Top five hauntings in history (window to past)

Tales of ghosts and ghouls have, for hundreds of years, captured the imagination. Here, Professor Owen Davies from the University of Hertfordshire, a historian who specialises in black magic, magic and ghosts from the traditional world to the trendy era, shares his high 5 hauntings in history.

16th century

Anne Boleyn, whose headless ghost is rumoured to haunt the neck of the woods of the Tower of London and alternative locations, is also the foremost notable ghost of the sixteenth century. however instead I nominate a literary hoax ghost. Following the Reformation, Protestant theologians laid-off ghosts as Catholic inventions, delusions and frauds. an honest Protestant mustn't believe ghosts.
Published within the late sixteenth century, John Scogan’s Scoggin’s Jests tells however the name hero detected a dishonest ghost whereas in Rome (of course!)
The practical joker meant to frighten a affluent widow into going away her cash. One evening he “came into her house & lapped himselfe during a white sheete, counterfetting a spirit, thinking she would run her wayes.” Scoggin catches him and beats him with a cudgel.

17th century

During the last half of the seventeenth century, a profound intellectual discussion flourished regarding the fact of ghosts and witches. For some, the chance of contemporary miracles, and as a consequence the terribly foundations of Christianity, were at stake. Ghost sceptics were denounced as dangerous atheists. The haunting of the house of John Mompesson at Tedworth (now Tidworth), Wiltshire, throughout the first 1660s, was a much-cited case within the discussion. The haunting consisted primarily of mystery percussion noises, however alternative sounds and spectral proof were recorded.
Rather than attributing them to the restless spirit of a soul, people who believed in their reality explained that they were caused by a wicked spirit sent in revenge by a percussionist that Mompesson had condemned shortly before.

18th century

This should be the Cock Lane Ghost. Few alternative ghosts attracted most infamy at the time and in following centuries. In 1762, in Cock Lane, shortly from St Paul’s Cathedral, strange knockings and visions were according to be emanating from the room of 1 Elizabeth Parsons. Communication was tried with the spirit by a system of knocks – like would be utilized in early spiritualism eighty years later. This apparently discovered that the supply of the disturbances was the ghost of Fanny Lynes, the mistress of William Kent. Fanny’s ghost confirmed rumours that she had been poisoned by Kent.
The case was a London sensation, attracting the eye of known literary figures like Dr. Johnson, historiographer and author. The sceptics argued that it absolutely was all AN elaborate hoax to smear Kent, and so a defamation suit was dropped at court.

19th century

In the age of the folklorist, medium and psychical research worker, there square measure such a lot of cases to settle on from. I have plumped for a ghost that definitely ne'er existed – the ill-famed and tragic Hammersmith Ghost. During the dark evenings of the winter of 1803/04, word unfold through the streets of Hammersmith that a ghost was molesting folks. One rumour had it that it absolutely was the spirit of a suicide buried in Hammersmith God's acre. On the night of three Jan an area craftsman and skilled worker named Thomas Milward was creating his approach home, wearing the white linen garments of his trade. He had already been mistaken for a ghost, and his mother had warned him concerning walking the streets at the hours of darkness in white. On this occasion a drink-fuelled try taken off from an area gin mill to catch the ghost, and one amongst them, catching sight of Milward’s phantasmal figure within the dark, shot him dead.

20th century

For a lot of of the century no man was a lot of related to ghost analysis than Harry worth (1881–1948). He was a epic character United Nations agency cherished the media, and assembled a novel library of rare works on the occult and paranormal. His most famed investigation was that of Borley vicarage, Essex, that came to be called the foremost haunted house in United Kingdom. Apparently haunted by the troubled spirits of a medieval monk and nun, various ghost phenomena were according, and phantasmal figures were seen walking the house and grounds.
In 1937 worth rented the vicarage, and publicized within the Times for “Responsible persons of leisure and intelligence, intrepid, critical, and unbiased, square measure invited to hitch rota of observers during a year’s night and day investigation of alleged haunted house.”
The vicarage was ruined by fireplace in 1939 (some say by phantasmal hands), and also the website continues to be a hot spot for psychical investigators.