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Having looked through a fair few photos of the 'New Buildings', the 1970s development in Beechmount where the Skillen family lived, I can now say with a reasonable degree of confidence that No. 91 Beechmount Grove was located where the red dot is shown on the map below:
IMG_20220224_153647~5.jpg

I know the house was demolished over twenty years ago, but still - for some reason it seemed important to know where it once stood.

I'll post up some of these photos gleaned from internet searches later - the map's helped enormously in being able to place where each one was taken.

Although so many of the New Buildings looked very alike, there's arrangements of streets that are parallel or perpendicular to each other, and that helps to orient the sightlines and build a sense of how the area once looked, back when the book was written.
 

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This is totally off topic, but looking at the image from the first video clip, at Beechmount Grove, Falls Road, I was dismayed at the complete lack of trees! It looks so bleak!

And now, back to the thread . . .
 
This is totally off topic, but looking at the image from the first video clip, at Beechmount Grove, Falls Road, I was dismayed at the complete lack of trees! It looks so bleak!

Going by the photos I've found during various online searches, Beechmount New Buildings in the late 1980s wasn't the most lovely of developments, no...
Beechmount area, 1980s.jpg


Beechmount Grove, 1980s - facing towards playground area.jpg


Beechmount Pass, Tullys Lane - 1970s or 80s.jpg



It appears that after the Skillen family surrendered No. 91 to the Housing Executive in late 1989, three or four families were consecutively moved in to the address but none stayed longer than a few weeks.

Eventually the house was given over to be used as a youth club, with no-one actively living there or staying overnight.

Residents seemed to have been moved out of the New Buildings from the early 1990s onwards - at which time the houses were barely twenty years old, but reportedly in poor states of repair - with the dwellings permanently bricked up as they were vacated.

Beechmount, 'The Lanes', 1990s - 'Caroline's House'.jpg


Beechmount Flats, 1994.png


Beechmount Avenue, Beechmount Grove junction - 1990s.jpg

The estate was finally levelled around 1999-2000.
Beechmount Pass, Beechmount Ave - demolition, 1990s.jpg


New Housing Executive residences were built on the former site, with the older street names retained but the street layout bearing no resemblance to what was there previously.

1658938025833.png


Modern-day Beechmount Link seems to be situated closest to where No. 91 Beechmount Grove once stood (the original Beechmount Grove seems to have encompassed a number of streets and courtyards)

1658938139021.png

There are at least a couple of trees now!
 
Another little bit of... something crossed my path the other week.

It may have nothing at all to do with the Beechmount Poltergeist/ Woman In Black - but since I'm still grubbing around, then reports of another haunting in the same neighborhood a few years previously, consisting of a black figure and polt-style activity, might have some relevance.

It's a fragment of a BBC Northern Ireland news piece on a reported haunting at Beechmount Leisure Centre, dating from October 1982. It's hosted on the BBC Rewind website.

As before, I'll post the link to the archive footage as well as my own transcript of the interviews.

https://bbcrewind.co.uk/asset/5de50583177e9d0027b1e308

Unfortunately the voiceover audio has been lost from the clip, so there's no introduction or scene-setting; just some silent static shots around the leisure centre, then two interviews with staff at the centre, and the news reporter wrapping up to the camera.

It's new to me - and this surprises me, as I'd have expected another known-about Beechmount haunting to have warranted a mention in either John Skillen's book, or at least in one of the very many threads about the Beechmount Grove case since started on Belfast Forums.

The fact it made the regional news - even as a fairly lightweight piece aired in the run-up to Hallowe'en - would indicate a wider awareness of the case, and the breadth of staff involved as witnesses to the strange occurrences - leisure centre staff, cleaners, security guards - implies a number of people living in the local area must have reported experiencing these phenomena, or been aware of someone they knew who had.

Sure have a watch/ read and see what you reckon.


The Beechmount Leisure Centre Ghost: Scene Around Six (BBC Northern Ireland)

Location:

Beechmount Leisure Centre, Falls Road, Belfast

Date:
Tuesday 12 October 1982

Interviewer:
Unidentified BBC News Reporter

Interviewees:
Unidentified Female Leisure Centre Worker (Witness 1);

Unidentified Female Leisure Centre Manager (Witness 2)

Duration:
3m 28s

BBC Rewind Description:
Some people believe that a ghost is haunting Beechmount Leisure Centre on the Falls Road.

BBC Rewind Notes:
Aspects of this video reflect the time it was made. This video has no commentary [Partial audio].


Transcript:

Scene 1 [00.00 – 00.04]:
Establishing shot of the exterior of Beechmount Leisure Centre (no audio)

Screenshot_20220805-103254~2.png


Scene 2 [00.05 – 00.12]: Establishing shot of a dark corridor inside the leisure centre (no audio)

Screenshot_20220805-103342~2.png


Scene 3 [00.13 – 01.20]: Head shot of Witness 1: unnamed leisure centre worker (with audio)

Screenshot_20220805-104226~2.png


W1:
Well, there wasn’t a lot happened really – em, I came into the room, I was boiling a kettle of water just over there [points], and, uh, a movement in this mirror here [points] caught my eye.

Now, I looked up and there was a shadow figure passed across the mirror. Well now, I looked here – over at this side [points] – to see what had caused that reflection in the mirror and there was nothing there, nothing at all.

So, at the time there was a lot of stories about ghosts at Beechmount Leisure Centre, so that came into my head immediately, and I just went straight out of the room – left everything – and up to the nearest person to calm me down, to reassure me, y’know [laughs], so, uh, I just left everything.

Interviewer (off camera):
You saw this shadow during the afternoon?

W1:
Yes, it must have been about three, because that’s tea break time, that’s what I was boiling the kettle for.

Interviewer (off camera):
Well, are you still a wee bit apprehensive, coming back into this room?

W1:
Yes, this room – uh, I never liked coming in here, I avoid this room, I don’t like it at all now, after that.

Interviewer (off camera):
Well, do you honestly think that this shadow – was a ghost?

W1:
Yes. Well, I – it could have been anything, really. But I do believe in ghosts, I believe there, there are such things, like, and, ah – I believe it could have been, yes.


Scene 4 [01.21 – 01.28]:
shot of a dark corridor inside the leisure centre (no audio)

Screenshot_20220805-104311~2.png


Scene 5 [01.29 – 01.34]: close-up of wall lights inside the leisure centre (no audio)

Screenshot_20220805-104346~2.png


Scene 6 [01.35 – 01.40]: shot of staircase inside the leisure centre (no audio)

Screenshot_20220805-104423~2.png


Scene 7 [01.41 – 02.59]: Head shot of Witness 2: unnamed leisure centre worker (with audio)

Screenshot_20220805-104451~3.png


W2:
Yeah, well, there’s a variety of things that would happen on a regular basis – one of the most common things is, em, if say cleaners leave a shower area, as soon as they go out, all the showers for no apparent reason come back on again. And this could happen say two or three times in, er, the one morning.

Screenshot_20220805-104529~3.png


Interviewer:
What other type of happenings have taken place?

W2:
Em, well, the security staff, now, in the evening would hear quite a lot of noise. Em, they would hear sounds as if someone in fact was in part of the building, playing, em, games. Now, when they do go to check there’s nobody there.

Er, one of the staff had a very nasty experience when, uh, a plastic waste bin sort of lifted up off the ground and – hurtled itself down the stairs. Er, that seemed to be a very frightening experience. Oh, there’s so many different tales, y’know, that the staff could – could tell you.

Interviewer (off camera):
We call them tales, but do you believe in them?

