The Legend of Old Jeffrey
The Epworth Rectory
You can hear an audio recording of this post on episode 38 of the Methodical Methodist Podcast!
For a period of three months, starting in December 1715, the Wesley family heard a number of strange sounds and witnessed numerous accounts of what they believed was a ghost name Old Jeffrey. Today we are going to explore these strange accounts reported by the Wesleys and the people who lived and worked in their home… The haunting of the Old Rectory at Epworth is considered one of the most famous poltergeist cases in British history. It has been called The Epworth Phenomena.
In 1714, when John Wesley was a boy of eleven, he left home and started attending the Charterhouse School in London. About this same time, while he was away, a series of strange events took place back home at the Epworth Rectory.
On December 1, 1715, the Wesley’s parlor-maid, Nanny Marshall, claimed that she heard a strange and terrible noise in the house. She claimed to hear sounds like the dismal groans of a man in the pains of dying. Susanna and her daughters were skeptical. They thought it was just the story of girlish imagination. But only a few days later, two of the Wesley sisters, Sukey (who was 21) and Anne (who was 14) heard something rush by the outside of the house, followed by three knocks, then repeated three times – inside. They heard a series of repeated and methodical knocking on the doors and paneling all over the house.
Molly Wesley, who was about twenty years of age, was sitting in the dining-room, reading. All of a sudden, she heard what sounded like the door that led into the hall open, and a person walking in. The person seemed to have on a silk nightgown that was rustling and trailing along the floor. It seemed to walk around her, then to the door, then round again; but she couldn’t actually see anything. She thought, "It signifies nothing to run away, for whatever it is, it can run faster than me." So, she rose, put her book under her arm, and walked slowly away.
Family Dining Room in Epworth
After supper, Molly was sitting with her sister Suky (about a year older than her) and she was telling her what had happened. She kind of made light of it and told her, “I wonder you are so easily frighted; I would fain see what would fright me.” Suddenly, they heard a knocking sound from under the table. She took the candle and looked, but she couldn’t find anything. Then the window and a warming pan (which was a device that was made to warm beds) began to clatter. Next the latch of the door moved up and down without a number of times. So, Suky jumped out of bed, pulled the bedsheets over her head, cowered down, and didn’t look up until the next morning....
Then, just two nights later, Emilia (who was 23) thought she heard the sound of several bottles being broken and a large lump of coal being dumped onto the kitchen floor. When she examined the kitchen, however, she found no evidence of broken glass or pieces of coal. On another occasion, a young boy who lived in the house and did manual labor for the Wesleys, heard someone walking up and down the stairs with a long cloak and gobbling like a turkey. He also claimed that he saw something that looked like a rabbit run out of a hole in the copper, spin around three times and run off, and it eluded his attempts to catch it.
At first, Susanna Wesley wrote these reports off - saying it was probably just neighbors playing pranks. She thought it might have been rats. She kept attempting to shrug off whatever noises they heard and make excuses for what the noises might have been. Her daughters begged her not to antagonize the ghosts. And it wasn’t long before Susanna began to hear strange sounds herself. The noises and disturbances began to appear during the day as well as the night. Soon, the Wesley girls were hearing sounds of breaking glass, footsteps on the landings, and they too heard someone gobbling like a turkey.
The Wesley family began to believe that these strange sounds were the work of a ghost named Jeffrey, a local man who had died by suicide – he was the former resident of the home. Samuel and Susanna’s daughter, Hetty, nicknamed the ghost “Old Jeffery.”
Supposedly, Old Jeffery took on many different forms. Susanna saw him once as a headless badger-like animal scuttling under the beds; one daughter witnessed a body-less men’s gown clunking behind her in the dark.
One of the strangest reports occurred when a servant, Robert Brown, witnessed the handle of the corn-grinding machine began to turn on its own volition. Brown expressed his regret that Old Jeffrey never worked the grinder when it was full… So, Brown still had to grind all the corn on his own!
