The Ghost At # 33 and The Cowart Family Birthday Party

If you watch tv soap operas, then my entry today should not be too hard to follow even though it involves events about 300 years apart—a ghost in the year 1760, and our birthday party last night.

Follow closely now:

In 1756 in London, William Kent married a woman named Elizabeth Lynes. She died eleven moths later. Afterwards, William Kent took a fancy to her sister, Miss Fanny Lynes.

Since it was considered incest to marry your wife’s sister, William and Miss Fanny Lynes could not marry.

Instead they shacked up.

In January, 1760, the happy couple rented a house at # 33 Cock Lane from a man named William Parsons.

One William loaned the other William some money.

William did not pay it back.

Still with me?

One month later, on February 2, 1760, Fanny Lynes died of smallpox. She was buried in a vault in the church of St John’s Clerkenwell.

But within a year, people at # 33 Cock Lane began to see sights and hear sounds. Thumps against the walls, and a haunting rapping sound, and a scratching sound that seemed to be some kind of intelligent code.

James Franzen,, owner of a nearby pub, and William Parsons, landlord of # 33, set up system of yes/no questions to communicate with the unseen entity through these spooky, scratching sounds.

News of communicating with the dead spread throughout London. Crowds mobbed Cock Lane. Traffic could not get through the street. People wanted to hear the dead woman scratch out answers to their questions.

The ghost revealed that she was indeed Fanny Lynes and that she had not died of smallpox, but that William Kent had poisoned her with arsenic.

Newspapers went crazy reporting this news and giving the ghost a name which lives on in history…

But how do those events in the 1760s have anything to do with the Cowart Birthday last night?

Four people in our family—Ginny, Helen, Donald, and me—we all four have July birthdays. So family and friends gather for a community celebration and cookout on July 18 (which is not anybody’s birthday). We splash in the pool, gorge on good food, catch up on gossip—Helen’s Dad gave her and Donald a new car. Randy and Lisa brought Barbara White over for the party.

And we talked theology—mostly about Christians we admire and churches we don’t.

But, while some of us floated in the pool, one young lady received an urgent phone call from her mother, Mrs. V. A could-be–crisis was developing at her house.

Being an upstanding, hands-on Christian gentleman, I offered to go with the daughter to Mrs. V’s house—and I tried to convince Donald and Randy (short for Ransom) to go with me.

Seeing their reluctance, I assured them that, “There is nothing to feel guilty about if you do not help me. No need to feel guilty at all. I mean just because I’m going over there with only a few girls to help me, there’s no cause for you to feel guilty. You go ahead home. I’ll be alright”.

Knowing that I’m an honest man, the rascals took me at my word and left for home.

Anyhow, Ginny and I followed the daughter across town through dark streets overhung with beards of Spanish moss to her mother’s house.

Here’s the problem:

A sound.

A mysterious scratching, thumping sound.

It was coming from inside a huge cast-iron Franklin Stove—a massive wood-burning, free-standing fireplace with three huge, heavy locked iron doors, two in the middle, one at the end.

Some unknown something was inside her Franklin stove.

Scratching.

Well, the mother and daughter and Ginny supervised as I crept up on the iron monster. I speculated that it was only a trapped squirrel that found its way down the chimney.

But what if it’s a rat?

I’m deathly afraid of rats. Could it be a rat in there?

By the way, Donald and Randy, no need at all to feel guilty about letting me do this by myself, Just wanted to be sure you know that.

What if this is a raccoon? They bite. They carry rabies.

But what if its only a baby bird lost and alone scratching the iron walls?

Hell, it could be a buffalo in there for all I know!

The daughter got a flashlight, a small sledge hammer, and a pillowcase for me. I extended my arm deep into the pillowcase so I could grab the animal then fold the pillowcase back over my hand trapping the creature—the way you’d put a snake in a bag..

The three ladies backed up.

Then I eased the iron door open a just a tiny crack and shown the light inside… couldn’t see a thing. I closed that door and cracked open one on the other side… I could hear some creature moving in there, but I couldn’t see it.

I snaked my arm in through the cracked door feeling around for some furry unseen something.

Ain’t it great to be a hand’s-on Christian?

Couldn’t feel a thing in there.

I hammered on the sides of the stove thinking I’d drive the unknown creature up the flu. I could still hear scratching.

I suspect the unseen scratcher had climbed up out of reach onto the smoke shelf at the back of the stove.

Time to open door three—nothing but soot and ashes from last winter’s last fire.

That gave me an idea.

I closed and locked all the doors, I shredded newspaper and stuffed them through the crack in the double doors. The daughter opened the damper. I struck a match.

“Nothing to it,” I told the women, “The smoke will drive the creature back up the chimney. It will go out the same way it got in”.

Unless its fur catches fire and it jumps out the door on top me and runs flaming through the house like one of Samson’s foxes…. Er, do you have home owners insurance?

That didn’t happen.

The flames died down.

Guess what we heard from inside the iron fireplace?

Silence.

At First.

Then more scratching.

Scratching, Scratching. Scratching.

I’d done all I knew to do. I gave up. I sealed up the doors and propped the sledge hammer and some fire logs against the door. I suggested that Mrs. V. go spend the night with her daughter then call animal control in the morning.

As Ginny and I drove home through the dark night, I could not get that scratching noise out of my mind. Where have I heard about that sort of thing before? Then I remembered the tale of the Ghost of # 33 Cock Lane.

I’d run across it years ago while researching a book I never got around to writing.

I remembered that the incident was proved a hoax—one William seeking revenge against the other William over that borrowed money. William Parsons was sentenced to stand pilloried with his neck in stocks at the foot of Cock Lane. He went stark raving insane.

But some people still believed in the ghost at # 33. A huge controversy arose between those saying it was all a hoax and those believing the scratching was caused by a real ghost .

The press of the day gave her a name.

She became a tourist attraction.

And, oh yes, the name those newspapers of yesteryear called the phenomena, that name stuck.

It was ever afterwards called—The Ghost Of Scratching Fanny!