W2:
Em, now I – can’t say that I believe in them, but yet I wouldn’t say that I don’t believe them either, em –

Interviewer (off camera):
Well, can I ask you one question – would you stay here at night on your own?

W2:
No. Definitely not.


Scene 8 [03.00 – 03.28]: Close-up of Interviewer in mirror, out of focus, then zooms out

Screenshot_20220805-104648~3.png


Interviewer:
Since Beechmount Leisure Centre opened some years ago, many members of staff have consistently complained of seeing a ghost. They say they’ve seen this ‘Mr Riddle’ stalk the corridors here day and night. Of course, many other members of staff remain sceptical. But, of course, that doesn’t mean to say that ‘Mr Riddle’ doesn’t exist.

https://bbcrewind.co.uk/asset/5de50583177e9d0027b1e308
 
By way of backstory, I can't yet find out a great deal about the history of Beechmount Leisure Centre. Going by the architecture, it was constructed in the 1960s or 1970s, was operated by Belfast City Council, and was closed to the public in November 2008 as part of council cost-cutting measures.

The centre was situated between Ard Na Va Road and Beechview Park, in the Middle Falls area. Here's some Google Street view images of the closed building, from 2011:

Screenshot_20220805-104739~2.png

This is the front elevation, seen from Beechview Park, with the addition of security shuttering and a new roof since the 1982 footage was shot.

Screenshot_20220805-104822~2.png
This is the side and rear of the main building, seen from Ard Na Va Road.

The BBC Rewind page does show a map location for the clip, but this is incorrect - for some reason, it shows the site of the centre as further along the Upper Falls Road, towards Andersonstown, opposite City Cemetery.

The former leisure centre building was demolished sometime in 2012 – BBC News reports of calls for police to curb antisocial and criminal behaviour at the derelict centre are archived from January 2012, but by October that same year, Google Streetview from Ard Na Va Rd shows that the site had now been levelled.

Screenshot_20220805-104913~2.png

The overall site is currently occupied by Coláiste Feirste, who operate the restored leisure centre playing fields as Spórtlann na hÉireann.

Screenshot_20220805-105002~2.png

The site of the centre building is now built over with hardstanding sports pitches, visible at the north end of the site.

And it may be irrelevant - but the leisure centre was located approximately 350m from where the events of summer 1989 took place, in Beechmount Grove.

Screenshot_20220805-105056~2.png


Although there’s not a great deal of detail given in the TV report on the ‘Mr Riddle’ figure reported by leisure centre staff (or indeed whether that was a name used by staff in the building, or something the reporter just made up off-the-cuff for the purposes of the broadcast), the mixture of a dark figure, water fitments turning on spontaneously, and substantial items being picked up and thrown does have certain parallels with No. 91.

It may also be worth bearing in mind that another eyewitness in the Skillen case claimed to have seen ‘The Woman in Black’ in his own home in the Beechmount area, over a year before the situation in No. 91 began:

One of the visitors was a friend of mine from years ago, Mickey Bradley. We went to school together and I had seen him on and off through the years, but we had more or less gone in different directions.

As a child Mickey was tall and thin and he still was. He had a touch of asthma when he was a child and I think it still affected him. What he was about to tell me would give the whole situation a strange new twist.

Mickey described an incident that occurred over a year before. One night, as he and his wife were preparing for bed, his wife saw an apparition. Mickey went on to describe in detail things that made my skin prickle.

It was the woman in black, right down to the last detail!

Mickey lived only two hundred yards away from me at the time of this incident. They moved out immediately after this and Mickey was glad to hear that I was planning to go too.

Thinking over Mickey’s story made me recall a suggestion made by someone that the ground itself might be the problem, and not the actual house itself. In other words, the thing could have sprung up anywhere...

Number 91, J. Skillen, 1991, p. 47.

This development sadly isn’t picked up again later in John Skillen’s narrative – it’s yet another thread left dangling tantalisingly. Did Mickey live in the New Buildings at Beechmount too, or in one of the older interwar terraces running off Ballymurphy St between the Leisure Centre and Beechmount New Buildings?

Nevertheless, it’s interesting to learn that besides the occurrences at the Skillen residence, there now seem to have been at least two other reports within an approximate 500 metre radius of No.91 of potentially similar ‘black apparitions’ - with the reports from leisure centre staff covering both a visible 'shadow figure' as well as classic poltergeist-style activity of upturned bins and spontaneous turning on of water taps.

It’s also maybe worth mentioning that, despite a local BBC news crew covering the leisure centre story in October 1982, there seems to have been no popular memory of this event by the time of the occurrences in Beechmount Grove in June 1989 (or, not one that’s mentioned in the book, anyway). It’s also not mentioned in any of the many Belfast Forum threads that reference local ghost stories and other legends.

Of course, this frustratingly incomplete snippet of archive news proves nothing and amounts to nothing, but as I said way upthread… I’m still gathering bits and pieces of the jigsaw here. It may never all fit together, and I may never do anything more with it, but… the gathering continues, as and when fragments crop up.
 
Well, for a number of reasons I'd made a bit of a conscious decision to back off from all of this - to the point of selling on my original copy of Number 91 to a folklorist in the US - but, as ever, something seems to draw me back in.

A few nights ago, while looking for something unrelated on the Northern Ireland Digital Film Archive, I happened upon two clips in the 'Recommended for you' sidebar.

The first seems to be a short clip from a local Ulster Television news reporter, Ivan Little, standing outside 91 Beechmount Grove on 8th June 1989 - less than a week into the reported disturbances.

https://digitalfilmarchive.net/media/beechmont-ghost-falls-road-4538

The second is a longer interview with author and paranormal researcher Sheila St Clair conducted by Mr Little, apparently recorded a few miles down the road on the same day.

https://digitalfilmarchive.net/media/sheila-st-clair-discusses-the-beechmont-4539

Presumably these are just two sections from a wider story that was broadcast on the UTV evening news on the 8th of June. It's unfortunate that the entire broadcast piece doesn't seem to be available yet, just these two clips.


They probably haven't shown up in any of my previous internet searches as DFA has incorrectly labelled them as 'Beechmont' rather than 'Beechmount'. I'll email them and ask them to correct this.

There's nothing all that new or startling in the clips, but it's maybe useful to have some contemporary accounts to bolster the text of the book. It also gives a few dates - there's a mention of 'the story in this morning's newspapers', which may be helpful to nail down a date if I ever get round to booking a slot at the Newpaper Library archive in Belfast.

I did a bit of transcribing too, and I'll post the full details from each of the clips below.
What a fantastic find Quercus and you're doing God's work here.

Not to derail the topic, but in the "recommended" UTV videos there's another fascinating story about a ghost on the M1 motorway, just after it opened. I'd heard a different ghost story about the M1 after it opened before and the reporter does mention a slew of them being talked about at the start of his piece. Absolutely fascinating
 
What a fantastic find Quercus and you're doing God's work here.

Not to derail the topic, but in the "recommended" UTV videos there's another fascinating story about a ghost on the M1 motorway, just after it opened. I'd heard a different ghost story about the M1 after it opened before and the reporter does mention a slew of them being talked about at the start of his piece. Absolutely fascinating
Hey, thanks! It's been interesting finding that there's actually a few more tales out there with a possible link to Beechmount - who knows what else could be lurking?

