Congratulations!

Is this a true story?
Parts of it are true. The Titanic was built in Belfast. The building was constructed for use in the linen trade in the same city at the same time that the ship was being built. However Helena Cecilia Blunden is a fictitious character created by the editor of irelandseye.com

Are the accounts of the experiences of the staff true?
Yes, these are real people giving genuine accounts of actual happenings. Staff who work in the mill had genuine supernatural encounters and shared these with the editor. Paul, Ally, Eleanor and Doreen related honest experiences and continue to believe that the mill in haunted.

Did Helena Blunden meet her death in the building?
No, this is just fiction. The story has been made up, woven around some actual facts.

Did you find a phonograph wax cylinder?
There were sand filled fire buckets in the building. The sand had remained in full view for almost century but there was no fire, and no discovery.

The singing sounds pretty spooky, what is it?
The song is a poor recording of a child singing Pie Jesu, from Fauré's Requiem. It had just the right qualities for the tale.

Is there live video from the building?
No. The video is not live. It is just six shots repeated in a loop. In fact the room does not exist. The printing machine was moved out and the entire building was gutted early in 1999. The printing machine was dismantled, shipped out and re-assembled elsewhere.

Have you made up the reports of sightings by surfers?
No, they have been sent in by visitors worldwide. Of course we cannot vouch for what people claim to have seen. Some have clearly been invented by the senders while others have the ring of truth about them.

So all this is a hoax?
We prefer to think of it as a modern mystery capable of being solved. Of course we could not announce it as such otherwise there would have been no challenge, but we provided plenty of clues. Indeed the story is peppered with them.

Can you explain the clues?

The reference to 'a Funt camera' housed in a 'candid' alludes to Alan Funt, the presenter of TV show Candid Camera.

Professor Charlie Dawson, the Musicologist is named after Charles Dawson an archaeologist who was credited in 1912 with the discovery of the skull of the 'missing link' in a quarry in Piltdown in England. In 1953 the skull was exposed as a hoax. It is thought to have been constructed by Martin Hinton, a fossil expert and curator of Zoology in the British Museum, from the cranium of a man and the jawbone of a monkey.

The professor is associated with the American Museum, transformed in 1841 by the great American showman P T Barnum, who bought the Scudders Museum in New York.

George Hull the Clockmaker from Cardiff - this refers to a hoax started in 1869 when Hull arranged for a newly carved 12 ft (4m) statue of a man to be buried in on a relation's farm near Cardiff in upstate New York. Twelve months later when it was 'discovered' by well diggers (directed by Hull) it was proclaimed to be the petrified body of a giant and displayed throughout America.

The erroneous mention of 'the First War of the Worlds' points to the famous radio broadcast Hallowe'en 1938 produced by Orson Welles. So realistic was the dramatisation of H. G. Wells' work of science fiction that it led to pandemonium throughout New York.

There was no such thing as 'the notorious X branch of the Ancient Order of Hibernians'. X - A.O.H. is hoax backwards.

Helena's cousin Martin Hinton is named after the man credited with the Piltdown hoax. (See above).

Dave Hannum, the bindery manager and clock winder, is David Hannum, an investor in the Cardiff Giant and originator of the phrase 'there's one born every minute'.

Neuman Piltdown
Named after 'Piltdown Man', and Alfred E. Neuman, figurehead of MAD Magazine

And finally...
If you got this far please write and let us know - we would love to hear about it: frontdesk@appletree.ie