An invasion of Ghosts.
At this season of the year, when the gigantic gooseberries are out, when the supernatural cucumbers have lost their fascination, and when even a cow with two tails, or a hen with three legs, is a source of but languid attraction, the newspaper reporters are sadly put about in their laudable endeavours to discover a subject wherewith to stir up the flagging appetite of their readers for news, and the inventive genius of these young gentlemen is seldom long at a loss for a dainty dish to set before the confiding public.
Just now they have alighted upon a most delightful theme, and the evil doings of ghosts in this Northern portion of our island are recounted, and, of course, held up to condign reprobation with a vividness and picturesqueness of detail in the highest degree creditable to the creative faculties of the narrators. It is a curious idiosyncracy on the part of these preternatural visitants that they have a perfect horror of large towns. It is only to the comparatively small centres of human life that they resort, and in them they seem to exercise very undesirable proclivities towards mischief, and to take a wicked delight in doing the silliest things in a particularly unpleasant fashion.
The ghosts of which the papers now-a-days tell us are far from being the respectable beings that in our earlier days we were accustomed to. In fact, they hardly seem accountable for their actions. In olden time they made their appearance in an orthodox way, clad all in white array, and having frightened the senses out of the spectators, vanished into the air at the first crow of the cock.
But now we have them behaving in an altogether insane manner, and acting more like mischievous monkeys than anything else.
In Cookstown they almost ruined the goods and chattals of poor Mr Allen, breaking his panes, cutting up his bedding and wearing apparel, and damaging his pocket to the tune of some £100. In Markethill they followed suit, besides “cutting up linen webs as with a sharp knife!” Coming nearer home, we have got one just now at Ballysallagh, near Bangor, whose freaks in “the house of a very respectable old lady” are represented to have produced “results somewhat similar to those experienced by Mr Allen at Cookstown.”
We had no notion that such things could have occurred within a couple of miles of us and we not know it; but as the facts are authenticated by a certain well-informed “correspondent” of a Belfast paper, whose correctness on all occasions is proverbial, we are bound to accept the information so far as we can afford. A cleverer ghost we have never heard of. To substitute eggs for potatoes in a pot on the fire is a feat of legerdemain it may well be proud of, and to cause candlesticks to “deliberately rise from the table and go upstairs, and as deliberately come down again and resume their places without any apparent assistance,” is an illusion which none but a genius in that line of business could perform.
Seriously, however, is it not about time that this little game should come to an end? The public has had enough of it for this once, and any more will not pay, even with a penny-a-liner. We all know how the thing is done, as witness the revelation at Cookstown, and, however seriously it may interfere with the emoluments of “a correspondent,” we beg that the Newtownards ghost, as well as all the rest of them, may be relegated into Winter quarters for this year at least.
Newtownards Chronicle and Co. Down Observer, 21st November 1874.
Another Ghost – (From our correspondent).
It would appear that the town of Cookstown cannot claim the monopoly in the ghost business. The neighbourhood of Newtownards has also had supernatural visitings; and, for some time past, the townland of Ballycallagh, between Newtownards and Clandeboye, has been the scene of a number of “fantastic tricks,” which have been played “before high heaven,” to the unmistakable terror of the inmates of a certain farmhouse in the townland.
A pot that was filled with potatoes and put on the fire to boil, was shortly afterwards found to contain eggs; panes of glass in the windows produced most unearthly noises; candlesticks would deliberately rise off the table and go upstairs, and as deliberately come down again and resume their places without any apparent assistance; and when the lady of the house would make an attempt to put on her boots, those useful articles of wearing apparel would suddenly rise and disappear through the ceiling.
Many other things even stranger than the above have occurred, and the ghost has not yet been “laid.”
Belfast Weekly Telegraph, 28th November 1874.
The Ballysallagh Ghost.
For the past year and a half the house of a very respectable old lady who resides in the townland of Ballysallagh, a short distance from the village of Crwfordsburn, has been troubled by somebody or something which produced results somewhat similar to those experienced by Mr Allan, at Cookstown. It is popularly known as the “Ballysallagh ghost,” and some people in this locality attribute its appearance to an over-indulgence in spiritualistic practices, such as rapping and table turning, by those in the house where the “ghost” performs.
Newry Telegraph, 28th November 1874.