Great Amherst Mystery

It was the subject of an investigation by Walter Hubbell, an actor with an interest in psychic phenomena, who kept what he claimed was a diary of events in the house, later expanded into a popular book.

According to Hubbell's account, events began at the end of August 1878, after Esther Cox, then aged 18, was subjected to an attempted sexual assault by a male friend at gunpoint.

There were knockings, bangings and rustlings in the night, and Esther herself began to suffer seizures in which her body visibly swelled and she was feverish and chilled by turns.

In January 1879 Esther moved in with another local family, but the manifestations around her continued and were witnessed by many people, some of whom conversed with the "ghost" by questioning and rapped answers.

After the visit to Saint John, Esther spent some time with the Van Amberghs, friends with a peaceful farm near Amherst and then returned to the Teeds' cottage in the summer of 1879, whereupon the phenomena broke out again.

It was at this point that Walter Hubbell arrived, attracted by the publicity surrounding the case, and moved into the Teed cottage as a lodger to investigate the phenomena.

He communicated with the various named "spirits" by rapping, and listed three others: "Mary Fisher", "Jane Nickle" and "Eliza McNeal", who were also manifesting themselves as part of events.

She returned to Amherst once more, working for a man named Arthur Davison, but after his barn burned down he accused her of arson and she was convicted and sentenced to four months in prison, although she was released after only one.

Prince seems to indicate that Esther was more than just unstable: that she was a psychopath suffering from symptoms of a split personality: that she herself, or rather part of her, played 'poltergeist': furthermore, that most so-called eyewitness accounts were of little scientific value; and that there was only one beneficiary of the whole fraud: Walter Hubbell...

[1]Larson also wrote that Hubbell's first edition of his book asserted that his story had been fully corroborated by the inhabitants of Amherst and from strangers from distant towns but there was no evidence for this because not a single statement was verified by any witness mentioned by name.