A poultergeist, often called a noisy ghost, is a supernatural entity believed to cause physical disturbances, from unexplained noises to objects moving on their own. In eighteen seventy eight, a young woman became the center of one of the most chilling and well documented poultergeist cases in history. It became known as the Great Amherst Mystery. What began as a strange knocking in whispers soon escalated into terrifying attacks, spontaneous fires,
and violent paranormal activity that shook an entire town. This is the haunting Tale of Esther Cox.
My name's Ben, I'm Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked Ingram, a true crime podcast material.
Audience listeners, big massive news in the true crime community and minor news in our true crime community. We're not doing it to true crime case today, We're doing paranormal. That's our minor news. We're taking it from true crime to something a little bit, you know, a little more haunting today.
Just for fun, what did you call the ghost.
Poultrygeist, poultry geist, poultergeist.
Okay, I don't think I've ever heard.
That, You've never heard the term poultry ghist.
Last night right before we're about to go to sleep. You're like, the case is this, and I was like.
What you have heard? You've heard of that because you like the Amityville horror. That's a poltergeist.
Oh okay, maybe I'm just not retaining that name.
Then apparently not, but it's also known as a noisy ghost. Basically the ones that like, yeah, it's like stuff.
Moves, and the ones that are like a real menace.
Yeah, those are Poultergeist.
Okay.
Yeah, So that that's our minor news is that we're not doing true crime today. We're going to talk about a Poultergeist. But the massive true crime news this week is that they may have identified Jack the Ripper, which is wild.
That's a big one, eh.
It is. I'm not going to go into a whole lot of detail about who it is or anything like that. It takes a quick google and you'll find it. I can even put a link in the description of this episode if you're interested in going and finding it out. But basically, they did the whole like genetic genealogy thing mm hm, and they found distant family members of this individual who they believe is Jack the Ripper, not one
hundred percent confirmed. Yet it's basically like they have a suspect and they have evidence, and he's if he were alive, he'd probably be handcuffed. Now he's got to go to trial that sort of thing. Okay, so he hasn't been tried and found guilty yet, but they have what they believe.
Is enough evidence, enough evidence, which is wild crazy. Yeah, I mean, gosh, you have to sometimes you have to be thankful maybe for this like ancestry stuff, hey, because it is solving a lot of cases.
It really is. This ancestry stuff is helping a lot. So if if you have nothing to hide, maybe it's worth putting your DNA in this data bank because you could potentially convict one of your relatives.
A which is probably something you'd rather know, yeah.
Most most certainly, and be make the world a little bit safer too. So yeah, I'm going to leave that up to you though, if you want to do it or not.
But because yeah, I was kind of all, well, not against them, but I was like, oh no. But then now that they're solving cases and I have nothing to hide, I'm like, uh, okay, maybe this isn't too bad.
Yeah, So now let's go back from Jack the Ripper stuff. Back to our little story today.
Okay, well, we have some patrons to thank first.
Oh, I guess we should probably thank our patrons.
Yeah, we sure do.
Em will slipped right past that. Thank you for the reminder. Shout out to Lauren Franklin and Vivian Green, who both signed up on Patreon this week. They get the hole behind the scenes, they get the exclusive episode you name it. Speaking of which I should probably start looking at which exclusive episode is going to come out at the end of the month.
I know that's next week?
Is it already?
Yeah? Is it next Friday? I believe? I think wow, Yeah.
Which means if we're if it's next Friday, that means we're getting into marchall soon. So Springs just around the corner.
Ring is here. Basically it's minus twenty right now, so I can't say that.
Oh gotta love Canada. But yeah, let's talk about a poultergeist. Okay, So yeah, a poltergeist is yeah, a noisy ghost, like you said, those ones that are a real menace. And the case today is a Canadian case that we're talking about. Amherst is over on the East coast of Canada, and this is probably the most well documented poltergeist case in history period.
Okay, which is insane, and how long ago?
We are going back quite a way where we are going back to the eighteen hundreds from okay, well yeah, so yeah, are you ready for it? Let's do or okay, So we're heading back not just to the eighteen hundreds, but specifically to the eight year eighteen seventy eight. We're heading to a little quiet town known as Amherst in Nova Scotia, Canada.
