In the late 1940s a young family moved into a modest house on Canmore Street, just off the Shankill Road. Their small daughter was often heard talking to someone in the rooms, but when her parents went to check she was alone. At first they thought it was an imaginary playmate.
But over the weeks she gave unsettling details about this friend, whom she called Old Tom. He was an elderly man with a bad leg that made him limp. His wife had died some years before and his son had been killed in the war.
One evening the girl's father mentioned Old Tom in a pub, and neighbours grew grave. They told him that before his family had moved in the house had belonged to an old man named Tom who walked with a limp, whose wife had died and whose only son was killed in the war. Crushed by grief, Tom had withdrawn from everyone and when neighbours finally forced the door they found he had hanged himself in the back bedroom.
As with many such tales, the neighbours' information explains the child's account, but who told whom first cannot now be checked.
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