The 'Trap Brae'

<slippymap lat="54.2255725" lon="-7.279846" z="16" w="450" h="300" />

There was a house in Killylackey and the story goes that the occupants had killed a pig. To cure the bacon, they cut it up and hung the pieces in the chimney to smoke. One night, some neighbour woman climbed on the roof and tried to climb down the chimney to steal a piece of the pig. Her long clothes caught on the chimney and she was trapped. Her dead body was found next morning hanging upside down in the chimney.

People said her ghost haunted that road and her fate is remembered in the name given to this part of the road, ‘the Trap Brae’. She is supposed to have followed a local man home one night. He was walking home late one night and she walked the road after him and he fainted three times. The last time he fainted was on his own door step but when he came to, she was gone.

As a boy, Joe had often heard this story. As a result he always had a fear of the brae. “When I was young lad I used to go round to Aghadrumsee for the badminton and table tennis clubs. I had to go around that way and I hated that place. I used to turn my head to avoid looking in at that wee place. It would be grand when I was coming home because I’d fly down the hill. The problem was when I was riding against the hill. I used to cycle up the hill as far as I could and then try and run the rest of it till I could get back on the bicycle. I wasn’t a bit afraid of the graveyard just that one place on the road”.