The Haunted Girl of Princess Street

[00:00:00] Esther Cox was born on March 28, 1860, so this takes place a while back. This happened in the village of Upper Stuyack in Nova Scotia. Just three weeks after she was born, though, her mother died from complications of childbirth, and then her father left. He remarried and moved to Maine. By the time Esther was nine months old, she was left with her maternal grandmother. And it was her grandma that raised her.

[00:00:25] Now, Esther was quiet and hardworking, known for her small stature, short brown hair, and clear blue eyes. Those who knew her described her as honest, mild-tempered. She had, by all accounts, lived a life with obedience, modesty, qualities that were expected of a young woman back then. In her teenage years, Esther suffered another loss. Her grandmother died. With nowhere else to turn, she and several of her siblings moved to Amherst, Nova Scotia,

[00:00:53] to live with her older sister, Olive Teed, and Olive's husband, Daniel Teed. At the time, Amherst was a bustling town of about 3,000 people. It's small by modern standards, but thriving in its own way. It was near the Bay of Fundy. It was known for shipbuilding, agriculture, and light manufacturing. Daniel Teed worked as a foreman at a local shoe factory, and the family lived in a normal two-story yellow cottage at the corner of Princess and Church streets.

[00:01:22] Esther, who was now 18, moved into this crowded but loving home in 1878. She shared a room and a bed with her sister, Jane. Also living there were her brother, William, Daniel's brother, John, and Olive and Daniel's two young sons, five-year-old Willie and baby George. Even though it was a bit crowded, the home was described by visitors as cheerful, clean, and peaceful. And for several weeks, life passed in a completely predictable way.

[00:01:51] Esther helped with the housework, played with the children, and attended church regularly. But I wouldn't be telling you this story if everything had stayed normal. Because everything changed on August 18, 1878. That night, Esther went out with a man named Bob McNeil. It was a local shoemaker who had been courting her. Now, what exactly happened between them during that evening remains unclear. But what we do know is pretty chilling.

[00:02:18] They say that at some point during the carriage ride, McNeil pulled a revolver and threatened Esther. She returned home late, soaked to the skin, visibly shaken, and in what witnesses later described as hysterical condition from excitement. McNeil never returned to the Teed house after that night. And when questioned, Esther refused to talk about the incident. She went completely silent. And over the next several days, she cried herself to sleep.

[00:02:46] Her family noticed the change, but gave her space, not realizing that whatever had happened in that carriage ride was the beginning of something much larger. What's about to happen here is a series of mysterious events that were documented by someone who ended up staying close to this family, noting the events in detail. Strange writing, items moving, and witnesses, credible ones, standing behind these strange paranormal occurrences.

[00:03:16] This is also known as the great amorous mystery. And it's told through a new perspective that focuses on Esther herself, the paranormal events, and an analysis of what may have explained it all. My name is Edwin. And here is a horror story. Ten days after the incident with Bob McNeil, the one that Esther refused to talk about, the first of the strange events started happening.

[00:03:46] It was an ordinary evening. Esther and Jane were in bed. The room was dimly lit by a lamp. And they were settling down. And Esther cried out. She said that she heard something scratching beneath her bed. At first, they assumed it was a mouse. But they searched and found nothing. Still unnerved, they went to sleep. The next night, September 5th, it happened again. Only worse. This time, the scratching was louder.

[00:04:14] And it was followed by a sudden, inexplicable movement. A pasteboard box, filled with fabric scraps and stuff like that, which had been stored under the bed, leapt into the air and crashed to the floor. Now, the girls were stunned. They placed the box back in the center of the room. And they watched it. And it moved again. And no one was near it. Screaming, they woke up everyone.

[00:04:39] Daniel Teat, who was now wide awake and annoyed, came upstairs, checked out the box, and told them that they were imagining things. That it must have only been a bad dream. But the worst was yet to come. On the third night, September 6th, things escalated. Esther woke Jane with a scream. She was standing in the center of the room, shaking uncontrollably. Her face had turned bright red and her eyes bulged.

[00:05:07] Her short brown hair stood on end, as if charged with electricity. Jane later said that Esther's body looked swollen, almost as if it were inflating from within. Loud booms shook the howl, startling everyone awake. Esther then collapsed onto the bed and her swelling vanished as quickly as it had come. Later that night, around 10pm, the covers flew off the bed and landed in the far corner of the room.

[00:05:34] The sounds, banging and booming, were so loud that they were compared to gunshots. This time, the family called a doctor, Dr. Karit, who arrived and witnessed the activity first hand. As he sat beside Esther, the pillow moved on its own. Loud knocking erupted beneath the bed and then followed him as he moved across the room, pounding on the floor and then the ceiling and the walls.

