Terrible is the danger when a child leaves a pious home for a public school. John Wesley entered the Charterhouse a saint, and left it a sinner. It was during his residence at this celebrated school, that the mysterious and preternatural voices were heard in his father’s house. The often told story need not be repeated; but there can be no question that its influence upon himself was powerful and important. He took the trouble of obtaining minute particulars from his mother, from his four sisters, Emily, Mary, Susannah, and Anne, and from Robin Brown. He likewise transcribed his father’s diary, containing an account of the disturbances;[15] thereby showing the intense interest he felt in the affair. In fact, it would seem that, from this period, Wesley was a firm believer in ghosts and apparitions. In his twentieth year, we find him writing to his mother, in the gravest manner possible, concerning what he calls “one of the most unaccountable stories he had ever heard;”—namely, that of a lad in Ireland, who ever and anon made an involuntary pilgrimage through the aerial regions, and feasted with demigods _in nubibus_. In the same letter, Wesley relates an adventure of his own; for, while walking a few days previously in the neighbourhood of Oxford, he had observed a forlorn looking house, which he found was unoccupied by mortals because it was haunted by ghosts. Wesley tells his mother that he purposes to visit this forsaken dwelling, and to assure himself whether what he had heard was true. He further relates that a Mr. Barnesley, and two other of his fellow-students, had recently seen an apparition in a field adjoining Oxford, and that it had since been ascertained that Barnesley’s mother died in Ireland at the very moment when the spectre had been witnessed.[16] Thus, at this early period of his history, Wesley’s mind, wisely or unwisely, superstitiously or otherwise, was full of the supernatural; and to the calm judgment of his philosophic mother he submits his facts for her opinion. Three weeks afterwards she wrote:[17]— “DEAR JACKY,—The story of Mr. Barnesley has afforded me many curious speculations. I do not doubt the fact; but I cannot understand why these apparitions are permitted. If they were allowed to speak to us, and we had strength to bear such converse,—if they had commission to inform us of anything relating to their invisible world that would be of any use to us in this,—if they would instruct us how to avoid danger, or put us in a way of being wiser and better, there would be sense in it; but to appear for no end that we know of, unless to frighten people almost out of their wits, seems altogether unreasonable.”