A REMARKABLE ACCOUNT OF KNOCKING AND WAILING BEFORE DEATH.
A few miles from Newcastle Emlyn there is a farmhouse called Pen’rallt-hebog, which is situated in the parish of Bettws-Evan, in Cardiganshire.
Besides Pen’rallt-hebog there is also—or there was—another house on the same farm known as Pen’rallt-Fach. And there lived at this Penrallt-fach about 25 years ago a tailor named Samuel Thomas, and his wife.
About that time a very strange incident occurred, and the following account of it was given me by Mr. S. Thomas himself an intelligent middle-aged man who is still alive I believe.
One morning, very early, Thomas beard a knocking at the door of his bedroom, and he enquired from his bed “who is there?” but there was no reply, and everything was quiet again.
The next morning again he heard knocking at the door, though not the bedroom door this time, but the front door of the house. My informant exclaimed from his bed, “Alright, I am getting up now.” But when he did get up, and opened the door, not a single soul could be seen anywhere. Thomas was quite surprised, and perplexed as to who could have come to disturb him at five o’clock in the morning, two mornings one after the other, and disappear so mysteriously. No voice had been heard, nor the sound of footsteps, only a knocking at the door. After this there was no further knocking for some time.
Twelve months to the very day after this a brother of Thomas who lived in some other part of the country came on a visit, and to spend a day with him, and this was in the first week of January, 1883. Some day during this week the two brothers went out with their guns to shoot some game, but soon returned to the house again, and in the evening Thomas went to his workshop to do some “job”; but as he was busily engaged in making a suit of clothes, he heard a knocking at the window quite suddenly—two knocks. He thought that some friend outside wanted to call his attention to something; but when he looked at the window there was no one to be seen After a while the knocking went on again, and continued for about ten minutes.
The second night the knocking at the window continued as the previous evening between ten and eight o’clock, but nothing was to be seen.
On the third night there was a knocking at the window several times, and it was much louder or more violent than it had been on the two previous evenings. The tailor and the young man who was his assistant decided now to keep their eyes on the window, and as soon as they did so there was no more knocking; but the moment they ceased looking and resumed their work, the knocking was heard again. There were several young men present in the room this evening, and they heard the knocking, and even the wife heard it from another apartment of the house.
These “spirit knockings” had been now noised abroad everywhere, and amongst others who went there in order to hear them was the farmer on whose land the tailor lived. The farmer did not believe in superstition, but when he heard the knocking he was convinced that there was something supernatural about it.
On the fifth night a very loud knock at the door was heard as if some one attempted to break through; and on the sixth evening when my informant went out for a short walk he heard such noise as if two hundred horses were rushing by him.
On the seventh and eighth evenings the knocking still continued; and on the ninth evening, Thomas went out with a gun in his hand, and found that there was no one to be seen anywhere, but he heard some groaning voice in the air, and doleful wailing. The man returned to the house quite frightened.
There was no more knocking after this evening.
In the beginning of January, 1883, at the very time when these strange knockings, sound, and wailing were heard at Pen’rallt Fach cottage, a woman whose old home had been this very house before she had left her native land was dying in America; and her crying on her death-bed in that far-off land was heart-rending, when she found that she was too ill to return to Wales, to die at her old home in Cardiganshire, and to be buried with her husband, who had died before she had left for America. One Mr. Lloyd, from Newcastle Emlyn, happened to be at her death-bed in America, when she was longing in vain to die in her old home in Wales. This solves the mystery of the “spirit knockings,” and it also confirms the truth of the old belief that Death makes his presence known by knocking at the door of the relatives of friends of those he is about to strike.