John Street ran between Donegall Street and North Street before the area was rebuilt as Royal Avenue. In the 1860s a family in a small cottage there suffered violent disturbances. Objects moved, pottery and furniture were thrown about the downstairs back room, and the back yard was left in complete disarray.
One of the children claimed to see an elderly woman pacing in the back room, talking to herself, who vanished as she watched. The family left. The owner boarded the house up and it stood empty for years.
In May 1882 workmen digging trenches for pipes and sewers found human bones beneath the street. The police examined them and the remains were judged to be those of an elderly woman who had been buried there for many years. They were reburied in the Belfast Union Burial Ground, and according to local tradition the disturbances then stopped. This is the pattern of a haunting laid to rest by decent burial, as at Cave Hill.
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