Cox, Esther
Cox, Esther (1859–1912) At the age of nineteen, Esther Cox was the focus of Canada’s most famous poltergeist case, involving what became known as the Amherst Poltergeist. In 1878 she was living with her sister and brother-in-law, Olive and Daniel Teed, in Amherst, Nova Scotia, when she was raped by their neighbour, a shoemaker named Bob MacNeal. Immediately afterward, strange things began happening in the Teeds’ house. Everyone living there, including Olive and Daniel, Daniel’s brother, and the Teeds’ two young children, heard unexplained knocking and banging and unidentifiable muffled voices during the night, and on two occasions Cox’s skin became hot, red, and unnaturally swollen. While a doctor was visiting Cox to study her condition, he heard scraping and saw letters form in the plaster wall, spelling out “ESTHER COX YOU ARE MINE TO KILL.” He decided to stay in the house to investigate what had caused this strange phenomenon and made detailed observations of other evidence of poltergeist activity. This included silverware, pins, and needles spontaneously flying through the air and burning matches inexplicably dropping from the ceiling. In addition, Cox was attacked by pins and needles that appeared in midair and flung themselves at her. When she fled the house for a nearby church, the banging sounds followed her, and when she fled to a barn, the falling matches ignited its hay. After this, Cox was imprisoned for a month as an arsonist, despite her and others’ insistence that spirits were to blame for the fires. In prison her torments lessened, and sometime after she was released from prison and married they ended altogether. As to what might have caused this temporary poltergeist activity, experts on such phenomena have suggested that the trauma of Cox’s rape might have either attracted a violent spirit or enabled Cox’s mind to produce the poltergeist effects. Skeptics, however, dismiss the stories about Esther Cox as nothing more than “tall tales.”
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SOURCE:
The Greenhaven Encyclopedia of Paranormal Phenomena – written by Patricia D. Netzley © 2006 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning
