I am still near, Watching the smiles I prized on earth, Your converse mild, your blameless mirth.[64
- Date of account
- Late nineteenth-century compilation
- Source
- The Ghost World
- Reference
- The Ghost World · selected passage 112
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
A favourite mode of capturing a ghost in days gone by was to entice it into something small, such as a bottle, and as a decoy, to doubt its power to do so--a mode of exorcism which would seem to have suggested our 'bottle-imps.' An amusing story of laying a ghost by this means, and which illustrates the popular belief,…
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyA favourite mode of capturing a ghost in days gone by was to entice it into something small, such as a bottle, and as a decoy, to doubt its power to do so--a mode of exorcism which would seem to have suggested our 'bottle-imps.' An amusing story of laying a ghost by this means, and which illustrates the popular belief, is recorded in the 'Folk-lore Record' (ii. 176), on the authority of the late Thomas Wright. 'There lived in the town of ----, in that part of England which lies towards the borders of Wales, a very curious simple kind of a man, though all said he knew a good deal more than other people did not know. There was in the same town a very old house, one of the rooms of which was haunted by a ghost, which prevented people making use of it. The man above mentioned was reported to be very clever at dealing with ghosts, and so the owner of the haunted house sent for him, and asked him if he could undertake to make the ghost quit the house. Tommy, for that was the name he generally went by, agreed to do this, on condition that three things were provided him--an empty bottle, a bottle of brandy with a tumbler, and a pitcher of water.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.