Terrifying Haunting or Clever Hoax? Was Mompesson's ghost a genuine spirit? In 1662 English landowner John Mompesson began telling the world that his household was haunted by an evil and mischievous spirit. In a letter to William Creed, Regius professor of Divinity at Oxford and a relation by marriage, he said that he had initially thought that the disturbances were the work of burglars, before being forced to conclude that they could only be supernatural. He blamed the visitations on the witchcraft of William Drury, a drummer he had caused to be arrested in March for claiming money under false...