Ghost Of The Waste Ground

Ghost Of The Waste Ground   

By Paul McCann

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 .

Jimmy Tanner lived downstairs in one of the half houses with his son Liam and daughter Sarah . Jimmys wife Hannah died of a fever after Liam was born and little Sarah died when she was 3 years old after being scalded by a pot of boiling water that spilt over her after she had reached up and grabbed it from the stove .
Upstairs from Jimmy Tanner lived Mrs Angela Tupenny with her five children , she had lost her husband in the war and did her best to raise five children on a doffers wage .

Jimmy Tanner was decapitated in an industrial accident when Liam was just twelve years old and some of the locals had tried to put young Liam into an orphanage but Liam chased them out of his father’s house with a knife and with the support of Mrs Tupenny and her 4 sons who drove off the scoundrels who wanted to occupy the house downstairs .
All of them run and never returned .

Liam had been given help to raise the funds to bury his father . There was a benefit football match with all donations going towards the funeral cost . Another tragic accident happened shortly after Jimmys funeral .

In the half a house next door, a woman was heard to be screaming . By the time Liam and the neighbours got there , they found her there in flames.

She had been standing in front of the fire in a nylon night dress that had caught fire . After rolling her in a blanket they managed to put out the flames but she was so badly burned she had died . Her funeral was also paid by the local community who raised the money for that in a raffle . .

Liam had inherited his father’s half house and was happy there . He got himself a large dog for company and also for protection just in case anyone else decided to take control of his home . Liam liked to take his dog Sherpa out every evening for a walk over to the Waterworks . He enjoyed the walk through the little streets on the way to the waterworks , It was an escape for him away from the drab surroundings of his half a house. He liked to see the honeysuckle trees that hung their flowers over garden walls onto the street. He still remembers the sweet smell .
He often plucked them from the trees and sucked the sweet juice from the opening of the stem at the bottom of the flower .
When he came to the spare ground around the football pitch he took the lead off Sherpa which and her to run free for a while before entering the waterworks , where there were swans who lived there in the small lake and young children sometimes running around playing ball of flying a kite . Between the spare ground and the Waterworks there was a walled waste ground that was a shortcut back on the way home to his half a house . Now and then Liam would go that way home if it was getting dark . One evening as Liam and Sherpa were in the waterworks, a fight between two rival gangs broke out nearby and police arrived to take control of the situation . All the exits to and from the waterworks were blocked and everyone who was there had to remain inside the grounds until the fight was over . It was dark by the time the police restored order and Liam decided to take the short cut home . He made his way through a gap in the wall around the waste ground and started to descend down the steep hills towards the old rubbish dump . In the distance he heard the sound of a horse galloping towards him .
When Liam turned around to see what was going on , he got the shock of his life to
see a horse approaching , with a rider on top , holding his head under his arm .
Liam started to run with Sherpa on the lead and with every step the horse behind was getting closer and closer , chasing after them . The horse and rider went past only to swing back around to face them . Liam stood there.. frozen with fear .
The rider began to dismount from the horse and Sherpa was barking and crying at the same time , but the brave dog broke free from the lead in an effort to protect Liam , but there was nothing Sherpa could do to stop the ghost from approaching .
Then something happened that Liam would remember for the rest of his life ,
on that very night, in a state of fright , he
heard someone call his name .
Turning around he saw the ghost of his father Jimmy , who had appeared from nowhere , carrying his head under his arm and he said ,

‘ Not even death can prevent me from protecting you son . As sure as my name is Jimmy Tanner, no headless horseman will ever lay a finger on you. “

The two ghosts put down their heads on the ground and began to fight an unearthly battle for Liam’s life . The wicked horseman was no match for a fathers love and Liams father sent the ghost and his horse back to the darkness where they had come from .

Jimmy looked at his son and said ,

“Well now Liam , that was the gruesome ghost of galloper Thompson son . He has been riding among the hills around here every night for years with his head under his arm , seeking to harm anyone that he should meet “

Liam replied
.‘“I remember now Da . You used to tell me stories about him when I was just a baby . You used to say how he had stopped kids from playing and hebtook them away from the waste ground . “

Jimmy’s ghost said

“Galloper Thompson was a rich mill owner who lost his head on guillotine in the Old Mill he owned . Some say it was an accident , others say it was in retaliation for the way he treated his workers . No one really knows, but from now on he won’t be returning here to harm anyone ever again.”

Then in that moment , Jimmys ghost disappeared and a state of peace came over Liam right there where he stood on that cold old lonely wasteland road by the dumps that overlooked the village where he lived .
Liam told his story to the bravest of souls he knew , who vowed that they would never again walk that way home to the Bone ever again .

The story of the ghost of Galloper Thompson spread everywhere and some people had even said that they had heard about Thompson before , a rich young man who was tragically killed but no one knew where his wealth had all gone .

Liam grew up and found a wife . They had five children of their own and as they grew Liam told them the story about that night on the waste ground be the waterworks . Time passed and the factories around the Bone all closed and the old half houses were knocked down for the building of a new a housing estate .
Liam had secured a good job with the council were he worked as a town planner , mapping out the new estate that would one day become the home ground for ten thousand families . In his plans , Liam set aside one place called Jimmy’s Walk .
The nature reserve area started from where the walled waste ground had once stood to the place that Jimmys ghost had appeared .
The whole area was known as Jimmys walk . It had a set of retained garden beds with seats here and there around a manmade lake and across the lake there were stepping stones that took people across to a well-kept bird aviary within a natural environment , including a manicured grass section with small trees and a water feature that trickled and fell into a small pool , from the top of a clock tower with a spiralling slide that went around and around all the way down to the bottom where fresh water fish swam in a crystal clear pool of water that was filtered through an automated system that pumped the water back and forward every day . It was a place of peace for people to come and enjoy and it was always to be a place that would never have any houses to be built on it . To this very day Jimmys Walk is frequented by families who find an escape from their busy lifestyles .

The End

By Paul McCann\

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