[00:06:01] And then came the scratching sounds, loud and metallic, from the wall beside Esther's bed. The sound of something being carved. And then, in foot-length letters, words appeared in the plaster. Esther Cox, you are mine to kill. Shortly after, a chunk of the plasters tore itself off from the wall and crashed to the floor. The banging continued for nearly two hours before finally stopping.

[00:06:32] And Esther fell asleep. The next morning, September 7th, Esther woke up as if nothing had happened. She was calm, dressed and helping with chores. Later that day, in the cellar, potatoes reportedly flew through the air, narrowly missing her and Dr. Karit, who had returned. And at this point, there could be no more talk about this being a dream. Whatever was happening was happening in front of witnesses.

[00:07:01] The Teet family was obviously shaken, right? Word spread across Amherst. A young woman, barely 18, was being haunted or possessed or attacked by something no one could see. And the worst was that no one knew why. In the days that followed, the phenomena grew in intensity and frequency. Bed covers would jump from the bed. Pillows were tossed across rooms.

[00:07:28] Esther would cry out in pain as needles or pins appeared embedded in her skin, sometimes drawn out in front of witnesses. Her body would swell and then suddenly return to normal, and she often complained of intense heat or pressure just before the events occurred. Witnesses heard loud bangs like hammer blows against wood, some that echoed through the walls, the floors and the ceilings.

[00:07:54] They seemed to follow people around the room, most often Esther herself. Sometimes it sounded like gunshots under the bed, and other times like furniture being dragged across the floor when nothing had moved. In one case, a bucket of cold water sitting quietly on the kitchen table began to bubble violently for no apparent reason. One event that I found pretty disturbing involved a clasp knife flying across the room

[00:08:23] and stabbing Esther in the back, leaving her bruised and bleeding. Supposedly the knife was taken out, and then it flew again and stabbed her right in the same spot. And people were watching them happen, and that's what made the Amherst Haunting such a strong case for proof about the paranormal. The number and variety of witnesses, many of them considered intelligent and respectable. Among them were Dr. Edwin Clay, a local physician, and Reverend Temple, a Baptist minister.

[00:08:54] Both men visited the house repeatedly. Both of them saw phenomena that defied explanation and both defended Esther publicly. Reverend Temple would later say that he had no doubt that the events were real, and that Esther was not faking it. He claimed to have seen cutlery fly through the air and objects burst into flame. That Esther would cry in pain as she was pricked or scratched by unseen forces.

[00:09:23] One of the more bizarre and memorable manifestations involved iron spikes placed on Esther's lap. Within minutes, the spikes became too hot to touch and were launched across the room. No one could explain how or why. By this point, mid to late September 1878, the Teed House was a phenomenon. People were gathering outside.

[00:09:50] Friends and neighbors were invited in to witness the event. Some left freaked out and others were skeptical, but nearly all agreed that something strange was going on. In late September and into October, the disturbances spread through nearly every room of the house. Aside from things moving, fires were starting spontaneously, often from no identifiable source.

[00:10:16] Through all of this, Esther most of the time seemed confused, frightened, and exhausted. Her physical health was deteriorating. She lost her appetite. She began to lose weight. And yet the force, whatever it was, kept going. Then suddenly, in December of that same year, 1878, everything stopped. Esther came down with a serious case of diphtheria, a life-threatening illness back in the 19th century.

[00:10:47] For nearly two weeks, she was bedridden, feverish and weak. The strange activity, the banging, the fires, the flying objects, stopped completely. Now, pay attention to this part, because this would become one of the most telling patterns in the entire mystery. Whenever Esther was removed from her usual surroundings, or when she was physically weakened, her haunting also seemed to stop. Now, this was a clue, and one that later investigators would scrutinize closely.

[00:11:17] The story had spread through the town and into the surrounding communities by this point. Newspaper articles had begun to appear. Theories were flying, spirits, demons, trickery, mental illness. No one could agree. After her recovery from diphtheria in late December, Esther spent two weeks in the nearby town of Sackville, New Brunswick, staying with her married sister. Now, this was a much-needed break, and for the first time in months, life seemed normal.

[00:11:46] No bangs, no fires, no flying cutlery. But as soon as Esther returned to Amherst in early January of 1879 and moved back into the teed home, the activity picked up where it had left off. Loud rapping sounds in the walls, things moving on their own, spontaneous fires erupting from nothing. One day, a fire broke out in the cellar. It was quickly extinguished, but town's fire marshal was now involved.

