During the nineteenth century, John Street formed a short section of what is now Royal Avenue, running between Donegall Street and North Street. At the time, the area contained a row of small cottages and older dwellings which stood long before the later redevelopment of Belfast city centre.

One of these cottages became the focus of a strange haunting that was widely discussed locally during the 1860s.

According to contemporary reports, the family living in the house began to experience violent disturbances within the property. Objects were said to move on their own, and pieces of pottery and furniture were reportedly thrown about the downstairs back room. On one particularly alarming occasion, the yard behind the cottage was said to have been left in complete disarray, with household items scattered and broken.

Matters became even more unsettling when one of the family’s children claimed to have witnessed a strange figure inside the house. The young girl described seeing an elderly woman pacing back and forth in the back room, apparently speaking to herself. As the child watched, the figure suddenly vanished before her eyes.

Terrified by these events, the family eventually abandoned the cottage altogether. The property’s owner subsequently boarded up the house, and it reportedly remained vacant for many years afterwards.

The mystery appeared to take a darker turn in May 1882, when workmen began excavating trenches along the street to install new pipes and sewer lines. During the digging, one of the labourers uncovered a number of human bones buried beneath the ground.

Police were called to examine the discovery, and it was eventually determined that the remains belonged to an elderly woman who had been buried there for many years. The bones were removed and later reinterred at the Belfast Union Burial Ground.

According to local tradition, after the remains were properly buried, the disturbances associated with the cottage ceased, and no further reports of haunting were recorded.

Today the original cottages of John Street have long since disappeared beneath the redevelopment of Belfast city centre, but the story remains one of the more curious ghost legends once associated with the area.