Old Jeffrey, The Ghost 67
OLD JEFFREY, THE GHOST
at the foot of the stairs, chains rattling, the noise as of a carpen ter planing, or a jack being wound. Sometimes the house shook from top to bottom. One night when the din made sleep im possible, the rector and his wife decided to investigate, and hand in hand descended the stairs. When they reached the hall below, according to Susanna's account, "a large pot of money seemed to be poured out at my waist, to run jingling down my nightgown to my feet." ("Have you dug in the place where the money seemed poured at your feet?" wrote Samuel, Jr. who was always involved in the family's finances.) As Mr.
Wesley and Susanna proceeded into the kitchen that night, their mastiff came whining to them and wedged himself be tween them, cowering in fear. They searched every room in the house and saw nothing unusual, but the "rattle and thun der" continued for more than an hour throughout the rectory.
The ghost actually showed himself on only four occasions and in varying forms: Susanna saw him under a bed as a headless badger; Robin Brown, the manservant, caught a glimpse of the same figure near the kitchen fireplace, and at another time a creature like a small rabbit came out from behind the dining room fireplace beside Robin, turned swiftly around five times and disappeared. To Sukey and Hetty the apparition resembled a man in a long, trailing nightgown. He made himself heard, however, at any time he took a notion, day or night This was no kindly spirit, this "Old Jeffrey," as Emilia playfully named him. He rather fitted the poltergeist definition
—a noisy imp who harassed the entire family with his devilish tricks.
Jeffrey had his favorites, too. The door latches would be lifted by a mysterious hand to let the girls pass through. Susan na, always practical, expressed the wish that she be not dis turbed from five to six during her private devotions, and, oddly enough, the wish was granted.
The Wesley ghost had its strong political likes and dislikes
SUSANNA-MOTHER OF THE WESLEYS
and was quite evidently an ardent follower of the Stuarts, for it always kept up a frightful din overhead when Mr. Wesley prayed for King George and the Prince at family prayers.
This interruption made the little rector so angry that he would defiantly say the prayer over again and always with the same result. On the other hand, Old Jeffrey was mischievous at times. John Wesley, in his account, tells of a "gentle tapping" at the head of the girls' beds between nine and ten at night.
They then usually said to one another: "Jeffrey is coming, it is time to sleep."
During the ghost era, Samuel, Jr. was teaching at Westmin ster, John was at Charterhouse, and Charles w'as newly regis tered as a student at Westminster, so the boys had little first hand knowledge of the strange happenings at home. Young
Samuel, alarmed by the extent of Jeffrey's performances, demanded a letter from each member of the family giving his or her individual account of the phenomena, and for once the correspondence from Epworth took on a personal character.
The usual letters from Susanna and Samuel to their children were impersonal, dealing solemnly with great events or princi ples of conduct and the like, with few of the personal touches which would be priceless to historians of this family. Old
Jeffrey, if he did nothing else, upset this cool detachment.
During the period of his visitation the letters from various members of the family, and especially the rector's diary, reveal reactions so characteristic of their writers as to be amusing.
Susanna, logical and unbiased, discredited the reports of her children and the servants until she could thoroughly evaluate the antics of the ghost for herself. Even then she first attributed the noises to rats until, after fruitlessly sounding a horn throughout the house to run them off, she became firmly convinced that no human creature or animal was capable of making such disturbances. In a letter to her son Samuel, weary of his persistent questionings regarding the ghost, she wrote
(March 27, 1717):
OLD JEFFREY, THE GHOST
"I cannot imagine how you should be so curious about our unwelcome guest. For my part, I am quite tired with hearing or speaking of it; but if you come among us, you will find enough to satisfy all your scruples, and perhaps may hear or see it yourself."
The dauntless little rector defied Old Jeffrey whose politics he resented anyhow: "Thou deaf and dumb devil," he cried in a loud voice, "why dost thou frighten the children that cannot answer thee? Come to me in my study that am a man."
