As an almost universal rule children, especially girls of
about twelve, are centres of the trouble; in the St. Vincent story,
the children alone were exempt from annoyance.
LORD ST. VINCENT'S GHOST STORY
Sir Walter Scott, writing about the disturbances in the house occupied
by Mrs. Ricketts, sister of the great admiral, Lord St. Vincent, asks:
"Who has seen Lord St. Vincent's letters?" He adds that the gallant
admiral, after all, was a sailor, and implies that "what the sailor
said" (if he said anything) "is not evidence".
The fact of unaccountable disturbances which finally drove Mrs.
Ricketts out of Hinton Ampner, is absolutely indisputable, though the
cause of the annoyances may remain as mysterious as ever. The
contemporary correspondence (including that of Lord St. Vincent, then
Captain Jervis) exists, and has been edited by Mrs. Henley Jervis,
grand-daughter of Mrs. Ricketts. {222}
There is only the very vaguest evidence for hauntings at Lady
Hillsborough's old house of Hinton Ampner, near Alresford, before Mr.
Ricketts took it in January, 1765. He and his wife were then
disturbed by footsteps, and sounds of doors opening and shutting.
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