The Bells Rang for 53 Days. Nobody Could Find Who Was Pulling Them

When Major Edward Moor returned home from church one Sunday afternoon, his servants had a strange story to tell him. The dining-room bell had rung three times while he was away, but nobody could find anyone who had pulled it.

The two servants left in the house had checked the room each time. Nobody was there, and neither could explain why the bell kept ringing.

Moor assumed something was wrong with the mechanism. It seemed like the kind of household problem that would take a few minutes to fix, but the strange ringing was only getting started.

It Started With One Bell

It was February 2, 1834, and Moor was living at Bealings House in the village of Great Bealings, Suffolk, England. His home had the usual system of servants’ bells found in larger houses of the period.

Each room had a handle connected to a wire running through the walls. Pulling the handle made a bell ring in the servants’ area, letting them know which room needed attention.

The day after the first incident, the dining-room bell rang again while Moor was out. But on Tuesday, things became much stranger. Several bells hanging in the kitchen suddenly began ringing together, making an enormous racket.

They would ring furiously for several minutes, stop without warning, and start again after a short silence. Nobody admitted to pulling the handles, and Moor couldn’t find anything wrong with the system.

Moor Watched Them Ring

At first, Moor had only the servants’ accounts to go by. That changed when he and his son went into the kitchen to see what was happening.

While they stood watching, several bells suddenly began moving. According to Moor, the ringing was so rapid and forceful that the bells seemed to be moving together rather than responding to individual pulls.

The noise continued for several minutes before stopping. Sometimes there were gaps of ten or fifteen minutes before another burst began, and occasionally a smaller bell in the attic rang while the others remained perfectly still.

Moor had now seen the strange activity for himself. He was determined to find out what was causing it.

He Tried Making the Bells Do It Again

Moor began testing the system. He pulled the handles, examined the wires and tried different ways of making several bells ring at once.

He even used a tool to tug at a section where the wires ran close together. He could make the bells move, but he couldn’t reproduce the same rapid, continuous clattering he had witnessed.

He and his household continued inspecting the mechanism, looking for loose connections or signs that someone was playing tricks. Meanwhile, the bells kept ringing at unexpected times.

Some days brought long stretches of silence. Others were interrupted by sudden bursts that sent the servants searching for someone who needed them.

The Whole Household Got Involved

As the weeks passed, the activity became part of daily life at Bealings House. Family members, servants and visitors witnessed different episodes, sometimes hearing several bells sounding together.

The major was becoming increasingly frustrated. He had spent years serving in the military and studying unfamiliar cultures, yet he couldn’t explain what was happening inside his own kitchen.

Moor wasn’t someone who usually kept his observations to himself. He had written books on history and religion and was a Fellow of the Royal Society, so recording unusual events was hardly unfamiliar territory.

He decided to put the story in writing and see whether anyone else had experienced something similar.

He Wrote to the Newspaper

While the ringing was still happening, Moor sent a letter to the Ipswich Journal. It appeared on March 1, 1834, describing what his household had experienced since the beginning of February.

The letter attracted attention, and readers began contacting him with stories of strange bell-ringing and other unexplained disturbances in their own homes. Some accounts came from places far beyond Suffolk, including Chesterfield, Ramsgate and Greenwich Hospital. Moor saved the letters and began gathering the reports together.

He had gone looking for an explanation to a problem in his own house. Instead, he discovered that people elsewhere in England had stories that sounded remarkably similar.

And Suddenly, Everything Went Quiet

Toward the end of March, after roughly seven and a half weeks, the disturbances stopped. By then, the bells had been causing trouble for about 53 days.

Nobody was caught secretly pulling the wires, and no repair explained why the ringing had suddenly ended. The same system remained in place, but the unexplained activity was over.

Moor wasn’t willing to forget the experience. He still had his notes, along with letters from people who claimed to have witnessed equally strange events.

Seven years later, in 1841, he published a book called Bealings Bells. It contained his account of the disturbances, along with reports he had collected from other parts of England.

The book ran to 142 pages, giving readers a detailed look at what had happened and the attempts Moor had made to find an explanation.