Funny you should mention the M1 Ghost Story... I found that UTV clip with Charles Witherspoon interviewing William Nesbitt on his M1 experiences on the Digital Film Archive website a year or two ago, but only got around to posting it up on the Phantom Hitchhiker thread the other week:
Oh yes, and I just found this link too, on a case which I don't think has been mentioned on here before, but is a well-known legend locally - the M1 Phantom Hitchhiker.

https://digitalfilmarchive.net/media/the-m1-ghost-story-2136

That's the M1 between Belfast and Lisburn - not the M1 between London and Leeds.

Might be of interest, as I think someone had commented upthread that the thing with phantom hitchhiker tales was that they always seemed to happen to the archetypal 'friend of a friend' - never the speaker themselves.

Well, the above link's an archived local news interview with a man who claimed to have picked up a hitchhiker on the motorway one night, and who then vanished from his car moments later.

I transcribed the interview a while ago; there's a few discrepancies about dates (which seems to relate to the archive?) but it's quite interesting nonetheless.

The M1 Ghost Story

View attachment 57424

Location:
M1 Motorway, outside Belfast

Date: 1962 stated [but M1 opened July 1962, and sighting reportedly occurred on 31 December – description claims ‘two years after opening’ – so 1964/65?]

Interviewer: Charles Witherspoon (CW) – News Reporter, Ulster Television (UTV)

Interviewee: William Nesbitt (WN)

Duration: 5m 14s

DFA Description:

Restrain your hearty laughter and hear a sober tale of a ghost that hitchhikes on Northern Ireland’s new motorway.

Just two years after the opening of Northern Ireland’s first motorway legends have already begun to take root. Join Charles Witherspoon on the M1 flyover as he interviews William Nesbitt for Ulster Television news about his roadside psychic experience. This encounter with a ghostly hitchhiker is not Mr Nesbitt’s only tale of telekinesis, judge for yourself as he testifies to the viewers at home.

DFA Notes:

The M1 is Northern Ireland’s first and longest motorway. An urban myth was circulated that the straight sections of the M1 were built so that the US Air Force could use them as supplementary runways if war broke out with the Soviet Union. Plans for the motorway were announced in 1946 but work only began in 1959. The first stretch opened without ceremony on 10th July 1962. The RUC instigated a vigorous campaign to educate people on how to use the new motorway. Northern Ireland remained free for years from the 70 mph speed limit that was introduced in the UK. This material is courtesy of the UTV Archive.

View attachment 57425

Transcript:

CW (voiceover):


The M1 – Ulster’s new, or fairly new, motorway. A quick way of getting from Belfast to Lisburn and, in time to come, to the heart of our province.

CW (to camera):

But, new as it is, legends have already begun to spring up about the M1. For the past month, there has been a legend about a ghost appearing on this road. Now is that true, or is it false?

Well, Mr William Nesbitt is one of the most sensible, down-to-earth people I know, and on New Year’s Eve he was driving along this road. Now, to restrain your hearty laughter, let me tell you that Mr Nesbitt is a teetotaller.

CW (turning to WN):

Mr Nesbitt, what happened?

WN:

It was just about a quarter to twelve and I was coming down on – you can see it from here, about a quarter mile up the road – and a girl was walking on the hardcore. I pulled in knowing that she shouldn’t have been on, hoping to give her a lift. She got into the car with me. I didn’t speak to her until I got back onto the… the M-way again, and when she got in to the… or, when I spoke to her, I asked if she wanted a lift, if she wanted a telephone. She made no reply. I glanced round at her – but she wasn’t there.

CW:

Well now, you opened the door, and she got into the car?

WN:

Yes.

CW:

And you felt nothing unusual about it?

WN:

Nothing unusual, no – except the car got very cold at that stage. And remained cold, until she disappeared.

CW:

How long would you say this girl was in the car with you, altogether?

WN:

I would say approximately two to three minutes.

CW:

And what age would she be, roughly?

WN:

Between eight – late teens, early twenties. Quite an attractive looking girl she was, from what I could see – absolutely full, there was no ghostly look about her. Not transparent or anything, absolutely full.

CW:

Well, did you sense anything unusual at the time?

WN:

Not at that time, with the exception of the intense coldness in the car, at that stage.

CW:

How long did you say she was with you?

WN:

Say, about two to three minutes.

CW:

Could you see her all the time she was there?

WN:

Oh yes. Yes I could. I could even – I could even distinguish that she had on a grey-green suit and like a dark coat, while she was sitting beside me in the car.

CW:

Well, how did you know that, with the car being dark?

WN:

Well, I had the dashlight – was on, I could see from the dashlight what she had on.

CW (nodding):

Well you had no – she didn’t ask you to stop?

WN:

No, she didn’t ask me to stop; she was more walking along a road, with a view of looking around as if she – as if she knew somebody was coming, or somebody was behind, going to lift her. More the type of, say: well, if you know me, give me a lift; and if you don’t, go on ahead, type of thing. If you wish to stop, stop; if you don’t… [nod of head].

CW:

When she got into the car, did she shut the car door?

WN:

No, I shut the car door. She didn’t make any attempt to shut - to close the door, and I had to reach over and pull the door closed.

CW:

And there was no possibility during that time of her getting out of the car in a natural way?

WN:

None – none whatsoever.

CW:

How did you feel, after it?

WN:

Well, I was shocked I suppose, after it. Very much so. I - only one thing I wished, I had have had wings on the car rather than just having four wheels!

CW:

Um – have you had any other psychic experiences, at all?

WN:

Yes, one or two, which I pass no remarks on. One was in 1948 in South Africa – uh, my father appeared to me on board the ship that I was on. I learned about a week or so after that he had just passed away at that particular time; about five past midnight when he appeared; spoke; spoke back… that was one of them. Other one was on the High Donaghadee [to] Bangor Road; that can be verified by a witness. We were motoring home from Donaghadee one Sunday evening, just about half past eleven, and this friend suddenly said, “look out, there’s a man in front of the car” – but I knew it wasn’t, because I – because I’d already seen that man before.

CW:

He’d appeared to you a number of times?

WN:

He had, yes. Twice before.

CW:

So the experience doesn’t alarm you now?

WN:

Not now, not any more, no.

CW (turning back to camera):

Well, there it is. Mr Nesbitt, I think you’ll agree, is a solid, sensible man. Now, I’ve been talking to the psychic research people about this and they tell me that this form of what they call telekinesis – someone appearing – is quite common. And they have also assured me that in this kind of manifestation, there is absolutely nothing to be frightened of. These are very gentle ghosts indeed. They are not the malicious poltergeists, who bang doors and throw furniture and crockery about. So if you should be driving along the M1; you should pick anyone up; they should disappear – don’t be frightened, because there’s nothing to be frightened of.

https://digitalfilmarchive.net/media/the-m1-ghost-story-2136
I've been assembling some other accounts about 'the girl on the M1' to add to this, but had to wait until a book on order arrived - but if you've any info, I'd be very interested in hearing it!
 
By way of backstory, I can't yet find out a great deal about the history of Beechmount Leisure Centre. Going by the architecture, it was constructed in the 1960s or 1970s, was operated by Belfast City Council, and was closed to the public in November 2008 as part of council cost-cutting measures.

The centre was situated between Ard Na Va Road and Beechview Park, in the Middle Falls area. Here's some Google Street view images of the closed building, from 2011:

View attachment 57775
This is the front elevation, seen from Beechview Park, with the addition of security shuttering and a new roof since the 1982 footage was shot.

View attachment 57776This is the side and rear of the main building, seen from Ard Na Va Road.

The BBC Rewind page does show a map location for the clip, but this is incorrect - for some reason, it shows the site of the centre as further along the Upper Falls Road, towards Andersonstown, opposite City Cemetery.

