Old Jeffrey, the Epworth Rectory spirit

A spirit the Wesleys called Old Jeffrey disturbed Samuel Wesley's rectory at Epworth, mostly in December 1716 and the spring of 1717.

Joseph Priestley published original letters of John Wesley and his friends, and one tells of a man grinding corn in the garrets when the handle of the mill spun round very fast by itself. He said the only thing that annoyed him was that the mill was empty; with corn in it, Old Jeffrey could have ground away as long as he liked.

Andrew Lang, writing later, places the trouble mainly in December 1716 and the spring of 1717. He stresses that the house was the rectory of Samuel Wesley, not of his son John Wesley, who founded the Wesleyan Methodists, as many journalists have assumed.

The University of Lincoln's Haunted History of Lincolnshire site adds that John Wesley was away studying at Oxford and that his sisters wrote to him about the events, letters it says have survived. By their account, once the noises and bangs had built up, things were thrown across rooms by no visible hand, and the younger girls were sometimes pinched with nobody else in the room.

The sources disagree on who named the spirit. Lang says Emily Wesley did; Wikipedia gives the nickname to Hetty, the fourth eldest daughter, and says Old Jeffrey made itself known to the whole household on Christmas Day 1716. Mrs Wesley, as Wikipedia quotes her, described a noise in the room above like several people walking, then running up and down the stairs.