Ghosts in Ireland, like ghosts around the world, can become attached to families, or more specifically to individual family members. As it turns out, the ghost of the farm in Derrigonnelly tended to do just that.
This ghost haunted the family, in particular the twenty-year-old girl Maggie, who lived with her father and sisters in a farmhouse in the village of Derrigonnelly (County Fermanagh, Ireland) in the late 19th century.
What was the haunted house
Farm stays in 19th century Ireland typically consisted of a living room, which was also used as a kitchen, and two rooms. These rooms were used as bedrooms for parents and children.
Of course, there was no convenience such as electricity and, at best, oil lamps were used for lighting. For cooking and heating the premises, a rather primitive stove was intended, in which mainly firewood and brushwood were burned. Fuel was procured in the summer and stored during the colder months.
The family described in our story consisted of a widower-farmer (at that time the mortality rate in Ireland was very high), his son and four daughters. The oldest of these children was a girl named Maggie, who was in her twenties. When the ghosts began to manifest themselves, they seemed to focus on her.
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Haunted house stories are not uncommon in Ireland. But what makes this house unique is not the presence of a ghost, but the fact that this mystical phenomenon has been investigated by some influential people. In particular, the British physicist Sir William Barrett, former president of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), as well as an eminent scientist and member of the Royal Society, was recruited for the research.
The ghost declares itself
The first signs of a poltergeist in the house were acoustic: loud knocking and scratching sounds were heard all night. Then objects began to move, some things could be found outside the farmhouse, especially after a night of continuous banging and knocking noises. It became impossible to keep lamps and candles in the cottage - they were always found on the street in the morning.
His father, a Protestant Methodist, was instructed to leave the Bible open overnight in the room Maggie and her sisters were occupying, and to press down the pages of the book with stones. It was useless as the stones disappeared the next morning and the pages of the Bible were torn out.
Sir William Barrett visited the mysterious house with Mr. Thomas Plunkett of Enniskillen. His report, cited in part by Peter Underwood in The Gazetteer of Scottish and Irish Ghosts, states:
Barrett visited the farm for the next three nights with other SPR members, and events repeated themselves in exactly the same way. Barrett and other researchers, at the request of the farmer, conducted additional experiments, trying to connect with the spirits using spiritual techniques. Unsuccessfully.
Finally, one of Barrett's associates, the Rev. Maxwell Close, read some Bible passages. At first there was a loud hum, which gradually got weaker. By the time the priest got to the Lord's Prayer, the noise had disappeared. After that, the persecution of the farm family in Derrigonelli ceased.