The Great Amherst Mystery

A terrified scream echoed around the walls of the cramped cottage. The cries were those of 18-year-old Esther Cox and the moment would mark the beginning of one of the world's most notorious unsolved cases of poltergeist activity on record.

The writer and actor, Walter Hubbell spent several weeks living with the family in the haunted house and carefully documented the terrifying and life-threatening events. The accounts, reported in newspapers at the time and then more fully in Hubbell's book, gripped readers around the world.

Witnessed by hundreds of people over the course of many months, and with no obvious signs of this being a hoax, The Great Amherst Mystery, as it was called at the time, remains one of the most baffling and unexplained demonstrations of apparent supernatural power. Even its most vocal critic admitted that the case was a classic which had produced an impact of one kind or another on hundreds of thousands of people.

This new and complete edition of the written testimony of Walter Hubbell, who witnessed and first investigated these extraordinary events from 1878, includes the official statements of those present. This edition also contains an introduction written by Chris Hastings which sets the scene for the modern reader.

Those sceptical of the supernatural will find The Great Amherst Mystery one of the greatest of challenges. It is harder to explain how this could be a hoax than it is to accept that ghosts were responsible.

"When I read the accounts now in my journal, from which my experience is copied, I am almost speechless with wonder that I ever lived to behold such sights." - Walter Hubbell.