A Haunted Land E-Book

Robert, Dr. Curran

• Herausgeber: The O'Brien Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

The spirits of the dead return in many shapes and in many locations in Ireland. There are the wraith-like ghosts and the full-bodied type, the dangerous and damaging, the threatening and the merely frightening. There are notorious buildings where down through the centuries spectres have been seen or heard, some, such as Leap Castle, where psychics have been overwhelmed by the intensity of the atmosphere. There are families pursued by spirits who warn them of impending death or seem to be trying to get back at them for some long-forgotten wrongdoing. Here are stories and details of the amazing variety of hauntings to be experienced throughout the country.

Leseprobe

Reviews

A HAUNTED LAND

Ireland’s most atmospheric sites and strange stories of presences and hauntings.

CONTENTS

Reviews

Title Page

Introduction

THE SPIRITS OF THE DEAD

The Arny Woman – DANGEROUS GHOST

The Daylight Wraith – DANGEROUS GHOST

The Legend of Frank McKenna – WARNING GHOST

The Radiant Boy – CHILD GHOST

Corney – CELEBRITY GHOST

HAUNTED PLACES

A Night at the ‘Ram’s Horn’ – COUNTY DERRY

The White Lady of Kilcosgriff – COUNTY LIMERICK

The House on the Hill of Weeping – SKYRNE CASTLE, COUNTY MEATH

Ardogina, the House of Madam Coghlan – COUNTY WATERFORD

The Touch of the Dead – GILL HALL ESTATE, COUNTY DOWN

The Haunted Castle of Leap – COUNTY OFFALY

About the Author

Copyright

Other Books

Introduction

‘I believe thatthere are few speculative Delusions more universally receiv’d than this. That those things we call Spectres, Ghosts and Apparitions are really the departed Souls of those Persons whom they are said to represent.’

‘A Moreton’ (Daniel Defoe), Secrets of the Invisible World

Ghosts have always been with us. As our ancestors gazed out into the gathering prehistoric dusk, perhaps they saw things that were beyond their comprehension and suggestive of their own forebears. It was here probably that the ghost story was born and the tradition has continued down through Classical, Medieval and Victorian times to the present day. And even in these scientific and technological days, phantoms continue to fascinate us, particularly within the Celtic world. Why should this be so? Are there indeed such things as ghosts or is Defoe correct to label them as nothing more than ‘Delusions’? Part of the answer may lie in the Celtic tradition and psyche.

The Celts held a very different notion of death than we do today. Nowadays, we view our demise as the end of our interest or involvement in the material, physical world. We do not expect to influence or even to remain in touch with those whom we have left behind or who come after us once we have ‘passed away’. This was not the Celticperspective. Although the Celtic Afterlife was never properly defined – it was usually referred to as some vague and nebulous Otherworld – it remained remarkably close to the sphere of existence of the living. Of course, the Celts held this belief in common with many other ancient cultures, but for them, given their ties of blood and kinship, it held a particular imminence. From their vantage point in the Otherworld, the dead watched their descendants, often with a paternal and friendly eye, and from time to time they intervened in the course of things to benefit those who followed them through the world.

Ghosts were not always terrifying. Although the Victorians did their best to turn them into creatures of menace and fear, most of the early Celtic spectres were benevolent and often returned to the world for a specific purpose. Sometimes it was simply to partake in those things that they’d experienced when alive, for, in the Celtic mind, the world of the dead was simply a kind of pale continuation of the world of the living. There the shades of the dead enjoyed less of the comforts than they had enjoyed in the material world and often yearned to return for short periods to enjoy a pipe, a good, warm fire or a decent meal. And from time to time, they came back to indulge themselves, and those whom they had left behind were required to support them as they did so. The early Brehon Laws – the legal system of the early Celtic world – reflected this, for they decreed that a corpse might own property: a horse, a cow, a suit of clothes and the furniture of his or her bed, and that these could not be sold in satisfaction of debt. The corpse was also entitled to have full enjoyment of these should it decide to return briefly. Tradition also stated that after some time in the cold grave the returning dead required a meal and a glass of spirits, and this was usually provided by the deceased’s family. These Celtic revenants, then, seemed to be more corporeal than the drifting phantoms of later times, and they seem to have had hearty appetites as well! They returned from the Afterlife to enjoy the comforts of family life and companionship, and as long as these were provided they were content in their demise. Nor were they particular figures of terror in the community – after all, they were relatives and neighbours and as such were to be welcomed back rather than feared.

