partition, and on the door in the yard, the latch whereof was often lifted up, my daughter Amelia went and held it fast on the inside, but it was still lifted up, and the door pushed violently against her, though nothing was to be seen on the outside.’ The sounds included breaking glass, groaning and cackling.

Mrs Wesley wrote to one of her children: ‘One night it made such a noise in the room over our head as if several people were walking; then. . . running up and down stairs, and was so outrageous that we thought the children would be frightened so your father and I rose and went down in the dark to light a candle, Just as we came to the bedroom at the bottom of the broad stairs, having hold of each other, on my side there seemed as if somebody had emptied a bag of money at my feet, and on his as if all the bottles under the stairs (which were many) had been dashed in a thousand pieces. We passed through the hall into the kitchen, and got a candle and went to see the children. The next night your father got Mr Hole to lie at our house and we all sat together till one or two o’clock in the morning and heard the knocking as usual. Sometimes it would make a noise like the winding up of a jack, at other times like the night Mr Hole was with us, like a carpenter planing deals, but most com monly knocked thrice and stopped and then thrice again, and so many hours together.’

The Wesley children were not frightened by the poltergeist but seemed to treat it almost as a friend; they named it ‘Old Jeffrey’. Like most poltergeists, the events simply faded away after a few months.

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