The Epworth Phenomena | Page 3

points,

and are nowhere inconsistent with each other.
2. Later reports were written in 1726 by Mrs. Wesley, Susannah,
Emilia, Molly and Nancy, and Robin Brown. As might be expected,
there are slight variations from the earlier narratives, but the variations
are surprisingly small and non-essential. Comparison of these earlier
and later accounts is sufficient to assure us that the people concerned
were not of very imaginative temperament, or they would have
embroidered their recollections more. And of course even when they do
refer to something which was not mentioned in the earlier accounts, we
cannot be sure that the new detail is a trick of the creative faculty-a
hallucination of memory-for it might have been overlooked and
omitted in the first instance. The authors of those early documents did
not write them with the anticipation that they would be subjected to the
analysis of an S.P.R. They were writing to son and brother at a time
when correspondence was a slow and tedious and rather uncommon
task, and we cannot assume that the letters described everything that
happened. In fact it is clear that they did not. But the point is that in
essentials the later accounts give quite satisfactory corroboration of the
earlier ones.
3. Second-hand contemporary accounts, as when Emily Wesley says
that Hetty heard something like a man trailing a loose nightgown
coming down the stairs behind her. This kind of evidence, though
Possibly true, must be regarded as much weaker than (1) and (2), being
one remove further away from actual experience.
The Wesley family at home Consisted of the parents and seven
daughters (two being young children, Patty and Keziah), with a
man-servant and maid. Mr. Podmore dwelt on the fact that of the
Wesley adults Hetty is the only one who has left no written record,
though the phenomena tended to happen more particularly in her
vicinity. But it is rather absurd to regard this as a suspicious fact. The
narratives were written mostly as letters to the brothers Samuel and
John, and there is nothing surprising in one member of the household
being a bad correspondent. I know one member of a family of two who
never writes to-day what can be put off till to-morrow. And it is likely

that Hetty Wesley, aged nineteen, if she wrote any letters at all, would
find more appreciative correspondents than her own brothers.
The witnesses being numerous and-as even Mr. Podmore
admits-sober-minded, and quick to write their accounts almost
contemporaneously with the experiences, we are not justified in any
hasty assumption of undiscovered trickery, and we naturally ask, "Do
these things occur at other times and places?" If they do, and trickery is
still undiscovered, the Wesley evidence Will seem stronger, the
antecedent improbability being lessened. And this is what we do find.
Without insisting on the Cock Lane (London) ghost of 1762,* or the
Stockwell disturbances of 1772, described in Mrs. Crowe's Night Side
of Nature, or the bell-ringing at Bealings, Suffolk, at the residence of
Major Moor, F.R.S., who described them and was convinced of
supernormal agency-without dwelling on these and many others that
could be mentioned, we may come down to more recent times and
more stringent methods, and still find the things happening, and
happening inexplicably.
* Cock Lane and Common Sense by Andrew Lang.
There was a case at Worksop in 1883. Tables moved, candles Were
Upset, knives, forks, and crockery were thrown about, damage to the
extent of £9 being done, footsteps were heard, bottles jumped four feet
into the air, basins rose slowly and sailed up and down with a
"wobbling" motion, and so forth. The Society for Psychical Research
heard of these doings, and Mr. Podmore visited the scene of action.
Apparently the phenomena had then ceased, but Mr. Podmore
interviewed eleven eye-witnesses, and it is amusing to note how even
the champion sceptic was nonplussed.* The witnesses were impressive
in their intelligence and apparent honesty, and there had not been much
time for exaggeration by tricks of memory, for Mr. Podmore'e visit was
on April 7, and the phenomena had begun early in March. Six of the
seven, principal eye-witnesses were interrogated separately, and the
minor discrepancies in their accounts were no greater than would be
expected in descriptions by different people of any ordinary event. At
first Mr. Podmore was inclined to suspect the owner of the house; but

this became untenable, when it was proved that he was not always
present when the phenomena occurred. Moreover, there seemed no
reason why he should smash his own crockery to the value of £9. Later,
Mr. Podmore finds his usual naughty little girl, Eliza Rose, daughter of
an imbecile mother, and thinks that she may have done it somehow,
though not one of the, eye-witnesses would allow that