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Halloween 2: The Joiner's Arms Farmer: An Unseen Guest · The Rooted Soul Podcast

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Good evening and welcome to the Rooted Soul Podcast.
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therootedsoulbooks.com is the website.
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alan@therootedsoulbooks.com is the email. @alanmacdonaldire is the Instagram
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handle. Website has the book on special offer, the first collection before
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the second is published. I thought I
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would have a second part to the Halloween podcast special.
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I was a little shook the other evening when I recounted the story of the
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Joiner's Arms and, uh, the ghostly— what seems
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to have been a ghostly apparition that I didn't realize at first was such.
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And there's some people who are in a little bit of disbelief.
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I embellished, obviously, the telling of the Christmas story,
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but the rest of it is actually very true. And I've written
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a companion piece to start off this second part.
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It's called The Joiner's Arms Farmer.
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On a wild winter's eve, bone sick of the rain,
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I stopped in the joiner's for a pint of the plain.
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Friend arriving late, time for warmth and a ponder,
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when he caught my eye before over he wandered.
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An old man out of time, in this place and almost life.
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Cloth cap with labour's grime, long wax coat with
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frayed signs. I watched as he stood at the bar
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all alone. How odd when he could engage the
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throng at pint's throne. And once
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he turned and doffed his cap, over he shuffled
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to engage in a chat. He was pale,
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almost blue. Hobbed boots made no sound.
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Pub lighting gave him a hue, but I shrugged off my frown.
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He sounded old Ireland and regaled me this tale of
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his Christmas ghost and the footsteps following his trail.
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The story sent a shiver, though I now realize something
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about this farmer gave my hackles a rise.
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We parted most cordial, and he turned for the gents.
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One glance at my phone, then I turned to follow hence,
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but he had disappeared in seconds flat. No sign
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of the farmer. No sense to make of that.
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He had nowhere to go, but in the end never went.
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My friend described him in full in the empty bar before we left.
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Reminding myself of that story Um,
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and the encounter with, with him,
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whoever it was, wherever time and place he was from,
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did give me a little pause for thought. I've had a few
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of those kind of experiences over the years that you can't quite explain.
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So maybe people will think there's a logical explanation for it, I don't know.
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But it made me think of a lot of Irish ghost stories, and I'll tell
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a few of them this evening. That I think ghosts
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are real no matter what you believe in.
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I've often said that, and someone says, well, how would you like to be remembered?
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Is that, well, when the last person is gone who knew me or has memories
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of me or memories of stories of me, then I don't need to be
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remembered. And there's something in that, I think, that ghosts are
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You can go to a place that you used to frequent
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with friends, family. You've— we've all experienced
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that, right? You go somewhere that was so full of life and your life at
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the time. And there's a feeling of ghosts in the room
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and ghosts on the wall. You know, when you
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enter into that space, which now has none of those people,
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it only holds the memories. And those memories, depending on
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where it is, are different for different people.
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And I always feel that even if it's held in your own imagination,
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it's real. There's something to it. Something fires up those
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synapses to give you that sense of either
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déjà vu or just the memories of good or
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bad times or in between.
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I happen to believe there's a veil.
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Between this world and elsewhere.
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And I think that's what that was that night.
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I mean, I was— it was a weekday evening. I mean,
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I literally first sip of a Guinness, so it wasn't about being
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drunk. And my eye was drawn to
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him, you know, at the bar.
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And, uh, something was— you can't
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quite make it out. And my friend, who I won't name, So it's not fair,
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you know, had said— I was— when she described
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him later that night, and I had not given any description, I was
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like, can you— if that bar is full,
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can you tell the difference? And she was like, I can't
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tell you how, but yes, I can tell. I found that
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fascinating. And look, there's any number of logical, I guess, explanations,
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but It was a very interesting encounter for me, and, um,
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one I don't think I'll ever quite forget. Um,
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but this time of year in particular, it's— I love
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it, you know, watching old horror movies, the old— I was going to try and
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do some kind of creaking door sounds and stuff in the background, but I thought
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that's so cliché. But it's,
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um, this kind of part 2, or as
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I should call it, part woo.
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I've just ruined it for everyone now, haven't I? I thought
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I'd read some— there's a poem from W.B.
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Yeats who's a favorite of mine and an occultist,
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a man who loved the black arts and the dark arts and black magic and
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all of that stuff. He was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden
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Dawn, which I encourage you all to look up. I keep saying it, I'll do
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a podcast on him and Aleister Crowley, the links between them,
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L. Ron Hubbard, and there's really interesting stories
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to be told there. This is called The Host of the Air.
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O'Driscoll drove with a song, The Wild Duck and the Drake,
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from the tall and the tufted weeds of the drear heart
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lake, and he saw how the weeds grew dark at the coming
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of night tide, and he dreamed of the long dim hair of
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Bridget, his bride. He heard while
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he sang and dreamed a piper piping away, and never
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was piping so sad, and never was piping so gay.
