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The ghost story genre merits a two-page, highlighted spread in The Oxford Companion to English Literature (ed. Margaret Drabble, 6th edition, 2000). In Ireland the genre has a special place because it provided the raw material for evenings of storytelling that were a common feature of country life up to the 1950s (and frequently beyond).

In December 2001 the deputy Lord Mayor of Cork, Councillor Mary Shields, opened the first ever All-Ireland Ghost Convention in Cork City Jail. Inspiration for the event had come from Richard T. Cooke, a psychotherapist and hypnotherapist. The Cork Evening Echo reported the event:

Unexplained psychic phenomenon fascinates and intrigues people from all walks of life. However, many are afraid, ashamed and embarrassed to come forward for fear of not being taken seriously and it is for this reason that [the] convention was established – to allow people to explore this fascinating area. Richard’s theory on the existence or otherwise of ghosts is pragmatic. He says ‘They operate on a different plane to us and don’t conform to the normal rules that we understand, so you can’t get specific proof to say, “yes they do” or “no they don’t” exist. … It’s more of a feeling people have and if they experience something, someone who is with them at the time might not. That doesn’t mean what they experience wasn’t real.’

Some of Cooke’s accounts are included in the ‘Ghost Family Festival’ chapter in this book. Along with his colleague at Irish Millennium Publications, Catherine M. Courtney, and author Pauline Jackson, he has kindly allowed me to retell stories from their excellent book, Ghosts of Cork.

Celebrated people, as well as ordinary folk, have had strange experiences, and included here are those of the actor Mícheál Mac Liammóir and of playwright and author Hugh Leonard. In the Evening Echo on Saturday, 1 December 2001 the Lord of the Dance, Michael Flatley, acknowledged the presence of a ghost named Isabella in his Castlehyde home near Fermoy, County Cork. Oliver St John Gogarty claimed that he believed in ghosts but qualified his statement: ‘I know that there are times, given the place which is capable of suggesting a phantasy, when those who are sufficiently impressionable may perceive a dream projected as if external to the dreamy mind: a waking dream due both to the dreamer and the spot.’ (As I was Going Down Sackville Street, Dublin, 1937)

There are many well-known Irish ghost stories and I tell some of them in this book. I have, however, leaned heavily on the side of less well-known tales; most of them previously unpublished. All the time, I claim the storyteller’s privilege of using his own style and embellishments. If my accounts appear a little flippant occasionally, this does not imply that I have taken people’s accounts less seriously than I should. I’m sure ghosts have a sense of humour too! To avoid repetition, I offer many of the stories without qualification as to their authenticity.

Many people have given me assistance in collecting these stories and I wish to thank them most sincerely. They include the librarians and staffs of the National Library of Ireland and of the County Libraries of Cork, Kildare, Leitrim, Westmeath and Wexford. I thank also the Topic Newspaper Group, Tim Cadogan, Richard T. Cooke, Catherine M. Courtney, Pauline Jackson, Vincent Kelly of Cork’s Evening Echo, Jack Keyes Byrne, Ivor Young of Horetown Equestrian Centre, County Wexford, Comdt Victor Laing, Army Archives, Comdts Kevin Croke, Arthur Armstrong and Paul Buckley, Yvonne Croke, J.H.R Lindsay, Mary O’Malley of Maynooth College Visitors’ Centre, Alice and Kevin Downes, Anne Waters, Hook Heritage Limited, Brendan O’Connor and Joan Daly.

The work of previous chroniclers of the paranormal must be acknowledged. These include: Jonah Barrington, Patrick Byrne, the Countess of Fingall, Sean Henry, Mr and Mrs S.C. Hall, Shane Leslie, Seumas MacManus, James Reynolds, John Sheehan, Lady Wilde, and my parents and neighbours in Staplestown, County Kildare, who told ghost stories to me over three score years ago.