I like that name.
That's cute Amhurst, isn't it. It sounds cozy. It's very cottage core.
Yeah.
You know. Now, back then Amherst had only about three thousand people living there. Now today that number is only grown to around nine thousands. So it's not exactly you know, explosive population as far as where the place is. But small then small, Now that's my point. It's peaceful. It's a picturesque place full of charming homes. It had, you know, nice little, neatly kept lawns and all the perfect little
places to live. Not exactly the kind of town you'd expect to become the setting for something straight out of a horror movie. But this summer. I like, how that this coming this summer? It's very horror movie.
Kind of pretty much.
Yeah, but this summer, seriously darkness took root in this town and something that people would later call was from the work of the devil himself.
WHOA Okay, so we're like really in for it here.
Yeah, So let's talk about a perfectly ordinary house in Amherst that lived on and was perched on Princess Street. Yeah. If things couldn't get perfect enough.
This has this been made into a movie, because it's already sounded like one.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if it had. I didn't do enough research to find, you know, what's come out of it as far as like Hollywood and books and stuff like that. But I would not be surprised if this had been if it birthed some productions and'd say that yep. Now, this house on Princess Street was a nice, cozy, two story cottage where Daniel and Olive Teed lived with
their two little boys, Willie and George. Also sharing the house were Daniel's brother John and Olive's three sisters, her brother William Cox and her sorry three siblings her brother William Cox and her two unmarried sisters, Jane and Esther Cox. Now the Teed's and the Coxes were a close knit family together, they were well liked and they were well respected. Esther was the youngest of youngest sister at eighteen years old, and she was known for helping out with her nephews
while Olive kept the house running smoothly. To everyone who knew them, they were good, decent people, making what happened next even more shocking. So it was on August twenty eighth, eighteen seventy eight, that Esther came home in a terrible state. She was shaken absolutely to her core. See that evening she had gone for a carriage ride with a man by the name of Bob McNeil. He was a young man who was a shoemaker who had been courting her for the last little while, so this should have been
a pleasant outing. However, it turned into something more of a nightmare. See, Bob drove her and himself far beyond the limits of the town to this carriage ride out into the woods, and while there alone secluded, he suddenly pulled out a revolver and ordered her to get out of the carriage. Or else. Esther was terrified. The man that she had trusted now was about to kill her, or so it seemed. But before he could do anything, and before Esther could react, the sound of an approaching
wagon was growing off in the distance. Without a word, Bob jumped back into the carriage and drove them back home. She arrived home safe, soaked from the rain, trembling, and barely able to speak a word. She went straight to bed and wasn't seen again until morning. Over the next few days, she kept her distance, avoiding the house and
wandering the streets or visiting neighbors. Her family assumed that she and Bob had fought and you know, had given her some space, not realizing the truth of what had really happened between the two. They hoped that she'd get over her her heartache in time, but every night they could hear her crying herself to sleep.
Oh that's so sad.
Isn't it. Then, exactly a week after the carriage ride, things started to get strange. That night, Esther and her sister Jane were drifting off to sleep when a noise from under the bed jolted them awake. At first, they thought that it was just a mouse, so they searched for it, but found nothing. The same thing happened the next night. This time they traced the noise to a
wooden box filled with patchworks stored under the bed. And by patchwork, you're looking at probably things along the lines of, you know, making quilts and that sort of thing. So so kind of box, right, yeap. When they found this box, they were expecting a mouse to scurry out. They pulled the box out into the middle of the room and waited to see what would happen, seeing if the mouse would run to the corner, run under the bed or what. And they could try and you know, get it, capture it, whatever.
And that's when something happened that neither of them could explain. The box suddenly leaped into the air, about a foot off the ground before landing on its side. No mouse and no logical explanation for what just happened. Terrified Jane hesitantly set the box back in place, and it immediately leapt again into the air. This clearly wasn't a mouse, this wasn't a rodent, this wasn't anything natural. Panic set in and the girls screamed for their brother in law, Daniel,
to come into the room. Now, Daniel wasn't exactly thrilled about being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, And when Jane and Esther breathlessly told him about this mysterious jumping box in the room, he just kind of shook his head and chuckled and shoved it back onto the bed like nothing had it.
