Peter Priestley’s hiss

About 1790 Peter Priestley was clerk, sexton and gravestone cutter at Wakefield parish church, a man not given to superstitious fears. Working late one Saturday night inside the church to finish an epitaph, he heard a strange hiss or hush, searched in vain for its cause, and heard it again, louder, after the clock struck twelve. Sure he was being warned for working on the Sabbath, or that his own death was near, he went home to a sleepless night. In the morning his wife found one side of his wig burnt away by his candle, and he leapt out of bed cured. A Morley correspondent sent the story to the Year Book in 1831 to help dispel such idle fears.