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And he saw young men and young girls who danced on a level place,
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and Bridget his bride among them with a sad and gay face.
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The dancers crowded about him, and many a sweet thing said,
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and a young man brought him red wine, and a young girl white
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bread. But Bridget drew him by the sleeve away from the
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merry bands to old men playing at cards with a twinkling
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of, twinkling of ancient hands. The bread and the wine
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had a doom, for these were the hosts of the air.
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He sat and played in the dream of her long dim
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hair. He played with the merry old men and
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thought not of evil chance. Until one bore Bridget, his bride,
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away from the merry dance. He bore her away in his arms,
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the handsomest young man there, and his neck and his breast and his arms were
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drowned in her long dim hair. O'Driscoll scattered the
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cards and out of his dream awoke.
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Old men and young men and young girls were going like drifting smoke.
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He— but he heard high up in the air a piper piping away,
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and never was piping so sad, and never was piping so gay.
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Sorry, I tripped up a little bit there, guys, but, uh,
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I do love how, uh, Yeats writes. You know,
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there's something— he's another writer that there's
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something deep beyond the words.
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You, you're kind of— you're brought to a visual, I think.
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Of the scene he's writing about, whether it's real or imagined.
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But I think it's amazing. I had— I'm going
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to read another one here.
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This is called The Haunted
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House by George William Russell.
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He was an Irish, an Irish writer. I don't know that much about him,
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but I do like this. Here where the night is
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quiet and deep, a phantom walks through the rooms of sleep.
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No step is heard on the creaking floor, no hand is laid
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on the unlatching door. Yet something moves in this silent space,
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a pale cold thought from an ancient place.
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A shadow born of a forgotten grief that falls on
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the heart like a withered leaf. It lingers
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long by the cold hearthstone to dream of
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a fire that was once its own, then slips away in the morning gray before
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the shadow is chased by day.
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It's a wonderful short piece. I must check out more of his work, actually.
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I had, um, I have a poetry
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book somewhere on night poems, poets that wrote either kind
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of ghost story poems or, you know, the kind of writing
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by candlelight type poems of that dark of which any of you know I love
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that time. It's a very creative, very open-minded time,
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I think.
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This is another one. This is called The Fairy House by Alice Mulligan.
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Published in 1908.
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The night is cold on the mountainside, the wind is sharp and the dark is
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wide. Listen, O listen, along the glen comes
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the tramp of the ghostly men, not with the sound
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of iron shod nor heavy tread on the mountain sod, but light
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as the leaf that the autumn weaves and soft as the fall
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of the winter leaves. They pass the house where the fires burn red.
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They call no name from the quiet bed, but the watcher shivers
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to feel them pass like a breath of frost on the window
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glass. That's a wonderful last line—
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like a breath of frost on the window glass.
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There's a lot of old Irish ghost stories, tales, and poems which
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are fantastic, you know. And I know there's,
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as I said before, Eddie Lenihan is one to check out.
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He's an Irish storyteller, Seanachór, and he's
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incredible. But he has a whole store of the oral tradition from
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Ireland, you know, going back thousands of years.
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I keep going back to that joiner's arms. That experience of mine
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I'd forgotten about for a long time, or at least it was in the back
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of my mind. This time of year, I guess. And it was around this time
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of year, it wasn't quite up at Halloween, but it was October or November,
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I think. Um, because I know it was dark and
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cold and wet. Um, a bit like myself, what? Um,
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but yeah, so I think
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I'm gonna read another piece.
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This is called The Dead Ship of the Atlantic.
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It was the 5th week out from the COVID of Cork, bound for
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Boston on a timber brig called the Kathleen.
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We were caught in a dead calm off the Grand Banks, a fog so
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thick and white you couldn't see the bowsprit from the wheel, and the sea
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beneath us as flat and black as polished slate.
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Just after midnight on the middle watch, That's the,
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that's the watch that, uh, that's the, that's the middle watch
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is the one that tends to get the most paranormal activity. The air turned
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bitter cold, not the damp chill of the fog, but a sudden dry
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frost that froze the spray on the deck timbers.
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That was when we heard it. No foghorn, no bell,
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just the slow, heavy creak of ungreased blocks and the
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slap of rotten canvas against spars. Out of the wall of
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white rolled a 3-masted schooner.
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She carried no lights at her masthead, and her sails were torn
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into gray hanging ribbons that never stirred in the dead
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air. She moved across the water with a smooth, silent glide,
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cutting the glass of the sea without leaving a single
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ripple or wake. The watch captain called
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out through his trumpet. Ship ahoy! What vessel is that?
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No voice answered from her quarterdeck, but as she drifted
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alongside so close her main boom nearly brushed our
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rigging, we saw the crew. They were standing along the gunwale,
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6 or 7 men in salt-stained coats, motionless as statues.
