Can’t arrest a ghost.
Ghostly footsteps creak through the corridors of the lonely police station at Letter, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. Sergeant McNeill and his three constables are living through a Christmas ghost story which seems to have no ending in the old house that was once a clergyman’s home. The sergeant was recently roused from sleep by the sound of his suitcase being dragged from under the bed and hurled across the room. He flashed a torch but the case was undisturbed. Constables rushed into the kitchen when they heard crockery being smashed. Not a cup was found out of place.
The Letter police are unable to offer a solution. There are no clues – not a finger-print. For this ghost knocks without knuckles.
Daily Herald, 21st December 1945.
Six-county police barracks “haunted.”
Ghost noises are causing an extraordinary mystery to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, stationed at Letter, Co. Fermanagh, near the Donegal border. “The Impartial Reporter,” Enniskillen, records that the barracks was originally the residence of a local landlord, and for over a quarter of a century mysterious noises have been heard periodically. They seem to have reached their zenith about the 1920s, when the dwelling was occupied by the “A” Specials during the troubled times. Shortly afterwards the house became the regular police barracks and since then, until lately, the noises were only infrequently heard, but within the past few weeks the “ghost of Letter” seems to have recommenced its activities, with renewed vigour.
The noises take various forms. Sounds of footsteps, accompanied by the realistic creaking of floorboards, is the most common; a barrel being rolled across the floors of upper rooms, and a crash as if some heavy object had been thrown with great force on the floor, or other forms the noises take. [sic] Basins and delph seem to crash against the floors, suitcases are thrown against the walls, yet, on investigation, Sergt. McNeill and the three constables who form the garrison have never found any thing disturbed.
Leinster Leader, 29th December 1945.