Story about my village and some of the goings on I remember as a child
People used to live on the Bone as it was called, in a place called Savage Row which had been an area of half houses built for the factory workers to live in . Most of the houses had a steel tub that was hung from a nail hammered into a wooden frame behind the wall . There was a small parlour with a fireplace and a tiny bedroom beside . On a Friday the steel tub would normally come down from the wall on bath night . The bath water was shared by many . Families lived downstairs in the half houses while other families lived upstairs .
As the years went on those houses were renovated and some knocked down and new ones were rebuilt . There was something unique about the bone and the people who lived there . I used to visit my school friend Anthony McNeil who lived there on the Bone and we played snooker on a small table he had . Those games were brilliant , His older brother was a boxer and his Father trained him in the house .
As a young lad there was a small crowd of us who would play football on the cinder pitch at the bottom of the dumps and then sometimes at twilight before we went home a few of us would remain and sit on top of the dumps telling ghost stories .
One night , when everyone went home, Thomas Mc Creight and I waited until it was dark just to see who would be frightened most We shared some scary stories we had heard about some of the old houses in Ardoyne where it was said people who lived there had heard footsteps on the stairs at night when everyone was in bed . There were other stories about the beggar child who was seen outside the poor Clare’s convent with an empty basket and when people would approach her she would disappear ,
Then there was the story about Jimmy Tanner who was run over by a truck and was sometimes seen at night standing there on that very spot holding an old paraffin lantern that was never lit . There were other stories about an orphan boy who had chased the man he thought was his father and stabbed him with a knife but when the police investigated the incident the description of the boy was the same as a young scoundrel who once occupied one of the half houses on Savage Row and he lost his life in a fire that destroyed the home . .
Thomas and I were pretending hard not to be frightened but the darker it got the more we felt uneasy there sitting on the dumps . I remember the night well as a large dog came and sat with us for company and we kind of felt protected . At that moment there was an awful smell like dead flowers all around us .
We never said nothing until we saw the distant shape of a horse approaching .
There seemed to be a rider on top .
The sound of the hooves got louder and then I looked at Thiomas and he looked at me .
We both screamed out at the same time .
‘‘Galloper Thompson. Run “
I don’t even remember my feet touching the ground as we raced down the dump hills and we never stopped to look back .
When we got to the Jamaica street , we were both out of breath and Thomas said to me
“Don’t tell anybody about this Paul . Because if you do he’ll be coming to do us harm and that’s the last time I’m going to sit on the dumps at night , “
.‘We looked at each other and went our separate ways “
The next day I went for a walk over the waste ground around the old cinder pitch where an underground spring was and I found the skull of an animal . God only knows what kind of animal it was . I started thinking maybe it was the skull of Galloper Thompson’s horse . But I never bothered to hang around there much after that .
Some say Galloper Thomas was beheaded in a work accident , but there were others who said he was killed in retaliation for the way he treated his workers . No one really knows, but from then on I was hoping that he wouldn’t be returning to tell me the truth of what had happened to him .
Part of me had wished that someone would built a monument of Galloper Thompson somewhere between Ardoyne and The Bone , with a thought it might put his soul at rest . I never seen Thomas McCreight much after that night . Maybe he told his parents and they made him vow not to ever talk with me again .
I’m sure there are other people who might have a story about the ghost of Galloper Thompson , His fane spread everywhere and one story that came to me was that he was , a rich young man who was tragically killed but no one knew where all his wealth had all gone . The intrigue of that says a lot about what could have happened
As the years passed new houses were built where the cinder pitch used to be and I often wonder if anyone in those houses had ever heard the sound of a horse galloping past at night .
Jerry Lowenstein, an octogenarian and a nice guy, has written a fantastic mystery/ suspense novel that takes place just after WW2 on and near Bikini Atoll. He actually witnessed an atomic bomb test. Can you imagine that?
When high school principal Jerry Egge is brutally murdered, Deputy sheriff Dave Jenkins begins an eerie investigation. Just about everyone in Soldier, Minnesota, is a suspect.
"Murder isn't usually this funny."
Amazon re
