Aldersgate or Fetter Lane

12
That Wesley had (or at least recorded) so very few direct supernatural experiences
prior to Aldersgate 39 did not mean that Wesley did not have any interest in them. Dr.
Robert Webster, Oxford trained church historian and professor at Regent University,
includes in Appendix 1 of his book, Methodism and the Miraculous, “John Wesley’s
Summing Up the Matter of Old Jeffrey, 1726.” 40 “Old Jeffrey” was the name given to a
ghost whom the family claimed caused a number of strange events in the Epworth rectory
between December 1716 and January 1717. Wesley enumerated thirteen strange
characteristics surrounding “it.” Number three, for instance, reads: “Before it came into
any room, the latches were frequently lifted up, the windows clattered, and whatever iron
or Brass was about the changers rung and jarred exceedingly.” Although interested
enough to write about Old Jeffrey ten years after the events, Wesley was not present in
the rectory during this time as he was in residence at the Charterhouse school in
London. 41 Old Jeffrey is certainly a curiosity, but like Peter Wright’s story told above,
Wesley is not directly involved and merely summarizes events as told to him.
39
There may be other potentially supernatural moments in Wesley’s life prior to Aldersgate that a
more thorough reading of the early Wesley journals and writings could uncover. However, most likely
these would be few and far between considering the lack of comment on them in the literature.
40
Robert Webster, Methodism and the Miraculous: John Wesley’s Idea of the Supernatural and
Identification of Methodists in the Eighteenth Century (Lexington, KY: Emeth Press, 2013), 207.
41
Henry D. Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism (London, UK:
Epworth Press, 2002), 58-9.