lanvill, a hundred years earlier; and in
the case at Orleans, 230 years earlier. The Orleans case is
published, with full legal documents, from MS. 40, 7170, 4,
Bibliotheque du Roi, in Recueil de Dissertations Anciennes et
Nouvelles sur les Apparitions, ii. 90 (a Avignon, 1751).
'Scratching' was usually the first manifestation in this affair, and
the scratches were heard in the bedroom occupied by certain
children. The Cock Lane child 'was always affected with tremblings
and shiverings at the coming and going of the ghost'. It was stated
that the child had seen a shrouded figure without hands; two other
witnesses (one of them a publican) had seen a luminous apparition,
_with_ hands. This brilliant being lit up the figures on the dial
of a clock. 'The noises followed the child to other houses,' and
multitudes of people, clergy, nobles, and princes, also followed the
child. A certain Mr. Brown was an early investigator, and published
his report. Like Adrien de Montalembert, in 1526, like the
Franciscans about 1530, he asked the ghost to reply, affirmatively
or negatively, to questions, by one knock for 'yes,' two for 'no'.
This method was suggested, it seems, by a certain Mary Frazer, in
attendance on the child. Thus it was elicited that Fanny had been
poisoned by Mr. K. with 'red arsenic,' in a draught of purl to which
she was partial. She added that she wished to see Mr. K. hanged.

She would answer other questions, now right, and now wrong. She
called her father John, while his real name was Thomas. In fact she
was what Porphyry, the Neoplatonist, would have called a 'deceitful
demon'. Her chief effects were raps, scratchings, and a sound as of
whirring wings, which filled the room. This phenomenon occurs in a
'haunted house' mentioned in the Journal of the Psychical Society.
It is infinitely more curious to recall, that, when Mr. Im Thurn, in
British Guiana, submitted to the doctoring of a peayman (see p. 39),
he heard a sound, 'at first low and indistinct, and then gathering
in volume as if some big winged thing came from far toward the
house, passed through the roof, and then settled heavily on the
floor, and again, after an interval, as if the same winged thing
rose and passed away as it had come'. Mr. Im Thurn thinks the
impression was caused by the waving of boughs. These Cock Lane
occurrences were attributed to ventriloquism, but, after a surgeon
had held his hand on the child's stomach and chest