The ghost immediately simulated Samuel's knock (the particu lar knock he always used at his own gate and door) "as if it would shiver the boards in pieces," says Tyerman, "and away it went." ^ After that it constantly annoyed Mr. Wesley in his study which had hitherto been spared its visitations. Samuel on one occasion even got out his pistol after the ghost, but one of his friends of the clergy, Mr. Hoole, who was with him at the [ time, convinced him that one cannot shoot a spirit.
At first the children trembled in sheer terror at the mysteri ous noises, even in their sleep; but Old Jeffrey's comings be- ! came so frequent that they got accustomed to the intruder and accepted him as a member of the family. They found they could
I tease and anger him by making personal remarks about him, [ and this turned into a sport with them. To little Kezzy, Old
Jeffrey became a favorite playmate. She chased his tappings i from room to room, gleefully stamping on the floor with her
I tiny feet and hearing the answering knock in return.
Nancy reported that the ghost walked behind her as she swept the room, seeming to repeat the sweeping after her. On ! one occasion, the bed on which she was sitting was lifted several times. This performance was in the presence of several others in the family.
Mr. Hoole, the neighboring clergyman, was asked to spend the night at the rectory during the height of Jeffrey's disturb ances, to "conjure" the ghost. He wrote his account to Samuel,
SUSANNA—MOTHER OF THE WESLEYS
Jr.; Robin Brown wrote his version, and so did Betty Massy, the maid.
Hetty seemed to be the one most troubled by the ghost. Its frequent knockings on her bed made her turn and twist in her sleep. It followed her more often than the others, too. Emily reported to her brother Samuel that the ghost knocked re peatedly under Hetty's feet, "and when she had removed, it has followed, and still kept just under her feet, which was enough to terrify a stouter person." ^ Susaima wrote to Sammy that "it commonly was nearer her [Hetty] than the rest, which she took notice of; and was much frightened, be cause she thought it had a particular spite at her. I could multiply particular instances, but I forbear." ®
Why did she "forbear"? One of the greatest mysteries about the affair of the Wesley ghost is the absence of any recorded account by Hetty. Young Susanna in a letter to her brother Samuel (March 27, 1717) says: "I should farther satisfy you concerning the disturbances; but it is needless, because my sisters Emilia and Hetty write so particularly about it."
But where are Hetty's letters? Were they lost or purposely concealed by her brothers? In all the carefully assembled data on Old Jeffrey there is no record of Hetty's own impressions, nor is there any excuse made for their omission. Could Hetty have been the unconscious intermediary in all these impish goings-on at the rectory, since she was the person most disturbed by it all? We shall probably never know but must add these to the other mysteries related to this case.
Every possible attempt was made to connect the antics of the ghost with some individual or individuals. They could not have been traceable to any member of the Wesley family or to the servants, because all were affected by its visits not only separately but in groups. Outsiders could not be blamed either—Old Jeffrey's presence was manifested too often and in too varied ways. More and more it became an accepted
OLD JEFFREY, THE GHOST
fact that no natural explanation could be found for the ghost but that he had to belong to the realm of the extra-natural.
Susanna tried to interpret the visits of the ghost as a fore boding of disaster or death—some accident to one of the boys or the death of her brother in India. This explanation for tunately proved groundless. John for a time believed that Old
Jeffrey was sent to pester his father because the rector left his family after Susanna failed to say Amen to the prayer for King William. Emilia gives her opinion about the ghost in a letter to her brother Samuel, undated but said to have been written about February 11, 1716-17:
"I am so far from being superstitious, that I was too much inclined to infidelity; so that I heartily rejoice at having such an opportunity of convincing myself, past doubt or scruple, of the existence of some beings besides those we see."
