The Blackpool Herald. — 1883-04-20 (Blackpool, Lancashire, England)

KIEBHAM : PEG HALL'S GHOST. Any old inhabitant of Kirkham can affirm that, fifty or sixty years ago, the neighbourhood was famous for its ghosts. In the days of our grandmothers people did not try to reason that it is impossible for departed !spirits to appear again to trouble the inhabitants of this world; on the contrary, every appearance, or supposed appearance, ' Of a spirit was treasured up to be repeated to children and friends. Murders must have been Much more common :at that time than they are now; and about the end of the last, or thebeginning of the present century, there appears to have been several, the victims of which subsequently troubled the peace of Kirkham. The particulars of :one of the murders are as follows :—A nice looking young woman named Peg Hall made the acquaintance of a :gentleman who frequently resided at Kirkham: the young woman doubtless believed, as simple-hearted and vain girls are only too ready to believe even yet, that the gentleman was willing to make any sacrifice for her fair face and form; and the meetings between the two went on for a considerable time, and brought their natural and sad consequence. One evening Peg Hall, decked out in smart attire, went by appointment to meet her lover at a place called "The Close," near the Kirkham Parish Church; on her way the foolish and unsuspicious young woman called at a friend's house, and boasted that she was going to meet a gentleman; and next morning the poor young woman was found murdered at a lonely spot in the Close. It was said that the gentleman, finding he had gone too far to extricate himself and maintain his reputation, had hired two ruffians to kill the girl, which they had done by barbarously cutting :her 'throat, It was also rumoured that two men in the garb of workmen, t and wearing white aprons, were seen leaving the town late that night. It is at least eighty years since this murder took place, and at so great a distance of time it is int/to:wade to judge how much of the account handed down by tradition is true. The administration of justice was very slack, especially in country districts, and the perpetrators of the crime were not sought after as they would be if such a murder took place now. After all, nothwithstanding the popular belief, the murderer may have been some disappointed lover in the girl's own station of life. Sixty years ago this story was constantly related to the rising generation of Kirkham, exciting various degrees of interest and horror in their minds according to the vividness of their imagination; and many were: the persons, both men and women, who claimed to have seen the ghost of Peg Hall. It would have been as easy to disbelieve the Bible as to doubt that the spirit of a murdered man or woman returned to haunt the spot where it was violently sundered from the body. The vicinity of the Close was consequently avoided, whenever possible, during the hours of darkness. We have one of Peg Hall's ghostlyrappearances on excellent authority. A most respectable lady, whose veracity cannot be doubted, and whose house adjoined the Close, went out one evening at dusk to fetch something from the garden that had been forgotten during the day. As she approached the hedge she perceived an object that froze the blood in her veins. Seated on or by the fence, silent and still, was Me figure of a woman, dressed—not in the smart garments the murdered woman wore the last time she was seen in life—but in the every-day working dress of a servant; a linsey petticoat, and a white bedgown, or loose jacket, as we should describe it now. It was not common to wear a white bedgown ; this was evidently a concession which Peg Hall made to the ghostly necessity of white raiment. Recollect that no woman in Kirkham would have dared to be alone in the Close for any purpose whatever after daylight had faded, and it will at once be seen how certain it was that the appearance was a bona-tide supernatural one. The lady did not wait to take a second glance at the apparition, but ran back to the house as fast as her strength would carry her.