There were, however, other reasons which might bring an ancestor back from the Otherworld. From their unseen vantage point, the dead could monitor the affairs of the locality which they had left and maintain a paternal interest in their descendants. So they might come back to intervene in the lives of their children. They could return to warn, to punish, to reward, to advise or to finish work that they’d left uncompleted in life. Thus the Limerick seamstress Grace Connor returned each night from the grave to complete a wedding dress that she’d been paid to stitch before her death, and Daniel McShane came back from the grave to advise his son on the sale of their County Antrim farm. These were functions that they’d probably carried out in life and continued to do so after death.

The Church, of course, found itself in an ambiguous position. It couldn’t really condone the idea of ghosts which it dismissed as ‘credulous superstition’, but it couldn’t really deny them either since, by their supposed existence, they provided evidence of the Afterlife. Moreover, there was a Biblical endorsement for their function of issuing warnings and urgings to lead a better life. With regard to sinners and those who turned to evil ways, Luke 16.30 advised: ‘If someone from the dead visits them, they will repent!’ The dead, it seemed, were actually carrying out Biblical teaching and the Church couldn’t wholly denounce them.

Besides, there was another, profitable perspective which the Church might use and which it exploited to its full extent. In doing so it changed the perception of the dead in the Celtic mind. Masses might be said for the dead and Masses meant money for the priests. If families were negligent in the payment of the priest to say such Masses, then the dead might be annoyed (since they were delayed in Purgatory, which appears to be a continuation of the Otherworld, and thus denied their Eternal Reward) and might return to dole out retribution for such neglect. And their vengeance would be awful. And thus the idea of the angry dead was born – phantoms who would terrorise the living and wreak untold horrors upon them. Of course, there had been elements of such things in earlier ghost stories – for instance, tales of the ghosts of malevolent misers or wife-beaters appear in early Roman folklore – but the Christian Church played the perception for all it was worth. Its sole purpose for doing so was to ‘encourage’ individuals and families to throng into the churches and pay the priests to say Masses for the repose of their dead ancestors. By doing so, people hoped to gain some measure of protection from those who had passed beyond the grave. And, of course, the churches benefited financially from it too.

With the onset of the Age of Enlightenment and the Victorian period, ghosts assumed a rather ambiguous position. On one hand, they were dismissed as pure fantasy, and yet they retained a distinct fascination for many people. Despite the rise of Rationalism and scientific enquiry, there was still what could be described as a thirst for immortality amongst the common people – and the appearance of ghosts served as evidence for the existence of the eternal soul. And yet, there was also an element of danger to these phantoms. In the past they had appeared at all times of the day – midday being a particularly auspicious time to see them – now they appeared only at night-time and in darkened places. It is easy to see why this was so – the gloom and the shadows distort everyday things into monstrous and threatening shapes. Appearances during the night added an air of mystery and menace to the idea of a ghost.

Gradually, spectres became associated in the popular mind with eerie and lonely places – isolated earthen forts, dark clumps of trees, lonely lakes and derelict houses, and the ghost stories and folktales concerning the supernatural usually reflected this. If places looked eerie and were not haunted, ran the wisdom, then they should be – and in the later Celtic world, with its rich tradition of tales, there was no shortage of imaginative storytellers to create the associated ghosts.

The histories and character of such places also played a part in these stories. Because of their turbulent pasts, old castles and houses, once occupied by tyrannical noblemen and landlords were often deemed to be haunted. Sometimes, these were the ghosts of the owners themselves, sometimes of their hapless victims. And the undoubtedly fraught history of a place such as Ireland provided many such sites for the tale spinner and for the fertile imagination.

