by Hans Holzer
“First I thought I would take a shotgun and go up,” said Mrs. Beverley. “Then I thought how silly that was. But I was uneasy, so I put a leash on each dog and we rushed up the steps. As I went up the steps, the dogs became more excited, their hair stood straight up.”
She went straight to the bedroom of her relative, who was lying quietly in bed, still asleep. The dogs strained at the leash and pulled toward the room where she heard the heavy footsteps. She opened the door and the dogs bounded in fiercely…but there was no one there. She explored every hiding place in the room, but found no trace of a living human being. The dogs quieted down and she decided that, at last, she had heard one of the famed Blandfield ghosts.
There is a rocking chair ghost at Shirley plantation in Chase City and another rocking chair ghost at Ash Lawn, once the home of President James Monroe, and the ghost of Governor Kemper is said to still inhabit Walnut Hill, his erstwhile home. I have reported a number of such cases in an earlier book called Ghosts I’ve Met. In fact, the area around Charlottesville, which I investigated personally in 1965, abounds with authentic hauntings.
It is just possible that someone who is psychic and who might have passed the building now housing the Health, Education and Welfare Department in Charlottesville might feel peculiar, perhaps a chill or two, perhaps only a sense of displacement in time.
* 127
The Case of the I.R.A. Ghosts
IT WAS A sunny, pleasantly comfortable day when the first expedition on Irish soil started out from the elegant confines of Dromoland Castle. Soon we left behind the international feeling of the main highway, and made our way towards the southern shore of the river Shannon which at this point is as wide as a lake.
We left behind us the bleak masonry of Limerick City, with its factories and wharves, and people going off to work. For it was a weekday and the non-tourist population of Ireland had other things to do than loaf around.
At Tarbert, we left the winding shore road and struck out inland, directly south for Listowel. We arrived in this sleepy old town around noon, just in time to have lunch at the local inn, its only hotel of some size, set back to the side of the old square still covered by cobblestones as in centuries gone by.
It was quite a sight we gave the townspeople, Catherine, elegant as ever, Sybil Leek in purple, and me, heavily burdened with tape recorders and cameras. It is to the eternal credit of the people of Listowel that no one ever asked us any questions, or perhaps this is part of the Irish spirit—to accept people as they are. At any rate, we had a pleasant meal and I went to the telephone to see what I could do about some local help.
Now the telephone is something of a rarity in Western Ireland. I mean one that works.
Our first encounter with this intrusion of the twentieth century into Irish life came at Kilcolgan Castle, that non-castle we never got to sleep in. There was a phone there which I at first took for a toy. It was light and the cord seemed to lead nowhere, but little did I know that this was it—the phone. It actually works at times, except that several hours each day it is off. The trouble is, they never tell you when. Consequently it is best to have emergencies only after you’ve checked the phone.
Here in Listowel I also discovered that you needed certain coins to operate the telephone properly. So I went into the bar to get some change, for to carry a large supply of pennies around was not my idea of light travelling.
The traditional Irish friendliness was quite evident here, and more so in the bar. There were only two guests having a drink at the counter, one of them an Irish priest originally from San Francisco, who had decided to return to Listowel and really live. I had been given the name of a playwright named Eamon Keane who might be in a position to help me find Mr. Maloney’s haunted houses. I had heard about these haunted houses from Mr. Maloney himself in New York.
* * *
I was doing a radio program in New York in May 1965 on which I suggested that any Irishman with an authentic experience involving ghosts should contact me.
One of those who rose to the occasion was Patrick Maloney of Queens Village, about an hour from my home. Mr. Maloney had lived in New York for forty-three years, but had originally come from Listowel, Ireland. Mr. Maloney is a man in his early sixties, full of good cheer and about as factual as any man in his position would be. For Mr. Maloney is the supervisor of hospital aides in one of the larger mental institutions near New York. His work demands a great deal of common sense, dealing, as he does, with those who have lost theirs. As if his relationship with things medical were not enough to give Mr. Maloney a sense of caution, he is also an accomplished amateur magician and a student of hypnosis. He knows all about the tricks of the mind and the tricks of clever prestidigitators. He has met such famous magic craftsmen as Dunninger and Harry Blackstone, and to this day attends weekly meetings of the magicians’ circle in New York, to keep up on the latest tricks and to sharpen his sense of illusion.
