October 23, 2017 • 39 mins
After a traumatic event, strange things began happening around Esther Cox. In the 1870s, Amherst, Nova Scotia was abuzz with theories as to whether the phenomena were the work of a poltergeist, strange electrical charges, or a hoax.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Frying and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. It's still October.
It is still which means this is a perfect time
(00:21):
for what is a haunting episode? Or is it? But
I feel like that could be all of our haunting episodes.
And yes, for sure, this episode is all about an
alleged haunting that took place in Amherst, Nova, Scotia in
the eighteen seventies, so Canadian haunting. And as we've done
in haunting stories in the past, we're first going to
(00:41):
tell it more or less as it is relayed, from
a believer's point of view, and then we're going to
discuss it from a more skeptical side. So I witnessed
to this haunting Walter Hubble, and we're going to get
into his involvement in the story later because it's pretty important.
Wrote a book detailing a six week period in which
he lived in the house with Esther, who is the
(01:02):
young woman who allegedly all of this this haunting activity
took place around and the introduction to Hubble's book reads
quote the manifestations described in this story commenced one year ago.
No person has yet been able to ascertain their cause.
Scientific men from all parts of Canada and the United
States have investigated them in vain. Some people think that
(01:25):
electricity is the principal agent, others mesmerism, while others again
are sure they are produced by the Devil. Of the
three supposed causes, the latter is certainly the most plausible theory,
for some of the manifestations are remarkably devilish in their
appearance and effect. So that's what we're in for here, uh,
(01:45):
And just a quick heads up before we get into
this story. There is a very brief discussion of attempted
sexual assault in this episode. There's not a lot of
detail about it. It comes up two times and they're
both quite quick. But if that is something that is
potentially troubling for you, you might want to skip this one.
But we're going to get into esther Cox in the
Great Amherst Mystery. Esther Cox was born on March eighteen
(02:08):
sixty in Nova Scotia. Her parents were Archibald T and
Esther Cox, and the family had a farm. She was
really really tiny when she was born, According to Hubble's
recounting of Esther's childhood, she only weighed five pounds by
the time she was nine months old. Her grandmother had
to keep her on a pillow to wash and dress
(02:29):
her because she was just so delicate. Esther's mother also
died just a few weeks before Esther was born. I
immediately was incredulous when reading that account, and like a
nine month old that weighs five pounds seems very weird
to me. I'm sure we will get a flood of
people who say no, no, I have evidence, um, just
having known a number of very early premise, I think
(02:51):
most of them had passed five pounds by the time
they were nine months But that immediately kind of red
flag to me. Just f y I in case you
heard that went what. Esther was described by Hubble as
a young woman as short quote inclined to be stout, earnest,
and honest. She was also strong willed, and she would
sometimes sulk, but the writer assures the reader of her goodness.
(03:14):
By the time she was a young woman. Esther, her
sister Jane, and their brother William all lived with their
older sister Olive and her family. Daniel and Olive Teed
had two sons named William George. Willie was five when
Esther moved in with the family, and George had just
passed his first birthday. Daniel's brother John lived with the
(03:35):
family as well. Hubble described the Teed cottage as pleasant
with its interior adornments quote so tastefully arranged, so scrupulously clean,
and so comfortable that the visitor feels at home in
a moment, being confident that everything is looked after by
a thrifty housewife. On auguste eight, Esther, he was eighteen,
(03:57):
started her day as normal with breakfast with the family,
and then she did her chores around the house. That evening,
her boyfriend Bob McNeil came to call and asked her
to go for a ride with him. He had missed
a date to visit her the night before, and he
promised to explain what had happened during their ride. Allegedly,
as the pair were riding through a wooded area, Bob's
(04:20):
demeanor changed abruptly. He jumped down from the buggy, pulled
a gun and ordered Esther to do the same that
his exit the buggy, or he would kill her. She
did not do as he ordered, and instead told him
to stop acting like a crazy man and drive her home,
and this incensed Bob, and he was allegedly about to
shoot Esther point blank when they heard another buggy approaching,
(04:43):
and at that point Bob jumped back into the driver's
seat and raced back to the teed home. As Esther
ran into the house, Bob and the buggy raced away.
This incident, as it's related in the Walter Hubble account,
is like it's described above, although there's all so then
mentioned that Bob quote uttered several terrible oaths. Often though,
(05:05):
this incident is characterized as an attempted sexual assault, and
it's not clear due to the possibility that it was
sanitized and publication for the sake of propriety. But as
we're about to discuss, whatever took place on that ride
was very traumatic for Ester. This incident really did take
a severe toll on her and Esther's family, none of
(05:26):
whom who had ever really particularly approved of Bob McLean
presumed that the pair had gotten into an argument and
broken up. Esther did not reveal to them what had
happened in terms of him threatening her, and they didn't
pry into what they thought was a basic lover's quarrel.
But not long after McNeil's attack, a series of unusual
things began happening. For the next week, Esther was quite
(05:49):
understandably distraught. She cried a lot. She had trouble sleeping
on the night of September four, as their believed that
there was a mouse in her bed. She felt thing
rustling under the sheet. Her sister Jane, who slept in
the same room with her, assured her that even if
it was a mouse, it wouldn't hurt them, that they
should just try to get some rest. The following night,
(06:11):
what they believed was a mouse once again disrupted their sleep.
This time they heard what they thought were mouse noises
from within a box of patchwork. Esther resolved that they
were going to kill the mouse so that they would
not have the same problem of poor sleep night after
night after night. So the two young women removed the
box from its place under the bed and they put
it in the center of the floor, preparing to deal
(06:34):
with this mouse. While they were watching, the box rose
up into the air, roughly a foot off the floor,
and then it tipped onto its side. As it fell
back down, Jane put the box in the center of
the room, and the same thing happened again. They started screaming,
not surprisingly, and their screams drew their brother in law
(06:54):
Daniel into the room, but he laughed off the account
of the levitating box, insisting that they had just dreamed
it or they had shared some moment of delusion. The
next day, everyone went about their usual routine, but that
evening Esther felt ill and she went to bed early.
Jane went to bed later, but she was awakened in
(07:14):
the night by Esther, who had jumped out of bed
and exclaimed that she was dying. Jane little lamp, and
she saw that Esther's appearance was changed in really upsetting ways.
Esther's face was bright red, her hair was standing on end,
and she was shaking and gripping a chair so tightly
that her fingernails had sunk down into the woods. So
(07:35):
Jane called for help. After the adult members of the
household rushed into the room, Esther's color went pale, and
she became very, very weak. She was assisted to her bed,
where she sat for a moment before jumping up and
yelling that she thought she was going to burst. Jane
soothed her. She got into her bed, but Esther kept
(07:56):
saying that she was going to burst and that she
was swelling. Her family looked at her, and she was
swelling and turning red once again. She was also hot
to the touch. And then they all heard a loud
sound that Olive initially thought was lightning striking the house.
It scared all of so much that she actually went
to check on her two little boys. She was worried
(08:16):
that something might have happened to them, but they were
both fast asleep peacefully, and they appeared to have not
heard this sound that everyone in Esther's room had heard.
There was absolutely no storm outside. There were three more
loud noises, which all seemed to come from under the bed,
and then Esther's swelling vanished, her temperature returned to normal.
She fell deeply asleep until nine o'clock the next morning.
(08:40):
The family discussed the oddness of the previous night, but
because there was no discernible cause and Esther seemed to
be okay other than having a slightly reduced appetite, they
let them matter drop. We're going to talk about the
odd happenings around Esther intensifying after this, but before we do,
we're gonna take a little break and pause for a
word for one of our sponsors. Things at the Teed
(09:07):
house were normal for four nights, and then another swelling
incident happened. This time Esther was just getting into bed
when it started, and Jane advised her to just lie
still and be quiet and hope that the attack would
just pass. But as they waited for the swelling and
the fever to subside, all of the bedclothes flew off
the bed and landed in a corner. Jane, terrified, screamed
(09:30):
and fainted. When the rest of the family rested into
the room, having heard all the screaming, at first, they
were afraid that Jane was dead. Olive quickly gathered up
the bed coverings and put them back on our sisters,
but once again they flew into the corner and a ball.
