Jones’s Hotel was once among the notable hostelries of Derry, and during the early 19th century it welcomed a steady stream of travellers passing through the walled city. Among them was the celebrated writer William Makepeace Thackeray, who stayed at the hotel during his Irish travels in the 1840s.

Thackeray later recorded his experiences at Jones’s Hotel in The Irish Sketch Book, where he recounts an unusual local tale concerning a ghostly former landlord. The apparition, he notes, was said to appear dressed entirely in black, glimpsed at times along the hotel’s dark passages or ascending and descending its creaking, time-worn staircases.

Rather than presenting the figure as menacing, Thackeray describes the spirit as courteous and attentive – a landlord who seemed, even in death, intent on welcoming guests and overseeing the running of his establishment. The bleak interior of the inn, with its shadows and echoing corridors, provided a fitting setting for such encounters, yet the tone of the account remains measured and lightly observant rather than sensational.

The hotel itself is generally associated with Shipquay Street, an area long central to the life of the city. While the building no longer survives in its original form, Thackeray’s description has preserved its reputation as a place where, at least in local imagination, the duties of hospitality were believed to extend beyond the grave.