Jackie McGregor: ​Tales from the crypt: The Smithfield sweetheart and the headless horseman

It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but the place was creepier than I’d ever imagined. Wanting to give ourselves a proper fright we went there to tell ghost stories. Suddenly, I got the creepy feeling we were being watched. A shadowy figure appeared at a window. We all saw it at the same time. Then a black crow swooped out of a broken window cawing demonically. We abandoned all thought of entering. One pal wet herself, and we all ran like blazes.

Our target for that ill-fated mission had been North Belfast’s Chapel of the Resurrection. Built in the 1860s for the 3rd Marquess of Donegall as a memorial to his son Frederick Richard, Earl of Belfast, who died aged just 25, it had stood derelict for years. It was a ruin ravaged by time, vandals and horrifically, grave robbers.

I was surprised when the place was later converted into luxury apartments. The coffin-lowering mechanism was preserved, and the crypt repurposed into a private underground party room. Charming, I’m sure, though if invited for nibbles, I’d be gone before the host could whip out his prawn cocktail.

Looking back, Halloween was a tamer affair in 1980s Northern Ireland, we didn’t trick or treat. With the Troubles raging, approaching a stranger’s house in the dark, banging on the door, wearing a mask and issuing ultimatums was ill-advised. Instead, we stayed home, ducked for apples in buckets, wore plastic false faces, ate apple tart with a coin hidden inside and lit sparklers in the living room – all of which held their own horrors.

Today, Northern Ireland’s Halloween is a commercial spectacle, from Londonderry’s acclaimed street carnival to Crumlin Road Gaol night tours. A friend couldn’t sleep for months after the Gaol tour; she was so unnerved. She had begged me to accompany her, but she hadn’t a hope in hell of roping me in to that; I politely declined.

I’m so naturally nervy that when walking home alone one evening, I squealed and ran down the road after glimpsing my own fringe from the corner of my eye.

Besides, I’d warned her not to go: a press photographer I knew was sent there on assignment with a priest and a minister. One cell felt so chillingly evil that all three bolted, wedging themselves in the doorway. That was enough for me.

There’s plenty of local ghost stories to feed my overactive imagination. I can’t walk down Gresham Street without thinking of Biddy Farrelly the ghost of Smithfield Market, who died of a broken heart and still wanders the area searching for her lost sweetheart.

On the Shore Road, I watch for 19th-century mill owner Galloper Thompson, whose headless ghost supposedly gallops by, having refused the afterlife to stay with his trusty steed.

So, if you’re strolling the much-haunted Victorian Streets of Belfast this Halloween night, keep your wits about you. Look over your shoulder. Tonight is the night tortured souls slip back into our world to walk amongst us. Who knows what lurks in the shadows? You might glimpse something terrifying out of the corner of your eye...perhaps Biddy Farrelly, perhaps your own fringe.