Co. Down family not annoyed by its ghost.
Footfalls were so loud, they wakened baby.
By Frontier Sentinel special representative.
Ballyward, midway between Banbridge and Castlewellan may not be a hamlet of any great fame – in fact few people could direct you to it even if you were less than twenty miles away. But to the inhabitants it is quite a famous place and lays claim to immortality in the fact that it houses a ghost – one of the strangest that has ever undertaken a haunting.
Most ghosts are avoided if at all possible through fear – people will even steer clear of the vicinity of a graveyard, the most unlikely place of all for a ghost – but our “visitor” in Ballyward has become something of a fact – in fact “he” (or it could be “she”) is now what one might term a member of the family circle.
This story has nothing whatsoever to do with hearsay. It is a mere relating of fact and can be borne out by a visit to the public house of Wards at Ballyward at any time. It is not a recent happening that I am about to relate – it is something that has been going on all during the lifetime of the present Ward family and of the generation before them. It has become an accepted fact and at one time in the family history the decision must have had to be taken as to whether the home would be occupied by the ghost or the family – or both. The family decided to stay on, and so did the ghost to this very day.
In the realms of ghostlore it is an almost accepted fact that a real ghost is never seen by the human eye – it is sensed or heard. The Ballyward ghost is heard and never seen, but it is heard with such a regularity as to dispel any doubts that might otherwise exist as to its authenticity.
Ballyward is difficult to approach and in spite of the fact that I had a modern map to help me, I wandered twice off the road. With the aid of some country folk I at least hit a rather bumpy and twisty third class road that led me from the main Rathfriland Castlewellan highway to the hamlet of Ballyward. There is really no cluster of houses that one could term a village, but what houses there are, are biggish and well preserved. The residence of our ghost is set beside the Chaple [sic] and it is a two storey dwelling with licensed premises (one apartment) and kitchen, etc., on the ground floor and three bedrooms above.
I entered the licensed part of the premises with a friend and taking absolutely no chances on being hoaxed, we had two minerals. An elderly man – Mr Ward himself – was behind the bar and some transport men were refreshing themselves. I waited till they had left and then by easy stages I broached the question to the man of the house. He gave me a good bed by mentioning a story he had heard down the country about a clergyman’s ghost and quick to seize my opportunity I put the question straight away. “Isn’t there supposed to be something strange about this place?” I asked. “Ack, there is, but sure we don’t mind it at all.”
He gave this answer with a shrug of his shoulders, as much as to say “sure nobody bothers their heads with ghosts nowadays.” I repeated the question more emphatically – “Is there really a ghost in this house?” He again showed a definite disinclination to go into detail when he answered – “There are noises – that’s all – but we don’t bother our heads about them.” “What sort of noises?” was my next question. “Footsteps,” he answered, and looking up at the ceiling, which was about eight feet from the floor, he added – “They cross from one side of the house to the other, through the two front bedrooms.” “Could it be rats or mice?” I quizzed. “Not at all,” he quickly replied, and for the first time he got away from his distinterested attitude and became really serious. “I know that sound by now – no, they are definitely footfalls.”
I then related the following story I had heard during the previous months: During the Battle of Dolly’s Brae, near Castlewellan, between the Orangemen and the Catholics, fighting took place in the vicinity of Ballyward and the Ward home was the butt of regular Orange attack. On one occasion a group of Orangemen attacked the house and burst open the door of the bar to kill the owner and loot the house. The first attacker to enter saw a man at the till removing money and he immediately shot him, believing it to be the proprietor, Mr Ward, grandfather of the present owner. It was only when the Orangeman approached behind the counter he realised he had made a ghastly error – the man lying there was one of his own soldiers. He had broken into the house and was in the act of robbing the till when his comrades also broke in. so a murder had been committed in the house.
I realised, before I had finished the tale, that Mr Ward already knew it. “Yes, there was a murder here,” he agreed. “When I asked him if it was believed there was a link between the murder and the present noises, he said he could ot tell and when I followed up by asking him if he could explain the noises he answered: “Ach, I believe myself it is some poor soul that can’t rest.”
At that moment Mr Ward’s daughter entered the ar. “Here are two men who want to know all about the noises in the house,” said Mr Ward as he left, glad, I thought, to be relieved from the questioning. But the young lady – a girl of about twenty-four years of age – was full of the story. “We thought everybody knew of it” she said, and then I asked how long this was going on and she replied “Oh as long as I can remember – and my father too, for that matter.” “Just what is the noise you hear?” I continued to quiz. “Footsteps – one light step and one heavy,” she answered, adding, “and sometimes they are worse than others.”
On one of two occasions, she told us, the noises were so bad that they actually wakened her brother’s baby in the adjoining room, but the baby, she said, like the other members of her family, would grow up with the noises and would become so accustomed to them as not to be disturbed. Asked if the people in the surrounding houses knew of the unusual happening, she replied that everyone in the district knew of this for years and many had come along especially late at night in the hope of hearing them, but on the nights they came there were no disturbances.
I inquired how regular these happenings occurred and she told us they had no particular time, but Friday nights (in the early hours of Saturday morning to be exact) seemed to be the favourite occasions for the visitation. Shethen told us the story of the local curate who tried to find out for himself what it was all about. “He came by appointment one Friday night and we allowed him into one of the front rooms and left him there, but he didn’t stay long – he was down again in about ten minutes.”
We left, but may I add that prior to going to Ballyward I had a conversation with a high ranking ecclesiastic about the ghost – in fact it was he who put me on the story as “one that must be reported.” “I am very difficult to convince on matters of this kind,” he said,” but I am deeply interested in stories of this nature and I investigated the matter very thoroughly. I questioned people in the parish on whose opinion I could depend and i have come to the definite conclusion that there is something in the story.”
I, too, find it hard to believe things of this kind – frankly, I don’t believe in ghosts – but the sincerity of all the people on the Ballyward affair, have left me with my doubts. That the footsteps – or what sound like footsteps – are heard and have been heard in the house all down the years, there is absolutely no room for doubt. There may be a logical explanation that they are caused by the supernatural – and again, there may not. What do you readers think?
Frontier Sentinel, 7th March 1953.