Doris Lane

At one time there was a house in Jersey City haunted by three ghosts: a man, the woman he loved, and a third ghost. A Mrs. Magee owned the house and had once shared it with her pretty daughter. A stubborn and domineering Irishwoman, Mrs. Magee lived long enough to regret events concerning a man, his maid, and a railroad terminal peanut stand.

Such a rake was Conny O’Ryan; a gambling man of Civil War Era Manhattan. Word was, he could beat Saint Patrick, himself, at cards, if they were playing for beer. Conny was an engineer, who made good money at his work, and even better at his gambling. As much as he loved gambling, Conny loved booze and women. But Conny lost his heart for good and all one day to a pretty girl who ran a peanut stand in Jersey City.

She was as famous as he, in her way, Biddy Magee, famous for her beauty of face and form, and for her refined nature. With her peanut stand located at the busy Jersey City railroad terminal, Biddy caught the attention of many a traveling man. Biddy loved the attention and she loved the railroad. She loved paths to just about everywhere crossing just there, where she was selling her hot peanuts to travelers. She had a pleasing voice and tended to sing while she worked. Everyone smiled when Biddy was around. And what a looker she was, too, it bears repeating.

When Biddy Magee walked down the aisle of an idling railroad car, heads turned. Every red-blooded man aboard realized he wanted a bag of peanuts more than anything. One day that man was Conny O’Ryan, heading home from an all-night wagering fest in New Brunswick. His pockets full of winnings, he was ready to buy every last bag of her peanuts. But, somehow, for the first time in his life, silver-tongued Conny could not speak.

Biddy passed a bag of hot peanuts across Conny’s chest to a passenger with a window seat. Her arm brushed his shirtfront and she felt his heart go skitter. A nervous charge ran up her arm to her own heart. Biddy Magee looked into the Irish eyes of Conny O’Ryan. He stuttered for a bag of peanuts. She tossed them in his lap and ran off the train. As she reached the bottom step to the platform, her long skirt trailed those above. Right behind her, he placed his foot on her hem and held her fast.

Not even in death would he let her go.

The only thing that stood in the way of true love was Mrs. Magee, who was a formidable opponent. When her daughter came home with ne’er do well Conny O’Ryan, Mrs. Magee threw him straight down her front steps. She said her daughter was too good for any O’Ryan and said she’d make him sorry he was born with the name. She locked Biddy in a closet after telling her she’d tear down the peanut stand, before she’d see her daughter with the likes of Conny O’Ryan.

The thought of losing her beloved peanut stand just broke Biddy’s heart. Thinking she could keep both the peanut stand and her lover, Biddy promised her mother never to see Conny again.

But Mrs. Magee was smarter than that and took to working alongside her daughter at the railroad terminal. She left the house with Biddy and she came home at night with Biddy. She never let the girl out of her sight for two months. Every day, Conny spied on Biddy from the end of the line of ticket booths. He never went to his job anymore. Even at night he stayed in Jersey City gambling with a gang of tough guys. In the morning he’d be at his post to watch Biddy come to work. In the evening, he’d trail behind them at a safe distance and see her home.

Biddy never sang another note as long as she lived. Her customers noticed as Biddy grew thin and ever more unhappy. All day long Biddy’s mother told of evil deeds she’d heard of Conny’s new friends. Conny had become just as bad as the company he kept, she said. It was lucky Biddy had a mother who looked out for her welfare, Mrs. Magee told her daughter.

Biddy stayed quiet. Keeping the lovesick suitor in the corner of her eye and tucked away in her secret heart, she determined to run off with Conny. Mrs. Magee was already suspicious and on the alert. She stepped out of the darkened parlor one midnight to catch Biddy at the front door with carpetbag in hand. Mrs. Magee locked the weeping Biddy in the closet again. Then she took her ax from the woodpile in the yard and went off to the station.

By the time the earliest travelers arrived to catch their trains, they could see Conny O’Ryan standing next to the pile of lumber that had been his true love’s peanut stand. They swore the big, handsome fellow had tears in his eyes. An unfortunate porter began sweeping up the strewn peanuts and Conny knocked him unconscious. Two burly policemen came up on Conny from each side and dragged him off. They warned him out of Jersey City and put him on a Hudson River ferry. If he ever came back, they said, they’d land him in jail.

