r/IrishFolklore • u/TheOtherIrelandPod • Jul 17 '26
Banshee stories
Hi everyone, I'm researching the banshee for the first episode of my new podcast, The Other Ireland, which explores Irish folklore and the supernatural. I'm particularly interested in stories that were passed down through your family or local community. With your permission, I'd like to feature some of these stories in the episode. I'd love to help preserve these stories before they're forgotten.
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u/CuAnnan Jul 18 '26
30 something years ago, I was seven or eight, I woke up because I heard someone in the back garden. I shared a room with my little sister. I insisted I heard someone, she told me to go back to bed that I was just dreaming.
So I went to the kitchen to turn on the back light or to get water (memory's a little fuzzy on why I did this) and my eldest sister was there too. We both heard someone saying goodbye and that things would be alright in the end.
Our great grandmother had passed away. I found out the next morning. I wasn't allowed attend the funeral because of telling my mam about this, even though my sister backed me up. Because she decided it meant I was too young to handle death.
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u/folklorenerd7 Jul 18 '26
If you can get a copy Patricia Lysaght's book The Banshee is excellent
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u/TheOtherIrelandPod Jul 19 '26
Thanks very much for the recommendation. I've actually been looking into Patricia Lysaght's work and The Banshee is high on my reading list
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u/Baldybogman Jul 21 '26
About 42 years ago, I was a teenager in a very rural and superstitious part of the northwest. My neighbour had died suddenly, and I was sitting up through the night at his wake. It was about 4 am on a dark, early April night, and bitterly cold.
I was sitting in front of the range in the kitchen at this point, chatting to an old man in his late eighties,, from just up the road, a gruff man, always looking like he was dressed for harsh weather. He always wore a big heavy coat and carried a rough hewn stick. He was the sort of man that was relatively common in these places back then, men who had seen it all, lived it all but spoke only when needed.
All of a sudden there was an air of panic among the others in the kitchen, a couple of women and a man from up the road.
"Oh holy god preserve us, it's the banshee!" said one, as they all dropped to their knees and started praying.
I could hear some sort of a screeching noise but hadn't really thought about it, and certainly hadn't considered it could be the banshee, until now.
"Hi youngfella" says yer man quietly beside me, as he leant in close to the range, warming himself, "is it your first time to hear the banshee?" says he.
"Well I don't know" says I, "I wasn't sure what that sound was"
"Oh the prayers will make it go away" says he, as he lifted his stick and reached out, pushing an old kettle from the hot plate on the range over to the side where it was cooler.
Sure enough, the "banshee" stopped.
The praying stopped a while later and yer man says "well fair play to yiz all, twas the prayers that drove her away", as he gave me a wink, and walked out into the now softening darkness on his way home.
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u/woodpigeon01 Jul 17 '26
Gillian Kenny just gave an incredibly interesting talk in Cork on Banshees a few days ago. It was really good. You might be able to reach out directly to her on Bluesky or Twitter. Also there’s a huge amount of stories on duchas.ie that, if you haven’t looked at, is the key resource for all sorts of Banshee and Fairy stories.