[00:12:15] He didn't believe in ghosts, and he certainly didn't believe in poltergeists. To him, this looked like arson. So he accused Esther directly, and said she was facing legal suspicion, even though there was no proof and no clear motive. Some neighbors believed that Esther should be sent away. Others thought that she needed an exorcism or a jail cell. One woman was overheard saying that if Esther were her daughter,

[00:12:42] she would have whipped her until the nonsense stopped. Now, inside the home, the stress was mounting. Daniel Teed, Esther's brother-in-law, had reached his limit. With a young family to take care of and his household in constant chaos, he made a difficult decision. Esther needed to leave. So he reached out to a family friend named John White, a local man who had shown sympathy for Esther and believed that she wasn't to blame for the strange events.

[00:13:12] John agreed to take her in. Now, in January, again, 1879 now, roughly four months after the disturbances had begun, Esther moved into the White household. And at first, things seemed promising. The first two weeks in her new home were quiet. It was enough to raise a cautious kind of hope. Maybe the thing haunting her had finally stopped. Maybe it had stayed behind in the yellow cottage.

[00:13:40] But then came the third week. One morning, Esther was using a scrub brush to clean the hallway floor when it suddenly vanished from her hand. Shocked, she called for Mrs. White and her daughter, Mary, who helped her search the house top to bottom. The brush was nowhere to be found. And then, without warning, it fell from the ceiling, striking Esther on the head. The ghost was back.

[00:14:09] From that point on, it seemed to grow more active with each passing day. Knocking sounds returned, sometimes so loud that they shook the furniture. Esther discovered that if she asked yes or no questions, the ghost would respond by rapping once for no and three times for yes. People began to test it, asking how much money was in their pockets, what name they were thinking of, and the entity responded with startling accuracy. The witnesses, again, were baffled.

[00:14:38] The ghost appeared to know things that it couldn't possibly know. But it wasn't just playful anymore. The energy around Esther began to turn malicious. It was around this time that the ghost, or whatever it was, began to identify itself. The name it gave was Bob Nicol. A gray figure with glaring eyes, Bob claimed to have been a shoemaker in life. And his messages, often communicated through automatic writing,

[00:15:08] were laced with profanity and threats. Through all those means, he called Esther vile names. He claimed that he would burn down the house if she didn't leave. To people close to Esther, the name sounded familiar. Maybe it sounds familiar to you too. Do you remember the incident with Bob McNeil? The shoemaker who had tried to court Esther in the summer of 1878? He had threatened Esther with a gun, terrifying her.

[00:15:37] Anyway, he disappeared from her life completely after that. Now, months later, an entity named Bob, a shoemaker, was tormenting her from beyond the veil. So many began to wonder, was this ghost a manifestation of Esther's trauma? Or was something more literal at play? A spirit using the identity of her real-world abuser to inflict psychological torment.

[00:16:10] In March of 1879, the case reached the ears of a man who would go on to become its most famous documentarian, per se. Walter Hubble. A traveling actor who saw the story in the local press and immediately recognized an opportunity. So he came to Amherst. He wanted to witness the phenomena, but also make money from it. Hubble struck up a partnership with John White and made plans for a lecture tour,

[00:16:38] with Esther appearing on stage while he told her story. The idea was bold and controversial. But before the tour could begin, Esther was sent away again, this time to St. John, New Brunswick, where she stayed with Captain James Beck and his family. And her tormentors followed her. The same thing happened here. Knocking sounds resumed, new ghosts, one named Maggie Fisher, the other one Peter Cox. They began to speak through her

[00:17:06] in the same coded system of raps. Observers, including men of science and religion, were baffled. Some were frightened, others were convinced, but all were watching something they couldn't explain. Back in Amherst, Walter Hubble was preparing for her return, because when she got back, they would take her on tour. Now this wasn't supposed to be a theatrical performance. Esther would simply sit on stage, silent and pale,

[00:17:34] while Hubble delivered lectures about the events in Amherst. The flying objects, the fires, the ghost named Bob Nickel, and the terrifying inscription, Esther Cox, you are mine to kill. So Hubble's goal was part education, part spectacle. He wanted to defend Esther, but also to monetize the story. The public was eager. He wrote his lecture in the very house where many of the phenomena had occurred.

[00:18:05] It was on June 11th, 1879, when Hubble met Esther for the first time. She had just gotten back from her stay at the Van Amburg farm, a peaceful rural retreat where, for nearly eight weeks, the ghostly disturbances had nearly vanished. For the first time in months, she had known something close to peace. But peace doesn't sell tickets, and Walter Hubble knew it. So the next day, on June 12th, Hubble and Esther left for Moncton, New Brunswick.