It was from these varying sources – a remembrance of the returning, sometimes hostile, dead, a sense of history and tradition and, just as importantly, a sense of place that the Irish ghost story emerged. This collection, which is based on the folktales and stories that the common people told, deals with all of these aspects. The ghosts which appear in them are of a number of types – child ghosts, dangerous ghosts, the spectres that drift along the corridors of haunted houses, and there are even a couple of what we might call ‘celebrity’ phantoms. The stories have been divided into two categories – one which reflects the spirits themselves and the missions or impulses that have brought them back from the grave, and the other as ghosts associated with places and specific sites, reflecting both the atmosphere and the sense of history associated with them. The variety of ghosts contained here demonstrates the richness and breadth of Celtic storytelling as well as the influences brought to bear on the tradition, and also the imminence of another world that lies just beyond our everyday vision – a world which can only be vaguely glimpsed with the eye of belief and awe.

So sit back, turn down the lamp, and ignore the wind rising outside, the unaccountable rattling at the back door or the mysterious shadow on the window blind. They’re all probably nothing and if you were to look out into the gloom you’d be no better than that ancestor who gazed out into the darkness in fear and trembling. Turn the pages of this book – you are about to enter the realm of the Irish dead where such things might have many different meanings. You are about to enter The Haunted Land.

The Spirits of the Dead

The Arny Woman

There is an old saying in some parts of Ireland – ‘A man who dies owing money or a woman who leaves a newborn infant will never lie quiet in the grave.’ This adage served to remind the living of their main obligations and responsibilities before death. It also forms the central strand of the once widely told tale of the Arny woman from County Fermanagh.

In many country areas, the dead were considered to be extremely possessive – so possessive that they might well return from the grave to claim what they believed was rightfully theirs. Nowhere was this idea of rightful possession more extreme than in the case of a mother and her child. This was a bond which, it was felt, could transcend even death. It was widely believed that mothers who had died during or after childbirth would return to care for their infants. As a child, I remember a woman in our own community in County Down who was supposedly suckled as an infant by her mother’s corpse, which had returned from the grave specifically for that purpose.

However, in a more macabre twist, it was also said that other dead mothers missed their children so much that they would appear and carry them back to the tomb if not prevented. One way of preventing this was to place the father’s clothes across the foot of the crib – this would ward away ‘fairies and the dead’ until the child could be formally baptised. If an unbaptised child was taken by the dead, it was lost to the world of the living forever.

This abduction of a newborn by a corpse forms the basis of the story of the Arny woman, but there are a number of other elements in it as well. Certain traits about a living woman might mark her out in the eyes of the local community as ‘fairy friendly’, and therefore as one who might be malicious after death. These traits included being a ‘foreigner’ (that is, coming from outside Arny), having red hair, being of a shrewish and spiteful disposition, and having any slight physical deformity.

The role of formal religion in the story of the Arny woman is interesting, for it was not the efforts of a priest that could send her cadaver back to the grave. Rather it was the deployment of Christian symbols supported by an older, more magical wisdom stretching back into the pre-Christian past. This demonstrates a rural Ireland where both Christian and pagan traditions were entwined, where local people paid a kind of devout lip-service to the Church, while also respecting ancient, pagan traditions. This, of course, is not unique to Ireland – the same layering of pagan and Christian traditions can be seen in the Caribbean, in South America, and even in modern cities, such as New Orleans.

Like many rural ghost stories, the tale of the Arny woman is a rich folkloric tapestry with many themes interwoven through it. Once, it was very well known throughout the North, but nowadays it is little more than a fading memory.

About two or three miles beyond Tommy Gilleese’s public house at Arny crossroads, a man called Peter Maguire and his wife made their home. Peter was a woodworker and, by all accounts, a quiet and very decent man. His wife, however, was a horse of a different colour.

She was not from the Arny area at all, but had been born away on the other side of Ballinaleck, and nobody in the district knew anything about either her or her family. Nor did they ever find out, for Peter’s wife never mentioned her people. A moody and sullen woman, she never made unnecessary conversation or showed any friendliness towards her neighbours. Those that had to have dealings with her found her sharp and uncommunicative, and reported that she was always more ready to issue a curse than a blessing. As a result, no-one in the countryside had a good word to say about her. Not that she seemed to care – Peter’s wife kept herself to herself.