Didn't believe them, Hey, No.
Didn't believe them whatsoever. And in all honesty, who's going to believe you when you say I have a jumping box under my bed?
Yeah? I feel like most people probably would be very skeptical of that.
Hey, one hundred percent. I would be inquiring as to what you drank before bed? Was it niquill? Was it something stronger? I don't know.
Can I have some exactly? Now?
The girls knew how ridiculous it sounded. They weren't, you know, blinded by their own words and perspective. They knew what they were saying sounded wild, but they weren't sure what they just witnessed themselves. They're like, what, what's going on? This wasn't our imagination? Was it?
Like?
We're not making this up? Something strange had happened. They knew that but whatever it was, it's definitely wasn't over well.
The fact that both of two people saw it is kind of helpful. At least they can kind of lean into each other exactly.
Yeah. Now, the next night things took a much dark turn. Esther woke up feeling awful. In the middle of the night. She shook Jane awake, panicked, creeping into her voice, She's screaming, I'm dying, I'm dying. Jane fumbled the light and trying to turn on a lamp, and when she turned she saw her sister, and she looked horrible. Esther was now standing in the middle of the room, completely rigid. Her short hair bristled standing on end as if it electrified.
Her face was deep red, almost almost the color of blood, and her eyes bulged unnaturally, as if they were ready to pop out from her sockets. She gripped the back of a wooden chair so hard that her nails were digging into the wood. Jane screamed for help, and within moments the rest of the household rushed into the room. They tried to lead Esther back to bed, but she fought them off, shrieking in agony, then in a voice that was barely human. She gasped, I'm swelling up. I know I'm going to burst.
Oh wow, okay, Right.
Before the eyes of everyone in that room, her hands and face began to swell grotesquely, her skin burning hot to the touch. The red drained from her face and was now replaced by a deathly pale hue. She writhed and gnashed her teeth, her entire entire body ballooning to an unnatural size. The family was frozen in horror, unsure whether to call a doctor or a priest. Then came
an explosion. A deafening boom shook the house so loud they thought lightning had struck the roof, but when Olive peered outside, there was no sign of any storm or nothing striking the home.
Okay, I thought for a second that was Esther the big boom.
I was like, Oh, it definitely wasn't so. Just as she turned back inside to look from as from looking outside, another blast, this time even loud, rattled the very walls of the room they stood in, and just like that, Esther collapsed onto the bed. The swelling vanished, her body relaxed, and within seconds she was fast asleep, as if nothing had happened.
Holy that can you imagine just like witnessing your loved one? Like whatever is going on there?
Hey, yeah, that's not a picture I think anyone could imagine ever seeing, And if it is ever going to be possible, no one would want to see that. No, so this night was only the beginning. Strange noises soon filled the house. Knocking, banging, rustling sounds came from seemingly out of nowhere and everywhere, all at once. Four nights
after Esther's terrifying episode, it happened once again. She swelled up, She was screaming in pain, and as soon as she laid down, the blankets this time were ripped from her body, as if by some unseen force, and they were flung into the far corners of the room. Olive, trying to comfort her, sister, rushed over and tried to grab these blankets and putting them back on her. However, the bedding was yanked away from her hands and a second time they were thrown. This time a pillow shot from under
Esther's head and straight into john Ted's face. That wasn't enough. That was enough for John He bolted from the room, leaving the others to huddle around Esther's bed, physically holding blankets down on her to try and keep them in place as they were trying to be yanked and thrown once again. The chaos went on for minutes before another tremendous bang shook the room, just like before. Everything then stopped. Esther's body returned to normal, and she drifted into an exhausted sleep once again.
Well, I can only imagine what this is doing to her poor little body.
Hey, ooh, the toll something like this would take ye now. The next day a doctor was called in. He arrived that evening determined to diagnose whatever mysterious illness was affecting Esther. After a brief examination, he concluded that she was simply suffering from an extreme nervous excitement, like likely triggered by some kind of emotional shock. Nothing supernatural, nothing unusual, Just a girl overcome by anxiety. That was his diagnosis when
he witnessed her. But he didn't witness the act.
The acts the I'm like, that's not like any anxiety I've ever had.
