Locals sometimes refer to the Upper Mounttown Road as “Widow Gamble’s Hill”. A connected story references how Widow Gamble had many mouths to feed and would do everything she could to provide for her young family. One day, she happened to ask a wealthy, pregnant woman whether she could spare some change, but the poor woman’s request wasn’t even accepted with any sense of respect or empathy. Instead, the wealthy woman callously dismissed her, and insulted her, uttering “you go away with your little pig children”. The widow screamed at her “may your child have a pig’s head!”. The wealthy woman went on to have her baby not long after and was relieved to gaze down upon the most angelic face of a child you have ever seen, but only a few days later, the baby suddenly became horribly disfigured and its head resembled that of a pig. The woman demanded that her servants seek out the widow and poison her, and that they did.

The story concludes that Widow Gamble’s ghost still walks the Mounttown Road at night, while other witnesses have claimed to have spotted her spectre near the Carrickbrennan graveyard and even at Monkstown Castle. Some also connect her spirit to the sound of a shrill cry that is heard in the area on occasion.

According to another old tale, a phantom coach & horses passes along the same route at midnight on the first Friday of each month. The four horses and the four drivers are of course all headless.