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Their faces were gray and shriveled like dried kelp, eyes wide
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and staring straight ahead into the mist. At the wheel stood
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a tall man with a tangled beard, his hands frozen fast to
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the wooden spokes, staring down at a compass housing
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that was shattered and empty. Not a soul
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on board moved, not a breath was drawn.
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They passed us in total suffocating silence, slipping back
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into the white fog as fast as they appeared. When our captain checked
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the charts that night, He found the log of an Irish emigrant ship that had
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gone missing in those exact coordinates 40 years prior.
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She'd sailed out of Galway in the winter of '46,
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never reached port, and was never heard from again except by
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men becalmed in the fog on the Grand Banks who watch her still steering
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a dead course for a shore she'll never touch.
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Wow, I really like that. That's a creepy tale.
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I do love the, um,
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maritime kind of ghost stories. They're, they're, they're kind
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of more creepy because it's just the idea
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of the dead sailing a ghost ship in
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eternity, but also to come alongside that or to be on a ship that
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has some of that activity going on. And you're surrounded by
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nothing but water. You have nowhere to go. So you're trapped with that
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on the vessel, whatever that might be.
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So I always find those are quite, quite chilling tales,
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actually. You know,
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I had another experience. People are gonna think I'm mad.
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And this was about 8 years ago, I would say.
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And I was in the back of an Uber chatting to the driver.
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And there was— it was late at night, but there was something holding up traffic,
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so it was going relatively slow. He saw what I saw though. We were
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going by a church which had a, um, a graveyard attached.
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And there was a— it was late enough at night, but there seemed to be
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a white apparition of a woman that seemed to be floating
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above one of the gravestones. Now at first I thought it was a woman in
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white And maybe some lighting or lamppost
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or something was coming down to illuminate. Well, we were both completely freaked
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out by it because we were far enough away that you can't be sure,
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but not so far like that you're fairly certain that what I'm seeing
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here is weird. It's not of— maybe not of
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this world. Um, and it kind of freaked
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me out a little bit. I, I tend not to be too scared by that
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stuff. Mostly. It might send a shiver, but I
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know they can't do us harm, whatever they are. And quite often,
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they're poor, for what I believe anyway, they're poor souls that
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are— I don't like to think that they're souls that
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are stuck in a memory, in a loop.
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I think it's an echo,
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as I've said before, that there's a ghost on the wall.
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So something happens in a place, you know, the old stone
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tape theory where— stone tape, I should say— where something
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can happen that's so tragic or brings about such extreme
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emotion that actually part of that person stays,
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but it's not the person, it's the memory that
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stays on there. Now, I have no idea, Lewisham High Street,
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Southeast London, uh, in the 21st century.
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What a farmer who looked from the 1940s or '50s or '60s
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from rural Ireland, what he was doing
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there, if he was an old soul, I don't know.
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But, um, and maybe I'm doing him a disservice and he was actually
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real, but it, it, it makes no sense, as I said the other night.
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But I like to think that it's not souls that are trapped anywhere. No soul
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should be trapped anywhere. And, you know, I like
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the idea of certain tenets of Judaism where there
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isn't really a heaven and hell. You are sent somewhere
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for your soul to be cleansed for a period of time before you
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return to all the other souls.
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And I like that idea. So I hope that
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what we see is not someone who's stuck that needs to move towards
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the light. Everyone deserves to go to that,
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to go on from this mortal coil once we're gone.
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But I, I'll close out this evening with
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one of my horror poems. And let
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me just find the right one here. One I think I haven't read before.
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Demon Decor. Writings on the wall under her painting.
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Wondering, appalled, unfolding, explaining how odd
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it is. We talk of hell, hot furnaces, burning yells.
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Yet here he has chosen the evil in my home, whose touch is frozen
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wherever I go. So maybe devils thrive
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in cold and they heat another lie that they have told.
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I know, guys, I've been a little creepy tonight,
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but I do I do enjoy the tales. Do let me
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know, guys. As I say, alan@therootedsoulbooks.com is the email,
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or on my Instagram social media. I love to hear people's
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thoughts, and I'll lay out that poem when
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I put this up on social media for people to
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read. I may do an individual reading of it as well if people like that,
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so let me know. So again, guys,
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There's details of the live show, 26th of February to Friday,
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NYX Hotel in Dublin, 2027. And details
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of that will be up on the website shortly. It's being revamped as we speak.
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And there'll be other offers coming with the second publication, which has
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the Rooted Soul Acceptance to Joy, has a special
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edition with Christmas poems in it, which I think people will like.
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And the first collection is only on special offer, £1.77 and euro equivalent for
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the ebook and £5 and euro equivalent for the paperback. And that will
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be until early November. So please, if you want
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to get a copy, you're never going to get it cheaper. And people do seem
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to have enjoyed it. So I thank you for tuning in this evening.
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And as always, better living within.