“…they cried out they saw something between the childrens heads
– of a shining colour – about the size of a cat..
she said it felt very soft and the vanished, but somewhat at the same instant
pinched the flesh of her arm so that blood ran down…”
Printed and bound for the Hell Fire Club
In a limited edition of 120 copies
Each copy individually hand numbered from 1 – 120 in emerald ink
Printed on cream laid paper
Bound quarter leather using dark brown niger and chestnut book cloth
Matching headbands and chestnut endpapers
Pages sewn folio with emerald silk ribbon
Dark red ink onto canvas textured mould-made paper
Title label and limitation label printed by hand using antique letterpress type on a waterlow press
A compulsive and chilling account of actual poltergeist phenomena thought to have been affected by the agency of witchcraft, a small family disturbed by dark manifestations, scratchings, wounds, violent transportations, the malice of a distinctly supernatural kind.
The almost diary-like and matter of fact document begins in December 1761 with the manifestation of some unseen entity scraping at the children’s window, a sinister force that soon made its own way into the house. What follows for the ensuing months shows the appalling physical and mental effects of these visitations upon the family, the unquiet minds of the observers and the witch-hunt mentality slowly taking hold.
Stranger than all this is the account of communications with the entity, a creature that may have appeared a century earlier in the same town. Bovets ‘Pandaemonium, or the Devils Cloister’ (1684) records similar disturbances to those of our account:
“..one of the daughters three days following in the height of her fits repeated in a solemn majestick manner the same form of speech, which was a predicting of her own death to be in some few days…another of them vomited pins…”
These same disturbances of June 1683 are repeated in the 1761 account almost to the letter, along with the spectral appearance of the malevolent entity in the form of a luminous orb of light of various colours. In Bovets account the creature took the form of a malicious bear-like creature within the orb
“.. some people by pursuing unlawful studies have put themselves in the power of evil spirits, and though some may look on this relation as a jest, upon enquiry it will be found a real truth…”
Could the manifestations of 1683 and 1761 have been the agency of the same dark creature? Could it still be waiting to manifest? Our account gives a remarkable insight into its nature, its knowledge of future events, and shows its ability to communicate beyond the veils of sense.
On more than one occasion it appeared upon summons, accompanied by loud knocking noises, manifestations of orbs of light, and answered questions at first in its own demonic scratchings and scrapings, then in more subtle but not less unsettling ways: by voice in ancient languages, then by answering mentally via direct thought transference…