The bed covers were replaced once more, and this time Olive, Daniel, William,
(09:51):
and John sat on the edges of the bed to
keep the covers in place. Esther's pillow shot out from
under her head and it hit John in the face,
which frightened him out of the room. As Esther's brother,
William brought a bucket of cold water to try to
soothe her aching and feverish head. There were, as in
the first swelling incident, several loud noises from under the bed,
(10:14):
after which Esther's swelling vanished and she once again slept peacefully.
But the next day, as the family conferred on what
had happened, it was decided that they absolutely needed a
doctor to check on Esther. Daniel visited the family doctor,
doctor Curit, and he described to him all that had happened,
and while the doctor thought it sounded like utter nonsense,
(10:36):
he did agree that he would go to the house
in the evening and that he would stay until one
am and observe. He initially examined Esther and said that
she appeared to have had a shock and she was
experiencing nervous excitement. Then he saw the pillow under her
head move on its own. As before, the pillow shot
(10:56):
out then from under Esther's head, and this time John
tried to grab it, but it felt as though some
other force was pulling it in opposition. Loud sounds once
again came, initially from under the bed, but then as
the doctor, who seemed to keep a pretty cool head
through all of this, started walking around the room. Those
noises seemed to follow him under the floorboards. Then words
(11:20):
appeared to be etched into the wall over the bed
that said Esther Cox, you are mine to kill. Next,
a piece of plaster came loose from the wall and
flew across the room. Then the banging sounds again, and
the noise continued for two full hours and then stopped abruptly.
The doctor left, promising that he would visit again in
(11:42):
the morning to check on Esther. When Dr Kat was
in the house the next day, Esther was up. She
was feeling fairly normal and going about her stores. She
went into the cellar, but soon she ran back upstairs,
convinced that someone was hiding there and had thrown as
of wood planking at her. The doctor investigated, but he
(12:04):
found nothing. He asked Esther to come down into the
cellar with him, and once she was there, the pair
were pelted with potatoes, uh and they both immediately ran
back upstairs. That evening, the doctor gave Esther several sedatives
at bedtime and the hopes that she would be able
to rest, but the pounding took place once again, this
time louder and faster than on previous occasions. Eventually it
(12:29):
shifted so that it sounded like it was coming from
the roof. And up to this point, the family had
kept all of these strange events from their neighbors, but
words soon began to spread this something very unusual was happening,
and this was due in part to the fact that
the pounding sounds started going on all throughout the day
and night, and they were so loud that people simply
(12:49):
heard them. A few weeks after the doctor's first visit,
Esther had a spasm or a seizure while he was there.
One night. She went quite still and then relayed what
had taken play between her and Bob McNeil. Yeah, there
are a few instances where she sort of goes into
this almost trance like state and has discussions that she
(13:11):
doesn't really recall. It comes up again later. And it
was at this same time that esther sister Jane put
forth the idea that whatever the entity was that was
making these noises could also she thought, here and understand
the family, and so they decided to test this idea.
So they started to ask questions of whatever it was,
(13:32):
things like can you hear us? Three knocks? In response,
and then they asked how many people are in this room,
and five knocks came in response, which was a correct answer.
The family also started to realize that what was happening
was centered around Esther. None of these things were happening
whenever she was out of the house. A well known
Baptist minister named Dr. Edwin Clay had heard stories of
(13:55):
the happenings at the Teed house and he came to investigate,
and after spending a brief time there and hearing the
knocking in response to questions and seeing the writing appearing
on the walls, he was convinced that it was not
a hoax. But he thought that the shock of being
held at gunpoint by her boyfriend had actually caused Esther
to manifest a sort of electrical charge. If you remember
(14:16):
the intro at the top of the episode said that
electricity might have been the cause. And Clay was really
the proponent of this, and he actually toured and gave
lectures on this theory, and in the process of those lectures,
he defended Esther against those who believed she was perpetrating
a hoax. As the story ballooned and more and more
respected members of the community attested to seeing strange things
(14:39):
like water boiling in a bucket on its own. The
Ted's home became overrun with curious onlookers. There was a
constant stream of visitors and a steady throng of people outside.
There was ongoing debate about whether this was really happening,
or whether it was an elaborate theatricality, or even if
Esther somehow exerting mind control over people. Yeah. One of
(15:04):
the theories was that she was planting these ideas in
people's heads, that they weren't actually seeing any of these things,
but they believed that they had. In December of eighteen
seventy eight, all of the poltergeist, which is what it
was being called at this point, activity stopped when Esther
was ill with dip syria. She was on bed rest
for two weeks, and when she had recovered, she went
(15:26):
to visit another sister of theirs in Sackville, New Brunswick
for another two weeks, and no events happened while she
was in Sackville. Well Esther was away, the family shuffled rooms.
They moved Esther in Jane's room to a different part
of the house to see if it would stop all
these weird problems. On our first night back, Esther told
Jane that a voice had told her it was someone
(15:47):
who had once been alive, but he had been dead
for some time, and that was going to set the
house on fire. Jane called everyone in and relayed this
odd conversation that Esther said she had had with a ghost, presumably,
And while they were discussing all of this, a lighted
match was said to fall from the ceiling onto the bed.
(16:08):
Jane quickly put this match out, but it was followed
by eight to ted more that the rest of the
family also put out, and then one of Esther's dresses
caught fire. The family was again able to extinguish it quickly.
Up to this point, the family had been pretty keen
on Dr Clay's theory that Esther was somehow hyper electrical,
but this fire event made them a question whether something
(16:32):
of a darker spirit nature was going on. According to
Hubble's account, Daniel said of the phenomenon, quote lightning oftensets
fire to houses and barns, but it has never yet
been known to roam about a man's house as this
strange power does. Several days later, a fire started in
the cellar when only Esther and Olive were home. The
(16:54):
two young boys were home, but they were outside playing.
The women tried to put it out the cellar fire
with the water bucket from the kitchen, but they were unsuccessful,
and so they ran out into the street and yelled
for help. People began rushing to them, But it was apparently,
and this all stood out as very odd to me,
a stranger who just showed up out of nowhere off
the street and put out the blaze and then left
(17:16):
the house without speaking to anyone. He does not appear
again in any of the Esther stories. We'll talk about
how the village reacted to the fires in a moment,
but we're going to take a quick break first for
a word from a sponsor. So the family attributed these
(17:37):
fires to a ghost. The fire marshals of Amherst, on
the other hand, thought it was Esther starting the fires.
But regardless, the whole thing made everyone in the village
nervous because, no matter what the cause, if the teed
house were to catch fire, it could spread, and so
everyone in the area had a keen awareness of the
danger that this situation posed. One evening in January eighteen
(18:00):
seventy nine, the ghost appeared in the family's parlor, and
it told Esther that if she didn't leave, would burn
the house down. Daniels, who was desperate, told Esther she
would have to go, and then it was the ghost's
fault and not his. But the problem was that no
one wanted to take in a young woman who either
set fires herself or had a ghost that did so
(18:22):
that was chasing her. Uh. There was one neighbor, John White,
who had been both fascinated by and sympathetic to Esther's plate,
and so Daniel went to White and he asked if
Esther could stay in the White home, and John and
his wife agreed. For the next two weeks, Esther actually
seemed a lot better. There had been no incidence while
she stayed with the Whites. The couple treated her as
(18:44):
one of their own children. But in the third week,
a scrub brush banished out of Esther's hand as she
was cleaning, and then it fell from the ceiling onto
her head. For the next few weeks, odd things continued
to happen, and Esther could once again communicate with this
entity call and response style, and it would respond with pounding.
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But all of the various things that were happening there
at the White House. Uh seemed fairly harmless, really, but
after six weeks fires began at the White household. John
White was afraid to leave Esther at the house when
he wasn't there, so we started to take her to
his dining saloon During the day. She worked in the
kitchen and behind the counter, and it seemed like the
(19:27):
Poulter geist followed her there. Esther's ghost opened up the
large stove in the saloon's kitchen and through an axe
handle that had been used to prop the stove closed.