The former leisure centre building was demolished sometime in 2012 – BBC News reports of calls for police to curb antisocial and criminal behaviour at the derelict centre are archived from January 2012, but by October that same year, Google Streetview from Ard Na Va Rd shows that the site had now been levelled.

View attachment 57778
The overall site is currently occupied by Coláiste Feirste, who operate the restored leisure centre playing fields as Spórtlann na hÉireann.

View attachment 57779
The site of the centre building is now built over with hardstanding sports pitches, visible at the north end of the site.

And it may be irrelevant - but the leisure centre was located approximately 350m from where the events of summer 1989 took place, in Beechmount Grove.

View attachment 57781

Although there’s not a great deal of detail given in the TV report on the ‘Mr Riddle’ figure reported by leisure centre staff (or indeed whether that was a name used by staff in the building, or something the reporter just made up off-the-cuff for the purposes of the broadcast), the mixture of a dark figure, water fitments turning on spontaneously, and substantial items being picked up and thrown does have certain parallels with No. 91.

It may also be worth bearing in mind that another eyewitness in the Skillen case claimed to have seen ‘The Woman in Black’ in his own home in the Beechmount area, over a year before the situation in No. 91 began:



This development sadly isn’t picked up again later in John Skillen’s narrative – it’s yet another thread left dangling tantalisingly. Did Mickey live in the New Buildings at Beechmount too, or in one of the older interwar terraces running off Ballymurphy St between the Leisure Centre and Beechmount New Buildings?

Nevertheless, it’s interesting to learn that besides the occurrences at the Skillen residence, there now seem to have been at least two other reports within an approximate 500 metre radius of No.91 of potentially similar ‘black apparitions’ - with the reports from leisure centre staff covering both a visible 'shadow figure' as well as classic poltergeist-style activity of upturned bins and spontaneous turning on of water taps.

It’s also maybe worth mentioning that, despite a local BBC news crew covering the leisure centre story in October 1982, there seems to have been no popular memory of this event by the time of the occurrences in Beechmount Grove in June 1989 (or, not one that’s mentioned in the book, anyway). It’s also not mentioned in any of the many Belfast Forum threads that reference local ghost stories and other legends.

Of course, this frustratingly incomplete snippet of archive news proves nothing and amounts to nothing, but as I said way upthread… I’m still gathering bits and pieces of the jigsaw here. It may never all fit together, and I may never do anything more with it, but… the gathering continues, as and when fragments crop up.
OK I've done a bit more digging on this "Mr Riddle" character.

Reply #27 in This thread states that the field Beechmount Leisure Centre was built on was called "Riddle's Field".

This article states that an old hostel beside Beechmount Leisure Centre was "originally the home of the Riddle Landlords".

This article states that Samuel Riddle, a jeweller from Beechmount Mansion declared in the deeds to the property that the mansion should never "fall into Papist hands" (it later became a convent). It's a long article, you'll have to search for "Riddle".

Lastly, one of the Directors for this company, "The Beechmount Trust Ltd", has a surname of Riddle. Though based in Downpatrick, there is no "Beechmount" in Downpatrick as far as I'm aware, just the one in Belfast. Still, might be a coincidence. It seems to be a religious organisation of some kind.

If you Google things like Riddles Field Belfast etc you'll find stories of Fairy Rings, suicides etc.

So it appears that "Mr Riddle" was based on a real historical person at least.
 
So, it seems that the story of Number 91 continues to draw folks in with its sheer oddness... Real Life Ghost Stories podcast has just put together a two-part show based on the book, plus additional sources and commentary - including some of the assorted musings from this fair thread.

Part 1:

Part 2:

As a listener of both shows, I thought Spotify was glitching and throwing up the older Weekly Creep podcast episode from 2021 whenever I saw 'Number 91' appear in my podcast subscription feed, but no...

I listened to Part 1 on Friday during the morning commute, and was impressed with the thoughtful approach to what is - essentially - a bizarre and disturbing story which seems to repel any attempt to approach it with logic. The first part mostly sets the scene of West Belfast in summer 1989 and describes the first few days of the reported disturbances as John Skillen sets them out in his book.

I know it's likely only coincidence, but Part 1 was released on Sunday 4th June, which was exactly 34 years since the weekend when all this supposedly kicked off at 91 Beechmount Grove.

In a further strange bout of synchronicity, I messaged the Real Life Ghost Stories email account fairly late on Friday night, just to say that I'd enjoyed Part 1 and adding that there was some additional background on this forum thread which may or may not be of any use at this stage. It turned out that Emma from the show was just looking at this thread at the time my email dropped.

The second part was released on Sunday, and finishes the story as recounted in the original book, before moving on to the rather knottier discussion of WTAF was going on here.

And of course, we don't know. We can't know for sure. From reports, it seems that John and Greta Skillen are sadly no longer with us, and while their children are very aware of the book and its legacy, it seems they have zero inclination to revisit what occurred all those years ago. While part of me would love to hear the tale told from another perspective, I can fully understand why they feel the need to take this approach.

In the podcast, Emma concurs that the physical violence and intensity of the activity seems so extreme as to push the bounds of credibility - but points out that none of it is without precedent in other accounts of destructive hauntings. The difference is only really in the intensity.

The story of No.91 is wild, agreed, but it's not totally untethered to other reports elsewhere in the world.

By contrast, I'm thinking of the rather singular accounts circulating of the alleged Amityville haunting at 112 Ocean Drive - with its walls supposedly running with blood, demonic pigs with glowing red eyes appearing at windows and phantom marching bands - which have limited antecedent in other paranormal case studies.

But if someone claims to have been nudged, or pinched, or scratched while visiting a supposedly haunted location, well - whether you believe it or not, at least there's many accounts of people reporting similar experiences, from across the world. Regardless of what you believe the actual cause to be, it's acknowledged as A Thing people do report from time to time. Spectral marching bands passing through a residential house, not so much.

But going from a touch, to a nudge, to a shove, to being kicked down the stairs or bodily picked up and flung over a sofa - well, now it's more a question of degree regarding known reported phenomenon. And when there's named witnesses to such activities - apparently many witnesses, including people who still stand by what they saw, and remain disturbed by it even decades later - then I think that's a different matter.

So yeah. I don't think this is something I'll ever get to the bottom of. The fragments picked up in recent years do seem to position the overall Beechmount area as something of a centre for strangeness - and, to throw my tuppen'orth into the mix, I reckon there is something odd about the land itself rather than the individual houses that were built on it. But what happened to the Skillens - and why John was the focal point - remains as baffling now as it was then.

But it's good to know other people are still intrigued by the account too, and who knows what other information might come out some day?

And if it does, I'll pop it up here...
 
The Beechmount Leisure Centre Ghost: Scene Around Six (BBC Northern Ireland)

Location:

Beechmount Leisure Centre, Falls Road, Belfast

Date:
Tuesday 12 October 1982

Interviewer:
Unidentified BBC News Reporter
Oh yes - and just to clarify on this one, I've since realised that the 'Unidentified BBC News Reporter' in the October 1982 clip on the Beechmount Leisure Centre haunting is in fact the journalist Adrian Logan.

adrian_logan.jpeg

I've only ever known him as a long-standing UTV sports presenter; I hadn't realised he'd originally cut his journalistic teeth with the BBC Northern Ireland news team.

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But I'm quite sure it's the same guy, just a bit younger!
 
