Ghost Stories

Well, the ghosts...! It's amazing how many haunted houses there seem to be if you start looking for them. Another estate agent (in Co. Meath) told us wild stories about his vast experience with haunted houses the minute he detected the interest of my Ex in these matters: moving furniture, creaking floorboards, and the chill in the rooms, etc. The usual. Co. Meath seemed to be particularly ghostridden. Since we were genuinely interested in one particular farm, we stopped by the neighbors to suss them out. The farmer's wife, a mother of 5, doubled as a school teacher. We reckoned she had her head screwed on the right way and wasn't into make-believe as such. No, there were no ghosts. Not anymore anyway since Father Gogarty had said mass there. So now for you! A little cottage down the road, abandoned for donkey's years but not in disrepair, sits looming on a curve in the road. An Irish friend, Sheila, explained to me that she saw Little People there at night sometimes when she came home late around midnight. Maybe a case of too much of the brown stuff? Doing my research for this blogs and all things Irish, I stumbled across a book with the title "The Lively Ghosts of Ireland," published 1967, by a German sounding Hans Holzer, an American, however, who traveled to the Green Isle regularly for research on haunted houses. What they often have in common is a tragic death that befell somebody in or around the house. And Ireland history with its 800 year long occupation and subjugation is full of tragic stories.Holzer's psychic travelling companion sometimes is able to set the ghost at ease, to send them home or lay them to peace. Marvelous. The interest in ghost lore -like in UFO's- never ceases. As a regular reader of the Skeptic Inquirer, I see that a lot of debunking is still being done in that magazine and needs to be done. I'll have a real haunted house story for you the next time. With real ghosts in our new home town...