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    A Celtic Darkness: Supernatural Tales Of Ireland
    A Celtic Darkness: Supernatural Tales Of Ireland
    A Celtic Darkness: Supernatural Tales Of Ireland
    Ebook104 pages1 hour

    A Celtic Darkness: Supernatural Tales Of Ireland

    By Eoghain Hamilton

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    An exciting collection of short stories that reinvigorates the Irish ghost story tradition!

    A Celtic Darkness: Supernatural Tales of Ireland by Eoghain Hamilton is an insightful blend of local settings, folklore and legends, with classic Gothic and ghost tales. Hamilton creates a new and unsettling landscape in among the haunted hills and rolling countryside of Ireland.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEoghain Hamilton
    Release dateFeb 21, 2012
    ISBN9781476092577
    A Celtic Darkness: Supernatural Tales Of Ireland

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    • 3/5
      Decent collection of short horror stories. Not really my preferred genre, so the three stars. The author clearly is knowledgeable re: Irish ghost stories etc.

    Book preview

    A Celtic Darkness - Eoghain Hamilton

    A Celtic Darkness

    Supernatural Tales Of Ireland

    By Eoghain Hamilton

    Copyright 2010 Eoghain Hamilton

    Published by Martin Owens at Smashwords

    This book is available in print online.

    All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part or in any form. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the author.

    Though some of the locations in these works are real, the characters and events portrayed in these stories are purely fictional. Any resemblance to any living person is purely coincidental.

    http://celticdarkness.com/

    Contents

    Introduction

    Acknowledgements

    Auld Lang Syne

    The People of Peace

    Gaoth Sidhe

    The Summer House

    Veil Thinner

    Mahain’s Grave

    The Samhain Party

    The Session

    Lady Westropp's Gift

    Introduction

    In West Cork, there is an old saying meant for anyone meeting a fairy woman on the road at night. Bíodh an Lá agatsa agus an oíche againne – You have the day and we have the night.

    It is wise advice to the inexperienced traveller who may have wandered inadvertently into the path of something strange. It tells us to leave well alone. That the night belongs to the spirits of the Otherworld and we humans are unwelcome. The country people in Ireland believed in such things as Banshees and Ghosts and creatures of the night. Many still do.

    I have often found myself walking the country roads in Cork at all hours of the night. On the road you are alone, alone with your thoughts, your feelings and more often than not, fears. These fears are heightened by the uncertainty of being abroad on a deserted road. Each moonbeam casts a disturbing shadow. Each movement from the night-creatures in the hedgerows leaves the silence shaken and sets your mind ablaze with images of some terror lurking just beyond your vision. Your body responds, you can feel your heart beat. The back of your neck tingles and all the while you doubt. The darkness casts doubt over everything.

    This collection of short stories was born in that moment of doubt. That dreadful feeling of uncertainty that walking at night on an Irish country road can bring, an uncertainty that casts a myriad of what ifs in your mind. Walk the road with me a while, I could use the company. Together maybe we can find out if they really do have the night.

    Acknowledgements

    Nothing is ever achieved on one's own. This collection of short stories couldn't have been created without a lot of help, encouragement and outright love from a number of people. Thanks to my wife Mary Hamilton for just being you, the greatest Anam Cara a man could wish for. A heartfelt thank you to Eileen Margerum for some fantastic support and suggestions, this collection would never have seen the light of day if it was not for your steadfast belief in me. To Professor Rod Kessler for helping me learn the craft and providing editing skills over and above any call of duty. Thanks also to Nancy Skarmeas for being patience personified in her role as primary editor. To Martin Owens for amazing cover art and design, you have forgotten more about graphic art, design and computers in general than I could hope to remember. A big thank you to Tom Fitzgerald and Paul Bailey at Cló Litriocht for getting this project to final publication. To my family and friends and anyone else who has helped along the way, thank you so very much. I should also thank the land that inspires me. Ireland, my homeland across the sea. Your haunted landscape, lonely bohreens and ancient ruins never fail to whisper new mysteries to my ear. Long may you continue to do so. Finally, this collection is dedicated to my son Fionn Hamilton, the fair one you are the light in this Celtic Darkness.

    Eoghain Hamilton

    April 2011

    Auld Lang Syne

    I’ve been this way for many years. When I was growing up in Ireland during my teens, my father bought me a racing bike and I cycled to the movies on Friday nights. I loved the night, the darkness a velvet cloak that covered everything as I cycled the country lanes into town. The night is a blank canvas where anything and everything is possible; at night things are different, new.

    I didn’t bother with the lamp my father gave me to light my way. He had insisted on my using it and, while I had no wish to do myself any harm, I reckoned I could see more when I had it switched off. You see seeing is what I was looking for. I’ve always wanted to connect with what was out there in the mystery of the night, proof if you like that I was not alone in the world.

    Cycling through the Irish countryside at night inspires a certain wonder, a fascination that can take over your thoughts. It did mine. It fed my yearning for the supernatural. I came to believe that some night, through some fortunate turn of events. I would have my proof after all.

    As I grew older, I spent more time searching for the supernatural in the darkness. I walked at strange hours in all weathers, in old villages and towns, old graveyards and castle ruins to find out if something was out there. Often I had the feeling that something was with me; in fact, every time I wandered, I was sure I did not walk alone. Sometimes I was scared, sometimes strangely comforted. Yet, I never saw anything or found any proof that I was anything else but alone.

    That was in my youth. Marriage, family and the day to day responsibilities of life have long since dulled my appetite for the Otherworld, and yet I felt the old yearnings once again as I crossed the bridge below my childhood home for the first time in many years.

    The old house, the house where I had grown, was silhouetted against the night sky, a two-storied square construction, with a grand design like the Irish country houses of the aristocracy. A large portico at the front stood proudly overlooking the long driveway. Many of its rooms had windows that overlooked the river valley below. The house had been built in an attempt to blend in with some of the older houses in the vicinity, and yet it had never matched their splendour. Instead my old home had a uniqueness that demanded attention day or night.

    I had been summoned from America where I had moved years earlier, by the strangest of events, a phone call in the middle of the night that woke me from a troubled sleep. I answered but the line went dead. The caller I.D placed that call from my parent’s house. I thought this strange, since the house was empty, my parents having died a few years before. The next day I called my sister. She told me that the house was in between tenants, and as I expected, empty. So who had called? Who had reached out across the Atlantic to wake my feverish mind and arouse my old curiosities once again?

    So I booked a flight to Shannon. My wife was annoyed since our plans for New Years Eve were disrupted, yet she understood. She always does with me.

    I arrived on New Years Eve and decided not to tell my sister. An old house key that Dad had given me when I was in my teens let me in. The house felt cold; it had that damp unlived in smell which turned my nostrils. I got to work quickly and built a roaring fire, then turned on the heating, saying a short prayer that some oil left was still in the old fuel tank outside. Da had always been a miser with the oil in winter.

    I made up a bed in my parent's old room. It was a room of memories. It had been many things, including my mother’s death bed. Now, it would be a place to sleep – I hoped its memories would somehow comfort me.

    A few hours later,

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