The Jockey's Ghost

The Jockey's Ghost by M.P. Pellicer

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
In 1885, a ghost story rooted in Long Island history made the newspapers. It all started in 1866, when a horse trainer was mysteriously killed at Centreville Course.

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Death and the Jockey c.1825

​On October 1, 1866. a "celebrated trainer" was shot at the Centreville Course. His name was Robert Walker and he'd gone out to exercise his horse. He was also the owner of a hotel and stable close to the racecourse.

The horse returned with an empty sulky, and Walker's servant went to look for him. There he met Leonard Brown who told him he just found Walker's body lying on the track. He was still warm and blood spurted from a wound to his left temple.

Dr. Belden from Jamaica examined the body and found a small pistol ball inside the dead man's cranium. A man working at the track told the coroner that about the time of the murder, he saw two men dressed in dark clothes running from where the body was found.

Walker's death came soon after the murders of two horse people in Chicago. First the owner of a racehorse was shot dead by his mistress. A few days later, at the same place, a driver by the name of McKeever was found dead—supposedly murdered.

One of the theories for Walker's murder was a business deal gone bad. He lent a large sum of money to a friend in New York as a security of certain oil stocks, which were found to be worthless. They had a violent quarrel, and Walker threatened to expose him. The man said, "you shall rue this as long as you live, and that won't be long."

A second suspect was a man named Alfred, recently employed in Walker's stables to look after a horse belonging to Mr. Boles from Newark. Mr. Boles fired the man, after Walker told him about his illicit affairs with the servant girls around the hotel.

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Illustration of the Centreville Races

Another theory for the motive was connected to Walker's skill as a driver. Perhaps he was killed to prevent him from participating in recently announced races on the Union Course. Robbery seemed not to be the aim of the crime since $102 in "greenbacks" were found in Robert Walker's vest pocket, along with his gold watch. There were no footprints around the soft earth where the body had fallen.

On October 9, 1866, Robert Martin was arrested on suspicion of being the murderer of Robert Walker. He was formerly a hostler in Walker's stable. Martin who was supposed to be somewhere else, within a few minutes of Walker's death came to the hotel, ordered breakfast, which he didn't eat and left to deliver a horse to Newton, New Jersey. He acted very nervously. He stopped at John Snedeker's and said Walker was dead after being kicked by a horse. At this moment he had not seen the body or known of the man's death, which intrigued the detectives who eventually arrested him. Martin had a very bad reputation and everyone appeared to be afraid of him.

In a strange twist, Coroner Curtis thought to let him go on a $500 bond for his appearance. On October 15, the inquest held into the murder concluded that evidence was deemed insufficient to justify the detention of suspected parties. The murder was never solved. Could this be the reason the ghost haunted the race course?

This was the ghost story told:

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After a rest of five years on the Centreville Race Course, just south of Woodhaven, men and women congregate every night to witness the strange sight. His ghost appears promptly at a quarter to ten o'clock and departs at twelve minutes after eleven. There is a good deal of speculation as to whose ghost this is. 

Two murders on the race track from bloody chapters in its history and public opinion argues that this spectral visitor is the troubled ghost of the murderer of one, or the other of the slain. It is also the belief that when the ghost was in the flesh its avocation was that that of a horse jockey, and as the man last murdered on the race course was thought to have been killed by a rival jockey, some persons who lived in the neighborhood at the time, think they can solve the mystery in which the crime remained shrouded. 

The ghost is first visible in the vicinity of the stables of the old Centreville Hotel. It is recalled that the rival jockeys quartered their stock in adjacent stables on this property. From the stable the specter proceeds by the highway to the southward point where a hotel formerly stood in front of the entrance to the race track. Here it halts for some minutes, just as the jockeys used to do, for they always took a drink before exercising.

There is a dispute whether the ghost wears a robe of white or a garment more the color of sheep's wool. But on one other point there is no disagreement, the ghost spits fire like a foundry chimney and leaves a sulfurous odor behind it. On this fact is based a most animated discussion as to whether the original of the ghost is in bliss or a state of torment. The majority hold the latter theory, and a few think it may be a spirit sent to earth to do penance. 

The ghost never touches terra firma. It moves along through space like a feather in the wind going on a zigzag course. At regular intervals it spits fire. Scores of persons have followed in its wake without getting close enough for personal contact, and all declare that when the ghost comes to a stop, it invariably says, "Whoa!"

From the drinking place the spirit moves in on the race course apparently waiting for the word to dart away from where the wire used to be, going round the mile track at so terrific a gait that some persons argue it must be the ghost of Flora Temple (raced in the 1850s) or Lady Suffolk (raced in the 1840s). But those who hold to the theory that it is the ghost of one of the departed jockeys affirm that they can distinctly hear the hallooing and whistling of the whip so familiar to old track habitues. 

After every heat comes the scoring exercise, and three heats are invariably run. After this the ghost waltzes out into the highway, stops again at the old familiar barroom, and goes zigzagging along to the stable, into which it disappears seemingly, but there are those who claim that the ghost passes on to the Bay Side Cemetery and into its grave.

​The keeper at this Hebrew burial place laughs at the credulity of the people. No body is every buried there near enough to the surface to enable a ghost to rise up, the keeper says, but he has a suspicion that at some time, near or remote, some person has been murdered and buried in the old stable He thinks it the spirit of some woman who takes to the race track in pursuit of her slayer. Some of the Catholic residents who believe firmly in ghosts and declare that they often conversed with spirits in Ireland, are quite alarmed at this apparition because it is in no particular like the friendly Irish ghosts. Nearly fifty persons watched the fiery tongued visitor for more than an hour last nigh