This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 5, Issue 2, from 1991.

A small, inexplicable scratching in the wainscoting of a house in Cock Lane, a narrow thoroughfare within the purlieus of Smithfield and the parish of the tolling of the hanging bell of Newgate Prison, was the modest herald of a curious case which was to blossom into a classic eighteenth-century enigma.

All London was set, literally, by the ears by the escalating furore of rappings, crashings and scratchings perpetrated by an alleged spirit entity nicknamed ‘Scratching Fanny’.

No less a personage than Dr Samuel Johnson was to set forth upon intrepid investigation and, in due course, pronounce the prankish poltergeist a great sham, and the whole paradox was to culminate in court, with a man accused of murder by a ghost defending his good repute by counter-charging criminal conspiracy.