Whisky Smugglers using Ghost Story Cover

In an article entitled ‘Saw “Ghost” 88 Years Ago’ that was published in the Isle of Man Times [17 June 1955], 98 year old Ada Fisher describes how in 1867 she saw smugglers moving their goods under the cover of a ghost story.

“I was ten years old at the time,” Miss Fisher (surely Manxland’s oldest visitor) told a “Times” reporter this week with a wistful smile, “and I defied my parents to see it”—(no mean feat in those davs). “I wanted to see the ghost pass by my cousin, George Radford’s farm at Ballacallin.” I went to bed, and when my cousin knocked at “my door, I went to the window. “There, sure enough, was the ghost—a black hearse drawn by four horses, with three men on top, and inside the lighted windows I saw a coffin.” Later on the “ghost” was explained. Smugglers in the mountains, with a still at their disposal, used the hearse with its coffin to get their whisky down to the sea.’ [Isle of Man Times, 17 June 1955]

The map is just to roughly illustrate the general area.