The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1900-10-13
THE GHOSTS OF LONDON.

Houses That Have Been Haunted for
Centuries and Have the Ghosts Yet.
Doubtless, if a chronicler could be
found to unearth the reports from
among old newspapers countless stories
could be told of alleged hauntings of
the type which is at the present june
! ture titillating West Kensington nerves
| and giving the police a deal of extra
point duty in Edith Walk Neverthe-
less the haunted houses in London
which have achieved anything more
than merely transitory and vulgar no.
tice appear to be but few and far be-
tween; while of duly authenticated
ghostly visitations the metropolis can
! boast practically nil, OF course, what
is still the most famous London ghost
story, the notorious Caek Lane affair
/ of the last century, was a bogus spirit
altogether
Almost every one of us, young and
old, has heard how cunning Fanny
with her mysterious knockings, con-
! trived to hoax the wonder-loving Lon
/ doners, until at length the cheat was
discovered and it's chief contriver
brought to condign punishment. DR..
Johnson, at the head Of a body Of SER
wants, solemnly Investigated the af-
fair, sitting up through the night of
February 7, 1862, in the vault of st.
Johns church. Clerkenwell, and Gold
smith wrote pamphlet on the subject
for which Newberry paid him three
guineas. The whole was a plot, de-
vised by one Parsons, the parish clerk
of st. Sepulchre's, and carried out by
his daughter, a girl Of twelve, the OBJ
ject being to malign a gentleman of
Norfolk, who had sued him for debt
This gentleman was a widower, who
had taken his wife's sister as mistress
(he marriage being forbidden by law,
and had brought her to lodge with
Parsons, from whom he had removed
her to other lodgings, where she had
died suddenly of smallpox. Parsons
object was to obtain the ghosts decar-
alton that she had been poisoned by his
CParsons) creditor. The knave was sub
sequently tried and sentenced to the
pillory and one years imprisonment,
but even after the exposure the Lon
don mob still believed in the Cock Lane
ghost, and freely subscribed for testi
monial to it's originator.
The Tower of London, which ought
to be haunted if any place is, once
boosted an awe-inspiring specter that
assumed the shape of a bear. Before
the burning of the armories there was
a paved yard in front of the Jewel /
House, from which gloomy and ghost
like doorway led down a flight of stairs !
to the mint. Strange noises used to be
heard in this gloomy corner, and on a |
dark night in January 1915, the sentry |!
saw figure like bear cross the pave |
ment and disappead down the steps.
This so terrified him that he fell, and in |
a few hours, after having recovered suf-
to tell his tale, he died This
affair, which was fully in
vestigated by an official inquiry, is be- |
lieved to have arisen from phantas-ma-
goria, and the governor doubled the sem
try and used such energetic precautions
that no more ghosts haunted the tower
for that time. The soldier bore high |
character for bravery and good conduct,
and the affair created a considerable
stir at the period
The most famous modern example of |
how stories of this kind can be manu-
featured even IN our day, out of hear
say and third-hand statements is that
Of the haunted house in Berkeley
square, which, seems to have received
its popularity and fame from being
identified through some accidental Cir
as the scene of similar
story in Temple Bar for 1868 by Miss
Broughton of house in the country.
The house in question belonged to an
eccentric gentleman. He was is good
but chose to spend no
money on it. For many years soap,
paint and whitewash We're never used
and then by degrees began the most
stories of servants and vis-
tors going out of their minds after
sleeping a night in one particular