It was allegedly quite heavy, and then the spirit snatched
a pocket knife from the hand of Mr White's sun
and drove the blade into Esther's back furniture and boxes.
(19:50):
One box weighing a reported fifty pounds began to move
about the saloon without any obvious source for the motion.
Many witnesses were said to have seen these events. At
the end of March eighteen seventy nine, Esther traveled once again,
this time to St John, New Brunswick. She stayed at
the house of Captain James Beck and his wife for
(20:10):
three weeks, and her particular problem was observed and examined
by a group of science minded men. Hubble's account reports
that when the men investigating Esther's poltergeist made contact with
it and conversed with it. By means of this knocking
and response that had been established by Ester's family, other
(20:30):
ghost entities also came forth, although the others were all
weaker than Esther's preliminary ghost, who claimed to be someone
named Bob Nichol. Rather than going directly back to Amherst,
Esther stayed for two months with the Van Amberg's, who
lived in the woods several miles from the village and
had invited her to stay as a guest. Those weeks
(20:51):
passed uneventfully, and Esther was allowed something of arrest from
the tumult of her recent life. When she got back
to Amherst, she moved back in with her sister and
brother in law, but she continued to work for Mr
White during the day, so someone always had an eye
on her. Almost immediately, unexplainable things began happening again. It
(21:11):
was actually during this time that Walter Hubbell entered Esther's life.
He was an actor by trade and wanted to travel
to Amherston determine whether all this news making poultergeist activity
was real or a hoax. He felt that his experience
in creating stage illusions gave him enough knowledge to expose
a hoax if there was one. He arrived on June
(21:33):
twenty one, eighteen seventy nine. We'll talk about it later,
but there's an interesting critical essay about all of this.
It's like, really, that's what an actor thinks he needs
to become like a paranormal investigator. Like I've been in
the theater. I've seen people make things look like they're
happening when they're not. I can super figure out if
this is a real deal or not. Um So, this
(21:55):
actor turned paranormal investigator was in the home for roughly
five minutes, according to his account, before he witnessed objects,
specifically his umbrella and a carving knife, moving through the
air with no explanation. After moving to a different room,
this activity continued, amplifying to the point that a large
chair was hurdled at him. He at that point decided
(22:17):
to leave the house for a brief walk before returning.
I'm out of here just for a bit. I'll be
back and go for a quick stroll. There. My head
of these objects being thrown so Hubble began to ask
questions of the spirits that seems the ones who revealed
themselves when Esther was in St. John had stuck with her,
They answered by a knocking, as had become a habit
(22:39):
for everybody involved. Yes, so when she came back from St. John,
just to be clear, all of those other ones that
suddenly made themselves apparent, in addition to Bob Nichol, came
along with her, um like they were suddenly part of
the story. At this point. Later, Hubble spied on Esther
by pretending to be asleep on the sofa in the
(22:59):
parlor her while she was doing some other things in
the parlor herself, but he was secretly watching her through
one eye, and he said that he witnessed a paperweight
fly through the air that Esther clearly had not thrown herself. Apparently,
the apparitions were not fond of Hubble, and they were
especially active and belligerent when he was near. He cataloged
dozens of events that seemed to be focused on getting
(23:21):
him to leave and or causing him harm. Hubble wrote
that he quote made the acquaintance of all the ghosts
in the home. There were six altogether, and he asked
them a series of questions. They answered and the affirmative
when he asked us to whether they were in hell
and whether they had seen the devil, apparently they were
(23:42):
very affirmative that they had seen the devil. Devil in particular,
Hubble describes having to pull pins at one point from
Esther's body, as the ghost would stick her with them
throughout the day, and they also obliged when he asked
for them to throw him a lighted match, although they
overdid it by throwing several a dozen. It just seems
like a very risky thing to a match from a
(24:07):
pipe and specifically throw it to me. After a week
in the house, Hubble and members of the household started
to hear a trumpet being played loudly all day long.
Hubble also claimed that the trumpet materialized from the spirit
realm and fell to the floor, and that then he
kept it. Yeah he planned to put it in a museum.
Walter Hubbell stayed at the Teed house for six weeks,
(24:30):
during which he watched the ghosts hurt Esther by cutting
her with a bone found in the yard and stab
at her face with a fork. He also witnessed Esther
falling into the trance like states that we mentioned before,
in which she spoke with the dead Uh he saw
firsthand the painful nighttime swelling incidents that had continued since
(24:51):
the first manifestation. As the summer war on the fire
problem became more intense and Esther once again was moved
from the house. He returned back to the woods to
the home of Mr. And Mrs Van Amberg, where things
were relatively quiet. Once Esther left the teed home, all
the company there came to an end as well. But
(25:13):
in November of eighteen seventy nine, Esther was found guilty
of arson for the burning of a barn at another
home that she was staying at, briefly that of the
Davison family, and she claimed that the ghost Bob had
set the fire, that the activity had started up once again,
but the jury was not convinced of this whole Poultergeist story,
but after public outcry, she served only one month of
(25:36):
her four months sentence. In nineteen nine, forty years after
the events surrounding Esther and her possible Poultergeist, Dr Walter F.
Prince published a critical study of the Great Amherst mystery
in the Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research,
and in this paper Prince makes pretty clear a case
(25:59):
that Hubble exaggerated the details of Esther's case. Houbble, he
pointed out, first published his notes on the Estercox case
in eighteen seventy nine, so the year after it began
and the same year that some of this was still
going on. He then published a total of ten editions
of these notes, augmenting them with each printing and making
quite a happy sum of money in the process. The
(26:22):
summer after the alleged Poulter guy started its disruption of
Esther's life, while the haunting was still happening, she went
on a tour to talk about the phenomena. Walter Hubbell
and John White went with her. But this tour was
really a bust. In the first two stops, the audiences
were really belligerent and heckled them. All of the other
(26:42):
dates were canceled, and the tour abruptly ended. So, as
you recall, John White was the person that her brother
in law Daniel went to desperate and said will you
please take her in? And this is where we mentioned
that that lecture tour was actually agreed upon as a
business venture by those two men before Hubble had even
set foot in Amherst h It begins to be very
(27:05):
obvious that from the beginning Walter Hubble saw esther Cox
as a money making opportunity. Prince wrote of Hubble quote,
we are disposed to put the most favorable construction upon
this tendency to dramatize, embellish and use paint. It's merely histrionic,
a projection of the habitudes of the stage. But when
the actor becomes investigator and recorder, this tendency will trip
(27:28):
him up, especially if it be stimulated by the mercenary lure.
One of the interesting distinctions made by Prince is the
difference between witnesses and spectators. Uh And while many people
are said to have seen the phenomena of the Teed
House and other places that esther was, in Hubble's first
edition of his notes, there's merely the assurance that all
(27:51):
of these claims have been corroborated, but no actual statements
from anyone else. In a later edition of the book,
Hubble added a statement that was signed by sixteen witnesses,
and Hubble himself wrote this so called testamentary document, but
Prince points out that the wording only says that the
signatories believe what Hubble has written, not that they necessarily
(28:13):
saw any of this themselves. As for olive Teed, she
apparently said some contradictory things during Hubble's account while she
is a signer of the testamentary document. She is said
to have told an investigator later that Hubble had not
given an accurate account, but then some years later wrote
that everything in the book was true. Also, she inadvertently
(28:36):
contradicted the Hubble account on a number of different occasions
while relaying her own version of events. The details and
a lot of instances just don't match up, including the
fact that she later told an investigator that she had
never actually seen anything fly through the air. Prince also
points out that a lot of the stories running in
newspapers about Esther's paranormal situation cited a common source, and
(29:01):
that source is Walter Hubble. Hubble in his writing mentioned
stories in the paper from before he became involved, but
there's no actual citations for any of those once he
became part of the story, though there's an abundance of
citable newspaper articles. Prince's writing also addresses the possible completely
mundane cause if many of the phenomena that we're reported
(29:23):
around Esther matches, he points out, can be easily hidden
on somebody's person. There's never any mention of Esther being
searched during any of these accounts. He also pokes holes
and Hubble's account based on its lack of detail, and
points out that often no specifics are offered as to
the position of Esther during various moments of this seeming
(29:44):
paranormal phenomena. Yeah, there's not really a breakdown of like
Esther couldn't have done it. Here's why. There just aren't
hard details about where she was and how things were
playing out. It's kind of like the thing I brought
up earlier about this mysterious stranger that shows up and
puts out a fire and then vanishes and no one
knows who it was, so we can't question him. Uh.
