About sixty-five years ago there was a house situated in the middle
of Battersea Fields which remained for a long time uninhabited on
account of the strange and weird stories related and circulated about
it. Ignorant and uneducated people said it was "haunted." Nobody would
live in it. At midnight "lights" it was said were to be seen "flitting
about the rooms," and "dismal groans of one in extremes, at the point
to die" were to be heard, and so many believed in "old bogies" and
tales of "hobgoblins" so their minds pictured the most frightful
and hideous spectres imaginable. At length the house like other old
buildings in the neighbourhood was demolished. The Rev. John Kirk, who
wrote a Biography of the Mother of the Wesleys, says: "The legendary
literature of the world teems with wonderful stories of haunted houses
where invisible spirits were believed to utter mysterious sounds, to
perform extraordinary pranks, and sometimes communicate revelations
of the future, or disclose the dread secrets of the hidden world.
These beliefs though strongest and most prevalent where the Gospel
is unknown or least influential, are not peculiar to generations 'of
old time' or to any particular nation under heaven." Certainly the
present generation do not appear to have improved much more than
their forefathers in this respect when there is so much nonsensical
talk about communicating with the invisible world by means of "spirit
rappings," "table turnings," etc. Surely the age when men shall give
heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons has come!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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