Excerpts from the London Chronicle April 30, 1810

The Invisible Ghost.--The neighbourhood of Kennington has for some time past been both amused and alarmed by an unusual and extraordinary circumstance:--A respectable person, while at home at his house about one o’clock on Wednesday, the 11th inst., was disturbed by an unusual knocking at his front door. On going to the door the knocker continued to play, although no person was near it; at the same time the clock in the house began to strike. The person suspecting some one was playing him a trick, immediately had the knocker taken off the door, beat about with a hammer, and laid on a table, when it began to perform its operations, in conjunction with the clock, and continued without intermission for the space of an hour. On the Wednesday following, at the same hour, they were again alarmed by the same unusual noise, without being enabled in any measure to account for its cause. Some old women in the neighbhourhood were so much alarmed, as to mention the necessity of reading prayers to avert the judgment that seemed to threaten, or to prevent a recurrence of the same, which they fully expected on Wednesday, at the usual hour.

The Visible Ghost.--Last week, while two men were employed in the interior of a family vault, about seven miles from Leeds, a meager figure, black from head to foot, glided into the sepulchral mansion; the man whose eye first caught the spectre became instantly petrified with horror, his speech forsook him, and it was only by a vigorous effort that he could jog the elbow of his fellow, and point to the object of alarm. Like the shock from the electric spark the terror was communicated by the touch; but the symptoms were not so strong in the second as in the first subject: taking courage, he addressed the Ghost in a faltering accent, and said, “In the name of God, what is your errand to this world?”--”I have no errand; I was going past and thought I would just look in.” These grateful sounds instantly dispelled the illusion, and the workmen recognized in them the well known voice of a neighbouring chimney sweeper.