(30:05):
There's a lot of that that goes on in the
book and the next part. Keep in mind this was
written in nineteen nine, so really at a time when
psychiatry and psychology was still in its infancy compared to
what we know today. But Prince makes a case that
Esther was probably a young woman in a great deal
of shock after that incident with Bob McClean, which he
(30:26):
felt was almost certainly an instance of attempted sexual assault,
and in that state where her mental health may have
been compromised, she embarked, likely subconsciously, upon the strange behavior
that came to be known as the Amherst Poltergeist. After
Esther's brief incarceration for arson, the Poltergeist, Bob seems to
have disappeared, as there went on to Mary twice, first
(30:49):
to Adam Porter on March third, eighty two in spring Hill, Nova, Scotia,
and then again to Peter Shanahan on July in Amherst.
Esther died in Brockton, Massachusetts, on November eight, at the
age of fifty two. This is still one of those
cases that people UM like to point to and talk about,
(31:12):
you know how, how very uh realistic. It all seems
that clearly this is a real haunting um And of
course there are plenty of skeptics as well. I don't
think it's a secret that I tend to fall on
the skeptic side of things. Well, especially this is this
is not the first haunting story we've had on the show.
(31:34):
Where haunting was purportedly happening, and mostly the family where
the people who know about it, and then another person
arrives on the scene and later writes a book. Yeah,
that's definitely a pattern. Uh. And as the Prince Essay
and Examination points out, like that, there were business dealings
(31:56):
going on around this that clearly were intended to make
money off of the situation, which automatically throws any accounts
relaid by those people into some serious doubt. So, uh,
that is a scoop. Don't be scared of hauntings. Uh.
Probably it's just somebody wanting to make a dollar. Uh.
(32:19):
I have though a lot of mail about another history history.
I have really been enjoying that mail. We've gotten so
much male about the Devil's footprints and theories about what
could have caused them. If you recall, that was the
situation that happened in England where a bunch of strange
footprints appeared overnight in the winter, in the ice and snow,
(32:43):
and no one has ever been able to successfully figure
out what caused them. Uh. So I'm going to read
a few of them, because we've gotten a few. First
one is from Catherine and it says I've been listening
to your podcast for the past year, and I've always
loved them. Before I could never listen to the radio
without getting a headache, but your voices are so relaxing
you Not everyone agrees, but that's cool. Um. Your podcast
(33:03):
always refreshes my desire to learn, which is especially useful
while in college. Recently, I listened to your podcast on
the mystery of the Devil's sweat prints, and it got
me thinking, what about goats? Some species of goats are
able to jump high enough, surprisingly, and they have hooves.
Just an idea that I had that wasn't mentioned. Give
it a second thought. Goats makes some sense. I don't
(33:24):
know why goats never appeared in any of the stuff
that I red. Goats make so much sense that I
was immediately like, obviously, goats. Why why did no one
think of goats? I wonder if it's the size of
the prints, but some goats get quite large. But then
it brings up the question of like, why did no
one here goats jumping on their roofs. There's there's there's
(33:47):
no one satisfactory solution. M our listener, ari, I hope
I'm pronouncing that correctly. Also suggested goats their notorious climbers
and they've got hooves. Ari says, one or two could
have made many prints on the ground and on roofs.
It's possible more plausible than kangaroos. Ha ha Hey, I
still like the kangaroo theory. This one is really really
(34:07):
interesting to me. This one comes from our listener Hillary Um.
She says, I recently listened to the podcast episode on
the Devil's Footprints, and I found it really interesting. After listening,
I started wondering if you came across any twenty one
century theories that named micro organisms living under the snow
as the cause. Living organisms radiate heat, and when they
stay in one place for a long time, that heat
(34:29):
can melt the snow around the organism. For instance, the
trees in this picture which she has attached but I
cannot show you because it's audio. The trees in this
picture have melted the snow around their trunks. Something like
this could happen with a fungus living in the soil.
The fungus could melt the snow from beneath, causing it
to look like prints in the snow. Fungus can spread
(34:51):
two walls and rooftops and fit in small narrow places. Also,
some fungi can grow for miles underground, and this would
explain why the prints seemed to move through objects and
how they covered such a large area in such a
short amount of time. I'm not sure why this would
only happen once in that area, but it is possible
that the unusually cold winter triggered some unique behavior in
(35:11):
the fungus that hasn't been seen since I'm not on
my college. As those who take what I say with
a grain of salt, Hillary, that is a fascinating theory,
and I kind of love it. Um that one is
pretty great. I also went from listener Meg, who writes,
I listened to the episode on the Devil's foot Prints
just now, and I have a theory to put forth
salt moldings. Perhaps pranksters coordinated to create many casts of
(35:35):
salt formed into the hoof shape, which were laid out
the night of the snowfall, or even perhaps depending on
the weather conditions and groundcover, several nights before with heavy snowfall,
any telltale human prints in the snow may have been
unnoticeable by morning. With earlier placement of salt, there mightn't
have been human footprints at all, with different people executing
(35:55):
the plan in different locations. That might also explain the
variation in presentation, one straight print line in some places
to parallel print lines elsewhere. Mag That is also a
fascinating theory. I feel like our listeners could perpetrate some
of the best hoaxes mankind have ever seen. Our listener,
am Rights, I wanted to talk about your Devil's Footprint episode,
which I just listened to. I really enjoyed it and
(36:17):
found it to be rather comical at times. Mysteries that
no one has ever solved just get to me. However,
I have a theory, and it might be far fetched,
but what theory surrounding this folk tale isn't I think
it's possible that a group of people got together and
put hoof boot booties on a bunch of cats. I
would love this. I think this may explain how the
(36:39):
footprints were found in so many odd places, as well
as how they are described to follow each other in
a narrow line. This would mean that there were a
lot of cats involved, but I'm supposing that it could
be a relatively low number of people. You did point
out that cats are not always graceful and probably would
have left other marks in the snow, like lying down, etcetera.
So it's certainly not a perfect theory, but it's the
best I could come up with. I just like the
(37:02):
idea that someone took the time to make tiny hoof
booties for kiddies and then successfully managed to apply them
to kitties and then had the kitties successfully run around
in them and not do the thing where they just
shake their paws right, um, I mean I um. I
don't think my cats would enjoy hoof booties at all,
(37:22):
but they're very spoiled, so maybe less spoiled cats would
do it. I don't know. Uh, And then are our listener.
Gavin wrote one that made us both giggle with delight,
and he writes, my belief is that the Reverend kidnapped
the kangaroos, put sweaters on them because kangaroos don't like
the cold, strapped, cloven kangaroo shoes on them, and turned
(37:44):
them loose into the night. Though this is probably not
what happened, is funny thinking about someone trying to put
a sweater and shoes on a kangaroo. I agree. I
like these ideas of someone trying to address an animal,
even though probably it's cruel most animals do not enjoy it,
but it's funny in a cartoon way to think about.
So those are many, many theories. We've got a couple
(38:05):
of others. Uh and thank you for everyone who has
written in with your ideas. Like I said, I think
our listeners could perpetrate a pretty great hoax if we
wanted to, because they all have very creative minds. It
turns out if you would like to write to us,
you can do so at History Podcast at house to
works dot com. You can also find us across the
spectrum of social media as missed in History and at
our website missed in History dot com. If you would
(38:27):
like to visit missed in History dot com, you will
find an archive of every episode of this show that
has ever existed, and show notes for any of the
episodes Tracy and I have worked on in the last
several years that we've been on the show. UH. So
we encourage you come and visit us at missed in
History dot com. For more on this a thousands of
(38:50):
other topics, visit host works dot com.
Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Frying and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. It's still October.
It is still which means this is a perfect time
(00:21):
for what is a haunting episode? Or is it? But
I feel like that could be all of our haunting episodes.
And yes, for sure, this episode is all about an
alleged haunting that took place in Amherst, Nova, Scotia in
the eighteen seventies, so Canadian haunting. And as we've done
in haunting stories in the past, we're first going to
(00:41):
tell it more or less as it is relayed, from
a believer's point of view, and then we're going to
discuss it from a more skeptical side. So I witnessed
to this haunting Walter Hubble, and we're going to get
into his involvement in the story later because it's pretty important.
Wrote a book detailing a six week period in which
he lived in the house with Esther, who is the
(01:02):
young woman who allegedly all of this this haunting activity
took place around and the introduction to Hubble's book reads
quote the manifestations described in this story commenced one year ago.
No person has yet been able to ascertain their cause.
Scientific men from all parts of Canada and the United
States have investigated them in vain. Some people think that
(01:25):
electricity is the principal agent, others mesmerism, while others again
are sure they are produced by the Devil. Of the
three supposed causes, the latter is certainly the most plausible theory,
for some of the manifestations are remarkably devilish in their
appearance and effect. So that's what we're in for here, uh,
(01:45):
And just a quick heads up before we get into
this story. There is a very brief discussion of attempted
sexual assault in this episode. There's not a lot of
detail about it. It comes up two times and they're
both quite quick. But if that is something that is
potentially troubling for you, you might want to skip this one.
But we're going to get into esther Cox in the
Great Amherst Mystery. Esther Cox was born on March eighteen
(02:08):
sixty in Nova Scotia. Her parents were Archibald T and
Esther Cox, and the family had a farm. She was
really really tiny when she was born, According to Hubble's
recounting of Esther's childhood, she only weighed five pounds by
the time she was nine months old. Her grandmother had
to keep her on a pillow to wash and dress
(02:29):
her because she was just so delicate. Esther's mother also
died just a few weeks before Esther was born. I
immediately was incredulous when reading that account, and like a
nine month old that weighs five pounds seems very weird
to me. I'm sure we will get a flood of
people who say no, no, I have evidence, um, just
having known a number of very early premise, I think
(02:51):
most of them had passed five pounds by the time
they were nine months But that immediately kind of red
flag to me. Just f y I in case you
heard that went what. Esther was described by Hubble as
a young woman as short quote inclined to be stout, earnest,
and honest. She was also strong willed, and she would
sometimes sulk, but the writer assures the reader of her goodness.
(03:14):
By the time she was a young woman. Esther, her
sister Jane, and their brother William all lived with their
older sister Olive and her family. Daniel and Olive Teed
had two sons named William George. Willie was five when
Esther moved in with the family, and George had just
passed his first birthday. Daniel's brother John lived with the
(03:35):
family as well. Hubble described the Teed cottage as pleasant
with its interior adornments quote so tastefully arranged, so scrupulously clean,
and so comfortable that the visitor feels at home in
a moment, being confident that everything is looked after by
a thrifty housewife. On auguste eight, Esther, he was eighteen,
(03:57):
started her day as normal with breakfast with the family,
and then she did her chores around the house. That evening,
her boyfriend Bob McNeil came to call and asked her
to go for a ride with him. He had missed
a date to visit her the night before, and he
promised to explain what had happened during their ride. Allegedly,
as the pair were riding through a wooded area, Bob's
(04:20):
demeanor changed abruptly. He jumped down from the buggy, pulled
a gun and ordered Esther to do the same that
his exit the buggy, or he would kill her. She
did not do as he ordered, and instead told him
to stop acting like a crazy man and drive her home,
and this incensed Bob, and he was allegedly about to
shoot Esther point blank when they heard another buggy approaching,
(04:43):
and at that point Bob jumped back into the driver's
seat and raced back to the teed home. As Esther
ran into the house, Bob and the buggy raced away.
This incident, as it's related in the Walter Hubble account,
is like it's described above, although there's all so then
mentioned that Bob quote uttered several terrible oaths. Often though,
(05:05):
this incident is characterized as an attempted sexual assault, and
it's not clear due to the possibility that it was
sanitized and publication for the sake of propriety. But as
we're about to discuss, whatever took place on that ride
was very traumatic for Ester. This incident really did take
a severe toll on her and Esther's family, none of
(05:26):
whom who had ever really particularly approved of Bob McLean
presumed that the pair had gotten into an argument and
broken up. Esther did not reveal to them what had
happened in terms of him threatening her, and they didn't
pry into what they thought was a basic lover's quarrel.
But not long after McNeil's attack, a series of unusual
things began happening. For the next week, Esther was quite
(05:49):
understandably distraught. She cried a lot. She had trouble sleeping
on the night of September four, as their believed that
there was a mouse in her bed. She felt thing
rustling under the sheet. Her sister Jane, who slept in
the same room with her, assured her that even if
it was a mouse, it wouldn't hurt them, that they
should just try to get some rest. The following night,
(06:11):
what they believed was a mouse once again disrupted their sleep.
This time they heard what they thought were mouse noises
from within a box of patchwork. Esther resolved that they
were going to kill the mouse so that they would
not have the same problem of poor sleep night after
night after night. So the two young women removed the
box from its place under the bed and they put
it in the center of the floor, preparing to deal
(06:34):
with this mouse. While they were watching, the box rose
up into the air, roughly a foot off the floor,
and then it tipped onto its side. As it fell
back down, Jane put the box in the center of
the room, and the same thing happened again. They started screaming,
not surprisingly, and their screams drew their brother in law
(06:54):
Daniel into the room, but he laughed off the account
of the levitating box, insisting that they had just dreamed
it or they had shared some moment of delusion. The
next day, everyone went about their usual routine, but that
evening Esther felt ill and she went to bed early.
Jane went to bed later, but she was awakened in
(07:14):
the night by Esther, who had jumped out of bed
and exclaimed that she was dying. Jane little lamp, and
she saw that Esther's appearance was changed in really upsetting ways.
Esther's face was bright red, her hair was standing on end,
and she was shaking and gripping a chair so tightly
that her fingernails had sunk down into the woods. So
(07:35):
Jane called for help. After the adult members of the
household rushed into the room, Esther's color went pale, and
she became very, very weak. She was assisted to her bed,
where she sat for a moment before jumping up and
yelling that she thought she was going to burst. Jane
soothed her. She got into her bed, but Esther kept
(07:56):
saying that she was going to burst and that she
was swelling. Her family looked at her, and she was
swelling and turning red once again. She was also hot
to the touch. And then they all heard a loud
sound that Olive initially thought was lightning striking the house.
It scared all of so much that she actually went
to check on her two little boys. She was worried
(08:16):
that something might have happened to them, but they were
both fast asleep peacefully, and they appeared to have not
heard this sound that everyone in Esther's room had heard.
There was absolutely no storm outside. There were three more
loud noises, which all seemed to come from under the bed,
and then Esther's swelling vanished, her temperature returned to normal.
She fell deeply asleep until nine o'clock the next morning.
(08:40):
The family discussed the oddness of the previous night, but
because there was no discernible cause and Esther seemed to
be okay other than having a slightly reduced appetite, they
let them matter drop. We're going to talk about the
odd happenings around Esther intensifying after this, but before we do,
we're gonna take a little break and pause for a
word for one of our sponsors. Things at the Teed
(09:07):
house were normal for four nights, and then another swelling
incident happened. This time Esther was just getting into bed
when it started, and Jane advised her to just lie
still and be quiet and hope that the attack would
just pass. But as they waited for the swelling and
the fever to subside, all of the bedclothes flew off
the bed and landed in a corner. Jane, terrified, screamed
(09:30):
and fainted. When the rest of the family rested into
the room, having heard all the screaming, at first, they
were afraid that Jane was dead. Olive quickly gathered up
the bed coverings and put them back on our sisters,
but once again they flew into the corner and a ball.