By the end of January, 1717, the annoyances of Old Jeffrey had about come to an end, though Tyerman reports that they were repeated at long intervals to the end of March of that year, then ceased altogether. Long after—thirty-four years after, to be exact—Emilia writes in a letter to her brother
John, dated February 16, 1750: "You won't laugh at me for being superstitious if I tell you how certainly that something calls on me against any extraordinary new affliction; but so little is known of the invisible world, that I, at least, am not able to judge whether it be a friendly or an evil spirit."
As a postscript it may be reported that long after the Wes leys had gone and over a hundred years after the first visit of the ghost, he is said to have returned to Epworth rectory and so harassed the occupants of the house that they went to Lon don to be rid of him.
Of all similar disturbances of this sort, the Epworth polter geist is undoubtedly one of the best documented—the rector's diary, the entire correspondence with Samuel, Jr., preserved in his own handwriting, John's account set down years later and published in the Arminian Magazine when he was an old
SUSANNA—MOTHER OF THE WESLEYS
man—all this makes out a strong case. One must bear in mind also that the Wesleys who were subjected to this strange visitation were sensible people. For them "no fairies still danced in the woods," nor were they superstitious like the simpler folk of the Lincolnshire parish. Credence must there fore be given to their narratives about the ghost. It is no wonder, then, that leading scientists and authorities in the field of the occult have made the Epworth ghost the subject of extensive research.
It would be inappropriate here to recount at length their findings. Some conclusions were absurdly impossible, others worthy of some consideration; but no one to this day has un raveled the mystery of Old Jeffrey. The Wesleys all linked him with the supernatural; Luke Tyerman, their historian, shared their opinion; so did Robert Southey, the deist. In his
Life of [John] Wesley, Southey writes: "It would be end sufficient if sometimes one of those unhappy persons who, looking through the dim glass of infidelity, see nothing beyond this life, should, from the well-established truth of one such story, be led to a conclusion that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy."
Susanna characterized the happening in her utilitarian way:
"If they [such apparitions] could instruct us how to avoid any danger, or put us in the way of being wiser or better—there would be sense in it, but to appear to no end that we know of unless to frighten people almost out of their wits, seems altogether unreasonable." Sammy's summation was epigram matic: "Wit, I fancy, might find many interpretations, but wisdom none." The rector, true to form: "It would make a glorious penny book for Jack Dunton."
The whole episode of the ghost made a profound impression upon John Wesley. As a boy of seventeen, he who always needed a reason for everything amassed all the facts regarding
Old Jeffrey, and as time went on he carefully evaluated them.
No one, even in the age of reason in which John Wesley lived,
OLD JEFFREY, THE GHOST
could have weighed every detail of this strange happening with colder logic and more impartial judgment than the Founder of Methodism, and his decision was in favor of the supernatural. Here was a queer phenomenon, perfectly docu mented, that could not be explained away, and this fact made an indelible impression upon him. Andrew Lang of a later day, an authority on the study of ghosts, says Old Jeffrey "made a thoroughfare for the supernatural" through John Wesley's brain.
Through his long lifetime there was ever for John Wesley a consciousness of good as well as evil forces in the realm of the spirit. It was his firm belief in the reality of an unseen world and its implications for man when this earthly sojourn ceases that helped to make Wesley the compelling leader he was.
Old Jeffrey was still in his mind when, at the age of sixtysix years and with the perspective of almost a lifetime, he pub lished, in his Methodist Arminian Magazine, his own factual account of this mysterious visitation of his childhood.
Susanna's kitchen services : Some families
WHO SELDOM WENT TO CHURCH NOW WENT CONSTANTLY.
SUSAIVIMA
in the PARISH If only the Wesleys could have known how famous they were to become, they might have kept a journal, or at least a diary, to give to posterity an account of the "Wesley dispersion" while the rectory was being rebuilt after the fire.
Did Mrs. Wesley keep school in the lodgings she occupied till the new house could be made ready, or was she not able to keep school at all? What kind of time did young Susanna and Hetty have in London during this period ? Their sojourn