Some countries have unique supernatural beings that are not found elsewhere. In Ireland, these creatures are Banshees.
Banshee is something between a ghost and an evil spirits, and first of all they are famous for their terrible screams, and secondly for the fact that they can be harbingers of death.
Translated from the old Irish language, the word "Banshee" means "fairy woman" or "woman from the magic hill." The banshee's scream almost always foreshadows someone's death and is described as completely inhuman, crying, hysterical, or with bitter lamentations.
In different places, people who saw the Banshee in reality described her appearance in different ways. Sometimes she was an old hag in dirty rags, sometimes on the contrary, a woman of exceptional beauty, and sometimes even as a chimera with the head of a bird or a hare.
“She was a woman of an inhuman type, but attractive and with a large shock of red hair. Her eyes were also beautiful, but their expression was frightening. She had a green cap on her head,”- this is how Banshee is described in one old book.
Banshee's height could also vary, she could be a real giantess, or she could be a dwarf. And before the arrival of the Banshee, you can see strange ravens, dogs or cats.
One of the encounters with the Banshee is described in the book Real Irish Ghost Stories, published in the 1900s. It happened in the area of the city of Cork.
“My mother, being a very young girl, once stood by a window in the village of Blackrock, near Cork. And suddenly she saw a white figure standing on the bridge. The figure was waving its hands towards my mother's house and then my mother heard from the other side a sad loud cry and groaning.
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This lasted only a few seconds, and then the figure disappeared. The next morning my grandfather walked to Cork over this bridge, slipped, fell, hitting his head, and died without regaining consciousness.
Soon after that, in March 1900, my mother lay in bed ill, and next to her was a nurse who came to see her and me. We were straightening my mother's bed when we heard the most unusual cry, which seemed to come from everywhere, including from the walls and from under the bed. We began to examine everything, but found nothing. At the same time, my mother seemed to hear nothing strange.
My sister was on the first floor with my father and my sister heard this strange cry, but my father did not hear. My sister thought her son was crying, she ran to his room upstairs and checked, but he slept fine. And then it turned out that this cry was heard even in the neighboring house and then the neighbor asked us “Did you hear that? This is Banshee. Mrs R. (my mother) will soon die."
History is silent as to whether the storyteller's mother died after that, but most likely it happened.
Another Banshee story from the same book involved a boy who lived in a boarding school in 1894.
“This curious incident happened in a public school for boys. One of the boys fell ill and was placed in a separate room, where he lay alone all day. Once, when a doctor visited him, the boy said that he heard a mysterious cry.
The doctor thought that the child was dreaming of an illness, but the boy turned out to be unexpectedly said, "This is a Banshee and I have heard her before." And the next morning, a telegram came to the school for the sick boy, which indicated that his brother had been accidentally shot."
The next two incidents took place in the 1940s. The first was in the village of Fulton. The elderly man was suddenly bedridden by an incomprehensible disease, and soon after, flocks of ravens began to gather on the lawn in front of his house. The birds croaked loudly and it was not clear what brought them here.
One evening one of his acquaintances came to visit the man, and when she was in the house, someone knocked on the door. The woman opened and saw on the doorstep "an old hag in a long white dress with long gray hair, wringing her hands and crying." A few seconds later, she disappeared right in front of the shocked woman, and soon the elderly man passed away.
Another story happened in the town of Bogside and according to an unspecified woman, it happened to her grandfather and his son (her father). My grandfather had a bad toothache, but he kept putting off going to the dentist. One day his son was walking down the street and heard an incomprehensible howling sound. The howl came from a figure huddled nearby, which he at first took for a crying child.
But when the man came closer, he saw that this was actually an old and hunchbacked woman of a very unpleasant appearance. And as soon as the son looked into her face, she disappeared. The son was sure that he saw Banshee and connected her visit with his father's illness. He began to persuade him to go to the doctor, but it was too late, literally a couple of days later, the grandfather died of the inflammatory process.
A more recent story was told on Reddit.
“Many people believe in Banshee, but few have seen her. I live in Ireland and my mother comes from an old family whose roots go back centuries. And they have repeatedly encountered paranormal activity, including the Banshee.
My mom heard about Banshee when her uncle died. The banshee visited her father that night. And then Banshee came to my mother, too, shortly after her wedding. In the middle of the night, heart-rending screams were heard on the stairs next to their bedroom. My father woke up from this and went out onto the stairs.
He saw the Banshee, who disappeared literally a second after that, and the next morning my mother received a call, which said that her father had died that night.
In recent years, my mom has encountered Banshee's presence twice more. Once, when she saw a strange howling dog near the house. She realized it was Banshee when her neighbor passed away the next morning. People love to joke about ghosts, but in our family, even the mere mention of Banshee will give everyone a chill. We do not joke about it, because we know that it is real."
The following story was posted on Your Ghost Stories by a young girl from Ireland.
“As a child, my grandmother told me that my grandfather once got sick and then someone knocked on their house. When Grandmother approached the door, she heard noisy sobs behind her, but when she opened the door, there was no one there. Grandma understood what it was and ran to grandfather. But she only found him in bed, already dead.
Already in our time, in 2001, I was at my grandmother's house and looked after her. The doctors said that she did not have long to live and that she would die day after day. When my grandmother got worse, my father said that I had better go out and sit in the living room. Then he called my boyfriend and invited him to stop by and take me home.
Therefore, when the doorbell rang, I went to open it, confident that it was my boyfriend who had arrived. But as soon as I opened the door, a strong chill went through my body, because there was no one on the porch. Almost immediately, from the side of my grandmother's room, my father's prayers and sobs were heard. Grandma is dead.
Closing the door, I managed to notice for a second something on the fence of the neighboring house. It looked like a very thin woman who bent over and sobbed with her hands to her face."