No, when he was looking at her, when he was examining her and you know, diagnosing her, none of these supernatural things were occurring. He just simply saw Esther in her state of you know, aftermath sort.
Of thing, right, kind of like how you said she was exhausted, tired, and exactly.
So he's sitting here talking to the family saying, yeah, you know what, she's in an emotional shock state. Something must have happened. And you told us, you know she whatever with the boyfriend. Yeah, so clearly something's going on. She's just very anxious. And he's delivering this diagnosis to the family and to Esther there presumably as.
Well, which could be right to some extent too. Oh, definitely she did have like that traumatic event. I'm sure that gave her some anxiety for sure too.
Well for sure. However, just as he was delivering this diagnosis and speaking on what he's you know, seeing, that's when something happened. The pillow that was under Esther's head suddenly slid out and without anyone touching it. The doctor watched it as the pillow just shot out, but then dumbfound it. Before he can even react, the pillow moved
again and it went right back under her head. John reached for it, but as soon as his fingers brushed the fabric, it once again jerked away and flew away, his hair on his on his head, and arms just stood on end, just like before with the static electricity. Then came the same banging. Loud insistent pounding echoed through the house, shaking the walls as if invisible sledgehammers were striking from all sides. The beds, blankets were all ripped away.
And this time all this was happening right in front of the doctor.
Okay, this is good that it's happening in front of someone.
Else, right exactly now, the most horrifying moment was yet to come. A sharp scratching noise soon filled the room, like something was carving into wood. Everyone turned around and looked at the wall right above Esther's head, right above the headboard of the bed, and there, as if etched by an unseen hand, were the chilling words carved on the wall saying, quote Esther Cox, you are mine to kill.
Oh gosh serious, Yeah, this does.
Not seem real, it doesn't. But this is documented. Shit, this is what I mean.
We are going back quite a way terrifying.
But there are people who documented these events, claiming to have witnessed it, claiming that these things actually occurred. Then as if to drive the message home, a chunk of plaster tore itself from the wall, flew across the room, twisted mid air and changed direction, and then landed neatly right at the doctor's feet. The pounding continued, the walls trembling as if caught in an earthquake. Esther lay motionless,
wide eyed with terror in the bed. The others stood frozen, helpless against whatever forest had taken hold of their home. For two agonizing hours, the nightmare raged on until without warning, silence fell. Esther slumped into unconsciousness, sinking into what looked like the deepest sleep of her life so far. The doctor was present the whole time. He was pale and visibly shaken, and had no words for what just happened.
He couldn't explain what he had witnessed, but he promised that he was going to return the next day with medicine to try and calm Esther's nerves.
Oh okay, I feel like they need something more than that.
Hey, well, what are you gonna do?
I know he wants to help, but it's like, what can he do exactly?
The next evening, the doctor did return and gave Esther a very powerful sedative, hoping that it would put an end to whatever was happening. Now that didn't really do anything, If anything, honestly, things only got worse.
I'm actually surprised that he came back, because I feel like I'd be like, yeah, i'll see you tomorrow.
And then never heard from again. Just fuck this shit, I'm out sort of situation. Well, I can understand that I'd probably be in a similar situation. I would have left my shoes in place while I'm running down the path. No, just ran right out of them. But that night, the banging returned louder and more violent than before. Reports from the time claimed that the doctor, as he returned to give esther this medicine, had actually even been standing as far as two hundred yards away from the house and
could hear pounding echoing from it. It sounded as if someone was on the roof hammering with a sledgehammer, trying to break through the shingles. But every time someone checked, there was no one there. There's no damage, there's no.
Ex Okay, I was just going to say, like, there's literally no damage to the house.
No word of all. This quickly spread, and I'm sure it did as many people would have been hearing these loud, banging clouds coming from the home as well. Soon all of Amherst knew that something unexplainable was happening at the Teed household. Someone or sorry not someone. People whispered about ghosts. They whispered about demons and curses. Meanwhile, the phenomena continued for wee and the doctor returned night after night, desperate to offer Esther any kind of relief that he could.
The more time passed, the more the family became convinced that whatever was tormenting them wasn't random noise or trick of the mind or anything like that. It was clearly something conscious. It could hear them and chillingly, it could respond okay it was. It seemed to be sentient.