[00:18:35] The small city was excited with rumors of the haunted girl. Crowds gathered at the train station to catch a glimpse of her. Hubble presented his lecture on June 13th and the 14th, while Esther just seated silently nearby. During one performance, he claimed a rocking chair moved on its own, startling audience members. He took it as confirmation that the four surrounding Esther hadn't been left behind in Amherst. And through this early success,

[00:19:05] they pushed onto Chatham, planning to repeat the lecture on June 20th. But once they arrived, a crowd had already formed. Not out of curiosity, but out of anger. The local public was outraged. Some accused them of witchcraft. Others believed Esther was a dangerous fraud, bringing misfortune wherever she went. Stones were thrown, windows were broken, and the venue was nearly stormed by a mob. The tour ended immediately.

[00:19:35] On June 21st, Hubble and Esther returned to the teed house in Amherst. She was physically unharmed, but emotionally, the collapse of the tour had taken a deep toll. Hubble wrote that she was in a wretched state of mind, barely holding herself together. And at one point, he claimed, she confided that she no longer wished to live. But here's something worth noting. It's through Walter Hubble's account in the books he published that I found a lot of this information,

[00:20:05] just as a word of caution here. Let's see if you come up with the same conclusion as I do, near the end. During Hubble's six-week stay at Amherst, Esther, he wrote, The storm would enter a trance-like state, sometimes speaking in a voice not her own. Her body would swell, her eyes would glaze over, and then, when the storm passed, she would collapse, exhausted and unaware of what she had done.

[00:20:30] You said that the spirit calling itself Bob Nickel grew more and more aggressive, hurling profanity and making violent threats. At one point, a beef bone reportedly flew from the yard and struck Esther in the forehead. And at another, she was stabbed in the arm with the sewing needle that no one saw move. Now, through all of this, Hubble kept a detailed journal, noting each event, the time, the witnesses, the circumstances.

[00:20:57] But later comparisons of those journals with his published book would raise serious questions about what he saw and what might have been embellished. Now, I found out about this through a critique of the writings, the ones that Walter Hubble did. This one came from another researcher, Dr. Walter Prince. On July 3rd, Esther went again to Van Ambers Farm, the retreat area. She returned to the Teed House on July 6th,

[00:21:25] only to leave again on July 11th for another stay at the farm. Now this time for good. She finally found somewhere where the ghosts didn't follow. Hubble's final visit to her came on August 1st, 1879. By then, Esther seemed at peace. She told him that the hauntings had stopped and her face had color again. Her voice was steady. She was ready to move on. But fate had one more cruel twist in store.

[00:21:55] On October 1879, Esther was accused of stealing clothes from the Davisons and bringing them to the Van Ambers Farm. She said no, but the evidence didn't look good. And when soon after the Davison barn caught on fire, there was only one person to blame. Now, Esther claimed that the fire was not her fault, that Bob Nickel, the ghost who had tormented her before, had started it. But this time, no one was inclined to believe her. The townspeople had reached their limit by this point.

[00:22:24] Sympathy had turned into suspicion, and now Esther's name was tied, not to just spirits, but to crimes. She was arrested and charged with arson. At her trial on November 6th, 1879, the courtroom filled with townspeople. Some believed she was guilty. Others whispered about her long history of strange happenings and whether she was cursed or simply cursed with bad luck. The judge didn't care for theories.

[00:22:51] He handed down a guilty verdict and sentenced Esther to four months in prison. She served just one. Why the sentence was shortened is unclear. Some say it was public pressure. Others say it was because Esther was young, female, and fragile. Regardless, in December of 1879, she was released, physically free, but forever marked. And then something strange happened. After her release, nothing.

[00:23:20] No more bangs, no more fires, no thrown objects. The haunting stopped. Entirely. Now for some, that was proof of guilt. If the ghost could be turned off so easily, maybe it had always been a trick. But others saw it differently. Maybe what fueled the manifestations, whether ghostly or psychological, had finally burned itself out. Over the next few years, Esther's name slowly disappeared from the headlines.

[00:23:49] In 1882, according to her sister Jenny, she married, had a child, and moved away. Her husband's name isn't recorded in surviving accounts. Her child's fate remains unknown. Esther made no attempt to return to the public eye. In the meantime, Walter Hubble published his book, The Haunted House, A True Ghost Story. It was later reissued as The Great Amherst Mystery. It became popular across North America, especially among spiritualists.

[00:24:19] He painted Esther as a martyr, a young woman caught in the grip of supernatural forces, misunderstood, and innocent. Now I have links to the full PDFs, in case you're interested in checking it out on your own. The guy ended up making 10 or so editions of the book. But as years passed, Hubble's version of events came under fire. Remember, there was this critique of the entire writings of Walter Hubble.

