Old Jeffrey and the Epworth Rectory Haunting, Lincolnshire

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated August 25, 2026 · How we verify

The Epworth Rectory haunting is unusual among English ghost stories because the family at the centre of it went on to change the religious history of the country. The Old Rectory in Epworth, Lincolnshire, was the childhood home of John Wesley, and for roughly six weeks over the winter of 1716 and 1717 his mother, father and siblings recorded a run of knocks, footsteps and groans that they could not account for. The children gave the disturbance a name: Old Jeffrey.

Quick Facts on the Old Rectory at Epworth

Style: Queen Anne. Rebuilt: 1709, in brick, after fire destroyed the earlier wooden rectory. Occupants: the Reverend Samuel Wesley, rector of Epworth from 1697 to 1735, his wife Susanna and their 19 children. Status: Grade I listed. Owner: the Methodist Church of Great Britain, which maintains it as a museum. Reported activity: knocking, footsteps, groaning, all confined to the winter of 1716 to 1717.

The Wesleys, the Fire of 1709 and a House Rebuilt in Brick

Samuel Wesley held the living at Epworth for nearly four decades, from 1697 until his death in 1735. He and Susanna had 19 children in the house. One of them, John, grew up to become a founder of Methodism, which is the reason the building is preserved at all rather than being another handsome parsonage on the Isle of Axholme.

On 9 February 1709, while the Wesleys were living there, fire burnt down the wooden rectory. It was rebuilt in brick, and that Queen Anne-style rebuild is the structure standing today. The fire matters to the wider Wesley story quite apart from any ghost: it is a documented, dated event in the family’s life, and it is worth separating from the later disturbances, which are not documented in the same way.

Old Jeffrey, Christmas Day 1716 to January 1717

The disturbances are said to have begun in December 1716 and to have consisted of loud noises and knockings repeating on a fairly regular pattern. Hetty, the fourth eldest Wesley daughter, gave the supposed spirit the nickname Old Jeffrey. He is said to have announced himself to the whole household on Christmas Day 1716.

Susanna Wesley’s own account describes “there was such a noise in the room over our heads, as if several people were walking, then running up and down stairs that we thought the children would be frightened”. As she and her husband searched the house without finding a cause, the account continues, Old Jeffrey went on “rattling and thundering in every room, and even blowing an invisible horn at deafening decibels”. In January 1717 the whole business stopped as abruptly as it had started.

That episode, and no other, is the basis of the Old Rectory’s reputation. It remains one of the best-known English poltergeist claims, sometimes called the Wesley poltergeist. It is also a claim about six weeks three centuries ago, not an account of anything a visitor should expect to encounter today.

What Addington Bruce and Trevor Hall Made of the Evidence

The Epworth case has attracted more serious scrutiny than most, and it has not fared well. Writing in 1908, Addington Bruce noted that the earliest surviving records of the haunting differ substantially from the versions circulated later. On his reading, the original eighteenth-century material reduces the affair to some alleged creaking noises, knocks, footsteps or groaning sounds, a long way from horns and thundering. Bruce concluded that “we are, therefore, justified in believing that in this case, like so many others of its kind, the fallibility of human memory has played an overwhelming part in exaggerating the experiences actually undergone”. He suggested that Hetty had produced the phenomena fraudulently.

Trevor H. Hall reached similar ground in New Light on Old Ghosts, published in 1965, offering natural explanations for what happened at the rectory. Anyone visiting for the ghost should know that the two most careful examinations of the case both came down against it.

Visiting the Old Rectory Today

In 1954 the Church of England sold the rectory to the British Methodist Church, which bought it with financial support from the World Methodist Council. Thomas Rayson carried out the restoration, and some of the external features were returned to the way the Wesleys would have known the house. It is managed by a board of trustees appointed by the British Methodist Conference and the World Methodist Council; the chair of trustees in 2015 was the Rev. Graham Carter, a past president of the Methodist Conference.

It is run as a museum rather than as a haunted attraction, and the interpretation on site is about the Wesley family and the origins of Methodism. Treat it as a place of pilgrimage for a great many visitors, because that is what it is. The Grade I listing reflects the quality of the 1709 rebuild, and the house is worth the trip for the architecture and the family story alone, whatever you make of Old Jeffrey.

Address: Epworth, Lincolnshire, England

See Old Rectory for Yourself

Sources

• The Rectory After 1954
• Historic ghosts and ghost hunters: Bruce, H. Addington (Henry Addington), b. 1874: Free
• historicengland.org.uk
• Famous Haunted Houses and Places – Epworth rectory
• GeoHack – Old Rectory, Epworth
• Wikipedia: Old Rectory, Epworth

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