She was a 350-pound, ear-biting bar bouncer. Some say her ghost still haunts Wilmington
She stood 6 feet tall with blazing red hair, a waterfront bar-bouncer armed with a shark’s temperament and 350 pounds of tattooed muscle — the only ghost more scary while alive.
In the 18th century, “Gallus Meg” ruled the rowdy Wilmington tavern known as The Blue Post, where sailors tossed dice, croaked out sea shanties and tossed back barrels of grog.
Three centuries later, her shadow still darkens the alleyways.
“They say her biceps looked like ham hocks,” said Steve Little, a storyteller with the Ghost Walk of Old Wilmington. “Big double neck. Big double chin. Mean. Rough.”
Gallus Meg was anything but nice
As Halloween approaches, her story draws the curious into the narrow cobblestone alleys off Water Street, a remnant of the ramshackle district where Gallus Meg kept watch over sailors’ sinning.
The Blue Post, Little explains, was “anything but nice. It was rough. It was tough. These dudes who were coming in here were rough dudes. They were looking for four things. The first would have been alcohol. The second would have been gambling. The third would have been music. The fourth, there would have been a red light out every night of the week, where you could make instant friends. Somebody had to rule with an iron fist.”
As the story goes, Gallus Meg drew the line at sailors who abused their female company, and when she witnessed it, she grabbed the offender by the neck and shouted, “Now they’ll be no more troubles out of ya.”
She then hoisted the shocked sailor by the neck and carried him dangling out into the street — which some suspect is the source of her nickname, “gallus” sounding much like “gallows.”
Ear-itating
As a crowd gathered, she would pummel the ruffian down to the cobblestones. And as the onlookers offered a polite golf clap, Gallus Meg showed her victims her finishing move.
“She would bite their ears off,” said Little. “Not a portion of the ear. The entire ear. Then here comes the finale. She’d go get her pickle jar and spit the ear in there. Everybody always remembered the story of the big red-headed woman who bites off ears.”
The legend persisted deeply enough that the modern-day Blue Post used to keep a pickle jar on its bar.
While it still existed, the Water Street Restaurant was known for Gallus Meg encounters inside the women’s restroom, especially for disrespectful men who made the mistake of wandering inside.
John Hirchak, who owns and operates the ghost tour, notices odd shapes showing up in photographs whenever his groups veer into Gallus Meg territory.
“The strange one was always the fog,” he said. “It would sort of engulf my lower half. One night I made a popping noise with my hand and my wedding ring flew off. I shouted, ‘Oh my God. I lost my wedding ring to Gallus Meg!’ “
Meg or Mag
One quirk to this story, which Hirchak said has circulated entirely by word of mouth, is it almost exactly echoes the tale of Gallus Mag, who worked as a bouncer in 1860s New York, had a similar penchant for ear-attacks and also stored her trophies in a pickle jar.
An Associated Press dispatch from 1940 describes her violent routine:
“A giant Englishwoman who flourish in the unsavoury dives of hell’s kitchen in the ‘90s ... This case-hardened Amazon, according to legend, wore a pistol in her belt and a bludgeon strapped to her wrist to aid her ministerations in giving the heave-ho to uncouth customers. ... After felling her victims with pistol-butt or bludgeon, she dragged them out to the gutter by the ears — and kept a jar of ears pickled in alcohol.”
Whether Meg and Mag are the same barroom hellcat in either history or the afterlife still fuels guessing.
“It appears that we have an echo in here,” wrote Rick Spilman in the Old Salt Blog. “Will the real Gallus Mag or Meg, stand up? And please no biting. Was the real ear-biting bouncer from New York or North Carolina? Did she exist at all or was she just part of the folklore of the period?”
Best not to ask. Sip your beer, tip your bartender and maybe wear earmuffs.