Semi-famous
poltergeist case which took place in 1878-79 in
Amherst, Nova Scotia. The focus of the case was 18-year-old
Esther Cox, who lived in the
overcrowded Teed home with her
sister Jennie, her other sister Olive and her husband
Daniel Teed, her brother William, Daniel Teed's brother John, and the two Teed boys.
About a week after Esther's
boyfriend,
Bob MacNeal, tried to
rape her at
gunpoint,
scratching noises were heard in Esther's bedroom, and she screamed to her sister Jennie that there was a
mouse in the bed with her. As Jennie rushed to her aid, she saw a
cardboard box move by itself -- and of course, no mouse was found. The next night, Esther's face turned bright
red, and her body
swelled to twice its normal size. While Esther cried that she was dying, a loud
booming noise was heard outside.
A few days later, Esther was still
alarmingly swollen. Her
bedsheets were torn off her while she was sleeping and thrown at
John Teed, who immediately left the home, swearing never to return. The rest of the Teed family sat on Esther's
sheets to try to keep them in place. When the local
doctor visited to examine Esther,
plaster flew off the walls, and,
chillingly, the words "
Esther Cox, you are mine to kill!" appeared on the wall above her bed. When the doctor prescribed
morphine the next day, he was hit by a volley of
potatoes, which struck so hard that he was actually knocked across the room.
Loud
noises continued for weeks, and the
lurid story hit the
newspapers. A local
minister witnessed a bucket of
cold water come to a
boil while sitting on the kitchen table. Esther fell into a
trance and told that Bob MacNeal had tried to rape her. Jennie proclaimed that the
haunting was Bob's fault, and the poltergeist began rapidly
knocking on the walls, as if in agreement. In future
messages the ghost wrote on walls, it would often sign itself "
Bob."
When Esther caught
diptheria, the haunting ceased, but it started back up again when she recovered. She got a
job at a restaurant owned by a neighbor, but while she was at the
restaurant, she was hit on the head with a
scrubbing brush,
oven doors clanged open, and things stuck to her like she was a
magnet. She was given special
shoes with
glass soles in an attempt to reduce some of the
phenomena, but she said the shoes gave her
headaches and
nosebleeds. She also began to hear
voices in her head which threatened to
stab her and
burn the Teed home down -- lit
matches sometimes rained down on her from the bedroom ceiling, and one of her
dresses once caught
fire while it was hanging in the closet.
When a
magician came to Amherst, hoping to make some
money exploiting the phenomena, the poltergeist threw carving knives, an
umbrella, and a
chair at him.
Pins were jammed into Esther's hand, fires broke out in the house, and a
trumpet was heard playing in the home (later, a small
silver trumpet was found --
no one could remember seeing it before). Esther's brother George found himself forcibly
undressed in public three different times by the poltergeist, and the family
cat was
levitated five feet in the air.
Concerned that the poltergeist trouble would affect the
property's
value, the Teed's
landlord asked Esther to leave the house. She went to work on a local
farm, but when items
disappeared, she was accused of
theft, and when the
barn burned down, she was accused of
arson and sentenced to four months in
jail. During her time in the
big house, the poltergeist activity stopped entirely and never returned. Esther was able to return to a
normal life -- unfortunately, that included a lifelong drinking problem -- and
whispers about whether she engineered the poltergeist herself.