Resident reports 'hundreds with lights' going to reservoir rave

As the TIMES reported last week, a party near the reservoirs on the edge of Carrickfergus has been linked by some to a spate of criminal damage in the town in the early hours of September 5.

A resident of the New Line road, who said she was kept awake by music and partygoers’ shouting until 4.30am, believes preparation for the event had been going on for several days.

“They must have organised it all week. I heard noises all week from over at the reservoir, but thought nothing of it - there were lights, comings and goings late at night, but I just thought it was young ones fooling about.

“It started about 8.00pm or shortly after. Buses and taxis were continuously going up the road from Gault’s shop. My friend and I saw two girls walking down the wrong side of the New Line with big high heels on, high as kites, trying to get a gate open to get over the Bryantang Road.

“There were hundreds of them going up with these lights - I thought at first it was bicycle lights, but somebody I know went up the road at 9.00 and saw people carrrying poles with lights on top, to show the way in the dark.

“When I came in about 11.00, it was going, but about mindnight it hotted up. The noise was dreadful - the music and the noise of the people themselves. There wasn’t 50 people there, there must have been hundreds. It was a still night and the noise was coming right over the valley.

“In the morning, they were walking back down to Gault’s shop and getting picked up there.”

A statement from a PSNI source that police had only been made aware of the event after it had come to a conclusion has been disputed by people in the area, who say officers were near the scene while the rave was in process, with at least two local people phoning in complaints about noise as early as midnight, but did not intervene.

One of those who called police alleged: “I talked to a police woman on the Sunday and asked why it had not been stopped. She said they hadn’t enough men to go in, but watched from a vantage point. I was told they could only go in if there was a fight or evidence of drugs, which there must have been - I don’t understand it.”

Another caller said he had spoken to a police officer who was at the scene around 3.00am and estimated that 250 people were present.

The TIMES was told that smaller gatherings of young people are not unknown, but that the recent events were without precedent.

“Around the church it is terrible. The car park for the fishermen is open to anyone - they sit there at night and drink and take drugs and so on - and I hear they light fires among the trees at times and sit and drink off tables they have made out of blocks of wood,” a local said.

“That has never happened in the countryside - I have been here all my life and have never heard that before, although about a year ago apparently they had been starting it up and somebody reported suspicious goings on and got it stopped.”