Despite all of these noises, Samuel Wesley was completely unaware of these supernatural encounters. For several weeks, Samuel had no idea about the supernatural presence in the house. The Wesley women didn’t tell him at first because they just assumed that he wouldn’t believe them. Then, because the evidence had grown too strong to deny, they didn’t tell him because they thought the spirit had come to harm Samuel. (It was a common belief back then that spirits did not manifest themselves to the mortal whom they had come on earth to harm). In other words, Susanna feared that Samuel had not witnessed Old Jeffrey because the Old Jeffrey actually intended death and damnation for Samuel.
But after a couple of weeks, Samuel began to hear these strange noises himself, and as the women had predicted, he assumed it was just unfriendly neighbors and reports of girlish imagination. In fact, he told his daughter Sukey… “I’m ashamed of you. These boys and girls frighten one another, but you are a woman of sense and should know better.” Samuel insisted that if it wasn’t the neighbors then it was the lovers of his older daughters sneaking into the house and up to no good.
When Samuel heard a report by their servant Robert Brown who had seen a badger-like creature running out from under his bed, he bout a large mastiff dog named Jack. He thought the dog would help with intrusive vermin and deter pranksters from messing with them. But when Old Jeffrey began knocking on the walls, the dog would cringe and whine and attempt to jump up into Robert Brown’s bed and take refuge.
There is a similar account when Susanna took Emilia into the nursery where she heard noises under the bed. She saw an animal like a badger without a head run across the room and hide under Emilia’s skirts. On another night, Samuel and Susanna were awakened by loud and violent noises. They got up and went throughout the house but, repeatedly, the sound seemed to come from the room they had just left.
On another night, Samuel heard rattling among bottles and the sound of several coins being poured out at Susanna’s waist and falling down to her feet.
Samuel finally started to believe that there was a spirit visiting their home. He feared that this spirit was there to indicate that their son Samuel Jr. in London had died. Samuel challenged the spirit saying, “If thou art the spirit of my son Samuel, I pray thee knock three knocks and no more.” There was no response. Samuel and Susanna wrote letters to all their boys making sure they were okay. All the Wesley boys who were away in school wrote letters home, indicating that they were alive and well.
Samuel eventually came to the same conclusion that the rest of his family had – their house was haunted by the spirit, Old Jeffery.
On one occasion, Samuel invited a fellow clergyman – the Rev. Joseph Hoole the Vicar from Haxey – to come and spend the night in the house. He wanted a witness to hear and witness what the family had been experiencing. Wesley and Hoole went through the house together, hearing the usual tapings. Samuel was fed up and fired a pistol in the direction of the ghostly noises – calling Old Jeffrey a deaf and dumb devil. He then challenged Old Jeffrey to join him in his study for some serious conversation about the afterlife. He said don’t bother my children, come to me. I am a man!
The spirit did not accept the invitation, but Old Jeffery did immediately respond with the same sequence of knocks that Samuel had used himself to let his wife Susanna know he was coming home at night. The Wesleys were only met with more disturbances – whistling, lifting latches, opening windows, and brushing against the girls.
Susannah Wesley wrote a letter on January 12, 1717, describing some of these events…
"One night it made such a noise in the room over our heads as if several people were walking; then run up and down the stairs and was so outrageous that we thought the children would be frightened, so your father and I rose and went down in the dark to light a candle. Just as we came to the bottom of the broad stairs, having hold of each other, on my side there seemed as if somebody had emptied a bag of money at my feet and on his as if all the bottles under the stairs (which were many) had been dashed into a thousand pieces. We passed through the hall into the kitchen and got a candle and went to see the children. The next night your father would get Mr. Hoole to lie at our house and we all sat together till one or two o'clock in the morning and heard the knocking as usual. Sometimes it would make a noise like the winding up of a jack (their Mastiff); at other times, as that night Mr. Hoole was with us, like a carpenter planning deals; but mostly commonly it knocked three and stopped and then thrice again and so many hours together."
On the next night Samuel said that when he entered his study, the door was pushed back on him with so much force it almost knocked him to the floor. He called on his daughter Anne to come stand next to him and he challenged the spirit to speak, but there was no sound. Samuel then told Anne: “Spirits love darkness; put out the candle and perhaps then it will speak.” Anne, probably scared to death, blew out the candle, and Samuel challenged Old Jeffrey to speak again. Again, it was silent. Samuel then said, “Two Christians are an overmatch for the devil; go downstairs, and it may be, when I am left alone, it will speak.” Again, there was only silence. Samuel also claimed to feel someone pressing on his chest later while he was lying in bed.
