History & local legend
John and Margaret Gallagher lived with their children above a candle-and-gift business in Richboro. Ghost-story collector Adi-Kent Thomas Jeffrey interviewed the family about children they could hear but never find inside or outside the house.
Their daughter Kathy and her husband once heard small children crying beneath an upstairs window around midnight. Concerned, they leaned out to look. The crying stopped immediately, and the street was empty. Later, John heard children talking, laughing and singing overhead while he read downstairs. Margaret had gone to bed, and their own children were asleep. When he checked upstairs, everything was quiet.
The Northampton Township Historical Society reprinted Jeffrey’s account in May 2001 alongside Betty Cornell Luff’s recollections of the same house. Luff’s family had occupied it for twenty-five years before the Gallaghers. She remembered no ghostly children, making the later family’s experiences a puzzle to someone who knew the building well.