As usual, my daughters Niamh and Aisling assisted with word-processing and my wife Maureen proofread for tricks played by gremlins, ghouls and things that go bump in the computer. Thanks again too to Fergal Tobin of Gill & Macmillan for his continuing encouragement, courtesy and friendship and to a gracious lady whose patience and politeness are exemplary, editor Deirdre Rennison Kunz.

ONE

The Green Lady of St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, features in a sad story of marital disharmony. A beautiful young woman became madly jealous of her husband and watched his every move suspiciously. She nagged him constantly until eventually they separated. The young mother lived ‘on the Green’ with her children, David and Isa. Perhaps because the boy had all the features of her estranged husband, his mother maligned him. His sister, however, received her adoration and enjoyed every attention.

David took to closeting himself in a large empty room upstairs. His health failed and he became morose. Isa came upon him unexpectedly one day and was amazed to find him happy and cheerful – almost looking healthy. He told her that he had seen a beautiful lady dressed in green, who had seemed about to join in his game of skittles when Isa interrupted.

‘She is tall, with deep blue eyes and her skin is as fair as a lily. Her gorgeous red hair falls in ringlets down her back,’ he said.

David’s joy was short-lived. The same evening his mother summoned him to the drawing room to meet a big, stern-looking man.

‘He is going to be your stepfather, David, and you will address him as “sir”,’ she said.

David became more miserable than ever and when the wedding took place and the man was permanently ensconced in their home, he began treating David even more harshly than his mother had done. The boy’s health deteriorated as rapidly as did his spirits. He was feeling so utterly dejected that he did not wish to live any longer.

Late one night Isa was in bed when she heard voices in the top room. She got out of bed, put on her slippers and crept upstairs. She listened at the door of the room and heard David say, ‘Oh, that would be so nice. Thank you very much.’

Isa opened the door and saw her brother in his nightshirt, sitting on the floor.

‘Why are you not in your bedroom? You should be asleep by now. Mama will be furious if she finds you here,’ she said.

‘Yes, and she told me the most wonderful thing. She says she is going to take me to a place where I will be always happy,’ David smiled.

Isa scolded him, saying he was stupid. She told him to get back to his bedroom or she would inform their mother. David obeyed and soon they were both asleep in their own rooms.

As the city bells were tolling midnight, Isa awoke. Above their peals, she could hear a woman’s most beautiful voice singing a strange air. She thought of David’s story and went to see if he had gone back upstairs. She checked his room but he was sleeping soundly. She was just about to return to her room when the singing began again. Then her mother and stepfather came from their room and servants gathered at the bottom of the stairs, all looking frightened.

When Isa came down to her breakfast, the cook was standing outside the kitchen, idly cleaning a basin but looking anxiously upstairs.

‘That’s three anyway, thank heavens,’ she said, ‘but your brother is usually first down.’

Isa went into the dining room where her mother and stepfather were talking about the stupidity of people who believed in ghosts and Banshees and the like.

‘Is your brother not with you? Go get him this instant,’ her mother ordered.

Isa went to David’s room but he was not in bed. She went to the deserted room upstairs but he was not there either. She rushed back and told everybody and a search of the house and its out-offices began. There was no sign of the lad.

Then the gardener spoke up. ‘Did youse try the ladder that leads to the attic where the water tank is?’

The gardener went up and returned with the dripping body of the boy in his arms. ‘Drowned in the tank,’ he murmured to the horrified gathering.

TWO

First-hand accounts of ghosts are rare but a farmer-poet from Cloghan, County Westmeath, wrote of his own experiences in the Westmeath Topic during 1978. John Sheehy’s home was close to Killynon House. It had belonged to the Reynell family for close on five hundred years. The mansion no longer stands but John remembered well the large dwelling house occupied by the last surviving member of the Reynells, a bachelor and ‘a cultured and benevolent character of Oxford standard’. His only sister kept house and supervised a retinue of servants. They often entertained other aristocratic friends and hosted meets of the Westmeath Hunt.

