The Cock Lane ghost

Record summary

The Cock Lane ghost was an eighteenth-century London controversy involving alleged knocking or scratching attributed to the dead Fanny Lynes. Public attention, clerical involvement and an investigation organized by Samuel Johnson and others made it an important episode in the history of disputed haunting claims. It matters for comparing auditory phenomena, repeated communications and social contagion rather than only visual apparitions. The events were exposed as a human deception involving the child Elizabeth Parsons, though details of participation and the sequence of demonstrations should be checked in contemporary pamphlets and later histories.