A Tale With The Ingredients Of A Haunted House Mystery.
This is a ghost story. It is a tale which has all the ingredients of a haunted house mystery… the strange noises… objects moving. But this is no tale from the dark ages. For this story happened in Antrim very recently. Can you explain the strange happenings of the Corner House? Here is how it happened.
It was late at night in the Corner House newsagent’s shop as Mr Sylvan Devlin and his wife were stocktaking a few weeks ago. They were alone… or so they thought. They were not troubled by the stories given them by the assistants that strange noises had been heard coming from an attic above the premises in Antrim’s High Street several times before. “Just their imagination,” they thought. Suddenly their ears pricked as they heard it. Without doubt, the unmistakable sounds of footsteps… going right above their heads. It was an apprehensive Mr Devlin who advanced up the steps to the long disused attic, torch in hand. The door crept open – the torch swung round the room. It was empty. Empty that is except for one thing.
On the floor, laid out neatly, were two nurses’ uniforms, pressed and folded. They looked as though they had been laid there… ready to be put on. This was mystery number one. According to Mr Devlin, the uniforms weren’t there before when he had last looked into the attic. Printed neatly on the collar of each was the name “Nurse Moffatt.” And so began the hunt of Mr Devlin, “ghost hunter extraordinary.” The hunt to find out who Nurse Moffatt was… was she alive. If not, what had happened to her.
The obvious place to begin investigation was the hospital. One nursing sister remembered her – the first piece of luck. But was she alive or dead? The same sister also remembered where Nurse Moffatt had stayed during her spell of duty at the hospital. She had stayed at 84 High Street, in an attic above a shop. She thought it was called The Corner House shop. This was five years ago though and since then a fire had gutted the same attic – destroying all its contents. So how did the two uniforms come to be laid out in the room?
This week events took an even stranger turn. Mr Devlin received a telephone call… from Nurse Moffatt. “I am alive and well,” she said. So Mr Devlin’s theory about the ghost of Nurse Moffatt was wrong. But whose were the footsteps that he and his wife heard on that eerie night. How did the uniforms get there? How did they come to be in such good condition with not a cobweb on them?
When this strange tale came to light, staff at the shop remembered the case of the moving magazines. Papers which had been left neatly stacked the night before were shifted in the morning when the shop was re-opened. Customers made a joke of it… “The ghost who reads newspapers,” they said. The staff at the newsagent’s confectionery shop have mixed feelings about the whole affair. Miss Elizabeth Smith, who worked in the shop during her school holidays was one of the first to hear the strange noises. “I certainly believed in ghosts up until today when Nurse Moffatt phoned. But how did the two uniforms come to be there and how could they survive five years in a dirty room without a cobweb?”
How indeed Miss Smith? But before you scorn this story as the work of an over enthusiastic imagination, consider this: A few years ago crowds flocked to Antrim Castle, just a few yards away; Reports were that a ghost had been seen there; The apparition has never been explained; That then is the story. It is up to you to make up your mind.
That’s funny. I could swear I closed that door when I came into the office. Ah well, that’s the trouble when you work late at night. Your mind plays tricks on you. Nothing in this ghost business anyway. Hello! Who’s that up there. Surely no one else still working. Someone coming down the stairs. What a lot of nonsense this ghost busine… Helllllp!
Ballymena Observer, 27th August 1970.