With no tenants, Mitchell faced bankruptcy, and needed answers. In 2010, she wrote to The Society for Psychical Research

In assailing The Atlantic for giving me a platform, he cited my journalistic malpractice as an associate editor at The New Republic in Washington, D.C. in the mid-1990s. (I was in my early 20s at the time, writing under my maiden name, Ruth Shalit.)

On April 15, 2012, Worland achieved his mission: The bones were reburied in unconsecrated land in St. Osyth, in a ceremony witnessed by Pagan and Christian representatives. It didn’t stop the curse of St. Osyth. Regulars abandoned the King’s Arms, and the owner shut its doors. Then on July 26, 2016, a car driving along Colchester Road mysteriously crashed into the Cage. The driver couldn’t explain how he lost control of the BMW. Mitchell had another son in 2016, but her relationship with his father ended too. Over the next three years, the Cage and the King’s Arms lay silent, apart from the occasional slamming door, or rattling chains, or the cries of infants echoing in the night. So the rumors went.

Then, last year, Mitchell found a new realtor who staged the property with broomsticks and books about the unexplained. On January 7, 2020, she accepted an offer of £224,000 ($300,000). The sale made international news, but after fees, taxes, and interest, Mitchell cannot calculate the extent of her losses. All she gained was a valuable lesson in hardship. “I’d learned about being terrified of something you can’t do anything about,” she told me. “I can deal with anything now.”

After some legal delays, the new owner of the Cage plans to move in by December. Mitchell felt it was her duty to warn her. The buyer is a divorcée who hoped to make a new start in St Osyth. The woman had no time for stories of the supernatural, Mitchell said.

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made it safely to the end of the round, you’d win and all the other lemmings would follow. If the lead lemming fell off a cliff into a pit of fire, so did the rest of his crew, even though they saw him fall in first they kept going.

The article did contain several errors: I placed an anonymous lacrosse mom in Greenwich when she actually lives in an adjoining Connecticut town. I referred to “Olympic-sized” backyard hockey rinks when I should have written “commercially sized” or “professionally sized.” A fencing neck injury that was originally described to me as a “stab” to the jugular has been corrected to a “jab”; a thigh injury described as a “deep gash” is now characterized as “a skin rupture that bled through a fencing uniform.”

Word of a serious paranormal investigation soon reached England’s amateur ghost hunters, who descended on St. Osyth carrying spirit boxes, ouija boards, and night vision cameras. Seizing an opportunity, Mitchell advertised the Cage as a haunted holiday home, and leased it to companies who charged visitors £35 ($45) to attend ghost hunts. The British tabloids dispatched reporters from the Sun, Daily Mail, and Daily Express, who called the Cage “the most haunted house in Britain.” A retired police officer claimed to have snapped a photograph of four ghosts carrying a dead witch in Coffin Alley. Others captured witch-like faces and even a ‘Satanic goat.’ (“It was an upside down parka coat,” Fraser told me.)

In his Oct. 24th column and a second on Oct. 30th, Wemple outlined in great detail his doubts and misgivings about my Atlantic piece. He raised the question that goes to the heart of any piece of journalism: “How much of it is true?”

One investigator had left the house with angry red marks on her legs. “The blistering was later examined by a doctor and diagnosed as being burn marks,” wrote Fraser. Kim Sondergaard, of a Danish Parapsychology group, told Fraser he was prodded and bruised on his leg. “[I was] standing in the courtyard… then I broke down… I started to cry uncontrollably,” he told Fraser in a recorded testimony.

After some legal delays, the new owner of the Cage plans to move in by December. Mitchell felt it was her duty to warn her. The buyer is a divorcée who hoped to make a new start in St Osyth. The woman had no time for stories of the supernatural, Mitchell said.

They say falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it. In 2012, Worland asked Archaeologist Jacqueline McKinley to inspect the St. Osyth skeleton. She concluded that the person was not Ursula Kemp, but a male. And the iron spikes were “recent” additions designed to enhance the witch story. In the Clacton and Frinton Gazette, Charles Brooker’s grandson, Paul, made a confession: “Grandad put the nails there. He embellished things.”

“I think the Cage is a good case, because similar things have happened to a lot of people,” Fraser told me, comparing it to history’s famous poltergeist cases. “The one problem with the Amityville case is you have only the family as evidence, which is a very, very narrow evidence base.” The fact that Mitchell’s witnesses are reputable professionals — Williams is a cancer nurse, and Young is now a school teacher — made the case more reputable to Fraser. In his book Poltergeist! Fraser spoke to other paranormal investigators who Vanessa allowed to inspect the Cage.

During this media circus, some suggested that Mitchell had embellished her paranormal experiences. “She has made quite a lot of money,” said Worland, the documentarian. Of the Cage’s supernatural activity, he added: “I think it’s a load of bollocks.” Mitchell doesn’t care. The women of St. Osyth are no strangers to accusations.

My story is true and I stand by it. It is true both in its particular details and in its overarching thesis: wealthy parents in niche-sport hotbeds are spending vast sums of money and pushing their children through extreme training regimens in pursuit of an ever-dwindling supply of Ivy League recruiting spots — endangering the mental health of their own kids and crowding out less privileged young athletes in the process.

On October 24th, Erik Wemple of The Washington Post wrote a column criticizing The Atlantic for its decision to publish my article, “The Mad, Mad World of Niche Sports Among Ivy League-Obsessed Parents.”