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Footsteps in the Snow: An Irish Haunting · The Rooted Soul Podcast

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  Good evening. Welcome to the Rooted Soul podcast. TheRootedSoulBooks.com is
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  the website where you can purchase the book and special offer.
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  It's on Amazon and other sites too.
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  Alan at TheRootedSoulBooks.com is the email. And at AlanMcDonald.ire is the Instagram handle.
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  Tonight I want to tell a story that I mentioned before but really hadn't told in too much detail.
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  So given the time of year, we're heading towards Halloween, Samhain,
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  and the time of the year when the veil is the thinnest between whatever this
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  world is and whatever the other worlds around us are.
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  Some years ago, I was in the Joyner's Arms pub. It's an Irish pub in Lewisham.
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  It was a Tuesday evening. It was about 6 p.m. I was waiting for a friend of
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  mine to come in. She was late.
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  I was having a pint. And I noticed an old man standing at the bar and he looks kind of out of place.
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  He had a no frayed kind of flat cap, cloth cap, you know, and a very old looking
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  battered kind of farmer style jacket, you know, that kind of waxed kind of jacket, long coat.
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  And at one point he, he came over to me and he sat down and we got talking and he was, from Kerry.
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  And we talked for a little bit and we were, you know, somehow went into talking
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  about ghosts and things like that.
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  Because that pub was known to have a bit of a haunting to it.
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  And he regaled me with a ghost story that he said wasn't his own,
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  though he told it in the first person.
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  And I'll take you through that story in just a moment.
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  When he finished, he got up to leave and decided to use the facilities, the gents, just before.
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  Now, the Joyner's Arms is a long, narrow pub.
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  And right down at the end is the gents' toilets. I was about halfway into the
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  pub, the table I was sitting in.
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  Now he was an old man kind of fairly doddering on his feet and when he got up
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  turned to go to the gents i glanced at my phone because i had a message from my friend,
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  then realized i had to use the facilities myself and when i got up to walk towards
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  the gents he wasn't he i just assumed geez he must have quickened the pace and
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  got into the gents toilets,
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  and when i went in there there was no one now this was two urinals in a cubicle
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  very small and there is nowhere else to go,
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  and there's no way either that he could have just turned around and walk out
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  past me without me noticing because it's so narrow and it was seconds.
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  And it was much later that night and i plucked up the courage after a few drinks
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  and my friend who she's a bit of a band fast a seer a wise woman as we call
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  it in ireland and when i started to tell the story,
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  she described an old man that was still standing at the bar and she described
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  the jacket and she described the,
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  frayed cloth cap very out of kilter with Southeast London in 2016 or whatever
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  it was it was around that time,
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  and she could still see him and I couldn't and it sent me a shiver.
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  For some time afterwards. This is the story that he told.
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  The cold that December was the kind that didn't just sit in the air,
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  it settled in your bones.
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  It was Christmas Eve, late enough that the pub lamps had all been turned down,
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  and the streets of the town were completely swallowed by white, quiet snow.
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  I was walking home alone, boots crunching rhythmically against the ice.
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  Halfway down the long, unlit stretch of Mill Lane, I heard it.
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  The second pair of boots pacing me. Crunch, crunch, crunch. I stopped.
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  The sound stopped dead behind me. I turned, holding up my lantern,
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  expecting to see a neighbor stumbling home late from the local. But there was nothing.
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  Just empty snow and the dark trees reaching out over the road like bare ribs.
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  I picked up the pace. The steps picked up too.
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  Right on my heel, so close I could hear the faint whisper of a heavy coat brushing against itself.
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  Yet every time I spun around, the road was entirely empty.
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  No tracks in the snow behind me, just one single set of footprints leading back into the dark.
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  By the time I reached my front door, my hands were shaking so much I could barely
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  get the key into the lock.
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  I burst inside, threw the heavy bolt and leaned against the wood,
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  listening. Outside, there was only the wind.
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  I let out a breath, pulled off my wet coat and walked down the hall toward the
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  parlor to revive the dying fire.
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  But as I opened the door, the chill in my chest turned to absolute shock.
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  Sitting in the wing-back chair, right by the heart, warming his hands over the embers, was Andrew.
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  Andrew Putnam, my closest boyhood friend, a man I hadn't seen in nearly three years.
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  He looked up and smiled, his face pale in the amber light of the fire.
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  You took your time coming home, he said.
