Haunted House in Portadown.
Incredible Superstition.
The belief in ghosts dies hard. Even toward the close of the nineteenth century a portion of our local community seems to be under the influence of these silly superstitions. They are firmly persuaded that the best haunted house in the world is to be found in Portadown. It is situate in Thomas Street, and was for a long term of years the residence of an old woman who lived alone and managed to obtain a precarious livelihood by swinning weavers gears. This old lady died a few months ago, and since then the house has been unoccupied.
It was recently let to another tenant, who with his wife and children entered into possession on last Friday night. Nothing unusual occurred till the witching hour of midnight, when, true to the traditions of all well regulated haunted houses, the ghost made its appearance. Like all real ghosts it travelled rapidly from one apartment to another, and had a peculiar knack of disappearaing, so that the inmates had not an opportunity, even if they had had the inclination, of establishing its identity. Its behaviour, however, distinguished it from the great majority of ghosts. The visit of the ordinary ghost is generally accompanied by a loud bang on the stairs or outside the bedroom door, resembling the fall of a heavy weight, but this particular ghost fluttered through the house yelling frantically, and with the aid of something like a tin can, which it thumped vigorously, created a most hideous noise.
It commenced in the kitchen, made its way upstairs, and continued its antics at the door of the bedroom. The new-comers were almost frightened to death. The wife, being a woman of much piety, asked her husband to read a verse of Scripture out of a Testament which was at hand. He did as commanded, and the passage which he read seems to have completely paralysed the apparition, for the noise at once ceased. It did not, however, dispel the fears of the new tenants. nothing but a ghost, they maintained, could make such a horrible, fiendish, supernatural noise. The house was undoubtedly haunted.
With bated breath the new tenant and his wife discussed their terrible experience until daylight dawned, and then they removed the furniture and betook themselves to the house they had left the previous day. When it became known that the house was haunted, the greatest consternation prevailed in the locality. The neighbours gathered in groups to talk the matter over, and in a short time the half of the town had congregated in the vicinity of the haunted house. Of course there was the usual amount of scoffing by persons who have no faith in anything but close bargains and big discounts on settlement. It is impossible to convince this class of the existence of ghosts unless they actually see them, and then probably their only anxiety would be to know if they had got any shares in Dunlop or Grappler Tyres. Quite a number of young men volunteered to stop in the house on the following night. And yet some persons will insist that the age of chivalry is dead! This should prove an interesting case for the Psychical Research Society.
Portadown News, 23rd May 1896