Now if there is one group of diehard skeptics, it is the magicians. To most magicians, all psychic manifestations must be fraudulent because they can make some of them. But the inability of most sleight-of-hand artists to accept the reality of ESP is based on a philosophical concept. To them, all is material, and if there are illusions they did not create, then their whole world is no longer secure.
To his eternal credit, Patrick Maloney is an exception to this breed. That this is so is due largely to his own psychic experiences. He is a Roman Catholic in good standing, married, and a grandfather many times over. One of his married daughters also has had psychic experiences, proving again that the talent does sometimes get handed down in a family, usually on the female side.
“I always keep an open mind; that’s the way we learn,” he commented in his note to me.
Born in Ireland in 1901, he went to National School and finished the eighth grade. Later he lived in England for a few years prior to settling in America. It was during his youth in Ireland that he became aware of his psychic gifts.
I met Patrick Maloney and we went over his experiences in great detail.
“It was the year 1908 when I had my first memorable experience,” he began, “and I was about seven years old at the time. We were living in the town of Listowel, County Kerry, in an old house on Convent Street. The house is still standing; it is built of limestone and has a slate roof.
“That day I was home, taking care of one of my younger brothers who was still a baby in a crib. My mother had gone down to the store, so while she was out, I went upstairs to look at some picture books which were kept on the first landing of the stairs. Upstairs there were two empty rooms, one facing the other, and they were not used by us.
The IRA ghost cross in Ireland where the ambush was
“I was going over the picture books, when something made me look up.”
“There, on the second landing, was a little man no more than five feet tall, beckoning me with his right hand to come to him!”
“I can see him as clearly today as if it had just happened. He wore black clothes and his skin was dark, the color of copper, and on his head he had a skull cap with brass bells, and all the time he was laughing and motioning me to come up.”
“Weren’t you scared?” I interjected. What a strange sight this must have been in the sleepy little town of Listowel.
Mr. Maloney shook his head.
“Not at all,” he said. “Maybe I was too young to be afraid properly, but I knew as young as I was that this was a strange thing, so I put my books down and went back downstairs. I had seen the little man come from a totally empty room and walk into another equally empty room, and I knew there was something queer about all this. But I never told my mother about it until I was a grown man.”
“Did your mother offer any explanation?”
“No, she didn’t. She just listened quietly and never said a word. To this day I have no idea who the little man was.”
I wondered about it myself and made a mental note to have a look at the house on Conve
nt Street, Listowel.
But the encounter with the unknown that puzzled him most happened in 1918 when Patrick Maloney was 17 years of age. At that time there was a great deal of what the Irish euphemistically call “the trouble”—guerrilla warfare between the British occupation forces and the outlawed I.R.A., the Irish Republican Army. This group of citizen-soldiers contributed considerably to Irish independence later, and there is scarcely a spot in all Ireland where there isn’t a grave or two of these “freedom fighters.” Unfortunately, when the Irish Republic came into being and normal relations returned between the English and their erstwhile enemies, the I.R.A. decided to continue the struggle.
Principally, the six northern counties known as Ulster are the bone of contention. The Irish government in Dublin would like to have solved the problem peacefully and gradually, but the I.R.A. could not wait, so there was violence once again, frequently to the detriment of famed landmarks, until eventually the I.R.A. was outlawed by its own government.
