Dixie Elliot ✒ A character from the H Blocks and the Cages who's name rarely gets a mention is Harvey the ghostly pilot.


His spirit reputedly wandered through Long Kesh scaring the shit out of unfortunate prisoners in the dead of night.
 
Long Kesh was built on the site of a disused WW2 airfield. Sections of the former runways can be seen on aerial photos of the prison.

There was a period in 1977, while I was in H5, when he seemed to be at his busiest haunting cells. I remember being shocked on at least two occasions when a fellow blanket man would let a scream out of him at night. Harvey had been and gone.

The stories of his hauntings varied. Sometimes, according to whomever he had paid a visit to, that prisoner would have been lying half asleep when Harvey would walk right through their cell, coming in through one wall and going out through the one opposite. On other occasions a prisoner would wake to see a figure dressed in the clothing of a WW2 pilot staring down at him.
 
There were also cases of prisoners who would wake up to find that they couldn't move and something was lying on top of them, pressing down on their chest. Though he might have many faults, I doubt that Harvey was a pervert. I experienced this a few times, both inside and out of jail, but I believe it to be sleep paralysis and not a ghost.
 
Harvey's hauntings seem to have petered out after we embarked on the no wash protest. Maybe the sight of walls covered in excrement was too much for Harvey and not only was it a form of exorcism but the tables were turned on the poor ghost regarding the scaring the shit of people. Whatever the reason Harvey seems to have returned to the cages around that time.
 
I never met Harvey myself but I wonder is his ghost still wandering the site of Long Kesh, bored and dispirited now that he no longer has a captive audience?

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

Harvey

Dixie Elliot ✒ A character from the H Blocks and the Cages who's name rarely gets a mention is Harvey the ghostly pilot.


His spirit reputedly wandered through Long Kesh scaring the shit out of unfortunate prisoners in the dead of night.
 
Long Kesh was built on the site of a disused WW2 airfield. Sections of the former runways can be seen on aerial photos of the prison.

There was a period in 1977, while I was in H5, when he seemed to be at his busiest haunting cells. I remember being shocked on at least two occasions when a fellow blanket man would let a scream out of him at night. Harvey had been and gone.

The stories of his hauntings varied. Sometimes, according to whomever he had paid a visit to, that prisoner would have been lying half asleep when Harvey would walk right through their cell, coming in through one wall and going out through the one opposite. On other occasions a prisoner would wake to see a figure dressed in the clothing of a WW2 pilot staring down at him.
 
There were also cases of prisoners who would wake up to find that they couldn't move and something was lying on top of them, pressing down on their chest. Though he might have many faults, I doubt that Harvey was a pervert. I experienced this a few times, both inside and out of jail, but I believe it to be sleep paralysis and not a ghost.
 
Harvey's hauntings seem to have petered out after we embarked on the no wash protest. Maybe the sight of walls covered in excrement was too much for Harvey and not only was it a form of exorcism but the tables were turned on the poor ghost regarding the scaring the shit of people. Whatever the reason Harvey seems to have returned to the cages around that time.
 
I never met Harvey myself but I wonder is his ghost still wandering the site of Long Kesh, bored and dispirited now that he no longer has a captive audience?

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

1 comment:

  1. I can well believe that, it would put the shits up me in a similar position, in fact at a different venue did. An old airodrome just outside York many years ago, we were camping. I was the youngest of the gang and most suseptible. They were harping on about dead pilots from WW11 haunting the site. I began seeing these aparitions everywhere, so hyped up was I that I pinned an older lad to the ground by his throat. He was a couole of years older than me which at the age of 12 made a difference in terms of strength. I just flipped and found reserves of strength I never knew I had because of the sheer terror these tales of ghosts had given me.

    Caoimhin O'Muraile

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