This kind of thing went on till Mrs.
Ricketts despaired of any natural explanation. After mid-summer,
1771, the trouble increased, in broad daylight, and a shrill female
voice, answered by two male voices was added to the afflictions.
Captain Jervis came on a visit, but was told of nothing, and never
heard anything. After he went to Portsmouth, "the most deep, loud
tremendous noise seemed to rush and fall with infinite velocity and
force on the lobby floor adjoining my room," accompanied by a shrill
and dreadful shriek, seeming to proceed from under the spot where the
rushing noise fell, and repeated three or four times.
Mrs. Ricketts' "resolution remained firm," but her health was
impaired; she tried changing her room, without results. The
disturbances pursued her. Her brother now returned. She told him
nothing, and he heard nothing, but next day she unbosomed herself.
Captain Jervis therefore sat up with Captain Luttrell and his own man.
He was rewarded by noises which he in vain tried to pursue. "I should
do great injustice to my sister" (he writes to Mr. Ricketts on 9th
August, 1771), "if I did not acknowledge to have heard what I could
not, after the most diligent search and serious reflection, any way
account for.
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