The earliest document, by a few days, is the statement of Mr. Wesley, written, with a brief journal, between 21st December, 1716, and 1st January, 1717. Comparing this with Mrs. Wesley's letter to Sam of 12th January, 1716 and Sukey's letter of 24th January, we learn that the family for some weeks after 1st December had been "in the greatest panic imaginable," supposing that Sam, Jack, or Charlie (who must also have been absent from home) was dead, "or by some misfortune killed". The reason for these apprehensions was that on the night of 1st December the maid "heard at the dining-room door several dreadful groans, like a person in extremes". They laughed at her, but for the whole of December "the groans, squeaks, tinglings and knockings were frightful enough". The rest of the family (Mr. Wesley always excepted) "heard a strange knocking in divers places," chiefly in the green room, or nursery, where (apparently) Hetty, Patty and Keziah lay. Emily heard the noises later than some of her sisters, perhaps a week after the original groans. She was locking up the house about ten o'clock when a sound came like the smashing and splintering of a huge piece of coal on the kitchen floor. She and Sukey went through the rooms on the ground floor, but found the dog asleep, the cat at the other end of the house, and everything in order. From her bedroom Emily heard a noise of breaking the empty bottles under the stairs, but was going to bed, when Hetty, who had been sitting on the lowest step of the garret stairs beside the nursery door, waiting for her father, was chased into the nursery by a sound as of a man passing her in a loose trailing gown. Sukey and Nancy were alarmed by loud knocks on the outside of the dining-room door and overhead. All this time Mr. Wesley heard nothing, and was not even told that anything unusual was heard. Mrs. Wesley at first held her peace lest he should think it "according to the vulgar opinion, a warning against his own death, which, indeed, we all apprehended". Mr. Wesley only smiled when he was informed; but, by taking care to see all the girls safe in bed, sufficiently showed his opinion that the young ladies and their lovers were the ghost. Mrs. Wesley then fell back on the theory of rats, and employed a man to blow a horn as a remedy against these vermin. But this measure only aroused the emulation of the sprite, whom Emily began to call "Jeffrey".