My grandfather John Hagarty (1866-1950) believed that two things sometimes kept the Irish in America down – alcohol and superstition. He lived up to his ideals. He took his first drink when he was 80 and had the occasional beer for the last four years of his life.
And he was not quiet when it came to expressing his views about the non-existence of ghosts. He enforced a rule that no ghost stories be told in his home by his family of six kids.
However, he might have been a little too sure of himself on the matter of ghosts, perhaps, as a group of his farmer friends and neighbours decided to put him to the test. They told him that if was so sure there were no such thing as ghosts, then he wouldn’t mind going into a haunted farmhouse in the neighbourhood after dark and retrieving an object from an upstairs bedroom that one of them had bravely put there during the day. He said he would do it, no problem (that’s when no problem meant no problem, not you’re welcome).
So, that night after dark, a group of men gathered on the road outside the abandoned house and watched as Grandpa, lit oil lantern in hand, walked in the laneway, entered the pitch black house, proceeded to the second floor and returned to those who had issued the dare with the hidden item in hand.
My Dad, his son, asked him whether or not he was scared going into the house and he admitted he was borderline terrified.
Visiting Ireland a few years ago, I was told by the woman who lives on the farm my ancestors once dwelled on that some folks believe that “wee people” live in the hills within sight of her home.
“Nobody really believes in leprechauns,” I said to her.
“Of course, nobody believes in them,” she smiled, “and nobody goes up there.”
I wonder if my grandfather, if he could have ever made it to that spot in his lifetime, would have gone up into those hills. I think he would have if he were challenged to. On the other hand, a dark farmhouse at night was something he was used to. Unfamiliar hills populated by tough little buggers with ill intentions in their hearts towards him might have put him off a bit.
I once agreed to look after a friend’s farmhouse while he and his family were away. It was an old house, far in from the road, and a bit spooky to me. For some reason, I never managed to make it there till dusk. I also had to go into the barn briefly every day.
I was pretty jumpy.
One night when I went into the house, I turned the light on in the entranceway before I went upstairs to water plants. When I came back downstairs, the light was off. Thinking maybe the bulb had burned out, I flicked the switch and it lit up again.
My trip from house to road was made in record time and I almost had to change my clothes when I got home.
People I have told this story to say the light thing was just a result of my overactive imagination. I am not so sure. There had been at least one death in that house which is almost 150 years old.
I try to be brave but I am not my grandfather.
Happy Halloween.
©2011 Jim Hagarty
