EPWORTH RECTORY

Opening

On 1 December 1716 a maidservant at the rectory in Epworth, Lincolnshire, heard groans at the dining-room door "like a person in extremes, at the point of death". Within days the household of the rector, Samuel Wesley, his wife Susanna and their daughters heard knocking, usually in threes, mostly in the nursery. Samuel at first suspected the young women of the house and their lovers. Then the knocking came nine times beside his own bed.

For weeks the family heard knocks, footsteps, the sound of bottles smashing and coins spilling, and a noise like the winding of a jack. Emily Wesley named the thing Jeffrey. Samuel searched with lights and without, challenged it to come to his study, and kept a journal. The family wrote to their son Samuel in London, and years later John Wesley collected and published their accounts.

Timeline

1 December 1716The maid hears groans. Two or three nights later several of the family hear knocking. It continues nightly for a fortnight before Samuel is told.

December 1716The noise follows Samuel and Susanna through the house. On the stairs they hear what sounds like money emptied at their feet and bottles smashed, but find nothing. Samuel brings in a neighbouring clergyman, Mr Hoole, who hears the knocking too.

26 December 1716Samuel knocks his own door-knock pattern on the kitchen joists. The noise answers simple knocks but not the pattern.

28 December 1716Susanna records a loud final knock in the nursery, like Samuel's at the gate.

12 January 1717Susanna writes the first letter to her son Samuel, a master at Westminster School, who had not written for a month.

January to February 1717More letters, from Susanna, Samuel, Emily and other children, go to London. On 11 February Samuel writes that the family is now all quiet.

August 1726John Wesley, visiting Epworth, takes down accounts from his mother, sisters and the servant Robin Brown.

1784John Wesley publishes his account in The Arminian Magazine.

1791Joseph Priestley publishes the original letters and journal.

Key figures

Samuel Wesley (1662 to 1735), rector of Epworth, poet and High Church Tory.

Susanna Wesley, who first thought it rats and sent for a horn to frighten them away.

Emily (Emilia) Wesley, the eldest daughter, who gave the noise its name.

Hetty (Mehetabel) Wesley, then 19, near whom the noise was most often heard.

John Wesley, then 13 and at school in London, later founder of Methodism, who collected the testimony.

Robin Brown, the rector's manservant.

Physical and documentary trail

The record is unusually close to the events: Susanna's letter of 12 January 1717, letters from the children, Samuel's own journal, and John's 1726 interviews, all published by Priestley in 1791 from manuscripts in the younger Samuel's hand. None of it was written for publication. Against it, John and Kitty Maw, neighbours who listened several nights, never heard anything.

I asked it what it was, and why it disturbed innocent children, and did not come to me in my study, if it had any thing to say to me.

Corrections to the earlier version of this report. The disturbances began on 1 December 1716, not later in the month, and the children did not name the noise collectively: Emily said she named it. Samuel's challenge was spoken in the nursery, asking why it did not come to his study, where by his account it never came. The old summary's line "They got a candle and the hall was empty" is not in the sources; Susanna wrote that they passed through the hall into the kitchen, got a candle and found the children asleep.

Things you might not know

• It objected to King George. Samuel wrote that it made a great noise during the prayers for King George and the Prince, so some of the family called it a Jacobite.
• The dog gave up. The family mastiff barked violently the first night, then only came whining to the family, seeming more afraid than the children.
• Samuel was pushed. He recorded being shoved three times by an invisible power, once against his study desk.
• Hetty trembled in her sleep. Susanna noticed she always shook before the noise woke her, and that it was usually nearest her.
• The scientist blamed the servants. Priestley, publishing the letters, judged it most probably a trick by the servants with some neighbours, kept secret.
• Samuel saw a market for it. He told his son the full account would make "a glorious penny book for Jack Dunton", the London publisher, but said he was not ambitious for anything of that nature.
• It had a forerunner. John's 1726 notes record his mother hearing knocks in threes years earlier, after a sharp quarrel between his brother and his sister Sukey.

Competing explanations

A spirit. Samuel wondered whether it foretold a death, and the family half-believed it a messenger. Nothing it did conveyed a message.

A hoax by servants or neighbours. Priestley's view. It fits an unpopular rector in a parish where some suspected parishioners of starting the 1709 fire, but no one confessed. Susanna said the new man and maid were the most frightened of all, and that the noises were often heard with them in the room.

A hoax by one of the children. The noise clustered around Hetty and around the nursery, and Emily admitted she wanted it to continue until her father was convinced. No one was caught.

Natural noises. Rats, wind and the timbers of a house rebuilt after the 1709 fire would explain some knocks, not footsteps answering knocks.

Later life of the case

"Old Jeffrey" became the most famous English poltergeist after Tedworth, partly because of the Wesley name. The rectory, rebuilt in 1709, is now a museum.

Finding

The Epworth disturbances are well documented by sober witnesses writing within weeks, and they were never explained. The family investigated, found nothing, and no one confessed. Trickery by a servant, a neighbour or a daughter fits the pattern but was never shown, and the neighbours who listened from outside heard nothing.

What still will not resolve: who, if anyone, was making the noises. The letters show the family suspected each other and the servants, and none of those suspicions was ever proved or cleared.