13. Fake Ghosts Were a Popular Con
History could have furnished great material for Scooby-Doo. For example, in 1762, the landlord of a property in Cock Lane, London, lost a lawsuit against a former tenant. So he had his daughter pretend to be the ghost of the former tenant’s deceased wife. The “ghost” claimed that she had been poisoned by her husband, the landlord’s former tenant, and she was widely believed. It took a commission, whose members included Samuel Johnson, compiler of the first comprehensive English dictionary, to clear the widower of suspicions that he was a murderer. The landlord was convicted, pilloried, and got two years in prison.
Another case involving a ghost impersonator occurred in the 17th century, when a grifter and cardsharp pretended to be the restless ghost of a recent suicide who had done himself in with a razor. The conman haunted a gambling den by covering himself with a white sheet, and waving a bloody razor around while making “woooo, woooo, wooo” sounds. As the terrified gamblers stampeded for the doors, the “ghost” snatched their money and vanished. The conman also used the same ruse to rob an elderly gentleman and make love to his young wife.