The “Black and Tans” of 1918 engaged in battles and skirmishes all over the land. Nobody could be sure that a stray bullet would not hit an innocent bystander. About two miles outside the town of Listowel, there was a gate in the side of the road. Behind it, the British were waiting. An I.R.A. patrol, consisting of three men, was approaching the spot. In the ensuing ambush, two of the Irish irregulars were killed by the British. Years later, a large Celtic cross was erected over the graves, but the story itself, being similar to so many tragedies of like nature all over Ireland, became dimmed, and even the local people scarcely remember the spot.
That moonlight night in 1918, however, a young Paddy Maloney and a friend, Moss Barney, of Ballybunnon, Kerry, were bicycling down that road, eager to get to Listowel for the night. They had been to a place called Abbyfeale, about five miles away, to see a circus. It was the month of June, and around one in the morning, with the moon illuminating the road rather well. At that time, the monument did not exist, of course, and the shooting was still within memory. But the two travellers gave it no thought. It did not concern them; they were in a gay mood after a pleasant evening at the circus.
When they reached the spot in the road where the ambush had happened, something stopped them in their tracks. No matter how hard Patrick tried to ride on, he could not move from the spot.
“It felt as if someone were in back of us, holding on to our bicycles. I felt clammy and moist, and the sense of a presence behind me trying to prevent me from going down that road was very strong. I had the sensation that someone was trying to keep us from running into trouble farther down the road.
“I tried to bicycle as hard as I could, but to no avail. Yet, the road was level, with a stretch of wooded section for at least 500 feet. I felt myself weaken, and the cold sweat broke out all over me. I tried to tell Moss about my difficulties but found my tongue was paralyzed.
“With a last surge of power, I pushed on and finally broke away from the ‘thing’ behind me. As soon as we came out of the wooded section our bikes were free as before. We both jumped off and I started to tell Moss what I had experienced—only to find that he, too, had felt the same uncanny weight. He, too, was unable to talk for a while.
“’I’ll never ride this road again at night,’ he finally said, and meant it.”
“Did you have other psychic experiences after that?” I asked, for it was plain to me that Patrick Maloney was mediumistic to a degree, having experienced such physical manifestations.
“Many times,” he acknowledged.
“When I worked as a psychiatric aide in one of the hospitals here,” Maloney added, “I had a most unusual experience. It was late at night and I was very tired. I went into a linen room there, and I lay down on a table to rest a bit, afraid I might fall asleep during the night when I was on duty. I was only down about five minutes, with a blanket underneath me, when someone came along and pulled that blanket from under me. Now I weigh over two hundred pounds, and yet it all happened so fast I had that blanket on top of me before I knew it.”
“Was there anyone else in the room?” I inquired.
“Nobody in the room, nobody in the ward, just myself.”
“What did you do?”
“I jumped up and looked around. The patients were all sleeping. So I went back to rest. Then it happened again, only this time it felt like a big, heavy hand feeling my back. That did it. I came out and locked the room up.”
“What did you make of it?” I said.
“When I went to investigate the ward, I found a patient dead. He had died in his sleep. He was an ex-boxer. He had been under my personal care.”
“I guess he wanted to let you know he was going on,” I said. “Any other uncanny experiences?”
“Oh yes,” Maloney said matter-of-fact like, “my son died in 1945, and a couple of months after he died, I was sitting in my home watching television. I was comfortable, with my legs stretched out, when I felt a person cross by my legs very fast. It made a swishing sound. I looked at my wife, but she had not moved at all. I knew it was my son, for he had a peculiar walk.”
Maloney has had numerous true dreams, and often knows when a person is “not long for this world.” Like the co-worker at the hospital whom he had dubbed the “dead man.” For two years he did not realize why he felt that way about his colleague. Then the man committed suicide.
In 1946 he returned to Ireland again after a long absence. Suddenly, in his hotel room, he heard his wife Catherine’s voice clear across from America. That week, her mother died.
Maloney takes his gift casually. He neither denies it nor does he brag about it. He is very Irish about it all.