[00:24:46] This happened in 1919, when Walter Franklin Prince, a researcher with the American Society for Psychical Research, published a thorough debunking of Hubble's claims. Prince, a Methodist minister and a psychologist, studied Hubble's notes and compared them with the published book. What he found was that many of the most hard-to-believe events described in the book, the walls cracking, objects flying, threats from demons,

[00:25:13] they were either missing from Hubble's original journal or written long after the fact. In some cases, events that Hubble described as witnessed turned out to have occurred before he even met Esther. Now even weirder was the journal's tone. It was dry, vague, often lacking detail. And yet, in his book, those same entries were spun into vivid scenes, rich in dialogue and atmosphere. I mean, Walter Hubble was an actor, so it was kind of expected.

[00:25:43] But Prince concluded that while Hubble had indeed witnessed some strange activity, he had also embellished freely, likely to increase book sales. But Prince didn't stop at calling Hubble a dramatist. He offered a different theory, one that in many ways was more disturbing than a haunting. He believed Esther was responsible for the phenomena, but not out of deception. He thought she was suffering from a psychological condition we would now call dissociation,

[00:26:11] the splitting of consciousness brought on by trauma. Prince pointed to Esther's traumatic encounter with Bob McNeil in August of 1878 as the event that triggered everything. The shock, the shock, the shame, and fear of that moment may have been too much for her to process consciously. Instead, he argued, her mind fractured, creating a sub-self, a subconscious personality that took over and acted out her inner turmoil in violent and physical ways.

[00:26:40] Now, in that view, the ghost wasn't a spirit from the beyond. It was Esther's pain, personified, a silent scream becoming louder and louder until a broke window started fires and carved threads into the wall. And what of Bob Nickel, the foul-mouthed ghost who claimed to be a shoemaker? Prince noted the obvious. Bob McNeil, Esther's real-life abuser, had been a shoemaker too. The names were nearly identical. The ghost wasn't separate.

[00:27:09] It was a shadow of McNeil, still tormenting Esther long after he disappeared from her life. So what really happened? After everything, the journals, the public debates, the fires, and the banging, we're still left with that question. Was this the work of spirits? Was Esther a fraud or the victim of a world that didn't understand her?

[00:27:35] Esther Cox spent just over a year at the center of one of the most bewildering and controversial supernatural stories in Canadian history. To this day, paranormal researchers, especially those sympathetic to spiritualist beliefs, still argue that the great Amherst mystery was a genuine haunting. They point to multiple witnesses, the repeated consistency of certain phenomena across different locations, and the fact that Esther never tried to profit from the events herself.

[00:28:05] A girl who suffered. A house that cracked open with noise and fear. A town that turned on her. A public that watched and judged. And a question that echoes even now. If she did not defend herself and didn't try to shape the story, it would be others. The believers, skeptics, opportunists, the one who would shape the legacy of the girl known as the haunted soul of Amherst.

[00:28:32] Esther died on November 8th, 1912 at the age of 52. And today there's little left of the yellow cottage on Princess Street. The house is gone. The house is gone. But the legend remains. In books, documentaries, podcasts, ghost tours. Esther's story still lives in the cultural imagination. I think it's because it shows how we respond to what we don't understand. How we fail to protect the vulnerable.

[00:29:00] And how trauma can distort the world around us. In the end, maybe Esther wasn't haunted by spirits. Perhaps she was haunted by a world that wouldn't or couldn't listen. Until the wall started knocking. This episode of Horror Story was researched and written by me, Edwin Covarrubias.

[00:29:28] The list of my sources will be available on horrorstory.com or you can email me about it and I'll send them over. This one took some digging to write, but if you liked it, please give me a follow and drop some stars for me in the reviews. I'm also looking for more mysteries and paranormal stories to write. I really like the idea of local legends like we had in our previous episode called Buried in the Woods. But what do you think about those? Let me know. I'm Edwin Cov on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.

[00:29:55] That's E-D-W-I-N-C-O-V in case you want to get in touch. I'll leave my contact information in the description of this episode. A huge shout out to our supporters on Scary Plus. You can find out more information over on scaryplus.com. But basically, you get these episodes without ads right here on this app you're listening on now for $4.99 a month. All while you're supporting this and all of our other shows from Scary FM. Plus, you get it free for 14 days. After that, you can cancel whenever.

[00:30:24] And if you get charged and didn't want to, just email me. I can always reverse a charge. Just let me know. But anyway, thank you very much for listening. I'll be back later this week with another story. Keep it scary, everyone. See you soon.