n five and six o'clock, my sister
Molly, then about twenty years of age, sitting in the dining-room
reading, heard as if it were the door that led into the hall open, and a
person walking in, that seemed to have on a silk nightgown, rustling and
trailing along. It seemed to walk round her, then to the door, then
round again; but she could see nothing."

As a matter of fact, the contemporary records are silent respecting the
extraordinary happenings that overshadow all else in the records of 1726
and 1784. In the former, for example, we find no reference to the
affair of the mill handle, the levitation of the bed, the rude bumpings
given to Mr. Wesley. There is much talk of knockings and groanings, of
sounds like footsteps, rustling silks, falling coals, breaking bottles,
and moving latches; allusion is made to the badger like and rabbit like
apparition; and there is mention of a peculiar dancing of father's
"trencher" without "anybody's stirring the table"; but the sum total
makes very tame reading compared with the material to be found in the
accounts written in after years and commonly utilized--as it has been
utilized here--to form the narrative of the haunting. Not only this, but
a rigorous division of the contemporary evidence into first hand and
second hand still further eliminates the element of the marvelous.
Admitting as evidence only the fact set forth as having been observed by
the relators themselves, the haunting is reduced to a matter of knocks,
groans, tinglings, squeaks, creakings, crashings, and footsteps.

We are, therefore, justified in believing that in this case, like so
many others of its kind, the fallibility of human memory has played an
overwhelming part in exaggerating the experiences actually undergone;
that, in fine, nothing occurred in the rectory at Epworth, between
December 1, 1716, and January 31, 1717, that may not be attributed to
human agency.

Who, then, was the agent? Knowing what we do of Wesley's previous
relations with the villagers, the first impulse is to place the
responsibility at their door. But for this there is no real warrant.
Years had elapsed since the culminating catastrophe of the burning of
the rectory, and in the interim matters had been put on an amicable
basis. Moreover, the evidence as to the haunting itself goes to show
that the phenomena could not possibly have been produced by a person, or
persons, operating from outdoors; but must, on the contrary, have been