Listened to the Real Life Ghosts Stories coverage of this, and the Beechmount Polt has a number of interesting features. Interestingly financial gain doesn't seem to be much of a factor, with the biggest possibility being a hope that the book would turn into a hit of Amityville proportions. But to give up the biggest & best house on the block when you don't have anything else and no options for anything better makes a hoax unlikely. Listening to the retelling, I'm thinking that some of the instances of going back for another face-off with the entity was likely alcohol-fuelled, as that kind of emotional teetering (to which the afflicted said he could never figure out why he kept going back) would make sense, and in that case it may factor into the Entity case where alcohol use factored into the life and disposition of the victim there. I'm also struck by similarity of this to the Bell Witch and Gef the Talking Mongoose in many respects, in that we have physical manifestations that some could see as well as an ability to converse (though Beechmount has the least amount of communication).

How close is Beechmount to Alanbrooke Hall, which had it's own set of somewhat similar ghastly encounters?
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-59320065
 
Listened to the Real Life Ghosts Stories coverage of this, and the Beechmount Polt has a number of interesting features. Interestingly financial gain doesn't seem to be much of a factor, with the biggest possibility being a hope that the book would turn into a hit of Amityville proportions. But to give up the biggest & best house on the block when you don't have anything else and no options for anything better makes a hoax unlikely. Listening to the retelling, I'm thinking that some of the instances of going back for another face-off with the entity was likely alcohol-fuelled, as that kind of emotional teetering (to which the afflicted said he could never figure out why he kept going back) would make sense, and in that case it may factor into the Entity case where alcohol use factored into the life and disposition of the victim there. I'm also struck by similarity of this to the Bell Witch and Gef the Talking Mongoose in many respects, in that we have physical manifestations that some could see as well as an ability to converse (though Beechmount has the least amount of communication).

How close is Beechmount to Alanbrooke Hall, which had it's own set of somewhat similar ghastly encounters?
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-59320065
Great work on this thread everyone, some really good detective work.

My rudimentary reading of Google maps suggests Beechmont Road was close to the Royal Victoria Hospital which in turn is just across the road from the QUB campus where I am assuming Alanbrooke Hall was situated. If I'm correct, then can we call this the Belfast Triangle...?
 
How close is Beechmount to Alanbrooke Hall, which had it's own set of somewhat similar ghastly encounters?
An interesting theory! I wouldn't say the two locations are all that close, though - Beechmount Link (the 2000s development built over the site of 1970s Beechmount Grove) is roughly about two miles away as the crow flies from Queen's Elms student accommodation on the Malone Road, where Alanbrooke Hall once stood.
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Belfast's not all that big a place, really, and though the two areas aren't all that far apart, the Malone area's very much part of South Belfast - which has a reputation for being a bit posh - while the Upper Falls area where the Beechmount development was situated would be perceived as part of West Belfast, and quite a bit more salt-of-the-earth.

The Westlink and the M1 motorway tends to be viewed as the divider between the two areas - though of course, the motorway is reputed to have its own road ghost too, so - who knows?

(Actually, so does Upper Malone now I come to think of it.)
My rudimentary reading of Google maps suggests Beechmont Road was close to the Royal Victoria Hospital which in turn is just across the road from the QUB campus where I am assuming Alanbrooke Hall was situated

Beechmount is indeed pretty close to the RVH, at the junction of Grosvenor Road and the Upper Falls Road - though the hospital near to the QUB campus (between the Lisburn Road and Donegall Road) is City Hospital. Again, a few miles separate them.

Mind you, City Hospital was built on the former Belfast Poorhouse, and there were a lot of contemporaneous ghost stories about the old Poorhouse while it was in operation.

Queen's Elms is a bit of a trek from the main QUB campus on University Rd - just one reason why it wasn't all that popular with students, compared to the Holylands area right alongside. It was also extremely run-down by the late 1990s, when I had a number of friends staying there - including two who may have been staying at Alanbrooke Hall.

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I can't now remember exactly which building it was - there were a number of broadly similar-looking high-rise blocks in the development - and I was only in it a few times.

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It was pretty horrible, but just in a dated and poorly-maintained way rather than a spooky way. Because the whole 1960s development was slated for demolition to build the proposed new Elms Village by the late '90s, clearly the buildings management company weren't going to waste money on stuff like decor. But I don't recall hearing any rumours of hauntings from those staying there at the time.

But it's fair to say the Danny Robins podcast has certainly provided the Belfast area with a sudden uptick in interest when it comes to Fortean matters. And I guess that can only be a good thing.

BBC News - Alanbrooke Hall: The Belfast building spooking UK listeners https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-59320065
 
Plus, if anyone wants their own original copy of Number 91...

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Hurry hurry hurry. Yours for only a penny short of a hundred quid, squire.

Free postage, mind.

That's quite a bit more than I sold my copy for - and mine seemed a lot better, condition-wise.

But that's only the second (and third?) copy I'm aware of to come up for sale in about five years.
 
Some more genuinely helpful stuff has come to light this week, as a direct consequence of the recent Real Life Ghost Stories podcast on The Beechmount Poltergeist case.

The Belfast Telegraph ran an article on No. 91 on Sunday just past:

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https://belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sunday-life/news/the-haunting-of-west-belfast-spooky-story-of-how-family-fled-violent-ghost-in-1989/a1134516064.html

I'm not sure if it was an online-only article, or made it into the print edition too, but again it summarised the main points of John Skillen's book, mentions the UTV news footage (linked back on page 1), and delves into some of the theories raised on this very thread and elsewhere.

But for me, the exciting bit is seeing a few of the contemporary news clippings which have, up to now, eluded me. It maybe helps to have some detail on what we know was broadcast or published, and when - even if I haven't yet been able to track them down.

First up is a clipping from the Irish News on Wednesday 7th June 1989:

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Although quite a short piece, this ties in with the dates and events set out in the book - that the evening of Tuesday 6th June marked the second occasion Fr O'Donnell called to the house, and the first large-scale community vigil, for want of a better term.

This was published only a few days after the reported phenomena began, in the early hours of Saturday 3rd June 1989. So it's pretty close to the start of the whole episode, and squares closely with John Skillen's later written account.

The book doesn't specifically reference the publication of this Irish News article, but John does mention in Chapter 5 about noticing "a TV cameraman outside the window" and the front door being knocked on the morning of Thursday 8th June, but that he "didn't want to open the door to a reporter". He goes on to say that the news team left soon after, but not before speaking to some neighbours - and also, apparently, Fr O'Donnell (possibly by phone?)

This lines up with the UTV footage featuring news reporter Ivan Little, linked on the previous page, which was recorded on 8th June and features a short direct quote attributed to Fr O'Donnell. So I think it's likely that it was the UTV news crew John describes seeing that morning.

It seems that, soon after leaving Beechmount, Little then travelled down the M1 to Lisburn, where he interviewed Sheila St Clair on the subject. As an author who had written books on local paranormal experiences and Irish mythology, she certainly seemed a logical choice to offer a professional perspective on the unfolding case.

In the recorded piece, Mrs St Clair states that she hasn't spoken with anyone from the Skillen family - but she seems to know a lot more detail about the case than the bare bones set out by the Irish Times on 7th June. She also talks about the family's living arrangements which were described "in this morning's papers", which makes me wonder of there were further, more detailed articles published the day after the initial Irish Times article. If so, these are still to be found.

The recent Telegraph article then goes on to summarise an Andersonstown News article from Saturday 10th June 1989, which isn't depicted but lists some of the phenomena experienced by John and others in No.91.

Amongst other things, this article - apparently written by a reporter names Tom Mallon - recounts the Woman In Black smashing a window, locking John in the toilet and knocking a glass from Greta's hand.

