Boom Hall, on the River Foyle, takes its name from the boom stretched across the river during the Siege of Derry in 1689. The Derry Journal reproduces a passage from Madeline McCully's Haunted Derry saying that Captain Robert Browning of the Mountjoy died of wounds received in the battle to relieve the city. His wife Jane is said to have watched from the shore, on the site of Charles Fort, believing she would soon see him, but it was not to be.
The passage wonders whether it is his ghost that is said to walk along the river on land known as Gunsland, in search of his wife, to keep a promise to return. It says there are stories that on misty evenings sounds echo across the water and a tall man stands perfectly still looking towards the river before moving erratically along the bank. Some say he wears military dress, but no one really knows.
The siege is history, and the story is the sort of reminiscence of an individual loss that survives in local telling.
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