In March 1904 a young housemaid named Sarah O'Hare retired to her room at the Waverley Hotel on Tomb Street. She lit her oil lamp, lay down for a short while to warm up, and as she reached to put the lamp out a young girl appeared at her bedside. The figure vanished as quickly as it had come. Sarah screamed and fled, and her cries roused several guests, who found nothing in the room.
In the common room she calmed down and described what she had seen. Two guests went to look at the lamp, and when one moved to turn it off he called the other over. They decided it was dangerously faulty and would almost certainly have exploded if she had put it out. They told her the apparition may have saved her life.
Oil lamp accidents were common, as cheap, impure fuel often caused explosions, and Spirited Isle quotes the case of Jane Wilson, who died after a lamp exploded at 43 Tomb Street in 1895. The Waverley's area was heavily bombed in the 1941 Belfast Blitz.
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