Until recent years, a large oak tree stood within the grounds along Battery Road in Longford Town. Local tradition holds that this tree served as a makeshift gallows around the time of the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

According to long-repeated accounts, three men were executed there following the failed rebellion. One of the executions is remembered in particularly grim detail: it is said that it took four attempts to complete the hanging, with the ordeal lasting over an hour. The scene, by all descriptions, was harrowing – witnessed by locals and intended as a warning in a time of political unrest.

In the decades that followed, stories circulated of an apparition seen in the branches of the oak. On certain dates – often associated locally with the anniversary period of 1798 — witnesses claimed to see the figure of a man suspended from the tree, sometimes described as writhing or screaming. The figure was not said to approach observers, but remained fixed in the act of execution, as though the moment had imprinted itself on the landscape.

The oak tree itself stood until recent times, when it was removed. Since its felling, reports of the hanging figure have largely ceased – leading some to suggest that whatever memory lingered there may have been bound to the tree itself.