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  His voice soft, almost like a whisper carried on a draft.
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  The relief washed over me so fast I laughed. I didn't care how he'd gotten in
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  or why he hadn't written to say he was coming. I poured two thick bugs of heavy
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  ale, set out some bread and cheese, and sat down across from him. We talked for hours.
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  About the old days, the people we'd lost, the roads we'd walked, and the strange ways.
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  Time carries men apart.
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  Sometime past two in the morning, the fire began to fade into grey ash.
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  Andrew stood up looking tired. I ought to rest, he said, nodding toward the
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  guest room down the hall.
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  Take the bed, I told him. We'll talk more over breakfast.
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  He stepped out into the dark hallway and I went to sleep feeling warmer than I had in months.
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  The next morning, Christmas Day, the sunlight was blinding against the snow outside.
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  I woke up early, brewed a pot of tea and walked down the hall to knock on the
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  guest room door. No answer.
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  I pushed the door open gently. The bed was made, the sheets were crisp and cold.
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  Not a single wrinkle on the pillow.
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  Confused, I walked back into the parlor. The two mugs of ale sat on the table between the chairs.
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  Completely full, untouched and skinned over with a thin layer of ice.
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  The bread and cheese hadn't been touched. The floorboards around his chair showed
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  no dust disturbed, no melted snow from heavy boots.
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  My heart hit my ribs like a hammer.
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  It was Boxing Day morning when the boy from the telegraph office rode up to
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  the house on his bicycle, handing me a small yellow envelope.
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  I tore it open with cold fingers.
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  It was from Andrew's sister in Yorkshire.
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  Andrew passed away quietly on the 1st of December. he spoke of you at the end
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  sending love this Christmas I stood on the porch in the freezing air looking
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  back down the long empty road and for the first time I realized he'd been walking behind me in the snow,
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  that's a story that's always stuck with me it's beautiful in its own way it's also a little creepy.
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  But given the time of year, you know, I love these kind of stories.
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  And coming from Ireland,
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  you know, we have the stories of the ferry forts that you, the mounds that you
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  don't disturb, the types of bushes that you never, you never cut down or cut away. The Banshee.
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  And I have a story here.
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  It's relatively short. The Banshee of the County Cork Road.
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  In the mid-19th century, a well-known farmer in County Cork was riding home
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  on horseback late at night.
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  As he neared a stone bridge, his horse suddenly stopped dead,
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  shivering violently, refusing to move another step despite the spur.
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  Frustrated, the farmer dismounted and led the animal by his bridle.
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  That's when he saw her. Sitting on the low stone wall of the bridge was a small
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  ancient woman, wrapped in a dark hooded cloak.
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  Her head bowed as she wrung her hands.
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  As he drew closer, she lifted her face, revealing skin like parchment and eyes
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  red from endless weeping.
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  Then she raised her voice into a sound that wasn't human, a sharp,
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  piercing, rhythmic wail that cut straight through the freezing night air,
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  echoing across the valley.
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  Terrified, the farmer forced his horse past her and galloped all the way home,
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  locking the door behind him.
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  Two days later, news arrived quietly that his brother, who had been ailing quietly
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  in a town ten miles away, had passed away at the exact hour the cry was heard from the bridge.
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  The Banshee is an interesting one and it kind of permeates a lot of Irish mythology
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  and, well, some would say not so much.
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  You know, at its heart, the kind of, the myth and the lore of the Banshee is
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  about remembrance. You know, it's about dignity.
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  She's kind of a, it's like a physical manifestation of a family history or family grief.
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  She stands visual. It comes from Keening, which was an Irish cultural women
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  who would weep for the dead and mourn them in that way.
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  So it's always, she comes, so it says, but when there is, when death is near,
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  death is just, death has just occurred.
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  And there's a lot of, a lot of very great stories actually around it.
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  You know, there's, there's different types.
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  She can appear as young, very beautiful, almost like a siren dressed in white, you know.
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  The other is an ancient kind of withered woman, you know, a hag as they call us.
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  Sunken red eyes from crying, wearing a kind of a sheet or a kind of a tattered,
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  I should say, shroud, or as I say at 47, but is she single?
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  But yeah, so there's different, there's the different, I've heard the stories
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  where she starts as that beautiful young woman dressed in white and can turn
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  into the hag if she's disrespected.
