Carrickfergus Castle is a Norman fortress on Belfast Lough, begun about 1177 and in military use until 1928. Its best known ghost is called Buttoncap.
In the version retold by Spirited Isle and Xyu and Beyond, a young soldier stationed at the castle in the eighteenth century, Robert Rainey in one telling, learned that his fiancee had been unfaithful with a man named Jennings, the brother of his commanding officer. In a rage he attacked a man in the dark with his sword, thinking he was the rival. The wounded man, dying, told his brother what had happened but, confused, named Timothy Lavery, an army drummer who looked a good deal like the real attacker. Lavery was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. As the noose was put round his neck he vowed to haunt the castle forever. The real killer is said to have confessed years later.
The ghost of the drummer is said to haunt the area of the castle well, sometimes called Buttoncap's Well, with cries for mercy, lonely drumming, footsteps, cold spots and shadowy figures in the keep. The name is said to come from a large button on his army cap, but the Spirited Isle writer says that detail has never been confirmed either.
Versions differ on who was the victim, who the killer and whether the dead man was a soldier at all. Some say the story did not happen. A 2016 photograph taken by a visitor from Australia is said to show a young boy beside her daughter at a window, and a headless figure on the battlements is mentioned in some tales without confirmation.
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