So is this where they call the priest?
Well, let me continue. One fact became impossible to ignore. It was all connected to Esther somehow, some way. The disturbances only happened when she was in the house and stopped completely whenever she left. Whatever it was it had latched onto her, And by now she had finally told her family that yes, you know, this event had happened with Bob in the woods. And they all agreed that somehow this horrifying event triggered this nightmare that they were now living in. But how they had no idea.
Yeah, because it doesn't really make sense, you know, that that would trigger this now as maybe it does, though we'll keep listening.
Well maybe now. As the case garnered notoriety, well respected figures came to investigate. One of them was an individual by the name of doctor Edwin Clay, a prominent Baptist clergyman. Like the medical doctor before him, he witnessed the knockings and mysterious wall carving's first hand, and when he left, he was fully convinced Esther wasn't faking any of this, and her family wasn't helping her pull off some elaborate
hoax either. He had his own theory, though, He believed that the trauma from the carriage ride had turned Esther into some kind of human battery. Now, remember we are going back to eighteen hundreds here, so like even knowledge of electricity at the time was not what we have today. So his theory of a human battery is quite far out there from our perspective today, but maybe from his it wasn't.
So let me at the time. Yeah.
Yeah, so let me explain a little bit here. He believed that she turned into some sort of human battery, storing energy in a way science couldn't yet explain. So, according to him, invisible flashes of lightning were somehow discharging from her body, and the loud knocks that they were hearing in the home were actually miniature collaps of thunder caused by her strange electrical field surrounding her body.
Okay, wow, I mean this is so far fetched to like try to comprehend, right.
It really is. However, I do want to put it in this perspective. When we look at this and say, oh my god, that's so far fetched that she's a human battery and invisible electricity is shooting out from her causing these loud claps of thunder, that is so preposterous to think. However, you have to consider we are going back to the eighteen hundreds. As I mentioned, people don't
have the knowledge that we do today. But we do have someone looking at unexplainable events and trying to come up with an explanation they're trying to debunk, so that that is massively important. Yeah, they're not just sitting here pointing fingers, which they're not doing like, oh my god, it's a ghost. They're saying, hold on, what could be happening? So props to them for doing that.
Totally, Like, yeah, they're really trying to help, which I think is great, But they couldn't. They could be onto something in the sense of its like energy, right. So yeah, I mean, yeah, it's hard to just put yourself in these shoes because people don't experience it like this very often.
No, for sure, And honestly, he's not far off from what many people believe poltergeist are today. Like, is the traumatic event charging her up with energy and then the energy being released into the home. Yeah, that's what many people believe poltergeist are today, is that you know, a traumatic event and now you are this beacon of energy and it's like being released somehow from this trauma.
Okay, so it is like, actually someone had a traumatic event.
Generally speaking, yes, not always do don't quote me on.
That, yeah, but wow, okay, so that yeah, okay, Yeah.
Now, his his topics and everything turned into lectures on the subject, and it drew huge crowds. Now, whether or not his theory was correct, he firmly stood by one thing, Esther's suffering was in fact real. Others, however, weren't so convinced. Some people in town were certain that she was a fraud, staging the events for you know, simple attention. Her family, of course, fiercely denied this.
Well, that would not be attention, you would want no.
But no matter what people believed, the Teed household had become a spectacle. Crowds gathered outside, hoping to witness the phenomenon for themselves. Some you know, whispered that Esther had the power to mesmerize people, making them see and hear things that weren't actually there. The situation got so out of control, in fact, that the family had to call police multiple times just to clear the streets from the crowds in front of their home. Meanwhile, belief in something
truly supernatural was only growing. One night, as Esther lay in bed next to Jane, Espra whispered to her that she could hear a voice. It wasn't coming from in the room, though, but she told her that the voice was saying that it had once lived on this earth, and it had been dead for many years. Then it made a terrifying promise to her. It said that it would set the house on fire that very night.
Oo. Okay, Also, can we just talk about the fact that Jane is still sleeping next to her sister, like that's that's impressive.
It really is.
Now.
Jane immediately called others into the room, including you know, the doctor.
Right.
