I just did a fresh install of the Lingua::Ispell module, and ran the program that tall_man provided w/out problems.
Even when I didn't already have .ispell_english created, the program ran, gave me an error (No such file .ipsell_english), created the file, and correctly inserted the word
Any luck finding an error logged to your apache logs?
Chris
Update: Never mind. I didn't see that you had fixed the problem until I increased my 'Notes' depth.