John’s interests included water- and metal-divining, at which he was adept. He wrote short stories and poetry and loved the countryside and its ways and lore. He had often heard about horses, riders and hounds of centuries past galloping over Killynon estate in the dead of night and of neighbours hearing the sound of the hunting horn, the thunder of hooves and the ‘Tally-ho!’ of the eager ghostly followers. Local tradition stated that when there was a death in the Reynell family, the ancestors of the deceased gathered in the house and in its basement and later spilled out into the grounds. People of Cloghan heard their chattering and, sometimes, their carousing.

A large black dog cropped up in many tales. It even interfered in the amorous adventures of the staff. On one occasion a maid arranged to meet a local labourer at a small building by the tennis court. Neither could make any advances because the dog constantly circled round them. John did not take the stories very seriously – until he began noticing some very peculiar occurrences in and around Killynon House.

Late one autumn night, John was at the mearing of the Killynon property, looking for one of his beasts which had rambled from his haggard. He saw an orange glow moving through the estate about eight feet above the ground. It would stop for a while, then move on again. Too large for a will-o’-the-wisp, John nevertheless concluded that it was some similar phosphorescent light caused by combustion of methane. Then his heart gave a leap. Almost beside him was another man watching the light. This giant figure was standing by a stile leading into the estate. John did not know any neighbour who came close to the man’s height. But he remembered a story he had heard years before about a dying member of the Reynell family calling a trusted herdsman to his bedside. He had promised, ‘When I have left, you keep a close watch on the animals by day and I will keep vigil by night.’ John wondered if he had stumbled upon the ghost of Reynell keeping his promise.

John was more amazed another evening when he was passing close to the house and heard ‘the echo of many voices coming from the horse stalls’. He assumed there was a party going on – something that occurred frequently during the shooting season. He enquired the next day but was assured by the staff that not only was there no celebration the night before but the family members were all away and had given most of the servants a holiday. Soon afterwards, John noted that a close relative of the family died.

While in the house itself one day, John saw a young girl standing by the sink in the basement scullery. Her hands were resting on the sink and she remained rigid when he was passing by. He walked along the flags in the passage, stopped and looked back but the girl did not leave the scullery. Later John was sitting in the servants’ dining hall and the housekeeper came to greet him. John asked her if they had hired extra staff. When she said they had not, he told her about the girl in the basement. They went to the scullery together but it was empty. It had no window and John had been watching its doorway all the time.

One of John’s visits to the house brought him in view of the lawn and the avenue leading to the front door. It was a spring afternoon and he was dressed in heavy clothes to protect himself from a biting easterly wind. An old lady in a light blue, summery dress was walking along a gravel path that led to a large arched iron gate. He wondered why, at her age, she had no headgear and was not wrapped up warmly. Her route took her out of his sight for the two minutes it took him to reach a wicket gate leading to the back yard. When he approached the gate, however, she was nowhere to be seen. Then he remembered. Her features were those of a family member who had died a decade earlier!

About six months later the same garden was the setting for another of John’s experiences. His potatoes had been blighted and he was visiting the garden hoping to buy some from the gardener. This was a man of few words and all of them blunt. He was working near the potting shed in the centre of the walled garden.

‘The potatoes are a lot worse here,’ he said, and pointing further down the garden, he added, ‘You might find an odd good one down there if you are not too lazy to use a spade.’

John went to the place indicated and found the condition of the potatoes almost as bad as his own – only about one in thirty was free from blight. A deafening bang interrupted his work. The potting shed! All the terracotta pots must have fallen, he thought. He looked back at the gardener, who called for John to go into the shed with him. They went in and saw that nothing was broken. The gardener remarked that it was not the first time he had heard the noise. He said little more, despite John’s attempts to make conversation, joking that he needed ‘to keep a drop of holy water in the shed’.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

ONE

TWO