So, as they debated whether Esther was imagining things, hearing these voices that sort of thing, something happened that none of them could have predicted. Now, remember when I say this is a very well documented case. Okay, so this is documented to have occurred. A lit match out of nowhere fell from the ceiling and landed on the bed, setting the blankets on.
Fire, just from out of nowhere, from.
Out of nowhere. Now, many people can argue, sure, maybe Esther had some matches, right, and she, when everyone wasn't paying attention, lit one and dropped it. And everyone believed that a match fell from nowhere. So the flames were put out quickly, but within the next ten minutes, eight more matches fell from the air, landing on the bed and across the room in various locations. Ooh, you can't tell me that she lit a total of nine.
Matches without anyone noticing exactly when really all the attention is on her exactly.
Each one of these little flames from the matches was extinguished before causing any sort of serious damage, but there was no mistaking the message whatever this entity was meant harm. In a desperate attempt to communicate, Daniel began asking the spirit some questions and using knocking sounds as a response, and he asked, this entity or this spirit, this being, or whatever you want to call it, He asked it, will the house be set on fire now? According to reports,
three knocks responded, which signaled yes, yes. Five minutes later, a dress belonging to Esther, which had been hanging near the door on a nail on the wall, suddenly lifted itself in the air, rolled up tightly, and flew under the bed, and before anyone could react, the fabric burst into flames. The fire was put out before it could spread, but the message was clear. This wasn't just a strange
noise floating pillows anymore. This was something far more dangerous that had an intent to clearly not only kill Esther, but burn this house down with whoever else was inside.
Almost like there really wasn't much they could.
Do, and according to Olive, nothing but the devil could have done something so terrible. It wasn't finished with them yet, though. Three days later, as Esther and Olive were washing dishes in the kitchen, they noticed smoke rising from their cellar. Olive rushed downstairs, only to find a barrel engulfed in flames, now licking the floorboard joices above them. Panic, the two women ran out into the streets, calling for help. Neighbors and people around kind of gathered the home and panicked,
Oh my god. They see the smoke now billowing out, And just then a stranger appeared, a man no one recognized. Without hesitation, he threw off his coat, sprinted into the burning house, and in mere moments he distinguished the fire in the cellar. Before anyone could thank him, he was gone. He vanished, just as mysteriously as he had arrived. No one knew his name, no one recognized him, No one knew where he come from or where he had been
there at that exact moment. He was just there, put out the flames, and was never seen from or heard from again.
And this I'm imagining, like it's a small community, they would all know each other exactly. Huh, Okay, so they maybe have a good spirit or entity on their side.
Now potentially now By now, the town of Almherst was divided, she believed or sorry. Some believed without a doubt that an invisible force was in fact haunting Esther. Others were convinced still that she was a fraud. The fire marshals were among the skeptics, insisting that Esther had set both the fires herself. One particularly cruel suggestion floating around town was that a good raw hide whipping would put an
end to her supposed tricks. Holy shit, Yeah, so they're proposing, you know, whip her into stopping these things.
Oh my gosh, are those people like also per evil?
Probably? Now her family, though never doubted her, they had witnessed too much. Still, the fire had crossed a line. Esther herself was terrified, claiming that the ghost had shown her a vision of a fire now in the attic, one that would burn the house down with all of them inside. For the safety of their home and their children, Olive and Daniel made a heartbreaking decision to ask Esther to leave. No Daniel's parting words to his sister in
law were as follows, I don't turn you out. It is the devil of a ghost that drives you from our home.
Where is she supposed to go?
Well, thankfully she wasn't left to fend for herself. A kind hearted local restaurant owner named John White took her in for three weeks. She stayed in his home, and at first things seemed normal, But then, as if enraged by her attempt to escape, the entity struck again. This time, objects didn't just move, they disappeared entirely, only to reappear somewhere else moments later. One night, while scrubbing the floor, a brush vanished from Esther's hands, then suddenly dropped from
the ceiling, hitting her in the head. Furniture in John White's dining saloon reportedly flew across the room, doors were torn from their hinges, and heavy objects moved without anything around. Witnesses claimed a fifty pound wooden box slid fifteen feet across the floor in broad daylight without a single person touching it. And then the attacks on Esther became more physical. She was slapped, she was scratched, she was hit by
invisible hands. She was even stabbed. One night, a small folding knife appeared from nowhere and plunged into her back. John White's son Fred, pulled the knife from her back, folded it up, and put it in his pocket, only for the knife to vanish from his pocket and reappear, stabbing Esther in the back once again in the exact same wound.
Holy shit.
By now, Esther's case had gained so much attention that researchers wanted to study Esther. She agreed without hesitation. She had nothing as she was trying to hide, she claimed, even going out on tour with a man named Walter Hubble, an actor and writer fascinated in the paranormal. Now, thanks to his meticulous notes, much of what we know about her case today survives. For a time, people paid to
see her and hear her story. Scientists, skeptics, and believers from across Canada and United States came to witness the strange happenings for themselves. Many left convinced of what they were being told. But the controversy surrounding Esther never faded. There were still two sides to this coin one event. In fact, tensions even boiled over to a full scale riot. Now eventually she returned to Amherst, but whatever wherever she went, fires followed her. The final straw came when a barn
belonging to her employer mysteriously burned to the ground. Whether people still believed in ghosts or not, their patients had run out. Esther was arrested and charged with arson and sentenced to a month in jail. After that, the strange occurrences gradually faded away. Esther moved on with her life, married twice, and eventually settled in Brockton, Massachusetts. She died on November eighth, nineteen twelve, at the age of fifty two. To this day, the case of Esther Cox the Great
Amherst mystery remains an unsolved enigma. Was it an elaborate hoax of psychological phenomena or was she truly tormented by some sort of unseen force like the devil himself. Skeptics dismiss her story, but believers point to the overwhelming number of first hand accounts that were very well documented from the time. Now, whether it is fraud or fact, one thing is undeniable. Esther's story remains one of the most well documented and chilling cases of an alleged paranormal activity
in history. So here we are nearly a century later, or more than a century later, I should say, actually, and people are still asking the question what really happened to Esther? And that's the story of the Great Amherst Heist and Esther Cox.
Huh Okay, Well, I did think it was going to end differently. I thought that this demon or whatever you want to call it, was gonna take her life.
For sure. There were no casualties in that manner. I mean, there were injuries, there were casualties in that manner, but there were no deaths.
Okay, that is wild, isn't it to just think that this happened to somebody? Yeah, because I don't know that. It's so far fetched to me to think like it. It's believable to me, because why on earth would someone you know, ever do that to themselves or how could they even do that to themselves to that extent.
And how could they trick that many people around them? You have people not only in one household, in multiple households, because she moved in with this guy who this other guy, right, Yep, things were happening there. You also have like when she was with employers, things happening there. You have reports of you know, people being around her and seeing shit from
doctors to clergymen, like they're witnessing these things. Yeah, and you're telling me she fooled every single one of them with these very elaborate things that like, how would she have made this box move fifteen feet across the room with people witnessing it? Is she sitting there with fishing line, really strong fishing line? I don't think so.
Well. Yeah, the people that aren't believing her, I think are the people that haven't, like experienced it first had.
Exactly so, And we have many people claiming these sort of things are still happening to this date, not to esther in her story, but like their own stories, their own hauntings, their own poltergeist, their own events, right. Yeah. In fact, one of the ones I can think of immediately off the top of my head is Robert the doll over in Florida, right right, So he is the world's most haunted doll. Allegedly, he's in a museum. You have to ask to take a picture of him.
And if you don't, bad shit happens.
And they have an entire wall dedicated to people writing letters to Robert, begging and pleading for forgiveness because shit is happening to them because they didn't ask permission. That just gives you chills right now, I do I want to say one thing. I am a skeptic person. I like to play Devil's advocate. I mean, that's something that I would tray often on this podcast is playing that Devil's advocate. So to put my devil's advocacy hat on
for a moment. We are talking about the time of the eighteen hundreds here, Okay, so documentation claim from this individual right that I said, you know, he came in and went on tour with Esther and that's where most of the documentation comes from. So he's doing a lot of post investigation after the fact. So people may have experienced these things let's say weeks ago, maybe even a month ago, maybe even two months ago. I don't know, but there there's these events that he's talking to people
after the fact. We all know that after the fact. We've heard people blow things out of proportion many a time.
