The Amherst Poltergeist Mystery - Esther Cox -

10/27/21 • 26 min

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The Great Amherst Mystery was a notorious case of reported poltergeist activity in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada between 1878 and 1879. 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.

The Amherst Mystery centred on Esther Cox, who lived in a house with her married sister Olive Teed, Olive's husband Daniel and their two young children. A brother and sister of Esther and Olive also lived in the house, as did Daniel's brother John Teed.

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. This left her in great distress, and shortly after this the physical phenomena began. 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. Then objects in the house took flight.

The frightened family called in a doctor. During his visit, bedclothes moved, scratching noises were heard and the words "Esther Cox, you are mine to kill" appeared on the wall by the head of Esther's bed. The following day the doctor administered sedatives to Esther to calm her and help her sleep, whereupon more noises and flying objects manifested themselves. Attempts to communicate with the "spirit" resulted in tapped responses to questions.

The phenomena continued for some months, and became well known locally. Visitors to the cottage, including clergymen, heard banging and knocking and witnessed moving objects, often when Esther herself was under close observation. In December Esther fell ill with diphtheria. No phenomena were observed during the two weeks she spent in bed, nor during the time she spent recuperating afterwards at the home of a married sister in Sackville, New Brunswick. However, when she returned to Amherst the mysterious events began again, this time involving the outbreak of fires in various places in the house. Esther herself now claimed to see the "ghost", which threatened to burn the house down unless she left.

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The Demon House On Brownsville Road

The Demon House On Brownsville Road

The house at 3406 Brownsville Road was built in 1909-10 and had three previous owners prior to the Cranmers. In December 1988 Bob and Lesa Cranmer bought the house upon being transferred to Pittsburgh by his employer. Bob states that the house was his “dream” to own, and that it mysteriously went up for sale the same week that they began looking for a house to buy. As a young child he would often stand and stare at the house hoping that someday he could see the inside. The three-story house was built in the Craftsman style and would later be designated as a historical landmark (by Pittsburgh History & Landmarks) because of its unique design. Bob and Lesa married in 1980 while Bob was an officer in the U.S. Army. He left the service in 1986 and went to work for AT&T in Whippany, New Jersey. Their objective was to eventually relocate to Pittsburgh, where Bob had grown up. This was unexpectedly realized quicker than they had expected as they had just built a new house in 1987. They had four children: Jessica (4), Bobby (3), David (2), and Charles (2 months) when they moved to Pittsburgh.[4]

Bob Cranmer states that the sellers seemed very anxious to move out and surprisingly accepted his first (low-ball) offer without any negotiations. During a walk-through of the house young Bobby Jr. wandered off by himself as the group went to the basement. He would soon be found on the front staircase crying and hyperventilating as if “he’d seen a ghost”. Lesa later expressed to Bob her misgivings about the house, that it was much too large, and furthermore “gave her the creeps.” Bob discounted this and was determined to make this house a home for his young family. He did however ask the seller if there “was anything wrong with the house.” Understanding exactly what he was referring to the seller assured him that the house was fine and that Catholic Mass was conducted several times in the living room of the house. Bob thought this was an odd response but took it with the reassurance that had been implied. Later the next Spring Bob discovered a small metal box buried in the front yard containing Catholic religious items. He called the previous owner who had assured him that “the house was fine” only then to hear him say “just put it back where you found it.”

Within weeks of moving in Bob and Lesa began to experience paranormal activity in the house. The first phenomenon they experienced was a pull-chain on a light in a coat closet that continuously wrapped itself around the light and would never remain in the hanging position. Soon other nuisance activities would begin and continued for years, the family choosing to ignore them, accepting that they shared their home with a “spirit”. Bob would go on to hold political office in the 1990s, first as a councilman and then county commissioner, gaining significant notoriety and celebrity in the western Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh) area.

Over the years the Cranmer family became increasingly dysfunctional and eventually Lesa and two of the children would experience serious mental issues which would require hospitalization. Bob had no idea that the spirit in the house had anything to do with the relational and psychological issues within his family and he attempted to manage his way through it. However, one night in 2003 his oldest son attacked him and Bob would be arrested. The next morning his elderly aunt who was living with the family was also found dead in her bed from natural causes.

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The Spirit Child Rosalie Case

Harry Price (17 January 1881 – 29 March 1948) was a British psychic researcher and author, who gained public prominence for his investigations into psychical phenomena and his exposing fraudulent spiritualist mediums. Harry Price and 'Rosalie' The following article is taken from the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 43, No. 726 (1965-66). Prior to Medhurst's paper, S.P.R. member David Cohen, who was President of the Manchester Society for Psychical Research, had published a book on the 'Rosalie' case - Price and his Spirit Child 'Rosalie', (Regency Press, London, 1965) - which had been reviewed in the December 1965 issue of the Journal. This was the current state of play with 'Rosalie' in the mid 1960s following Cohen's work on the case. Of all the strange phenomena reported by parapsychologists, that of 'full-form materialization' is perhaps the most difficult for the non-converted to take seriously. Both Crookes's 'Katie King' and Richet's 'Bien Boa' attracted their share of ridicule. The physiological difficulty that a structure as complex as a living body, carrying in itself the minutely detailed record of its remote and recent history, should be created and destroyed almost at will in the séance room has daunted more than one otherwise sympathetic man of science. Harry Price's story of 'Rosalie', which is the principal subject of Mr Cohen's book, is, taken at its face value, almost unique among such cases, insofar as Price had a degree of control over the sitters and the conduct of the sitting hardly ever permitted to the earlier investigators of phenomena of this kind. The story was first told by Price in his Fifty Years of Psychical Research (1939), and is reproduced in full in Dr Paul Tabori's Harry Price: The Biography of a Ghost Hunter. Price presents it as a 'verbatim and uncorrected' record, written on the night of the séance it describes. In his account, he says that on the morning of Wednesday, 8th December, 1937, he was rung up by a lady who told him that every Wednesday evening she and some friends held a family séance at her house, during which a little girl spirit known as Rosalie always materialized. Price was invited to attend, provided that he promised not to reveal the identity of any of the sitters, or the locality where the séance was held. He 'was not to seek a scientific enquiry, as the mother of "Rosalie", who attended each sitting, was terrified that her girl might be frightened away'. Price was told that 'these Wednesday meetings were in the nature of a sacred communion with the spirit of her daughter, and would be maintained as such'. However, he was assured that before the séance he would have complete freedom to search premises and sitters and to introduce any control measures that he wished.