WILLINGTON MILL

Opening

From late 1834 the Procter family, Quakers who ran the steam flour mill at Willington on the Tyne, between Newcastle and North Shields, reported footsteps, knocking, coughs, a lifted bed and figures in grey in their house beside the mill. Joseph Procter began a diary of the disturbances on 28 January 1835 and kept it for years. Neighbours and servants told stories too, and servants left.

On the night of 3 July 1840 Edward Drury of Sunderland sat up in the house with his friend Thomas Hudson. At ten to one he saw a grey female figure come out of a closet, rushed at it, and remembered nothing clearly for nearly three hours. His letters, Procter's replies and Procter's diary are the backbone of the case. The family left in 1847.

Timeline

About 1800-1806Unthank and Procter build the mill and the house. Later accounts call it the first steam flour mill on Tyneside.

Late 1834A nursemaid reports footsteps in an empty room.

28 January 1835Joseph Procter begins his diary of the disturbances.

17 June 1840Drury writes to Procter asking to spend a night alone in the house with only his watchdog. He has heard of the haunting from a farmer, Mr. Davison of Low Willington, and has read John Wesley's account of a similar case. He writes from the address of C. C. Embleton, surgeon, 10 Church Street, Sunderland.

21 June 1840Procter agrees and offers to have some of his men sleep in the house. The family leaves on 23 June. Procter returns alone on 3 July.

3 July 1840, about 11 p.mDrury and Hudson sit on the third-floor landing. Drury has an unloaded brace of pistols in his pocket. At ten to twelve they hear what sounds like bare feet pattering, then knocking near their feet and a hollow cough. At ten to one Drury sees the figure and rushes at it, falling on Hudson. He is carried downstairs.

6 and 13 July 1840Drury writes to Procter, the second letter giving his full account. Procter's reply of 9 July adds a postscript about "thirty witnesses".

About 1842"An Authentic Account of a Visit to the Haunted House at Willington", built on the Drury-Procter letters, is printed locally and later reprinted in M. A. Richardson's Local Historian's Table Book.

September 1844Procter writes that disturbances "have for a length of time been only very unfrequent".

1847William Howitt publishes his visit in Howitt's Journal. Procter tells Catherine Crowe in July that Howitt's account is substantially correct. The family leaves, and the house is divided into tenements for mill workers.

1848Crowe reprints the whole sequence in The Night Side of Nature.

1887Hudson publishes his own account in the Monthly Chronicle of North-Country Lore and Legend. He says he saw nothing.

1892The Society for Psychical Research publishes Procter's diary.

Key figures

Joseph Procter was the mill's co-owner and a member of the Society of Friends. He disliked publicity but cooperated with Drury, kept the diary and vouched for the printed accounts.

Edward Drury was the outside witness. He expected, in his words, to account for any noise "in a philosophical manner". An earlier version of this report called him a chemist. His letter was written from a Sunderland surgeon's address, and it was his companion who was the chemist.

Thomas Hudson, a chemist of about 20, was the second watcher. He was asleep or dozing at the critical moment, and his account 47 years later is sceptical.

William Howitt, a writer, visited the house and interviewed the family. Catherine Crowe reprinted his account and Procter's letter to her.

Physical and documentary trail

The record is unusually good for its time: Procter's diary, begun more than five years before the vigil, the numbered Drury-Procter letters, the 1842 pamphlet, Howitt's report, Procter's own letters vouching for them, and Hudson's dissent. Other phenomena reported in these sources include a luminous figure of a man in a surplice seen in a second-floor window from outside by the foreman, his wife, his daughter and a young relative of the family, for more than ten minutes, and a bluish-grey woman without eyes.

No physical evidence survives. The house was later demolished, though the mill building still stands. An earlier version of this report said the notes record soot that was clean in the morning. I could not find that detail in Procter's diary as quoted, in the Drury letters or in Howitt, so it has been dropped. A reference to a writer called "Unwin" printing the vigil could not be traced either. The printed sources are Richardson, Howitt and Crowe.

I have about thirty witnesses to various things which cannot be satisfactorily accounted for on any other principle than that of spiritual agency.

Things you might not know

• Drury came armed. He brought a brace of pistols to drop "as if by accident" in front of the miller, in case anyone planned tricks. He left them unloaded.
• He wanted a dog, not a friend. His first letter said he trusted his watchdog more than "any three young gentlemen" he knew. He brought Hudson instead.
• The male ghost had a nickname. Neighbours called the luminous man "Old Jeffrey", the same name the Wesley family gave their poltergeist at Epworth, which Drury had read about.
• Publicity brought fan mail. After the vigil was printed, Procter received many letters from people, some with large houses, saying their homes had the same trouble.
• The house had a reputation before the Procters. The 1842 account says one room was thought haunted forty years earlier, and repeats rumours of "some deed of darkness" while the house was being built.

Competing explanations

A genuine haunting. The Procters were sober Quakers who wanted the disturbances to stop, Procter's diary predates any publicity, and several independent witnesses described figures. Procter himself put it down to "spiritual agency".

Natural noise and suggestion. Howitt noted the house sat in a deep hollow near a tidal channel, the river, the railway viaduct and colliery engines, one of which was making "a wild sighing noise" when he visited. This can explain sounds. It does not easily explain the window figure seen by four people.

A frightened sitter. Drury had been primed by rumour, it was nearly one in the morning, and Hudson saw nothing. On this reading the closet figure was a waking dream or panic. This fits the vigil but not the family's years of reports.

Deliberate trickery by servants or workers. Drury suspected the miller at first, and the house was close to the works. No one was ever caught, and the family invited inspection.

Later life of the case

The SPR's 1892 publication of the diary made Willington a standard case in psychical research. Michael Hallowell and Darren Ritson revisited it in a 2011 book. It remains one of the better-documented English hauntings of the nineteenth century, because the household diary began before anyone outside the family was involved.

Finding

What is settled is that a respectable family kept a contemporaneous diary of disturbances for years, that a visitor had a terrifying experience on 3 July 1840, and that his companion saw nothing. The most likely explanation for Drury's night is fear and expectation in the small hours. The family's longer record, with its multiple witnesses, does not reduce so neatly, and no investigation at the time found a cause.

What still will not resolve: the window figure seen from outside by four people, and what the Procters heard for over a decade. The house that could have been examined is gone.