A Ghost Detected.
For some time past the neighbourhood of Peter’s-hill has been agitated, or amused, with the account of a very sagacious nocturnal visitor in a house there, who, by a tapping kind of noise after the family had retired to rest, contrived to answer the various questions of the credulous. Thus, if it was sought to know if any particular person would soon die, three distinct knocks or taps were a reply in the affirmative, and if the ghost was silent the answer was considered to be in the negative.
A respectable professional man, having some doubts of this supernatural agency, on Thursday night was admitted to the room, and when the noise had continued for a short time, he sprung to the foot of the bed, laid hold of a young woman’s foot, and soon found that this far-famed oracle was nothing but the great-toe-nail of the girl’s foot, which sounded its responses on the bed-post.
Belfast Commercial Chronicle, 29th January 1831.