I haven't looked closely yet, but I don't remember the book describing a window being broken or a glass being knocked from anyone's hand. Having said that, there are just so many events detailed that it's hard to keep track of them.

So apparently the Andersonstown News continued to update readers on the Beechmount story over the coming weeks, while other news outlets stopped covering the story as the news cycle moved on.

This may well be because the Andersonstown News is quite a local publication focusing on the West Belfast area, specifically the Upper Falls district, while other press outlets like the Irish News and the Belfast Telegraph are a bit more widespread.

Nowhere in John Skillen's book does he name the print media outlets he speaks to, which is kinda frustrating. I felt that the Andersonstown News was the most likely publication based on proximity, but apparently physical archive copies of their back editions are not held by the Newspaper Library operated by Libraries NI in central Belfast.

I'd contacted Belfast Media, the current owners of the Andersonstown News, back in August 2020 to see if they could help, but got no response. Searching their website brings up no results for any keywords relating to No.91.

John Skillen's account does go into a bit of detail about a radio interview he records with BBC Radio Ulster on Wednesday 14th June 1989, and which is then broadcast at noon the following day on the TalkBack show, hosted by the late Barry Cowan.

TalkBack still remains a fixture on Radio Ulster, where members of the public get to call in and give their opinion on current affairs and other hot-topic issues. According to John Skillen, Sheila St Clair then called in to the show to offer an expert opinion, sympathising with the family's predicament and reaching out to them by giving her phone number. As John tells it, Greta then rang Sheila and they agreed to meet up, along with a psychic medium and some other people.

This is the first time Mrs St Clair appears in the No.91 story - though we now know she had been interviewed by Ivan Little a week earlier.

Again, I contacted BBC Northern Ireland in August 2020 asking how I might go about accessing their radio archive for the TalkBack show broadcast on Thursday 15th June 1989 - but despite follow-up emails, I never heard anything back from them.

Although John Skillen's account states that the family effectively left 91 Beechmount Grove on Saturday 10 June 1989, a week after everything began - detailed in Chapter 7, 'After The Flit' - the next archive clip detailed by the Telegraph is an Andersonstown News front story from Friday 23rd June:

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This article, rather poignantly, features a photo of Greta Skillen. This is the first time I've ever seen a picture of any of the Skillen family.

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In the book, timelines become a little hard to follow once we get past the 10th of June. Rather, there are mentions of 'Saturday' and 'Thursday' and 'a few days later' which makes the chronology unclear at times.

But I think this article appeared just after a particularly violent episode in Chapter 8, 'Showdown!', which may have taken place on the evening of Thursday 22nd June - though there's no mention in John's narrative of Greta speaking to the press at this time. He does, however, state that following the showdown he considered that the Woman In Black had succeeded in "putting us out of our house".

22nd June is also the date of the letter Sheila St Clair wrote to the NI Housing Executive on behalf of the Skillens, requesting that they be rehoused, which is reprinted at the back of the book.

What is mentioned is the group of unnamed journalists who, not long after, conducted an overnight stay at No.91. The date of this 'vigil', and which publication they represented, isn't mentioned but John states that they had been drinking and left the house in a terrible state. He also variously condemns their subsequent article as "a farce", "a waste of time" and "a load of nonsense".

After this article was published - and again, I suspect this may have been in the Andersonstown News - John writes that he had to refuse Greta's suggestion to go to another newspaper to expose the activities of the 'drunk journalists', stating that "I felt that a confrontation with the paper concerned was the last thing we needed".

It appears that John's acutely aware of how the media might portray him and his family - and perhaps this feeling of being misrepresented and needing to take back control of his own story is what prompted him to write the book in the first place?

So this article from the Belfast Telegraph helps to pin down some of the dates and the publications, and I'd still like to track down these articles and read them in full. But for now - another few pieces of the puzzle?

All thanks to Emma of RLGS podcast for pinging me the link!
 
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@Quercus, interesting information. It's an interesting story to me because of it being a more recent poltergeist story with source material that has not been obfuscated by people trying to capitalize on the story.

I will be listening to the podcast. Thanks.
 
I've just been reading through the PDF. Very interesting bit on numbered page 27 of the book:

A few well-wishers dropped by to join my sisters. Ta came over to make sure that we were still definite about leaving to come and stay with him and Margaret.

One of the visitors was a of mine from years ago, Mickey Bradley. We went to school together and I had seen him on and off through the years, but we had more or less gone in different directions. As a child Mickey was tall and thin and he still was. He had a touch of asthma when he was a child and I think it still affected him. What he was about to tell me would give the whole situation a strange new twist.

Mickey described an incident that occurred over a year before. One night, as he and his wife were preparing for bed, his wife saw an apparition. Mickey went on to describe in detail things that made my skin prickle. It was the woman in black right down to the last detail!

Mickey lived only two hundred yards away from me at the time of this incident. They moved out immediately after this and Mickey was glad to hear that I was planning to go too.

Thinking over Mickey’s story made me recall a suggestion made by someone that the ground itself might be the problem and not the actual house itself. In other words, the thing could have sprung up anywhere...


So not necessarily tied to the house in particular.
 
Yes, this is a really significant part of the story - and, like so much else, it's referred to just the once and then never mentioned again in Number 91. Frustrating.

I'd highlighted this part of the story in passing last August:
It may also be worth bearing in mind that another eyewitness in the Skillen case claimed to have seen ‘The Woman in Black’ in his own home in the Beechmount area, over a year before the situation in No. 91 began:
One of the visitors was a friend of mine from years ago, Mickey Bradley. We went to school together and I had seen him on and off through the years, but we had more or less gone in different directions.As a child Mickey was tall and thin and he still was. He had a touch of asthma when he was a child and I think it still affected him. What he was about to tell me would give the whole situation a strange new twist. Mickey described an incident that occurred over a year before. One night, as he and his wife were preparing for bed, his wife saw an apparition. Mickey went on to describe in detail things that made my skin prickle. It was the woman in black, right down to the last detail!i Mckey lived only two hundred yards away from me at the time of this incident. They moved out immediately after this and Mickey was glad to hear that I was planning to go too. Thinking over Mickey’s story made me recall a suggestion made by someone that the ground itself might be the problem, and not the actual house itself. In other words, the thing could have sprung up anywhere...Number 91, J. Skillen, 1991, p. 47.
This development sadly isn’t picked up again later in John Skillen’s narrative – it’s yet another thread left dangling tantalisingly. Did Mickey live in the New Buildings at Beechmount too, or in one of the older interwar terraces running off Ballymurphy St between the Leisure Centre and Beechmount New Buildings?

Nevertheless, it’s interesting to learn that besides the occurrences at the Skillen residence, there now seem to have been at least two other reports within an approximate 500 metre radius of No.91 of potentially similar ‘black apparitions’ - with the reports from leisure centre staff covering both a visible 'shadow figure' as well as classic poltergeist-style activity of upturned bins and spontaneous turning on of water taps.

I'd love to know whereabouts Mickey Bradley lived in relation to No.91 Beechmount Grove, but I've not yet found any reference to the Bradleys in the various mentions of who lived where in Beechmount in online group chats: there's frequent discussions along the lines of "sure, you must remember Jimmy X, he lived next to the Y family who had the caravan, just opposite Tommy Z on the corner".

John Skillen says No.91 was 200 yards away from where Mickey saw The Woman in Black - but looking at the maps, that could have been either within the same 1970s New Buildings development, or somewhere in the older interwar terraces off Beechmount Avenue on the far side of Kennedy's Bakery, depending on exactly which direction it was from No.91.