Apart from the shortcomings of her personality, there were other factors that made local people uneasy about Peter’s wife. Firstly, she had long tresses of red hair framing her narrow, pale face. Red hair, it was said, especially a luxuriant growth like hers, was the sure mark of a witch-woman or of one of the fairy folk. Secondly, one of her legs was a little shorter than the other and she limped. Around Arny, this was a ‘fairy mark’ and it meant that the woman had close relations with the so-called Good People that lived in secret places in the hills and around the Fermanagh lakes. Thirdly, the people noted that Peter’s wife never attended Mass in the church nearby, even though it was only a short walk from her home. All in all, the locals gave her as wide a berth as they could, even though they got on well enough with her husband.

Despite his wife’s unpopularity, Peter Maguire appeared happy enough. The woman kept a neat house and appeared docile in public – though this didn’t quash rumours that she ruled the roost indoors. There were even stories that she had her husband under some sort of a spell – though no-one ever dared say anything to her face. All the same, local farmers kept their animals well away from her in case she might put the evil eye on them.

For a year or so after their marriage, Peter and his wife were childless. Then, one day, some of the local matrons noticed that Peter’s wife’s belly was getting big, and shortly after Peter smilingly announced that he was going to be a father. His sullen wife said nothing, nor did her disposition improve with impending motherhood. She was as sharp as ever. Even when neighbour women called to see her and to wish her well, she received them curtly, and made little conversation with them until they left. Although she seemed healthy enough, some of these visitors noticed that the pregnancy was taking its toll. She had never been a robust woman but now she looked even paler and more wasted than usual. This only added fuel to the rumours about her fairy connections, for it’s well known that the fairies have great trouble in carrying and delivering their children.

The time approached for the baby to be born. There were many ‘handy women’ (or midwives) throughout the locality, but the Arny woman didn’t call on any of them for help. In fact, she stayed well clear of them, keeping as close to her home as possible. Nobody even knew that the child’s birth was imminent, until late one night, Peter Maguire came battering at the door of a neighbour. The baby was coming, he shouted, and his wife was very ill. If she didn’t get help, she might not see the night out. Neighbours ran to give aid and between them all, they managed to save the child – a little boy – but they couldn’t do the same for Peter’s wife. Before morning she was dead. There were many who said privately and out of her husband’s hearing that maybe it was no bad thing that she was gone.

There was no funeral in the Arny churchyard for Peter’s wife. As Peter struggled to look after his newborn baby, the community took it upon themselves to send her away to be buried in Ballinlaleck, where they’d assumed her family were from. Meanwhile, the baby boy appeared in fine health. Peter brought in a woman during the day to suckle the infant and, at night, the baby slept in a cot at the foot of his father’s bed.

One night, a few weeks after his wife’s death, Peter was awakened from sleep by a noise. There seemed to be a low scratching sound outside the window of his bedroom. Sitting up in bed, Peter looked out through the uncurtained window into the dark night. Seeing nothing, he shrugged and went to check on his son, sleeping peacefully in his cot. But as Peter climbed back into bed he heard the same low scratching again. He looked out of the window once more – and this time found himself gazing straight into the face of his dead wife.

Her face was extremely pale – much paler than he remembered – and her red hair was matted and listless as it hung down about her shoulders. But it was her lifeless eyes that chilled him to his marrow, for they were looking straight past him and into the room. He followed the dead woman’s gaze. Her eyes were fixed on the crib, where their infant son slept.

In that moment, Peter knew why she was there – she’d come back for her baby. He’d heard that mothers sometimes returned from the grave for their children, especially if those children were very young, but he’d never believed such stories, until now. He stared at the dead face of his wife in terror, until just as suddenly as it had appeared, it vanished from the window.

An instant later Peter heard a rattling at the back door. The latch shook but, with relief, Peter remembered the door was bolted. His relief was short lived, for the next sound he heard was the door jamb splintering as the bolt gave way. The door creaked open and Peter knew that the corpse of his wife was in the house.