The bed covers were replaced once more, and this time Olive, Daniel, William,
(09:51):
and John sat on the edges of the bed to
keep the covers in place. Esther's pillow shot out from
under her head and it hit John in the face,
which frightened him out of the room. As Esther's brother,
William brought a bucket of cold water to try to
soothe her aching and feverish head. There were, as in
the first swelling incident, several loud noises from under the bed,
(10:14):
after which Esther's swelling vanished and she once again slept peacefully.
But the next day, as the family conferred on what
had happened, it was decided that they absolutely needed a
doctor to check on Esther. Daniel visited the family doctor,
doctor Curit, and he described to him all that had happened,
and while the doctor thought it sounded like utter nonsense,
(10:36):
he did agree that he would go to the house
in the evening and that he would stay until one
am and observe. He initially examined Esther and said that
she appeared to have had a shock and she was
experiencing nervous excitement. Then he saw the pillow under her
head move on its own. As before, the pillow shot
(10:56):
out then from under Esther's head, and this time John
tried to grab it, but it felt as though some
other force was pulling it in opposition. Loud sounds once
again came, initially from under the bed, but then as
the doctor, who seemed to keep a pretty cool head
through all of this, started walking around the room. Those
noises seemed to follow him under the floorboards. Then words
(11:20):
appeared to be etched into the wall over the bed
that said Esther Cox, you are mine to kill. Next,
a piece of plaster came loose from the wall and
flew across the room. Then the banging sounds again, and
the noise continued for two full hours and then stopped abruptly.
The doctor left, promising that he would visit again in
(11:42):
the morning to check on Esther. When Dr Kat was
in the house the next day, Esther was up. She
was feeling fairly normal and going about her stores. She
went into the cellar, but soon she ran back upstairs,
convinced that someone was hiding there and had thrown as
of wood planking at her. The doctor investigated, but he
(12:04):
found nothing. He asked Esther to come down into the
cellar with him, and once she was there, the pair
were pelted with potatoes, uh and they both immediately ran
back upstairs. That evening, the doctor gave Esther several sedatives
at bedtime and the hopes that she would be able
to rest, but the pounding took place once again, this
time louder and faster than on previous occasions. Eventually it
(12:29):
shifted so that it sounded like it was coming from
the roof. And up to this point, the family had
kept all of these strange events from their neighbors, but
words soon began to spread this something very unusual was happening,
and this was due in part to the fact that
the pounding sounds started going on all throughout the day
and night, and they were so loud that people simply
(12:49):
heard them. A few weeks after the doctor's first visit,
Esther had a spasm or a seizure while he was there.
One night. She went quite still and then relayed what
had taken play between her and Bob McNeil. Yeah, there
are a few instances where she sort of goes into
this almost trance like state and has discussions that she
(13:11):
doesn't really recall. It comes up again later. And it
was at this same time that esther sister Jane put
forth the idea that whatever the entity was that was
making these noises could also she thought, here and understand
the family, and so they decided to test this idea.
So they started to ask questions of whatever it was,
(13:32):
things like can you hear us? Three knocks? In response,
and then they asked how many people are in this room,
and five knocks came in response, which was a correct answer.
The family also started to realize that what was happening
was centered around Esther. None of these things were happening
whenever she was out of the house. A well known
Baptist minister named Dr. Edwin Clay had heard stories of
(13:55):
the happenings at the Teed house and he came to investigate,
and after spending a brief time there and hearing the
knocking in response to questions and seeing the writing appearing
on the walls, he was convinced that it was not
a hoax. But he thought that the shock of being
held at gunpoint by her boyfriend had actually caused Esther
to manifest a sort of electrical charge. If you remember
(14:16):
the intro at the top of the episode said that
electricity might have been the cause. And Clay was really
the proponent of this, and he actually toured and gave
lectures on this theory, and in the process of those lectures,
he defended Esther against those who believed she was perpetrating
a hoax. As the story ballooned and more and more
respected members of the community attested to seeing strange things
(14:39):
like water boiling in a bucket on its own. The
Ted's home became overrun with curious onlookers. There was a
constant stream of visitors and a steady throng of people outside.
There was ongoing debate about whether this was really happening,
or whether it was an elaborate theatricality, or even if
Esther somehow exerting mind control over people. Yeah. One of
(15:04):
the theories was that she was planting these ideas in
people's heads, that they weren't actually seeing any of these things,
but they believed that they had. In December of eighteen
seventy eight, all of the poltergeist, which is what it
was being called at this point, activity stopped when Esther
was ill with dip syria. She was on bed rest
for two weeks, and when she had recovered, she went
(15:26):
to visit another sister of theirs in Sackville, New Brunswick
for another two weeks, and no events happened while she
was in Sackville. Well Esther was away, the family shuffled rooms.
They moved Esther in Jane's room to a different part
of the house to see if it would stop all
these weird problems. On our first night back, Esther told
Jane that a voice had told her it was someone
(15:47):
who had once been alive, but he had been dead
for some time, and that was going to set the
house on fire. Jane called everyone in and relayed this
odd conversation that Esther said she had had with a ghost, presumably,
And while they were discussing all of this, a lighted
match was said to fall from the ceiling onto the bed.
(16:08):
Jane quickly put this match out, but it was followed
by eight to ted more that the rest of the
family also put out, and then one of Esther's dresses
caught fire. The family was again able to extinguish it quickly.
Up to this point, the family had been pretty keen
on Dr Clay's theory that Esther was somehow hyper electrical,
but this fire event made them a question whether something
(16:32):
of a darker spirit nature was going on. According to
Hubble's account, Daniel said of the phenomenon, quote lightning oftensets
fire to houses and barns, but it has never yet
been known to roam about a man's house as this
strange power does. Several days later, a fire started in
the cellar when only Esther and Olive were home. The
(16:54):
two young boys were home, but they were outside playing.
The women tried to put it out the cellar fire
with the water bucket from the kitchen, but they were unsuccessful,
and so they ran out into the street and yelled
for help. People began rushing to them, But it was apparently,
and this all stood out as very odd to me,
a stranger who just showed up out of nowhere off
the street and put out the blaze and then left
(17:16):
the house without speaking to anyone. He does not appear
again in any of the Esther stories. We'll talk about
how the village reacted to the fires in a moment,
but we're going to take a quick break first for
a word from a sponsor. So the family attributed these
(17:37):
fires to a ghost. The fire marshals of Amherst, on
the other hand, thought it was Esther starting the fires.
But regardless, the whole thing made everyone in the village
nervous because, no matter what the cause, if the teed
house were to catch fire, it could spread, and so
everyone in the area had a keen awareness of the
danger that this situation posed. One evening in January eighteen
(18:00):
seventy nine, the ghost appeared in the family's parlor, and
it told Esther that if she didn't leave, would burn
the house down. Daniels, who was desperate, told Esther she
would have to go, and then it was the ghost's
fault and not his. But the problem was that no
one wanted to take in a young woman who either
set fires herself or had a ghost that did so
(18:22):
that was chasing her. Uh. There was one neighbor, John White,
who had been both fascinated by and sympathetic to Esther's plate,
and so Daniel went to White and he asked if
Esther could stay in the White home, and John and
his wife agreed. For the next two weeks, Esther actually
seemed a lot better. There had been no incidence while
she stayed with the Whites. The couple treated her as
(18:44):
one of their own children. But in the third week,
a scrub brush banished out of Esther's hand as she
was cleaning, and then it fell from the ceiling onto
her head. For the next few weeks, odd things continued
to happen, and Esther could once again communicate with this
entity call and response style, and it would respond with pounding.
(19:05):
But all of the various things that were happening there
at the White House. Uh seemed fairly harmless, really, but
after six weeks fires began at the White household. John
White was afraid to leave Esther at the house when
he wasn't there, so we started to take her to
his dining saloon During the day. She worked in the
kitchen and behind the counter, and it seemed like the
(19:27):
Poulter geist followed her there. Esther's ghost opened up the
large stove in the saloon's kitchen and through an axe
handle that had been used to prop the stove closed.