Internet searches may not be very helpful to find any trace of Mickey, since he shares a name with Mickey Bradley of local punks The Undertones, now a popular presenter on Radio Ulster. But the famous Mickey Bradley is very much a Derry fella born and bred, with no known links to Beechmount - so I don't think it's him!
 
Yes, this is a really significant part of the story - and, like so much else, it's referred to just the once and then never mentioned again in Number 91. Frustrating.

I'd highlighted this part of the story in passing last August:




I'd love to know whereabouts Mickey Bradley lived in relation to No.91 Beechmount Grove, but I've not yet found any reference to the Bradleys in the various mentions of who lived where in Beechmount in online group chats: there's frequent discussions along the lines of "sure, you must remember Jimmy X, he lived next to the Y family who had the caravan, just opposite Tommy Z on the corner".

John Skillen says No.91 was 200 yards away from where Mickey saw The Woman in Black - but looking at the maps, that could have been either within the same 1970s New Buildings development, or somewhere in the older interwar terraces off Beechmount Avenue on the far side of Kennedy's Bakery, depending on exactly which direction it was from No.91.

Internet searches may not be very helpful to find any trace of Mickey, since he shares a name with Mickey Bradley of local punks The Undertones, now a popular presenter on Radio Ulster. But the famous Mickey Bradley is very much a Derry fella born and bred, with no known links to Beechmount - so I don't think it's him!
I wonder if consulting the electoral roll for the period in question would answer that question?
 
I just finished reading the PDF, quite a disturbing case - and one of those that seems to be a haunting with strong poltergeist phenomena, strongly linked to the location with no poltergeist contagion or events occurring outside the house - the phenomena never followed anyone, as in person-centred poltergeist cases, and strong disturbances such as loud noises and movement of furniture occurred when the house was unoccupied for extended periods.

The appendix made me laugh when the SPR lady continually mentions RSPK (rather than ghost/poltergeist) in an attempt to sound scientific, even though the case is obviously not explained by RSPK - at least not by a living focus.

In chapter 13, we have:
Cecil said a strange thing to Greta. ‘Some day there could be a terrible tragedy in that house. I don’t want to be reading about you in the newspapers. Take my advice and stay well away from it.’

Is there any evidence that there was any terrible tragedy in the house, after the Skillens moved out, and before the house was demolished?

I won't cite pages, I think the PDF was typed up by someone from the paper copy - there's a lot of typos that may or may not have been in the original, and I'm pretty sure the page numbers bear no relation to the hard copy book.
 
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Heh, glad it's been useful somewhere along the line!

I'm still kinda surprised how obscure this one is; given the media interest and the extreme nature of the reported activity, I'd have thought that some 'proper' research would have been applied to this case long ago. I wasn't joking when I wondered a few years ago whether the whole thing had been debunked as a hoax not long afterward, since there was just... silence.

I'd thought the Beechmount case might have made an appearance in the 1990s Glenravel publications - hence my keenness to track down the original print run of Belfast Ghost Stories and Ulster Ghost Stories pamphlets. But nope - nothing.

I've managed to make some inroads into tracking down more of the original newspaper articles which referenced the case back in summer 1989. Belfast's Newspaper Library, based at Central Library in Royal Avenue, has a number of potential leads - but they're mostly stored on microfiche film, so I think it's gonna take a full day to look through the spools for potentially relevant articles.

Since I only have this currently written down on a literal scrap of paper jammed into my phone case, maybe I should jot it down here for safekeeping - and if anyone else fancies stepping up to the plate, be my guest...
 
Andersonstown News:
hard copies only for 1989: located on 2nd Floor of Newspaper Library (staff to fetch and bring to reading room)

Belfast Telegraph:
Microfiche - Cabinet 5, Drawer E/ poss. F
Hard copies - apparently not available for May/ June '89?

Irish News:
Microfiche - Cabinet 10, Drawer B
Hard Copies - Volume Jul '88 to Jun '89

Sunday Life:
Microfiche - Cabinet 29, Drawer C
Hard copies (incomplete) - some in News Library (speak to staff)

South Belfast Herald & Post:
Hard copies only - 2nd Floor of Newspaper Library
 
In the spirit of trying to keep everything together, it's maybe also worth mentioning that the Belfast Telegraph's weekend sister publication, the Sunday Life, last week re-ran the story originally published on 2 July:

Sunday Life, 31 October 2023

The haunting of west Belfast: Spooky story of how family fled violent ghost in 1989​

Apparition’s terrorising of family in their home saw news crews descend on scene for story that’s still unexplained to this day

By Christopher Woodhouse

Reports of people being beaten up and having to flee their homes were an almost daily occurrence in the blood-stained Belfast of the 1980s.
But such attacks were usually carried out by masked men of one of the republican or loyalist paramilitary groups — not a violent black-clad Victorian woman who would suddenly appear out of thin air.

That is allegedly what caused the Skillen family to flee their home at 91 Beechmount Grove in west Belfast in June 1989.

The so-far unexplained experiences of the Skillens made front page headlines and TV news reports in June that year.

Father of the family, John Skillen, reported having his face slapped and his head smashed off the walls and fireplace of the house by the apparition, which suddenly started appearing in the house one day.

What happened was also witnessed by neighbours, friends and even a priest, who were drawn to the house by the bizarre happenings.

But the relentless cycle of tragedy during the Troubles, plus international events — such as the bloody end of the Tiananmen Square protests that month — meant the startling accounts of what was going on in the house were soon forgotten.

The Beechmount case has once again come back to public attention thanks in part to Irish podcast series Real Life Ghost Stories, and helped by members of the Fortean Times online forum, which collects and discusses accounts of strange phenomena.

It’s the second poltergeist haunting to have come back to the fore after the infamous alleged haunting at Queen’s University’s Alanbrooke Hall which made for a popular episode of hit BBC podcast series Uncanny.

The first mention of unusual goings-on at the long since demolished 91 Beechmount Grove appeared in a small news story on the front page of The Irish News on Wednesday, June 7, 1989.

Headlined ‘Belfast “ghost scare”’, it reported “100 men, women and children” had gathered outside the house upon hearing what was going on.

It told of older women reciting prayers, while one neighbour said: “I don’t know what is going on but it is beyond my understanding.

“I don’t know what is going on in there but one thing I know is that the man who lives there is not the panicky type.

“It must have been very strange to frighten him to these lengths.”

Following the report it wasn’t long before the cameras of UTV arrived, accompanied by reporter Ivan Little.

Local weekly paper the Andersonstown News kept up with the story and reported that Saturday how a number of priests had been called to the house to reassure the family.

It also recounted how the spectral woman had smashed a window, locked John in the toilet and knocked a glass from his wife Greta’s hand.

Tom Mallon, its ‘ghostbuster’ reporter, spoke to one neighbour who said: “This may all seem like a bit of a joke but this family aren’t the kind of people to make something like this up.”

While the daily media moved on, the Andersonstown News kept on the story, and within two weeks the haunting was so bad the Skillens fled the house, as reported on the paper’s front page.

Under the headline ‘In the name of God what do you want? No Respite For Haunted Family’, it told how the seven-strong Skillen family were now staying with relatives.

Greta said the Housing Executive was putting a new family in the property and had little sympathy for their plight.

“If we stay in the house at night, she’ll appear to my husband. He’s been thrown against the wall, my sons have been slapped around the head,” she explained to the paper.

“My husband asked: ‘What in the name of God do you want?’ And it said: ‘Get out!”

