Strange Days at the Lamb Inn

The Lamb Inn was a large, comfortable establishment in Bristol, England, with a long history, from the mid-17th century until it was demolished in 1910,  Over the centuries, the inn undoubtedly saw many strange and interesting things, but undoubtedly its most famous episode began in late 1761, when all hell broke loose at the hostel.  And, yes, I am speaking quite literally.

Richard Giles had been running the Lamb Inn since the 1740s.  Aside from the inn, he also earned a living as a carrier--that is to say, he ran wagons back and forth from London.  Giles lived there with his wife, eight children, and several servants in perfect peace until the early morning of November 13, 1761.  (A Friday, for those of you who are superstitious.)  The two Giles daughters, thirteen year old Molly, and Dobby, aged eight, were still in bed when they were awakened by the unnerving sound of loud scratching at their bedroom window.  As the girls cowered under the blankets, the scratching sound seemed to travel to their beds.  Now thoroughly scared, they ran to tell their parents.  When Richard inspected the bedroom, he did not hear or see anything.  He shrugged and told his daughters that they had undoubtedly just heard pigeons on the roof.

Quiet resumed until December 6, when the scratching started up anew, this time accompanied by knocking noises.  The cacophony became a daily occurrence.  One day, while Richard was inspecting the bedroom, he not only heard the scratches and knocks, but saw a wooden clothing box start rocking violently.  It then fell over, emptying the clothes on the floor.

Molly and Dobby were moved to another bedroom, which seemed to only make things worse.  Whatever entity was making the noises now turned to physically harming the girls, biting them and sticking pins into their arms.  Various items of furniture were thrown around their room.

Inevitably, news of the sinister haunting spread through the city.  A chemist named Henry Durbin, desiring to play amateur ghost-hunter, got permission to spend the night in the girls’ bedroom.  The spirits put on quite a show for him.  A glass drifted across the room, smashing itself into a wall.  Molly’s nightcap was snatched from her head by an invisible force which “beat a tattoo on her with the skill of a drummer.”  Furniture and chamber pots were hurled about.  The curtains moved up and down.  Phantom voices murmured ominously.  It was all, Henry wrote, “contrary to the course of nature.”

The spirits--or whatever you care to call what was visiting the inn--then took to kidnapping Dobby.  One day, she disappeared, only to be found under her bed, pinned there by some unseen force keeping her from moving, or even calling for help.  She said that “a woman in a ragged dress, a brown chip hat and great holes in her stockings” had forced her there.

More outsiders came to inspect the house, which was now universally regarded as being haunted by some evil being.  They were greeted with an eerie squealing noise.  Questions were asked of the invisible presence, who answered by tapping out letters.  The spirit blamed its presence on a witch in nearby Mangotsfield, who had been hired by a business rival of Richard Giles to curse him and his carrier business.  The spirit appeared to be proven correct when one of Giles’ wagons became so badly stuck on a road that eighteen horses were needed to move it.  The following day, the same thing happened to another wagon.

Bristol’s clergymen were called in to try to exorcise the spirit.  This did absolutely nothing to rid the household of its presence, but these men of God were impressed by the entity’s ability to answer their questions in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, so there’s that.

On one occasion, the two girls were levitated out of their beds towards the ceiling.  The combined strength of three men were unable to stop it.  Molly was finally moved to one of Giles’ other homes, but the entity mockingly followed her there.

One day, Giles was traveling in one of his wagons when the harness on the gig suddenly and mysteriously broke, throwing him into the road.  He later said that at the time of the accident, he saw the apparition of a woman standing by the side of the road.  By the time he picked himself off the ground, she had vanished.

Soon afterwards, Henry Durbin was informed by a Mr. Jennings that he--Jennings--had heard voices mentioning the uproar at the Lamb Inn, and threatening him, as well.  The voices said that the spirit’s control over the Giles girls was weakening, but its power over “the old one” was increasing.  On Durbin’s next visit to the Lamb Inn, he found that Richard Giles was seriously ill from some ailment his doctor couldn’t identify, and was powerless to treat.  Giles died three days later, on May 16, 1762.

This tragic event only intensified Durbin’s desire to investigate whatever it was that insisted on plaguing the Giles family.  The spirit had once told him that its name was “Malchi.”  Durbin consulted with a local “white witch” about “Malchi.”  She told him that the entity was the head of the “familiar spirits,” knowing all human languages and knowledge.  “There are some learned spirits and some ignorant.”

On a more practical level, the “witch” gave him a recipe for banishing Malchi.  It involved emptying the Giles girls’ chamber pots into a pipkin (an earthenware cooking pot) and placing it on a fire, after which, “beautiful colours came out of it like a rainbow.”  Chamber pot soup sounds like the sort of thing which would get rid of anybody, and, sure enough, by December 1762, Malchi had departed the Lamb Inn, for good.