It kind of escalates in your head.
So how much of these things this fifty pound box flew fifty feet across through or fifteen feet.
Sorry, I was like, oh, now it's blown fifty feet Well, exactly you know, right there.
Yeah, there's a way it can blow out a proportion even accidentally. Oh yeah, so was it really a fifty pound box? Maybe it was a box that was empty that said fifty pounds on it. Maybe it wasn't fifteen feet, maybe it was well, maybe it was only five you know. Maybe someone opened a door and then it hit the box and then a loud bang. Everyone remembers this loud bang from Esther reporting these and they turn around they see the box sliding.
I think there's too much though. I agree too much.
I agree, but I am just wanting to say, you can't tell me that post investigation, like after the fact, and all these things are exactly right.
No, oh yeah, I'm sure things have been.
Even if you if you want to put it on the strong end and you say fifty percent of them are over overblown and put out a proportion, that's still fifty percent of that information. That is I fucking wi I.
One thing I kind of have trouble is like how it just stopped. You know, is it something that she still kind of had to deal with all throughout her life but it maybe wasn't as drastic or she just kind of like kept it to herself for or what.
I don't know, because.
Yeah, just I mean, what made it stop? You know? That's that's where my head kind of goes, Like being in jail for a month gets stopped.
Well, if it is this traumatic event causing some sort of energy, you know, release in someone's life, let's put it that way. You know, it's like it's a built up some form of energy, whether you're drawing the energy to you or whether you are the source of the energy or not. Eventually, Hey, trauma fades. It never leaves entirely, but it does fade, you know what I mean with time. Yeah,
so maybe that's the case. You know, it's like a battery over time, it does lose its power and it slowly fades off.
Or she had new trauma now that was overshadowing that other one that started this. I don't know.
Maybe, I mean, she did get arrested for these events that maybe weren't her fault, and she went to jail for it.
M hm.
So maybe that was like something that she psychologically was able to shut it down. Who knows. Wow, Okay, people still don't know and understand what poltergeist truly are and what truly causes them. However, there is a lot of real documentation out there, including this case and many more, that suggests they are very real phenomena.
And it's still even happening to this date, right, Like, yes, not just all from back then.
Yes, Okay, you have people today, Like I guarantee you there are houses on the market right fucking now because people want out.
Yeah, that's just terrifying. Hey to think, I know, but I guess we can't live our life being scared of the unknown like that.
No, you always got to take the leap, right, don't be scared of the unknown. Anyways, this was a bit of a different story. I thought it'd be fun to do something a little bit different. We've once in a while had been doing a little more paranormal here and there, just for fun seats, and I thought, you know what, now's a good time throwing in there.
Yeah, it was super interesting. I just had the thought, like we almost thought about buying a house that was probably definitely.
Haunted, probably definitely. Yeah, it would have been a lot of work, was the problem. It was a like what was it nineteen twenty I think or something like.
That, something like that. It was stunning and it needed so much work.
It was like an abandoned house, good bones, but like everything about it needed work. And it would have been several hundred thousand dollars to get this thing back up to par and yeah, it was just a little too much of a project.
Well and then imagine putting all that money in there and then you do find out it's haunted.
Yeah, okay, yeah, but like this house, like it even had a carriage house out back. And when we think of carriage house, we think of like, oh, like a little like house for you know, like like an airbean be or something. Yeah, or yeah, you know, like for guests and stuff. Now this was literally a house to park your horse and carriage in. It was a carriage house. It was where you housed your carriage.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was wild, but it was really cool though. Yeah, So thank you for being here. Hopefully enjoyed that. And let us know what you think about the paranormal and maybe you think this was a little bit of a little bullshit and maybe you think it was totally real. Just a message. We'd love to hear your opinion. All our links are in the description of the podcast, and we appreciate you being here. Because of you, we get to do what we want for a living on this podcast.
We're completely independent. We research, we write, we do it all on our own, and because you're here, we get to do that. So thank you so much.
Yeah, we really can't thank you enough.
We really can't.
We can't.
We can't, can we we.
Can't, No, we can't.
All right, thanks for being here, and until next time, stay wicked.