"Demoniacal Possession."
Story of Wellington Mill briefly analysed. Authorities for the Story.
Letters. A Journal. The Wesley Ghost. Given Critically and Why.
Note on similar Stories, such as the Drummer of Tedworth. Sir Waller
Scott's Scepticism about Nautical Evidence. Lord St. Vincent. Scott
asks Where are his Letters on a Ghostly Disturbance. The Letters are
now Published. Lord St. Vincent's Ghost Story. Reflections.
Cases like that of Mrs. Shchapoff really belong to a peculiar species
of haunted houses. Our ancestors, like the modern Chinese, attributed
them to diabolical possession, not to an ordinary ghost of a dead
person. Examples are very numerous, and have all the same "symptoms,"
as Coleridge would have said, he attributing them to a contagious
nervous malady of observation in the spectators. Among the most
notorious is the story of Willington Mill, told by Howitt, and
borrowed by Mrs. Crowe, in The Night Side of Nature. Mr. Procter, the
occupant, a Quaker, vouched to Mrs. Crowe for the authenticity of
Howitt's version. (22nd July, 1847.) Other letters from seers are
published, and the Society of Psychical Research lately printed Mr.
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