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  And I've always thought, you know, the story is more about whether you believe
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  in this stuff or not. and I do, but really it's about respect,
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  isn't it? It's about dignity and death.
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  You know, I've never heard a story of the Banshee attacking or killing anyone,
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  who respects the ritual around losing loved ones.
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  And I love the idea that she is the manifestation of the mourning of the entire
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  family, which I think is a wonderful, it's a different way of looking at the Banshee.
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  But there's wonderful stories around kind of this time of year in Ireland.
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  I have another one, and I'll read one or two of my poems on the horror side of it.
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  This one was called The Light on the Bog of Kilglass. In the late 1800s,
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  a tailor named Martin was returning home at night after finishing work at a
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  farm across the bog of Kilglass.
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  It was a route he had walked hundreds of times since boyhood.
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  Every stone, stile and ditch was as familiar to him as his own kitchen.
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  As he reached the edge of the open bogland, the fog rolled in thick off the sea, heavy and damp.
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  Martin stepped off the main track to take his usual shortcut across the heather.
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  The instant his boot touched a small patch of green moss between two rocks,
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  the world shifted completely.
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  He didn't know it then, but he had stepped on the stray sod,
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  a piece of earth enchanted by the fairies.
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  Iona treads upon it as stripped instantly of their sense of direction,
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  completely blinded to the landscape they've known their whole life.
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  Suddenly the familiar track vanished. The night turned pitch black and Martin
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  began walking in circles.
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  Hours passed. No matter which way he turned, he kept returning to the exact
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  same damp hollow in the bog.
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  Then, through the fog, a pale amber light flickered in the distance.
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  Thinking it was a lantern held by a neighbor out searching for him,
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  Martin called out and stumbled towards it.
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  But as he grew closer, the light didn't stay still. It began to bounce,
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  softly, silently, moving just ahead of him.
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  He followed it down a low ridge, the sound of faint high-pitched whispering,
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  echoing through the mist just out of earshot.
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  The light led him straight to the edge of an old fairy fort, the Roth.
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  Inside the earthen ring, the light hovered over the dark grass.
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  As Martin took a step toward it, he looked down and realized he was standing
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  inches from the lip of a clean, abandoned quarry edge.
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  One step more and he would have fallen forty feet onto the rocks below.
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  The moment he halted, the pale light vanished into thin air.
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  A sudden burst of cold wind hit his face, and the fog cleared just enough for him to see where he was.
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  Remembering the old parish remedy for being led astray by the fairies,
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  Martin turned his coat completely inside out and pulled it back on.
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  The instant the lining was reversed, the spell broke.
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  The familiar outline of his cabin appeared less than 200 yards down the path.
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  He reached his front door as dawn broke shaking from the cold and never walked
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  the bog after dark again without his coat turned inside out,
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  there's a lot of these wonderful kind of stories you know and the fairies for
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  anyone obviously who's not Irish,
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  they're not Tinkerbell.
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  They are considered to be in folklore quite mischievous creatures which can
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  be very dangerous and spells of bad luck death,
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  there's stories of a woman who was captured by the fairies and it took seven
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  years for her to make her way back out and again like the banshee and the siren call when you,
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  at first it can seem very welcoming and wonderful and beautiful and then when
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  you get inside that's when you see the real the real kind of M.
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  Always thought so i i'm quite an interest no expert like with everything in
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  my life middle eastern culture and the djinn so for any of you who know what the djinn are,
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  they're very similar they are creatures you know with supernatural powers but
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  they're not you know it's not your fairy godmother you know shaking a magic
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  wand they're kind of ancient and dangerous and they're populations of people,
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  or if they can be called people and i don't want to anger them,
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  but you know,
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  they live in parallels with us and again it's not beyond the veil if you believe
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  in that kind of thing you know the djinn in islamic and.
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  A kind of arabic theology they're created from smokeless fire they inhabit a
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  world it's unseen by human eyes,
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  they possess free will so they can they're not summoned as such they are there,
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  but they can be good or bad they can avenge or be revengeful.
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  They can, they can, if you step into their territory.
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  So with the fairies, it's, you know, it is the ancient, the kind of specific
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  fairy forts where you'll see stones around them in certain formations and,
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  and there's certain thorn bushes that it said to not, you don't remove them.
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  You know, Iceland is another place where they take this stuff very seriously.
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  And again, I don't know, you know, it, it, these things are,
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  there's similarities all around the world with this stuff, but they come from,
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  it's amazing how they come from cultures and a time when these cultures would
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  not have had an ability to mix with each other.
