The Sheep Stealer's Screaming Spectre
Work and other commitments have kept me busy – so it’s been quiet here. But to keep us ticking over, here’s a short – but good – Belfast Telegraph story from 1963.
A midnight search party was organised last might to try to lay the wild-eyed ghost of Gallows Lane in Dungannon.
While ghostly screams and yells echoed through the darkness, the party, armed with torches, moved cautiously along the quiet laneway off Donaghmore Road.
But though they believe they caught sight of the ghost – “a tall man with castor hat and staring eyes” – they failed to solve the mystery.
Terrified women in the nearby housing estate have stayed indoors at night and locked their doors early since the apparition was first seen and heard on Thursday night.
Mr Ronnie McKee, a motor engineer, saw the figure as he was turning into his avenue in Donaghmore Road.
He flashed the lights as he turned the car, but the staring man, uttering ear-splitting yells, did not move.
Mrs. M. Morgan and a neighbour heard the screams at the laneway when returning from the cinema.
Troubled spirit?
Older residents believe the troubled spirit of some 18th century sheep stealer has returned to haunt the lane, along which he was dragged to the gallows 200 years ago.
Tradition has it that people sentenced to death at the Assizes House at Market Square were forcibly led along the laneway and hanged on a tree on Gallows Hill.
And the opinion of the police? According to Head Constable R. Hyndman they have no law authorising them to arrest ghosts. “And anyway we have no cell to put him in.”
Source:
Belfast Telegraph, 20 April 1963
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