It also reported how a small group of people had maintained a three-week vigil outside the home where they recited the rosary.

John then wrote his own account of what the family experienced in a book entitled Number 91, A Belfast Ghost Story.

The book is now rare with copies offered for sale online recently at almost £100.

Excerpts of the book were the basis of two episodes of Real Life Ghost Stories which looked back on the case.

In the self-penned work, Mr Skillen explained how he first saw the woman one night as he came out of the bathroom, but vanished as soon as she appeared, and he put it down to “light and shadows”.

Later that night, when he went to check the children hadn’t left the bathroom taps on before bed, he suddenly found the bathroom plunged into darkness and the door slammed behind him.

Mr Skillen was convinced he could feel the woman “stalk” around him before the door suddenly opened and he was met by his son.

This was the start of an escalation of unexplained activity in the house caused by the apparition which would quickly turn violent.
The physical interactions began with Mr Skillen having his hair pulled and face slapped as he tried to get to sleep that night.

The next night in one confrontation with the apparition, in the presence of his wife and her friend, it grabbed Mr Skillen and banged his head off the wall.

Another attack saw it grab his head and bang it off a radiator, and when another man came to his aid he was punched in the head by the entity and went flying across the room.

Similar incidents would happen over the following days with Mr Skillen being punched and even thrown into the air and against a wall.
Mr Skillen recalled her unbelievable strength and how he was “just like paper in her hands”.

The family would eventually leave the house on the advice of a priest who believed staying there would put them at risk.

Before they left a neighbour, Mikey, told Mr Skillen that his wife had seen an apparition in their home about a year before — the description exactly matching that of the woman attacking him.

In two further attempts to return to the house Mr Skillen was again violently attacked by the woman.

The occurrences at 91 Beechmount Grove have never been explained and the area has since been redeveloped.

It’s believed Mr Skillen and his wife have since passed away and the Skillen children do not wish to discuss the traumatic events of June 1989.

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/...y-fled-violent-ghost-in-1989/a1134516064.html

I wouldn't normally repeat a news story verbatim, but it appears that the original article linked upthread has now been taken down - don't know if it's been erased, updated or hidden behind a paywall - but you can access the most recent version of the article here:

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/...y-fled-violent-ghost-in-1989/a1134516064.html

I'm not sure if there's been any amendments between this version and the 2 July version, because I apparently didn't think to make a note of the text... I know, schoolboy error...
 
There was also a further addendum to the Beechmount story published in late July, also in the Sunday Life. It seems that the 2 July article flushed out that rarest of thing - a witness who was there in No.91 at the time, as part of the extended Skillen family.

Mon 24 Jul 2023 at 06:45

Belfast taxi driver details experiences with ghost that left him so scared he's stayed off booze for decades​

Michael Osborne laughed off haunting at relative’s house, then spirit got in bed beside him
By Christopher Woodhouse
The brother-in-law of an apparent poltergeist victim has described how witnessing the paranormal events at a house in west Belfast changed his life.

Michael Osborne told Sunday Life he had not touched a drink since the unexplained events at 91 Beechmount Grove in June 1989, which caused John Skillen and his family to flee their home.

“What happened with John and his family very much did happen because I was there when about four or five different incidents did happen,” said Michael.

“I saw John after he was attacked when he went up to the bathroom, and it is something I can’t explain to this day.

“How do you get scrape marks like nail marks on your ankles? They were very fresh.

“John is a big lad, over six foot, a big strapping guy, and he doesn’t fear an awful lot, but he was afraid that day.

“He wouldn’t have believed it at all, but it happened to him and then he believed.”

Earlier this month, we told how John, wife Greta and their family were terrorised by an apparition of a woman dressed in Victorian clothing who suddenly began appearing in their terraced home in June 1989.

The spirit, who Michael revealed was called Nora, physically attacked John, starting with slaps to the face and then escalating to sustained punches to the head and once being thrown across a room.

It would eventually force the family to leave the Housing Executive property, but not before the case made newspaper and TV headlines and drew crowds of curious spectators.

John penned his own account of what happened, Number 91: A Belfast Ghost Story, but Michael is the first Skillen relation to speak about the case since.

The former taxi driver said: “John was a quiet man at the best of times and never showed fear, but during that whole incident his brothers and others knew he was in a bit of trouble.

“It was only because of his family. He didn’t want anything to happen to them and there were things that were happening that he wasn’t in control of.

“I was always sceptical and would have been laughing at most of the things happening, except when it got serious.

“My reaction was, ‘These people can’t be telling lies. My wife never told a lie in her life’.

“It was a terrible thing that happened to them, but they got a lot of sympathy from people.

“She was a very religious woman, and I don’t know what she saw, but she didn’t sleep for a while after.”

Michael (70) said there was speculation the apparent haunting could have been linked to an old burial ground on the site of a long-demolished brickworks near the Skillens’ home.

“This all started with McGladery’s brickworks. There was an old graveyard there and apparently this girl called Nora had a pretty violent death,” he added.

Michael said he initially had no time for talk of ghosts or anything to do with superstitions, but that soon changed when he went to the Skillen house after the start of the paranormal events.

“I was a non-believer. I didn’t believe any of what was going on, but we went up to give the family a bit of support, along with a priest and John’s brothers and sisters,” he added.

“So, when they were sitting down getting ready for this — whatever it was — to come into the room, I went upstairs to have a lie-down.

“I turned the light on to see where the bed was and then turned it off, but when I lay on the bed there was somebody already in the bed.

“I got up immediately and turned the light on again. There was nobody in the bed — there wasn’t even a wrinkle on it.

“I decided to have a bit of a laugh and started switching the light on and off.

“I could hear them all saying, ‘Get upstairs quick’, and I stopped.

"But when I stopped, the lights did it on their own.”

On another occasion after the Skillens had been forced leave the house because of repeated attacks on John, Michael visited the property to check on it.

“When I went in, I couldn’t get out. All the doors had locked and the windows had frosted over,” he said.

“I found it very hard to explain to friends and other people what I experienced.

“They would say, ‘Sure, you’re a bit of a wind-up merchant’, and yes, but this was serious. There were people getting hurt.”

Michael, who was a heavy drinker at the time, added: “When I got to know it, I was s**t scared. It knocked the cockiness out of me… I haven’t taken a drink since.

“I remember asking one of the priests if he believed any of what was going on.

“He said, ‘I very much do. There is something in this room that shouldn’t be in this room’.”

Not everyone in the area took the episode seriously, with some of the dozens who gathered outside treating it all as a bit of joke.

“These people were coming expecting to see a ghost and anything that wasn’t normal, and there were people calling to the door with vacuum cleaners strapped to their backs, pretending to be Ghostbusters,” recalled Michael.

The only time Greta spoke about the matter was after the family requested to be transferred to another address, but that would not be the end of the link between them and the apparition.

“If we stay in the house at night, she’ll appear to my husband,” Greta told the Andersonstown News. “He’s been thrown against the wall. My sons have been slapped around the head.

“My husband asked, ‘What in the name of God do you want?’ It said, ‘Get out’.”

Michael picked up the story: “John put in for a move of house, but when they got another house, something like three quarters of a mile away, the family who got John’s house came round and asked him if he could bring his ghost with him.

“So, if John and the family were telling lies, why were they asking for the ghost to be shifted back on to him?

“It’s the not knowing that’s killing people.”

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/...stayed-off-booze-for-decades/a1059093720.html

All thanks to Emma at Real Life Ghost Stories podcast for firing that one over to me too!
 
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