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  And yet these stories are very similar. So you think what I said about the banshees
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  and your fairies again can appear as beautiful. They can appear as haggard,
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  you know, tall animals. Yeah.
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  It's the same with, you know, the djinn. They can appear as snakes,
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  dogs, scorpions, humans, strangers.
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  There's, you know, there's something to, and maybe I'm just naive and I love
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  an Elgo story, but there's something to these, I think.
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  And some of it is, they're apocryphal tales, they're morality tales, you know.
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  There's a wonderful story, which I won't go into this evening, but,
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  it's about a father and son in Ireland from rural Ireland in the 19th century
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  and they go to a cattle market and they spend the entire day,
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  walking there and trying to sell the cattle and coming back and they encounter
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  what they realize afterwards is a banshee,
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  and this is what I talk about respect and she's sitting there and she's combing
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  her hair and the child grabs the comb and runs inside and it just brings about a whirlwind of horror,
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  where eventually they have to negotiate to give the cone back and apologize
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  without, you know, one of them being taken away.
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  That's about respect as much as anything else they could have walked by her
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  and probably would have been fine although i have to say if i walked by somebody
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  who i thought was a banshee i would be fearing for my own safety for the rest
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  of the night under the cover of darkness,
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  there's a great radio it's all on youtube now art bell it was a wonderful talk
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  show host in the u.s and he used to host a show called coast to coast because it was across america,
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  hugely hugely popular and he was wonderful and all these different kind of out
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  there subjects and esoteric and so but he was just a brilliant brilliant broadcaster,
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  and you can find them called ghost to ghost art bell and two or three times
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  a year particularly at halloween obviously he would host hours of people calling
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  in and some of the stories were of course,
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  there were some really creepy stories actually and i would highly recommend
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  for anyone who's into that kind of paranormal to do that now i'm going to finish out tonight,
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  with a couple of my own poems because why not and I know I did a bit of a horror podcast a few weeks ago,
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  but I'm going to do a couple of more just out of.
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  Let me just pull this up here this is called Requiem for a Screen screaming
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  and loud bangs shook me from childish slumber.
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  Worse still was the silent hang that followed from that thunder.
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  Terrified and frozen stiff under blanket can't stop shaking.
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  This time somehow different, long silence after the raging.
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  The first time I'd heard his voice whisper softly in my ear,
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  you summon me now rejoice, no longer need you fear.
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  Strange to feel fearful, but trance like calm all the same.
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  It wasn't until the police set foot in this house the scene was laid plain.
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  Taken into care and far away from home But this place and voice stayed somehow
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  close Haunted, never alone.
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  Called Cask Whale. Standing over this battered coffin, as the howling wind batters my face.
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  Been here for hours as will softens, but I need to prise open my fate.
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  What I expect to await me? I have no idea. How a skeleton ghost can be,
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  the resolve of my horror.
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  Mind racing in squalor, her secret inside must reveal.
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  I break through the lid. Where is she hid? Nothing inside but the mirror.
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  Not quite my reflection. I fall not unlike genuflection. It's a younger, happier kid.
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  As dawn breaks I'm alone, but no house, no home, just me in my room and sobbing.
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  All in the mind. Broken, battered and unkind. To myself but no more of the throbbing.
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  Has the curse been broken, spoken, now spoken? Tension starts to unwind.
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  I hear the tick, than the talk of my old alarm clock. Time to sleep for a while.
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  I've written all sorts of those. I really enjoyed them, actually.
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  Because I can, you know, as much as I write poetry about me and my world and
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  other people's, it is lovely sometimes to step into a complete fictionalized tale.
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  And I keep adding to it over time, you know.
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  It's my go-to place when I can't think of anything to write in terms of the
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  wider world or, you know, my experiences.
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  So it's always fun to do that. Guys, I hope you've enjoyed this.
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  The story in the beginning, actually, what I've told you is true.
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  Most of it.
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  The story I know itself of the Christmas ghost story I have heard since.
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  So it's one that's been around, but that Joyner's Arms story is 85% true and
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  still shakes me to this day.
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  And I hope it shook you a little bit as well.
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  With that, guys, The Rooted Soul Books. Alan at TheRootedSoulBooks.com and Alan
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  MacDonald IRE is the Instagram handle.
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  I hope you get a good sleep tonight and better living within.