Before the Craigavon Bridge, the River Foyle was crossed at Derry by a long wooden toll bridge linking the Waterside to the city side. Spirited Isle tells that in 1865 a man crossing it late one evening neared the toll gate when a ghostly black coach came hurtling out of the dark, its horses thundering over the boards. It passed straight through the gate as if the structure were not there and charged at him.
He turned to run, but no matter which way he went the coach seemed to follow, the hooves and iron wheels getting louder. He climbed onto the guard rail just as the carriage flew by, and he saw the driver, a coachman with no head. The coach reached the Waterside end of the bridge and plunged into the river with a violent thrashing of water, yet when the man looked the surface was calm.
He fled to an alehouse on Bridge Street. Friends who saw him in the following days reportedly did not recognise him, since his hair had turned white and he had lost a lot of weight. The page adds that when the old bridge was taken down, witnesses claimed to see a black swirling shape rise from the timbers and vanish into the river, with the screams of phantom horses.
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