By Paul McElwee
Yes, I know it’s only July and Halloween is a bit away yet but, let’s be honest, who doesn’t enjoy a good aul ghost story?
Whether we admit it or not, everyone likes being scared a little, feeling that icy chill up the spine when listening to tales of dread and doom.
The Fir Trees Hotel in Strabane played host to one such evening of paranormal parables on Monday and yours truly went along for the craic.
The evening, ‘A Night of Irish Ghost Stories and Folklore’ came courtesy of the Donegal-based Haunted Ireland and its creator, Letterkenny native Gary Ramsey.
A long-time believer in things that go bump in the night, Gary was inspired to start Haunted Ireland because of his own brushes with the ‘other side’, some of which he recounted on Monday evening to a rapt audience.
Asked why he decided to bring ghost stories to the masses, Gary offered, “I’ve always been interested in the paranormal from a very young age.
I love hearing ghost stories and telling them, plus we Irish are born story tellers so it made sense to try and keep ensure those stories, if you’ll pardon the pun, ‘stay alive’.
“Why do people like ghost stories so much? I think it’s because the paranormal side is unknown and people love thinking of the unknown and imagining that there’s more to existence than what we can actually physically see and, in my experience, that’s certainly the case.”
Speaking of his own experiences, Gary recounted tales of Ouija boards, howling dogs and ghostly apparitions at the old St Comghall’s hospital in Letterkenny, warming the audience up nicely.
“I remember being camping with a few friends when I was 15 and, as you’d expect, we wandered about at night,” he said.
“About 2am, we met a few older boys who were playing with a Ouija board just past the old Dunne’s Stores in Letterkenny so, interested, we joined in. We asked who we were speaking with and the board spelt out ‘Beelzebub’ which, as people may know, is another name for the devil.
“We thought it was the older boys messing until we asked the board ‘if it’s really you, show us a sign’. At that moment, dogs began howling for miles around and a streetlight across the lane blew! Needless to say it scared the bejesus out of us!”
Other storytellers on the night included Suzanne O’Donnell, Colm McDaid and folklore expert Charlie Gallagher, all with different experiences.
Stories with a local flavour, such as the legend of Stumpy’s Brae and sightings of famed Sligo poet Francis Ledwidge’s ghost at Iona House on the Letterkenny Road outside Derry were recounted by Colm who produced a photo of a ghostly apparition which may or may not be him (personally I believe it).
Ghosts aren’t all doom and gloom though, according to local faith healer Suzanne O’Donnell who believes ‘there’s a ghost story in all of us’.
“I believe there are ghosts or spirits who are there to look after us,” she said. “My father experienced such a spirit when he and my mum were courting and he was saved from freezing to death by the apparition of a family friend and, I believe anyway, I was saved from being run over on a lonely country road quite recently whilst enjoying the Northern Lights. This type of story gives me a lovely warm feeling that we’re being looked after, even from beyond the grave.”
Probably the scariest part of the night came courtesy of Charlie Gallagher who, in Gary’s words ‘comes with a warning’ with his tales of demonic possession from Donegal in recent times.
Charlie told the audience, “I’ve been involved over the years with many people who could be involved with, what is considered, the dark arts and witchcraft. I’ve seen some things I don’t necessarily believe and I believe some things I’ve not necessarily seen!”
Charlie, clearly a born storyteller, recounted tales of demonic possession and exorcisms involving people, herds of cattle and broken barns, and a silver riding crop which, I must admit, gave me the heebie jeebies!
Charlie talks about spirits in terms of ‘levels,’ remarking “We have spirits who are ‘sent’ to look after us, such as when people say
‘an angel was looking over your shoulder’; there’s spirits who are seen just to mess with us, moving things around and then there’s the more malevolent, those who wish to use us to their levels of reality, operating for a singular purpose; eternal, unending and almost overwhelming which can result in trauma, questioning of general reality and, sometimes, death.”
As the night drew to a close and darkness fell, I drove home in silence and I was very alert!
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