It was allegedly quite heavy, and then the spirit snatched
a pocket knife from the hand of Mr White's sun
and drove the blade into Esther's back furniture and boxes.
(19:50):
One box weighing a reported fifty pounds began to move
about the saloon without any obvious source for the motion.
Many witnesses were said to have seen these events. At
the end of March eighteen seventy nine, Esther traveled once again,
this time to St John, New Brunswick. She stayed at
the house of Captain James Beck and his wife for
(20:10):
three weeks, and her particular problem was observed and examined
by a group of science minded men. Hubble's account reports
that when the men investigating Esther's poltergeist made contact with
it and conversed with it. By means of this knocking
and response that had been established by Ester's family, other
(20:30):
ghost entities also came forth, although the others were all
weaker than Esther's preliminary ghost, who claimed to be someone
named Bob Nichol. Rather than going directly back to Amherst,
Esther stayed for two months with the Van Amberg's, who
lived in the woods several miles from the village and
had invited her to stay as a guest. Those weeks
(20:51):
passed uneventfully, and Esther was allowed something of arrest from
the tumult of her recent life. When she got back
to Amherst, she moved back in with her sister and
brother in law, but she continued to work for Mr
White during the day, so someone always had an eye
on her. Almost immediately, unexplainable things began happening again. It
(21:11):
was actually during this time that Walter Hubbell entered Esther's life.
He was an actor by trade and wanted to travel
to Amherston determine whether all this news making poultergeist activity
was real or a hoax. He felt that his experience
in creating stage illusions gave him enough knowledge to expose
a hoax if there was one. He arrived on June
(21:33):
twenty one, eighteen seventy nine. We'll talk about it later,
but there's an interesting critical essay about all of this.
It's like, really, that's what an actor thinks he needs
to become like a paranormal investigator. Like I've been in
the theater. I've seen people make things look like they're
happening when they're not. I can super figure out if
this is a real deal or not. Um So, this
(21:55):
actor turned paranormal investigator was in the home for roughly
five minutes, according to his account, before he witnessed objects,
specifically his umbrella and a carving knife, moving through the
air with no explanation. After moving to a different room,
this activity continued, amplifying to the point that a large
chair was hurdled at him. He at that point decided
(22:17):
to leave the house for a brief walk before returning.
I'm out of here just for a bit. I'll be
back and go for a quick stroll. There. My head
of these objects being thrown so Hubble began to ask
questions of the spirits that seems the ones who revealed
themselves when Esther was in St. John had stuck with her,
They answered by a knocking, as had become a habit
(22:39):
for everybody involved. Yes, so when she came back from St. John,
just to be clear, all of those other ones that
suddenly made themselves apparent, in addition to Bob Nichol, came
along with her, um like they were suddenly part of
the story. At this point. Later, Hubble spied on Esther
by pretending to be asleep on the sofa in the
(22:59):
parlor her while she was doing some other things in
the parlor herself, but he was secretly watching her through
one eye, and he said that he witnessed a paperweight
fly through the air that Esther clearly had not thrown herself. Apparently,
the apparitions were not fond of Hubble, and they were
especially active and belligerent when he was near. He cataloged
dozens of events that seemed to be focused on getting
(23:21):
him to leave and or causing him harm. Hubble wrote
that he quote made the acquaintance of all the ghosts
in the home. There were six altogether, and he asked
them a series of questions. They answered and the affirmative
when he asked us to whether they were in hell
and whether they had seen the devil, apparently they were
(23:42):
very affirmative that they had seen the devil. Devil in particular,
Hubble describes having to pull pins at one point from
Esther's body, as the ghost would stick her with them
throughout the day, and they also obliged when he asked
for them to throw him a lighted match, although they
overdid it by throwing several a dozen. It just seems
like a very risky thing to a match from a
(24:07):
pipe and specifically throw it to me. After a week
in the house, Hubble and members of the household started
to hear a trumpet being played loudly all day long.
Hubble also claimed that the trumpet materialized from the spirit
realm and fell to the floor, and that then he
kept it. Yeah he planned to put it in a museum.
Walter Hubbell stayed at the Teed house for six weeks,
(24:30):
during which he watched the ghosts hurt Esther by cutting
her with a bone found in the yard and stab
at her face with a fork. He also witnessed Esther
falling into the trance like states that we mentioned before,
in which she spoke with the dead Uh he saw
firsthand the painful nighttime swelling incidents that had continued since
(24:51):
the first manifestation. As the summer war on the fire
problem became more intense and Esther once again was moved
from the house. He returned back to the woods to
the home of Mr. And Mrs Van Amberg, where things
were relatively quiet. Once Esther left the teed home, all
the company there came to an end as well. But
(25:13):
in November of eighteen seventy nine, Esther was found guilty
of arson for the burning of a barn at another
home that she was staying at, briefly that of the
Davison family, and she claimed that the ghost Bob had
set the fire, that the activity had started up once again,
but the jury was not convinced of this whole Poultergeist story,
but after public outcry, she served only one month of
(25:36):
her four months sentence. In nineteen nine, forty years after
the events surrounding Esther and her possible Poultergeist, Dr Walter F.
Prince published a critical study of the Great Amherst mystery
in the Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research,
and in this paper Prince makes pretty clear a case
(25:59):
that Hubble exaggerated the details of Esther's case. Houbble, he
pointed out, first published his notes on the Estercox case
in eighteen seventy nine, so the year after it began
and the same year that some of this was still
going on. He then published a total of ten editions
of these notes, augmenting them with each printing and making
quite a happy sum of money in the process. The
(26:22):
summer after the alleged Poulter guy started its disruption of
Esther's life, while the haunting was still happening, she went
on a tour to talk about the phenomena. Walter Hubbell
and John White went with her. But this tour was
really a bust. In the first two stops, the audiences
were really belligerent and heckled them. All of the other
(26:42):
dates were canceled, and the tour abruptly ended. So, as
you recall, John White was the person that her brother
in law Daniel went to desperate and said will you
please take her in? And this is where we mentioned
that that lecture tour was actually agreed upon as a
business venture by those two men before Hubble had even
set foot in Amherst h It begins to be very
(27:05):
obvious that from the beginning Walter Hubble saw esther Cox
as a money making opportunity. Prince wrote of Hubble quote,
we are disposed to put the most favorable construction upon
this tendency to dramatize, embellish and use paint. It's merely histrionic,
a projection of the habitudes of the stage. But when
the actor becomes investigator and recorder, this tendency will trip
(27:28):
him up, especially if it be stimulated by the mercenary lure.
One of the interesting distinctions made by Prince is the
difference between witnesses and spectators. Uh And while many people
are said to have seen the phenomena of the Teed
House and other places that esther was, in Hubble's first
edition of his notes, there's merely the assurance that all
(27:51):
of these claims have been corroborated, but no actual statements
from anyone else. In a later edition of the book,
Hubble added a statement that was signed by sixteen witnesses,
and Hubble himself wrote this so called testamentary document, but
Prince points out that the wording only says that the
signatories believe what Hubble has written, not that they necessarily
(28:13):
saw any of this themselves. As for olive Teed, she
apparently said some contradictory things during Hubble's account while she
is a signer of the testamentary document. She is said
to have told an investigator later that Hubble had not
given an accurate account, but then some years later wrote
that everything in the book was true. Also, she inadvertently
(28:36):
contradicted the Hubble account on a number of different occasions
while relaying her own version of events. The details and
a lot of instances just don't match up, including the
fact that she later told an investigator that she had
never actually seen anything fly through the air. Prince also
points out that a lot of the stories running in
newspapers about Esther's paranormal situation cited a common source, and
(29:01):
that source is Walter Hubble. Hubble in his writing mentioned
stories in the paper from before he became involved, but
there's no actual citations for any of those once he
became part of the story, though there's an abundance of
citable newspaper articles. Prince's writing also addresses the possible completely
mundane cause if many of the phenomena that we're reported
(29:23):
around Esther matches, he points out, can be easily hidden
on somebody's person. There's never any mention of Esther being
searched during any of these accounts. He also pokes holes
and Hubble's account based on its lack of detail, and
points out that often no specifics are offered as to
the position of Esther during various moments of this seeming
(29:44):
paranormal phenomena. Yeah, there's not really a breakdown of like
Esther couldn't have done it. Here's why. There just aren't
hard details about where she was and how things were
playing out. It's kind of like the thing I brought
up earlier about this mysterious stranger that shows up and
puts out a fire and then vanishes and no one
knows who it was, so we can't question him. Uh.
