The affair of the County Down ghost.
It had a spite against a young lady.
You don’t believe in ghosts? Neither do I, yet the following mysterious happenings on a Co. Down farm require some explanation. The family, whom I have known for some years, moved during the “blitz” to a country house in Co. Down. Everything was peaceful until one of the younger girls went to stay at night with an elderly lady who owned a small farm. Then the fun commenced.
Yellow meal, kept in the farm kitchen, was found upstairs strewn all over the linen chests, broken eggs were smeared over the linen, and one night a bedroom door was locked by unseen hands, and the key could not be found. Following this all the books in a well-stocked bookcase crashed to the floor.
The young lady concerned, her nerves almost shattered, after a couple of nights of it, decided to call it a day, and stopped going to the house, but the mysterious happenings in her own house from then onwards are almost unbelievable.
Shoes on one side of the fireplace suddenly arose and, flying across the kitchen, hit the far wall with a bang, and sugar, butter, etc. on the dining table moved away of their own accord and spilled all over the place. Uncanny noises and mysterious rappings, too, were heard clearly throughout the night.
A man well versed in psychic phenomena told me all these mysterious happenings are caused by poltergeists. There may be a better answer.
The house is now unoccupied, and the strange thing is, all the ghostly visitations ceased when the family moved elsewhere. They have never been troubled since.
John Oliver.
Ireland’s Saturday Night, 3rd November 1951.