For the next 27 days, there were no noises. But then, it started back up. The family were in prayer and they heard knocks as they were praying for the king. Then, at the end of the prayer, when they said “Amen” there was a loud thump. The next day, Samuel omitted the prayer for the king, and there was no sound. But then, the following day, when he mentioned the king in his prayers again, the knocking happened. This caused the Wesley family to assume that Old Jeffrey was a Jacobite - a supporter of the exiled Stuart king James II
Susanna was so concerned that the poltergeist was going to disturb her evening prayer time that she told Old Jeffrey she didn’t want to be interrupted between 5 and 6 p.m. — and she never was!
On one occasion Samuel’s dinner plate began dancing on the table during supper. On several nights the latch was lifted on his door. Another time, Emilia attempted to hold the latch on the back door of the kitchen, but it was still lifted, and the door was pushed violently against her. A similar thing happened to Samuel, three times, when he was pushed either by a door or an unknown force which drove him against his desk.
Strangely enough, the Wesley girls didn’t seem to be too frightened of Old Jeffry after a while. They had probably grown used to these strange encounters. After going to bed the girls would often say, “Old Jeffrey is coming; it’s time to go to sleep.” There was also a report of the three girls in the nursery – and their bed was lifted up to a considerable height. Anne was sitting on the bed and simply said, “Surely Old Jeffrey wouldn’t run away with me.” It’s kind of insane that they got so used to these encounters that they would make jokes about it. Susanna Wesley came to believe over time that Old Jeffrey was more of a nuisance rather than a threat.
And then after about three months, from December 1715 lasting until February 1716 the noises ceased.
Years later, in 1726, Samuel Jr. and John set out to document all of the details of the supernatural occurrence in their family’s home. They compiled letters from their mother, excerpts from their father’s journal, and statements from witnesses. The Wesley brothers were completely fascinated by Old Jeffrey, and their shared their account of the haunting with anyone who would read it. In their writings, they included this account of a single incident from Samuel’s friend, The Reverend Joseph Hoole:
“One of the maids who went up to sheet a bed brought the alarm that Jeffry was come above stairs. We all went up and were standing round the fire in the east chamber. Something began knocking on the other side of the wall of the chimney piece as with a key. Presently the knocking was under our feet. Mr. Wesley and I went down, he with a great deal of hope and I with fear. As soon as we left the kitchen, the sound was above us in the room we had left.”
Wesley believed that he knew the origins of Old Jeffrey. He believed his father had sinned by vowing to ostracize his wife after she refused to pray for the life and health of King William in 1702. John said, “I fear this vow was not forgotten before God.”
The Wesley family was totally convinced that ghosts really existed, and this was the work of the supernatural spirit, Old Jeffrey.
There were many who believed that there were explanations for these disturbances. One, Dr. Joseph Priestly argued that the whole affair was a trick of the servants, assisted by some of the neighbors for the purpose of puzzling the family and amusing themselves. They think Robert Brown and Nanny Marshal were in on it. But there is not any evidence to draw any specific conclusions. Still, others believe this may have been the work of the Wesley’s mischievous daughter, Hetty.
Dr. Adam Clarke, a personal associate of John Wesley, suggested this possible explanation:
“One night, after the family had gone to bed, the maidservant was finishing her work in the back kitchen, when she was startled by a noise, looked up and saw a man working himself through a trough which communicated between the sink-stone within a cistern without.”
Clarke goes on to say that the servant struck the escaping intruder on the head, that Samuel shouted and threw the fireirons down the stairs and that the man left a trail of blood for some distance. This suggests that the neighbors were involved in perpetrating the trickery.
Another suggestion is that Samuel Wesley had preached a series of sermons against the cunning men in the community. Perhaps all of this was a work of these cunning men trying to get revenge on the local priest. Perhaps it was the work of servants, or maybe it was the neighbors.
Or maybe, just maybe, it really was the work of Old Jeffrey…
