About 1671, parson Symonds, who officiated at Garsdon church in north Wiltshire in south west England, was riding home late one night when a spectre leapt up behind him. The spectre rode parallel to him until they came to the parsonage, where it jumped off. The apparition then turned to face Symonds, and “gap’d at him”. Symonds identified the ghost as that of John Estcourt, a gentleman who had died about two years earlier.

Halloween is all about witches and ghosts. In English scientific circles in the second half of the 17th century, there was a discussion about whether such things existed and how their existence could be proved.

The Royal Society, founded in 1660, was the country’s principal scientific institution. Joseph Glanvill, a Royal Society fellow, investigated spirits and witches. His Saducismus Triumphatus (1681) aimed to prove their existence by cataloguing cases in detail. He argued that denying them was to deny God’s existence.

Symonds’ haunting was recorded by that of another of the society’s fellows, John Aubrey, in a survey of Wiltshire’s natural world. Aubrey agreed with Glanvill that the supernatural deserved serious study and directed his readers to Saducismus, but he thought Glanvill somewhat gullible.

Aubrey........

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