Free Irish Ghost Tales by Tony Locke Page A

spirit world and some people believed that he had tried to raise a demonic spirit in the cottage.
    For Mrs Murphy these accusations were the final straw. It was bad enough that no one seemed willing to help her. She was trying to cope on her own with six children and no husband. She was scared stiff. And now, on top of all this, the people she considered her friends and family had turned against her and her children. She decided to pack up her meagre belongings and flee to America. In 1913, they went to Glasgow in Scotland and from there they boarded a vessel to America, leaving the poltergeist and all their troubles behind. Mrs Murphy thought that would be the end of it, but she was badly mistaken.
    To her surprise and horror the poltergeist followed them on to the ship and the banging and rapping began once more. Apparently it is well documented that passengers on board complained to the captain about the strange noises coming from the Murphys’ cabin. The captain was forced to confront Mrs Murphy and told her that if she didn’t stop the noise then he would be forced to put her off the ship. She tried to explain about the poltergeist but of course he didn’t believe her. Sailors are an extremely superstitious lot and the last thing he would have wanted was rumours spreading about a ghost on his ship. They seem to have come to an understanding for she was allowed to remain on board and the family eventually arrived in America.
    The Murphy’s quickly found a new home but the ghost followed them and the haunting continued for some time. Eventually the strange happenings stopped and the family were began to live a new life as best as they could. Unfortunately the poltergeist had a terrible effect on one of the Murphy girls. It is said that she was so traumatised by everything that had happened that she spent the rest of her life in a mental institution in America.
    But what happened to the ghost? The old cottage in County Fermanagh is still there today and the locals will give you directions to it if you ask them. When you stand outside you get an uneasy feeling, and when you enter the first thing you will notice is the cold. If you felt uneasy outside, the feeling grows much worse once you stand inside. In recent times some people have used the house as a drinking den and there are beer cans, bottles and cigarette butts scattered on the floor of the cottage. Some of the locals will tell you it’s the youngsters who dare each other to tell ghost stories in the house on Halloween.
    Some people have said that they have felt the presence of an angry man who didn’t want them there. There may be some truth to that. Some will say it’s haunted and others will tell you to cop on to yourself, there’s no such thing as ghosts. All I’ll say is that it’s unlikely you’ll come into contact with the Cooneen poltergeist, but there is certainly something not quite right about that cottage …

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T HE H ELLFIRE C LUB
COUNTY DUBLIN
    I n the seventeenth century, Europe entered a new era, that of the Enlightenment. It was also known as the Age of Reason as it was a time when man began to cast off the superstition and fear of the medieval world and use his faculties of reason to discover a new world. In the efforts to discover the natural laws that govern the universe, man was to make huge scientific, political and social advances. Rational thought was the new belief and this led to the rejection of the authority of both the Church and the State. Immanuel Kant expressed the motto of the Enlightenment when he said, ‘Dare to think.’ However, the Hellfire Club had its own motto over the entrance to their first building: ‘Do what thou wilt.’
    The first Hellfire Club was founded in London in 1719 by a drunkard, the aristocrat Philip, Duke of Wharton, but it is his successor Sir Frances Dashwood (Chancellor of the Exchequer) who was to go on to gather together what he termed ‘the most esteemed persons of quality’ in Ireland