The Waterside Library in Derry is located in the old Waterside Workhouse. Workhouses sprang up all over Ireland during the nineteenth century, and several are already listed on this website. Set up with the purpose of providing basic accommodation to Ireland’s poorest people, they were essentially prisons where families were separated and forced to work under strict conditions in return for shelter and just enough food to survive.

During redevelopment work in the 1990s, the remains of approximately 400 people believed to be Famine-era victims were uncovered on the grounds. They were later reinterred at Ballyoan Cemetery in a dignified interdenominational ceremony.

Children were not exempt from the harsh treatment that was routinely meted out. According to local legend, a strict matron – known in paranormal accounts as the Blue Guardian – had responsibility for the welfare and discipline of the children in her care. At one point she was called before her superiors, who felt she was being too lenient. Having taken their warning, she tightened her control considerably. One punishment she regularly employed was to place disobedient children in a large cupboard on the top floor – far enough from everyone else that their cries could not be heard.

One day, three small boys were locked inside. The matron was called away unexpectedly to attend to her ailing sister and, in the rush, she forgot them. By the time she remembered and returned, it was too late. The boys had perished. She never recovered from what she had done, and according to those who have worked in the building since, neither has she. A female figure is still reported moving silently through the corridors at night.

When the workhouse was repurposed as a hospital, not all of the reported experiences were unsettling. One account describes a former nurse who woke during the night to find a woman dressed in white placing an extra blanket on her bed, before disappearing silently through a solid wall. A more alarming account comes from a former matron who was woken one night when every tap in her apartment turned on simultaneously. The force of the water was so strong, she fled.