Although the laundry building no-longer stands, the Good Shepherd Convent in Belfast used to have a steam laundry at which “fallen women” were put to work cleaning the clothes of the rich.

It is said that in March 1879, a young orphan by the name of Ellen, had just turned 17 and had decided that she wanted to become a nun. She was working in the old laundry and had the dangerous task of lifting buckets of boiling water out of a larger boiler. Tragically, she lost her balance and fell in to the water. Ellen was pulled out and a doctor was summoned, but the young woman succumbed to her dreadful injuries later that day. A few years later, horrific screams started to echo throughout the convent, and on rare occasions, the ghost of a teenage girl would briefly appear. While the awful sounds of a girl screaming in pain caused great alarm to the other girls working in the laundry, it is said that the nuns were more dismissive, simply rolling their eyes and brushing it off. I understand that the sounds continued quite regularly for two decades.