Rev. R.A. Temple, the well known Wesleyan minister pastor of the Wesleyan Church in Amherst, has witnessed some of the manifestations. He saw, among other strange things, a bucket of cold water become agitated, and to all appearances boil, while standing on the kitchen table.
As soon as people in the village found that such eminent men as Dr. Clay, Dr. Caritte and Rev. Dr. Temple took an interest in the case, it became quite fashionable for people in the village to call at Dan's little cottage to see Esther Cox and witness the wonderful manifestations. While the house was filled with visitors, large crowds often stood outside unable to gain admittance. On several occasions the village police force had to be called out to keep order, so anxious were people to see and hear for themselves.
Many believed and still believe the whole affair a fraud, and others say that Esther mesmerizes people, and they think they hear and see things which never have an existence. Dr. Nathan Tupper is of this belief, although he has never witnessed a single manifestation.
Dr. Caritte, who continued to be one of the daily callers at the cottage, would have a theory one day that would seem to account for the manifestations he had witnessed, and the next day something wonderful would occur and upset his latest theory completely, so that he finally gave up in despair and became simply a passive spectator. Things went on in this way until December, when Esther was taken ill with diphtheria, and confined to her bed for about two weeks, during which time the manifestations ceased entirely. After she had recovered from her illness, she went to Sackville, N.B., to visit her other married sister, Mrs. John Snowden, remaining at her house for about two weeks. While there she was entirely free from the manifestations.
On returning to Dan's cottage the most startling part of the case was developed. One night while in bed with her sister Jane in another room, her room having been changed to see if that would put a stop to the affair, she told her sister that she could hear a voice saying to her that the house was to be set on fire that night by a ghost. The voice also said that it had once lived on the earth, but had been dead for some years. The members of the household were called in at once, and told what had been said. They only laughed and remarked that no such thing as that could take place, because there were no ghosts. Dr. Clay had said it was all electricity. "And," added Dan, "electricity can't set the house on fire unless it comes from a cloud in the form of lightning." As they were talking the matter over, to the amazement of all present, a lighted match fell from the ceiling to the bed, and would have set it on fire had not Jane put it out instantly. During the next ten minutes, eight or ten lighted matches fell on the bed and about the room, but were all extinguished before any harm could be done. In the course of the night the loud knockings commenced. The family could now all converse with the invisible power in this way. It would knock once for a negative answer, and three times for an answer in the affirmative, giving two knocks when in doubt about a reply. Dan asked if the house would be set on fire, and the reply was three loud knocks on the floor, meaning yes; and a fire was started about five minutes afterwards. The ghost took a dress belonging to Esther that was hanging on a nail in the wall near the door, rolled it up, and, before any of the persons in the room could remove it from under the bed, where the ghost had placed it before their very eyes, it was all in a blaze. It was extinguished, however, without being much injured by the fire. The next morning all was consternation in the cottage. Dan and Olive were afraid that the ghost would start a fire in some inaccessible place and burn the house down. They were both convinced that it really was a ghost, "for" said Olive, "nothing but the devil or a ghost with evil designs, could do so terrible a thing as start a fire in a cottage at the dead of night."
Dr. Clay's theory might be true, but it was not clear to them how electricity could go about a house gifted with the cunning of a fiend. "It is true," said Dan, "that lightning often sets fire to houses and barns, but it has never yet been known to roam about a man's house, as this strange power does. And as Esther can hear it speak, and it does whatever it says it will, why I believe it to be a ghost, or else the devil." While Olive was churning in the kitchen one morning about three days after the fire under the bed, she noticed smoke coming from the cellar. Esther was seated in the dining room when Olive first saw the smoke, and had been seated there for the last hour, previous to which she had been in the kitchen assisting her sister to wash the breakfast dishes as was her custom. On seeing the smoke, both she and Esther were for the moment utterly paralyzed with fear. What they so dreaded had at last come to pass. The house was evidently on fire, and that fire set by a devilish ghost. What was to be done? Olive was the first to recover from the shock. Seizing the bucket of drinking water, always kept standing on the kitchen table, she rushed down the cellar stairs, and was horrified at the sight which burst upon her view. There in the far corner of the cellar was a barrel of shavings blazing almost to the floor above. In the meantime Esther had reached the cellar, and stood looking at the crackling flames in blank astonishment. The water Olive had poured into the barrel was not enough to quench the flames, for in the excitement of the moment she had spilled more than half of it on her way down. What was to be done? The house would catch and probably be burned to the ground, and they would be rendered homeless.
"Oh! if Dan were at home, he could put it out," Olive managed to articulate, for both she and Esther were nearly suffocated with the dense black smoke with which the cellar was filled, and now the barrel itself had caught. The cellar was very small, and everything in it would soon be blazing unless the fire could be extinguished at once.
"Oh! what shall we do," cried Esther, "what shall we do?"
"Run out in the street and cry fire as loud as you can. Come, let's run at once or the whole house will burn down," exclaimed Olive, by this time wild with fear.
So, both she and Esther ran up stairs and out into the street, crying "fire! fire!" Of course their cries aroused the whole neighborhood. At the moment a gentleman, a stranger in the village, who happened to be passing, instantly threw off his coat, rushed into the cottage, picked up a mat from the dining room floor, and was down in the cellar in a second. He put the fire entirely out, and then, without waiting to be thanked, walked out of the cottage and was soon lost to view in the distance; and, what is remarkably strange, nobody knows who he was or whence he came, for from that day he has not been seen.