Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters

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crowded quarter of the city, and the gentry were content to leave it to the small tradesfolk and humble working people who made up its parish. Now

bitat was obviously in quite other surroundings. As they waited in the aisle-the man tall, erect, and easy of bearing, the woman fair and graceful-there was an instant craning of

pocket. All through the service he fidgeted impatiently in the shadows near the door, and as soon as the congregation was dismissed and he perceived that the visitors were lingering in their places, he hurried forward and accosted them. His name, he volubly explained, was Parson

name is Knight, and this lady is my wife. We-" He stopped short at sight of the changed exp

ed the disappointed and embarrassed cl

this lady is my wife. We have only recently come to London and are in search of lodgings. If

tery. Elopers or no, such a well born couple would not from choice bury themselves in this forbidding section of London.

o lodgings that would be at all suitable

rrupted the lady, with an ench

at was not lost on the now all-observing clerk, thou

quire only a bed-room and a sitting-room. If possible, w

rcely veil, "I can accommodate you in my own house. It is simple bu

ny?" asked the man,

t least g

pathies, as did the sadness which from time to time clouded her face. If, like Parsons himself, they soon became convinced that she and her husband shared some momentous secret, they could not bring themselves to believe that it involved her in wrongdoing. For the husband too they entertained the friendliest feelings. He was of a blunt, outspoken disposition and

t something is troubling you. Tell me what it is

very foolish. I was thinking of what would beco

will. But you could the

no rel

ear, are th

n tone, "but I a

riage. Had the wife died without issue, or had her child not been born alive, the law would have permitted her, even though a "deceased wife's sister," to wed the man of her choice. As things stood, a legitimate union was out of the question. Learning this, they resolved to separate; but separation brought only increased longing. Thence grew a rapid and mutual persuasion that, under the circumstances, it would be no sin to

in all about twelve pounds. Payment he postponed on one pretext and another, until the lender finally lost all patience and informed him roundly that he must settle or stand suit. Then followed an interchange of words that in an instant terminated the pleasant connection of the preceding months. Parsons was described as "an impudent scoundrel who would be taught what honest

hat the malady would prove slight; but she herself seemed to feel that she was doomed. "Send for a lawyer," she urged; "

ousness, the death. They buried her in the vaults of St. John's Clerkenwell, and from her tomb her husband came forth to give battle to the relatives who, shunning her while alive, did not disdain to seek possession of the small legacy

ealed to him, as to the public generally, by a brief paragra

meaning of it, four gentlemen sat up there last Friday night, among whom was a clergyman standing withinside the door, who asked various questions. On his asking whether any one had been murdered, no answer was made; but on

f her supposed husband, she had shared her bed with Clerk Parsons's oldest daughter; that she had then pronounced it an omen of her early death; that it did not occur again until after she had died; that, if the soi-disant spirit could be believed, the earlier knocking had been due to the agency of her dead sister; and that, in her own turn, she had come back to bring to justic

man of the neighborhood. He found that the method practised was to put the girl to bed, wait until the knocking should begin, and then question the alleged spirit; when answers were received acco

Miss Fann

ie natural

ie by pois

t kind of poison

arsenic?

by any person other t

that he be ha

n to you in

eer?"

he deceased was never known to drink beer, but had

ot in pur

er taking it?"-Three knock

aid) "know of your b

tell he

took it before you told her

is intricate and dark affair," the maid Carrots was found, and from her was procured a sworn statement that Mrs. Knight had said not a word to her about being poisoned; that, indeed, she had become unconscious twelve hours before her death and remained unconscious to the end. The

tinued, and night after night the accusation was repeated. He now resorted, therefore

It had promised that it would knock on the coffin containing Mrs. Knight's remains; and about one o'clock in the morning, after hours of silent watching, during which the spirit gave not a sign of its presence, the entire company adjourned to the church. Only one member was fo

rch was ascribable to the very good reason that Knight had caused his wife's coffin to be secretly removed. "I will show them!" cried t

rated Dr. Johnson who took part in the coffin opening episode in Clerkenwell, were animated by scientific zeal; but idle curiosity inspired the

red it was the Duke of York, and the company squeezed themselves into one another's pockets to make room for us. The house, which is borrowed, and to which the ghost has adjourned, is wretchedly small and miserable; when we opened the chamber, in which were fifty people with no light but one tallow candle at the end, we tumbled over the bed of the child to whom the ghost comes, and whom th

"The Mystery Revealed," a long pamphlet which was intended both to explain away the disturbances and to defend the luckless Knight. The actor Garrick dragged into a prologue a riming and sneering reference to the mys

et, Covent Garden; information of which being given to a certain magistrate in the neighborhood, he sent his compliments with an intimation that it should not

conspiracy against Clerk Parsons, Mrs. Parsons, the Parsons servant, the clergyman who had aided the servant in eliciting the murder story from the talkative ghost, and a Cock Lane tradesman. All of these, he alleged, had banded themselves together to ruin him, their malice arising from the quarrel wh

and the tradesman "to purchase their pardon" by the payment of some five hundred or six hundred pounds to Knight. But the clerk either would not or could not pay a farthing, and on him and his, sentence was now passed. "The father," to quote once more from the meager account in The Annual Register, "was ordered to be set in the pillory three times in one month, once at th

o slight a cause as a dispute over twelve pounds Clerk Parsons and his associates would conspire to ruin a man's reputation and if possible to take his life; and still more preposterous to imagine that they would adopt such a means to attain this end. Of course, they may have had stronger re

impulses of a hysterical child. The case bears too strong a resemblance to the Tedworth and Epworth disturbances to admit of any other hypothesis. Not that the Parsons gi

subconsciously, would cherish a grudge against Knight as the cause of that separation. The news of Mrs. Knight's death would come as a great shock, and might easily act, so to speak, as the fulcrum of the lever of mental disintegration. Then, dimly enough at first but soon with portentous rapidity, her disorde

hey would be confirmed by the suggestions and foolish questions of those who came to marvel. It needed another great shock-there being in those days no Janet or Prince or Sidis to take charge of the ca

TNO

rs and magazines speak of him only as Mr. --, or Mr. K--, there being, so far as the present writer has been able to discover, only one publication (The Gentleman's Magazine) so bold as to

ual Registe