* * *
When the priest from San Francisco heard I was trying to phone Eamon Keane for an appointment, he laughed.
“Nonsense,” he intoned, “just go to his house and introduce yourself. We’re all very friendly here.”
Mr. Keane, it turned out, also had an unlisted number. Imagine, an unlisted number in Listowel! But playwrights will have ideas.
Lunch being done with, we proceeded to find Mr. Keane. I had also been informed that in addition to playwriting, he owned a bar. We walked up the road and found ourselves in front of a bar marked “Keane’s.” Had we come to the right place? We had not.
“You want my brother,” the owner said, and off we went again, a block farther up the road, to another bar, also marked “Keane’s.” In fact, I don’t recall much else on that street except bars—here called pubs.
Mr. Keane was most helpful. He knew what I was looking for, and he offered to take me to a man who had had some experiences and could tell me about them firsthand. So we left again and drove down a few blocks to a small house the ground floor of which was occupied by a store. The owner of the store, it developed, was the man to see. He dealt in fishing tackle.
John Garen had lived here for fifty-seven years and he had an accent to prove it.
I asked if he knew of any ghosts.
“Right here in this street, sir,” he replied, “there is a house with a little brook beside it, and there was a family by the name of Loughneanes living in it. It’s on Convent Street and called Glauna Foka.”
“What does this mean?” I asked, my Gaelic being extremely weak.
“Glen of the Fairies,” Mr. Garen replied. “I’ve never seen any, but it seems that chairs and everything that was inside the house would be thrown out the windows, and you’d hear the glass crashing, and when you’d come around there’d be nobody there. The people had to move out because of it. This was about sixty years ago.”
I thanked Mr. Garen for his information, such as it was, and wished him the top of the afternoon. Then we drove on and stopped in front of the house on Convent Street where Patrick Maloney had seen the little fellow with the fool’s cap.
The house had obviously been reconditioned and did not show its age at all. It was a two-story affair, with a garden in back, and Sybil Leek went across the street to have a quiet look at it. We c
ould not get in, for the present owners were not too keen on the subject of ghosts. Mr. Garen asked us not to mention his name, in particular, for in a town the size of Listowel, everything gets around eventually.
“What do you sense here?” I asked Sybil, who of course knew nothing whatever of Patrick Maloney, his experiences, or even Mr. Garen’s recent talk.
“There undoubtedly have been some manifestations in the upper right-hand room,” Sybil said succinctly, “and I think this has an association with water. I think the previous owner was in some occupation in which water was very important. Someone associated with a mill; I think.”
Sybil did not know that there was a brook beside the house, nor that there had once been a mill not far away.
“How long ago do you think this happened?”
“About two hundred years ago,” she replied. “On the side of the house where there is no building at the moment, I can see, in my mind’s eye, a smaller building, rather flat.”
“How far back do you feel manifestations took place here?”
“About four years ago, then around 1948, and before that, about a hundred and twenty years ago. There has been some tragedy connected with water. I sense some wheels around that mill, and a name that sounds like Troon to me.”
We drove on, out of Listowel now, towards where the mill once stood.
“On the right side,” Sybil murmured, and Mr. Keane confirmed the location.
Since we could not get into the house itself I decided it was best to look into still another house Patrick Maloney had told me about. Mr. Keane excused himself and hurried back to his bar. We drove on into the open countryside looking for a farm house of which we knew little, if anything.
Mr. Maloney had provided me with a rough, hand-drawn map and it came in handy.
“The house in Greenville Road,” he had explained, “near the mill, had some poltergeist activity when I was there. The kitchen is haunted, and the bedroom also. Clothes used to be pulled off people in bed and the room used to fill up with roaches—millions of them—and then they would vanish into thin air; faces were seen at the windows, looking in. Fights were taking place, tables pushed around and chairs also, and the cups and saucers would dance on their shelves in the closet. The Connors who lived there are all dead now, and others live there, but I don’t know them. This was about forty-five years ago.”