Leaping into action, Peter placed himself squarely between his bedroom door and the sleeping infant and waited. Instead of trying to come in, however, she placed her face close to a crack in the door itself. He had a glimpse of her hard and glittering eyes in a shaft of moonlight. Then she was gone.

Peter heard scrabbling about in the kitchen, and cupboards opening and shutting. It was as if the corpse were looking for something to eat. Eventually she found a piece of cheese that he’d put away the night before, and he heard her devouring it. Having satisfied her hunger, the corpse then turned and went out through the open door, and disappeared into the blackness.

Behind her in the house, a shocked and shivering Peter Maguire relived what he had seen and imagined what might have happened. He prayed fervently that the corpse of his dead wife had returned to the grave and that this visit might be the end of it.

But the next night, Peter was again wakened by a fumbling at the window of his bedroom and, with a heart that was stopping in fright, he sat up once more. Once more he plainly saw the corpse of his dead wife through the window, trying to open the casement and get into the room. As before, her lifeless eyes were fixed on the infant, who was slumbering in his crib, oblivious to the awful danger. Again she quickly left the window and came round to the back of the cottage, where her husband heard her, rattling at the door. The newly mended bolts and door jamb gave, and the corpse was once more in the kitchen, clattering through the cupboards, looking for something to eat. This time she found some meat that Peter had been saving for the next day’s dinner, and she devoured it ravenously. Then, just as suddenly as the previous night, she was gone through the door and out into the dark.

Peter cowered in his own room. He was too terrified to emerge and confront the thing who used to be his wife, though he knew that he could not go on like this. If she came again, he would have to do something.

The next evening, just as it was getting dark, a neighbour man called William Nixon was out for a stroll to Gilleese’s pub. To his horror, he saw what he swore was Peter Maguire’s dead wife walking the road between the pub and her own house. She was dragging her bad leg after her and keeping close to the hedges. William kept well clear of the ghastly spectre, but was still able to get a good look at her. She had changed in apperance – her matted red hair had grown longer and was now thick with lice and graveyard dirt. Her filthy fingernails had lengthened and seemed much sharper, like the claws of a wild animal. However, he noted she had the same surly attitude that she’d had when alive, and she cast sly glances at him as she went by. William ran to Gilleese’s pub and downed several shots of whiskey to try and banish the chill that had settled in his bones. He was still shaking when he finally could tell what he’d seen.

Later that night, back in the Maguire house, Peter had barred the doors with new, stronger bolts and brought his son out of the crib and into his own bed for protection. He’d pulled the bedclothes up over their heads and prayed to be delivered from this awful experience. His prayers must have gone unheard, for soon he heard the now-familiar scratching sound at the window, as the corpse of his wife tried to find a way in.

Peter was holding the child so tight that the baby started to cry. The noise seemed to make the scrabbling at the window even more frantic. Then it stopped. Peter lowered the bedclothes. Moonlight was shining in through the empty window. From the back of the house came a rattle as the corpse tried the newly strengthened door once more. She found it tightly barred against her and Peter prayed that the new bolts would hold. To his horror, the baby started crying again and, with that, Peter heard the corpse of the child’s mother throw herself heavily against the door. With a loud splintering of wood, the bolts gave way and she came crashing into the kitchen. There was a brief tense silence as Peter hushed his child. Then he heard the corpse moving around, looking for a meal.

Peering over the bedclothes, Peter shouted as loud as he could. ‘In the Name of God, go back to your grave and leave us in peace!’

It was no good. Not even the mention of the Holy Name made any difference for, although the corpse gave no answer, he heard her moving about the kitchen, gnawing at scraps of food. Then as he held his warm, gently sobbing child to his chest, Peter’s heart nearly stopped. He could hear his own bedroom door creaking open. She was in his room!

She was standing close to the foot of the bed, staring at the crib where her son should have been. Peter heard her touch the crib, drawing her filthy hands along the white pillow where her son’s head had left its imprint. Peter heard a low growl and she moved back through the door. Then she was gone, back into the kitchen, through the back door and out into the night.