In late May 1887 the Swansea correspondent of the South Wales Daily News reported "much consternation amongst the more nervous inhabitants of Sketty" because of a ghost in the village. It wore a white dress reaching to the ground, with a black band round the waist, and its head was covered by a black mask with horns fixed to it. Several attempts had been made to catch it without success.
Thirty years later, in a column on local ghosts, the Cambria Daily Leader looked back on the Sketty ghost as a story well known to Swansea people. The writer said the fun had been spoiled when it was revealed that the man in the white sheet was a landlord, who had hoped to frighten customers away from a rival public house and towards his own. He was waylaid and caught by a local crowd, which the columnist considered only fair.
Whether the 1917 explanation belongs to the horned ghost of 1887 or to the earlier Sketty ghost mentioned in 1880 is not clear from the surviving reports. Either way it is a good example of how Victorian ghost scares were often caught and unmasked by their own communities.
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