(30:05):
There's a lot of that that goes on in the
book and the next part. Keep in mind this was
written in nineteen nine, so really at a time when
psychiatry and psychology was still in its infancy compared to
what we know today. But Prince makes a case that
Esther was probably a young woman in a great deal
of shock after that incident with Bob McClean, which he
(30:26):
felt was almost certainly an instance of attempted sexual assault,
and in that state where her mental health may have
been compromised, she embarked, likely subconsciously, upon the strange behavior
that came to be known as the Amherst Poltergeist. After
Esther's brief incarceration for arson, the Poltergeist, Bob seems to
have disappeared, as there went on to Mary twice, first
(30:49):
to Adam Porter on March third, eighty two in spring Hill, Nova, Scotia,
and then again to Peter Shanahan on July in Amherst.
Esther died in Brockton, Massachusetts, on November eight, at the
age of fifty two. This is still one of those
cases that people UM like to point to and talk about,
(31:12):
you know how, how very uh realistic. It all seems
that clearly this is a real haunting um And of
course there are plenty of skeptics as well. I don't
think it's a secret that I tend to fall on
the skeptic side of things. Well, especially this is this
is not the first haunting story we've had on the show.
(31:34):
Where haunting was purportedly happening, and mostly the family where
the people who know about it, and then another person
arrives on the scene and later writes a book. Yeah,
that's definitely a pattern. Uh. And as the Prince Essay
and Examination points out, like that, there were business dealings
(31:56):
going on around this that clearly were intended to make
money off of the situation, which automatically throws any accounts
relaid by those people into some serious doubt. So, uh,
that is a scoop. Don't be scared of hauntings. Uh.
Probably it's just somebody wanting to make a dollar. Uh.
(32:19):
I have though a lot of mail about another history history.
I have really been enjoying that mail. We've gotten so
much male about the Devil's footprints and theories about what
could have caused them. If you recall, that was the
situation that happened in England where a bunch of strange
footprints appeared overnight in the winter, in the ice and snow,
(32:43):
and no one has ever been able to successfully figure
out what caused them. Uh. So I'm going to read
a few of them, because we've gotten a few. First
one is from Catherine and it says I've been listening
to your podcast for the past year, and I've always
loved them. Before I could never listen to the radio
without getting a headache, but your voices are so relaxing
you Not everyone agrees, but that's cool. Um. Your podcast
(33:03):
always refreshes my desire to learn, which is especially useful
while in college. Recently, I listened to your podcast on
the mystery of the Devil's sweat prints, and it got
me thinking, what about goats? Some species of goats are
able to jump high enough, surprisingly, and they have hooves.
Just an idea that I had that wasn't mentioned. Give
it a second thought. Goats makes some sense. I don't
(33:24):
know why goats never appeared in any of the stuff
that I red. Goats make so much sense that I
was immediately like, obviously, goats. Why why did no one
think of goats? I wonder if it's the size of
the prints, but some goats get quite large. But then
it brings up the question of like, why did no
one here goats jumping on their roofs. There's there's there's
(33:47):
no one satisfactory solution. M our listener, ari, I hope
I'm pronouncing that correctly. Also suggested goats their notorious climbers
and they've got hooves. Ari says, one or two could
have made many prints on the ground and on roofs.
It's possible more plausible than kangaroos. Ha ha Hey, I
still like the kangaroo theory. This one is really really
(34:07):
interesting to me. This one comes from our listener Hillary Um.
She says, I recently listened to the podcast episode on
the Devil's Footprints, and I found it really interesting. After listening,
I started wondering if you came across any twenty one
century theories that named micro organisms living under the snow
as the cause. Living organisms radiate heat, and when they
stay in one place for a long time, that heat
(34:29):
can melt the snow around the organism. For instance, the
trees in this picture which she has attached but I
cannot show you because it's audio. The trees in this
picture have melted the snow around their trunks. Something like
this could happen with a fungus living in the soil.
The fungus could melt the snow from beneath, causing it
to look like prints in the snow. Fungus can spread
(34:51):
two walls and rooftops and fit in small narrow places. Also,
some fungi can grow for miles underground, and this would
explain why the prints seemed to move through objects and
how they covered such a large area in such a
short amount of time. I'm not sure why this would
only happen once in that area, but it is possible
that the unusually cold winter triggered some unique behavior in
(35:11):
the fungus that hasn't been seen since I'm not on
my college. As those who take what I say with
a grain of salt, Hillary, that is a fascinating theory,
and I kind of love it. Um that one is
pretty great. I also went from listener Meg, who writes,
I listened to the episode on the Devil's foot Prints
just now, and I have a theory to put forth
salt moldings. Perhaps pranksters coordinated to create many casts of
(35:35):
salt formed into the hoof shape, which were laid out
the night of the snowfall, or even perhaps depending on
the weather conditions and groundcover, several nights before with heavy snowfall,
any telltale human prints in the snow may have been
unnoticeable by morning. With earlier placement of salt, there mightn't
have been human footprints at all, with different people executing
(35:55):
the plan in different locations. That might also explain the
variation in presentation, one straight print line in some places
to parallel print lines elsewhere. Mag That is also a
fascinating theory. I feel like our listeners could perpetrate some
of the best hoaxes mankind have ever seen. Our listener,
am Rights, I wanted to talk about your Devil's Footprint episode,
which I just listened to. I really enjoyed it and
(36:17):
found it to be rather comical at times. Mysteries that
no one has ever solved just get to me. However,
I have a theory, and it might be far fetched,
but what theory surrounding this folk tale isn't I think
it's possible that a group of people got together and
put hoof boot booties on a bunch of cats. I
would love this. I think this may explain how the
(36:39):
footprints were found in so many odd places, as well
as how they are described to follow each other in
a narrow line. This would mean that there were a
lot of cats involved, but I'm supposing that it could
be a relatively low number of people. You did point
out that cats are not always graceful and probably would
have left other marks in the snow, like lying down, etcetera.
So it's certainly not a perfect theory, but it's the
best I could come up with. I just like the
(37:02):
idea that someone took the time to make tiny hoof
booties for kiddies and then successfully managed to apply them
to kitties and then had the kitties successfully run around
in them and not do the thing where they just
shake their paws right, um, I mean I um. I
don't think my cats would enjoy hoof booties at all,
(37:22):
but they're very spoiled, so maybe less spoiled cats would
do it. I don't know. Uh, And then are our listener.
Gavin wrote one that made us both giggle with delight,
and he writes, my belief is that the Reverend kidnapped
the kangaroos, put sweaters on them because kangaroos don't like
the cold, strapped, cloven kangaroo shoes on them, and turned
(37:44):
them loose into the night. Though this is probably not
what happened, is funny thinking about someone trying to put
a sweater and shoes on a kangaroo. I agree. I
like these ideas of someone trying to address an animal,
even though probably it's cruel most animals do not enjoy it,
but it's funny in a cartoon way to think about.
So those are many, many theories. We've got a couple
(38:05):
of others. Uh and thank you for everyone who has
written in with your ideas. Like I said, I think
our listeners could perpetrate a pretty great hoax if we
wanted to, because they all have very creative minds. It
turns out if you would like to write to us,
you can do so at History Podcast at house to
works dot com. You can also find us across the
spectrum of social media as missed in History and at
our website missed in History dot com. If you would
(38:27):
like to visit missed in History dot com, you will
find an archive of every episode of this show that
has ever existed, and show notes for any of the
episodes Tracy and I have worked on in the last
several years that we've been on the show. UH. So
we encourage you come and visit us at missed in
History dot com. For more on this a thousands of
(38:50):
other topics, visit host works dot com.
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Tracy Wilson
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