A 19thC Cornish farmouse near Treassowe has a stone trough turned uspside down that is supposed to contain a spirit laid by a Parson Stevens.

In some cases, however, merely locking the door of a room was considered an insufficient safeguard [to imprison a ghost], and there are people who have actually seen a doorway built up with masonry in order to prevent the escape of some unusually turbulent prisoner.

In large houses it was conceivably not difficult to spare a room for such purposes, but in smaller establishments the resultant inconvenience to the living inhabitants must have been considerable. In consequence, perhaps, of this, spirits were sometimes 'laid' under hearthstones, or out of doors in pigeon–holes, or beneath large rocks. On the tenement of Treassowe (pronounced 'Trazza'), in the parish of Ludgvan, near Penzance, there was formerly to be seen a great stone trough, turned upside down, just in front of a thatched house. A gentleman inquiring the reason for this was told that there was a 'spirit' underneath it which had been 'laid by Passon Stevens' many years before. Doubtless there are old people in the neighbourhood who can still remember this, although the writer understands that the trough itself has since been put to a more mundane use.

The spirit must have prooved to be very active and difficult to lay if the Parson had to resort to using a stone trough to contain it.