It’s Halloween or All Hallows’ Eve. I have to admit that I’ve never seen a ghost – at least not knowingly - but I’ve met people who claim they have. Ireland is apparently alive with phantoms and spirits. I went to visit an elderly man in England, once married to my great-aunt who died young. His second wife told me she visited Ireland on one occasion and would never risk it again. I thought this was an unusual comment and asked her why. She said it was because she could see spirits and was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers that appeared on Irish roads wherever she and her husband went. I have five ghost stories for you today and I’ll start with the one in our Victorian house in Dublin.
A Young Lady in White
I was in my twenties and one of the other lodgers woke up during the night to find a young woman dressed in a long white gown standing at the foot of his bed, regarding him with interest. Frightened, he told her to go away. According to him, the young woman turned and vanished out through the brick wall. I didn’t believe him at the time, especially as he had been out carousing and had knocked back several pints of Guinness.
When on my own in the house, I managed to convince myself that he was making this story up, hallucinating after a night out on the tiles. You know how your imagination starts to kick into overdrive when it’s dark and lonely? I often heard footsteps on the stairs but they belonged to the neighbours in the next house. That’s what I told myself.
Several years later when I had moved out, a visitor came to the house and witnessed a similar figure standing at the top of the stairs. I recently looked up the Census forms for 1901 and 1911 out of curiosity and discovered that a single lady owned the house and lived there with her female servant at that time. So perhaps it was Miss Fitzpatrick or her maid Mary. I don’t suppose we will ever know.
A First World War soldier
My brother and I went to look around a house once lived in by my great-great-grandfather in 1900. It’s a Regency house in Dublin with bright rooms and a friendly atmosphere. As a joke, I asked the son of the woman selling it if he had ever seen the ghost of my ancestor, a Victorian man with a long white beard and a little terrier dog. I have a black and white photograph of him at the end of the nineteenth century so I know that’s what he looked like.
The man took me seriously and informed me that his mother had seen a man in the basement on several occasions. He was dressed in the uniform of a First World War soldier so he wasn’t my great-great-grandfather who died in 1902. The man’s matter-of-fact tone fascinated me. He didn’t think my question in any way ridiculous.
Ghosts who appear to visitors
Two married friends who studied English in the same university as me went to visit a couple in the south of England. I’m going to call them Jack and Veronica but those are not their real names. The house is a wonderful 16th century mansion run by The National Trust but the previous owners still live there. Veronica was tired and went up to bed early after dinner. When her husband Jack came out into the hall to go to bed later on, he was greeted by a group of white shadowy figures on the landing at the top of the stairs. They vanished into the wall as he drew closer. He told me he was terrified, even though they obviously meant no harm. He ran into the bedroom, his face deathly pale, and his wife took one look at him and shouted, “Whatever you’ve seen, don’t tell me until the morning!” When they questioned the couple who lived in the old house the next day, they laughed and said many visitors had seen that collection of ghosts but the family never had. Those spirits only ever appeared to visitors.
Duckett’s Grove, Carlow is supposed to have several ghosts. (Photo: The National Library archives)
Moving paintings
I have a selection of stories from others about things that smell and move for no logical reason. The first was my only real inexplicable experience. I was still in my twenties and living in a rented cottage near the woods in County Wicklow. There was a landscape painting hanging on the left wall in my bedroom – the room was small and the bed took up most of it. One morning I woke up to find the painting had gone. When I investigated, I spotted the same painting on the floor on the right side of the bed. How could a painting move on its own across a double bed from one wall to the bottom of the opposite one? I was alone in the room all night. I’ve never found the answer to that.
My great-grandfather on my mother’s side lived in Lancashire and was a doctor. He was an atheist and didn’t believe in an afterlife. When his family, who were church-goers, questioned him about his lack of belief, he promised them that if there really was an afterlife, he would come back when he died to remove the picture from the wall in their sitting room. My mother said that after his death the family watched that painting for weeks. It never moved. Perhaps my great-grandfather forgot. Or perhaps he remembered seventy years later and came back to move mine instead!
A dreadful smell
I have one more story about a house and this one concerns a strange smell. Friends of ours were doing up a cottage in County Wicklow and rented another one while they were waiting for builders to finish theirs. Soon after the husband, wife and two teenagers moved in, they noticed a nasty smell. They told me it smelt like drains. They cleaned the interior drains and poured disinfectant down the outside ones and thought it would go. The smell got worse.
They suspected there might be a dead rat under the floorboards and waited for the smell to pass. The weeks went by and the stench grew stronger. The husband was talking to an elderly neighbour one day and mentioned the problem. His neighbour smiled and told him about an old man who had lived in the cottage. Locals believed the smell marked his presence.
Of course, our friends didn’t believe this and thought that the neighbour was joking. They never managed to get rid of the stink and resigned themselves to having to live with it until they moved into their own newly renovated cottage. That day couldn’t come fast enough for them.
The removal van arrived and carried their belongings five miles up the road to their new home and they settled in that first night with a feeling of relief. Whatever was in the old rented house was gone - a thing of the past. Or so they thought.
The next day they noticed a definite smell in their new home. Surely not? They felt they must have been imagining this. But no. As the week went on, the stench of drains or dead rat or whatever it resembled grew worse. I have to assure you that these friends of ours are very down to earth and both of them work in the medical field. They are not the sort of people I would consider overly imaginative.
In good rural Irish tradition, the priest was sent for. He arrived and said prayers, blessing the house. But the smell grew stronger and the family despaired. What where they going to do? This was their lovely new home they’d looked forward to living in. Eventually they decided to try something themselves. All four of them sat in a circle holding hands while they took it in turns to tell the presence that they wished it no ill will but it wasn’t welcome in their house. Very politely, the family asked the presence to go home again. They had no great hope that this would work but amazingly it did. Within a few hours the smell began to dwindle away until it vanished completely. It never returned.
I have another story about a poltergeist that used to pluck rose petals in a garden and place them in a row along the path but that will have to wait until another time.