Back in Manhattan, Conny found he’d been replaced as chief-engineer of the shoe factory where he had worked. It was just as well; Conny was in no mood for it. He spent his nights along the Bowery, carousing, brawling, drinking, and gambling with a recklessness that beat his own legend. He went through his small fortune and ended up living in a low boarding house. Finally, a friendly Tammany ward heeler said, “Conny, me boy, if this is how you want to live, why not become a fireman?”

In Conny’s day, the uniformed services did not yet exist. Firefighting was a less than honorable profession, something lower than acting on stage and better than a highway robber. Each independent fire station housed a gang of roughnecks whose greatest fun was outracing the gang in the next fire district to the biggest fire. This was done without regard for the safety of anyone in the way and injury or death by fire truck was a chance any New Yorker took just stepping onto the street. Every fire company in the city aimed their trucks for the biggest, most dangerous fire, passing up less spectacular conflagrations along the way and letting buildings burn to the ground.

When fires were slow, the fire b’hoys did the things Conny liked best to do, drank, gambled, brawled, and caroused. It was a perfect position for a heartsick, hell-bent lug like Conny.

When Biddy heard this news, she knew it was hopeless. A respectable girl could never marry a fireman. Even if her mother had not been opposed from the beginning, Conny’s new position in life made it impossible she would ever relent. Biddy worried constantly about Conny, jumped at every fire alarm, and wore herself to a bone with anxiety. Before long word came that even being a fireman was not dangerous enough for Conny. He had enlisted in the Union Army and gone away to war. Biddy worried herself so sick over Conny being shot dead in battle, she took to her bed. She cried and pined and literally wasted away.

Mrs. Magee buried her daughter and returned to her empty house. Every midnight she lay awake wishing she had let her daughter leave through the front door when she had had the chance.

Meanwhile, news of Biddy’s death reached Conny at the battlefront. He went berserk, into a rage so violent it took six men to pin him down. They jailed him, drugged him, hospitalized him, but the Union Army found there was nothing they could do with Conny O’Ryan, so they discharged him. He set off by foot from the camp and that’s the last anyone every heard of Conny officially.

Along his way home, or so they said around Jersey City, Conny came upon a blazing battle taking place in a field of meadow. He walked straight into it and down the middle of the field between the opposing forces. He was killed right off. Nobody could ever say if it was a Southern or a Northern bullet that ended the sad life of Conny O’Ryan.

What everybody in Jersey City could say and did, was that Conny O’Ryan haunted Mrs. Magee and her house forever after, and not just Conny alone. His ghost walked hand in hand with Biddy’s, through the darkness just at midnight, in and out of the rooms of Mrs. Magee’s house in Jersey City. Trailing after the couple, reunited only in death, would come the ghost of Biddy’s peanut stand.

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This ghost story is adapted from a 19th century song, “The Peanut Stand.”
Library of Congress
America Singing: Nineteenth-Century Song Sheets
Air: Joe Brown; H. De Marsan, Publisher, 60 Chatham Street, N. Y. [n. d.]
American Songs and Ballads, Series 3, Volume 3

Come, listen to me, white folks, while I rehearse a ditty
It’s all about a nice young gal, she lived in Jersey-City
She fell in love with a gay young man; he was wealthy once in his time
He was Chief-Engineer of a shoemaker’s shop, and his name was Conny O’Ryan
Now, Biddy Magee was a hansome gal, and known both near and far
She kept a peanut stand in Jersey-City, and supplied the railroad cars
But when her mother she heard of Conny, she swore vengeance against his clan
She said if her daughter kept company with him, she’d bust up her peanut-stand
Now, Conny O’Ryan was a man of fame, and noted far and near
He’d beat Saint Patrick at “forty-fives,” a playing for lager-beer
He got in with a parcel of Jersey ROUGHS; they led him around like a toy
So, he joined the New-York Fire-Zoo-Zoos, and he went for a soger-boy

When Biddy Magee she heard of this, she took right to her bed
The peanut-stand went up the spout, and the gal she died right deadThe news took effect on Conny himself so he never could march to time
So, out of the camp, in very short time, they drummed poor Conny O’Ryan
The old woman’s house is haunted now, at night, about twelve o’clock
She sees the most horrible sort of a sight, which gives her a terrible shock
The Ghosts of Conny and Biddy Magee come walking in hand and hand
While right behind them comes, marching along, the Ghost of the peanut-stand