The Ghost of Sir Richard Dawson Bates

And now to a curious postscript, reported in the Irish Central News on October 27th, 2009. 

The article stated that a Belfast family had been hearing strange sounds in their house, and seen human-shaped figures, heard breathing and human cries in empty rooms and have smelt tobacco smoke, amongst other curious and unexplained events. 

So persistent were these occurrences that the family called in a professional demonologist to investigate. 

The explanation? 

The Fitzpatricks of north Belfast say that the ghost of the controversial Unionist politician Richard Dawson Bates, who died over 60 years ago, may be haunting them because they are living in his former house – and they are Catholic. 

The report proceeded to note that Bates lived in the house for thirty years from the turn of the twentieth century, and was a chain smoker with a strong hatred of Catholics. 



The Irish Times in its version of the story quoted Chris Ryder on Dawson Bates, summarizing Bates in forthright terms as: 

 …an uncompromising bigot who regarded all Catholics as nationalists and, as such, enemies to be distrusted and neutralised in every conceivable way. 

Whatever his failings, Dawson Bates thus occupies a certain pride of place in the Hetty Jane Owen family history, as the only ancestor to return from the grave.