Cock Lane Ghost
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Cock Lane Ghost. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)
The supposed cause of a mysterious outbreak of rappings, apparitions, and similar manifestations which broke out at a house in Cock Lane, Smithfield, London, in 1762. The disturbance was of the usual character of poltergeist hauntings, but for some reason or other it attracted wide-spread attention in London. Crowds flocked to the haunted spot, and claimed to have witnessed the manifestations. The ghost purported to be the spirit of a former resident in the Cock Lane house, a Mrs. Kent, and stated that she had been murdered by her husband. The tenant of the house at the time of the disturbance was a man named Parsons, and it was more than surmised that he had invented the ghost for the purpose of blackmailing the deceased's woman's husband. The disturbance was finally traced to Parson's daughter, a girl of eleven, and Coleridge Parsons himself was prosecuted and pilloried. (See Andrew Lang's Cock Lane and Common Sense, (1894).
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
the name given to the imagined cause of certain knockings which were heard in the house of a Mr. Parsons at No. 33 Cock Lane, Clerkenwell, London, in 1762. A "luminous figure" was said to have been seen in the same house. Dr. Johnson wrote an account of the supposed phenomena for the Gentleman's Magazine. In consequence Johnson was severely attacked for his credulity in a poem entitled, The Ghost, by Churchill. It was decided that the strange occurrences had been produced purposely by Mr. Parsons and his little girl. Mr. Parsons was therefore pilloried. The expression "Cock Lane Ghost," has come to be used to designate any tale of fright or credulity that is purely imaginary.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The story itself is settled history, and both accounts have it broadly right: the rappings at Cock Lane in 1762, the exposure of the Parsons family, and the pillory. The main correction is to the details. The "ghost" claimed to be Frances (Fanny) Lynes, William Kent's sister-in-law and common-law wife rather than a "Mrs. Kent", and she almost certainly died of smallpox in 1760; the child medium was Parsons's daughter Elizabeth, about eleven. Aiton's 1910 suggestion that Dr Johnson showed "credulity" inverts the record: Johnson sat on the committee that tested the ghost in the vault of St John's, Clerkenwell, and his report in the Gentleman's Magazine concluded the noises were an imposture, though Churchill lampooned him in The Ghost anyway. Parsons was pilloried in 1763 and sentenced to two years' imprisonment, and later writers noted that the crowd, still half-believing, took up a collection for him instead of pelting him.
Written for this edition, 2026.