This is the first of an ongoing series on ghost folklore throughout the world. The telling of ghost tales has been a tradition in my family for generations. Growing up in Hawaii our family freely exchanged our stories with our neighbors. In the melting pot of Hawaii I grew up with ghost lore from Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Scottish, Danish, Puerto Rican, Korean, Okinawan and Guamanian cultures that mingled with the tradtions of my own Hawaiian, Chinese and Portuguese family. This weaving of ghost stories from many lands began a lifelong interest in

Above: A 19th century painting of the

Banshee of Shane's Castle, Ireland

collecting ghost stories and their related lore. In doing paranormal investigation work I have come to rely on my collection of ghost lore to gain insight on the cultural influences that frequently come to play in an investigation. Ghost lore is meant to be shared; that is how this tradition stays alive. In the spirit of keeping this fading tradition alive, I share these pages with you. And what better way to start this column in March, the month of St. Patrick, than with some of the ghost lore of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. So, Cead mile failte romhat! A hundred thousand welcomes! If you ask most Americans to name a ghost associated with the Irish, chances are many would say the banshee. The banshee, in Irish Gaelic bean sidhe, is a figure that goes back to the earliest beliefs of the Irish people, and is still alive today. A spectral figure found among some old Irish families, technically the banshee is not a ghost at all, but a female fairy. Her name, bean sidhe, has two meanings: woman of the fairies or woman of the fairy mounds. The banshee is a female fairy that, for reasons unknown, attaches herself to certain families of chiefly or noble blood. When the ancient Irish settled Scotland, the banshee followed, attaching herself primarily to Clan chiefs whose family names began usually with the prefix Mac, meaning “son of”. In Ireland the O’Gradies, the O’Neills, the O’Connors and the Kavanaghs all have banshees attached to their line, as do the MacDonalds, the MacMillians, the MacKays, the MacFarlanes, the Shaws and the MacCleods in Scotland. In Celtic folklore, the banshee is a psychopomp, a spirit that foretells an impending death or accompanies the soul to the afterworld. The banshee takes several forms in both Ireland and Scotland. Her most common form is that of a young, red haired woman dressed either in green or red with a long grey cloak and is often seen combing her hair with a silver comb. In this form the banshee appears to members of the family she is attached to a few hours to several days before the death of a family member. The banshee is sometimes heard performing the caoine, the Celtic mourning chant sung at funerals called keening in English. At other times she is heard singing or sometimes simply clapping her hands, or seen simply combing her hair. When the member of the family is also the head of the clan, or is aparticularly holy or well known person, several banshees are often seen or heard keening in chorus. The sighting of multiple banshees is also a sign of a plague or an impending failure at battle. Another common form of the banshee is the bean nighe, the washing woman, who is seen either just before or just after a battle at a nearby lake or stream washing the blood stained clothes and armor of the men from her family who died in battle. Unlike her sister, the banshee, the bean nighe is seen as an old hag and is thought by some to be a variant of the legend of the Morrigan, the Irish Goddess of Battle who the Celts believed came to take the souls of the dead on the battlefield to the Summerland. Both the beautiful woman and the old hag made their way from Ireland to Scotland. In Scotland, the banshee is known as the baobhan sith when she is a beautiful maiden and the bean nighe or the caionteach, the keening woman or washer woman, when she is the hag. Unlike Irish banshees, the Scottish baobhan sith is often only heard, but not seen. Like her Irish sisters, the Scottish baobhan sith can appear in groups when there is about to be a plague or massacre. Two famous events in Scottish history were announced by the baobhan sith and the bean nighe. The first took place in 1437, when King James the First of Scotland was told by a baobhan sith he encountered that he would soon be murdered by the Earl of Atholl. The second was the vision of several bean nighe washing clan tartans just prior to the Battle of Culloden, when the Scottish Highlanders were massacred by the English. Several clan chieftains told their clansmen that they had seen the women washing their Clan tartans or shirts in the small streams surrounding the battlefield or heard them keening in the nights before the battle. Keening was also heard by members of the Clan Donald before the massacre of the MacDonalds of Glencoe by the Campbells. Sometimes accompanying the banshee in Ireland was a spectral black coach pulled by four headless, black, horses and driven by a headless coachman. The coach is called the coiste bodhar in Gaelic, and the coachman is the dullahan. The death coach comes to collect the soul at the hour of death. Often after the banshee ends her song, the telltale hoof beats of the coiste bodhar is heard. The coach draws up to the home and the dullahan calls the name of the person about to die, causing their soul to depart and enter the coach, which then drives off. The legend tells that if you see the coiste bodhar, and it has not come for you, the dullahan will throw a basin of blood in your face, marking you as his next victim; it does not pay to be nosey when the dullahan is about his grim work. The coiste bodhar is also found in Scotland, where his coach is still heard along Edinburgh’s royal mile, collecting the souls of those living along the mile and also in Wales, where the coach is often seen driverless and pulled by four complete horses with black funeral plumes on their heads. The final portent of death that sometimes accompanies the banshee, is the corpse candle or corpse light. This light, also called the will-o-the-wisp and the jack-o-lantern, are said to be lights that follow the route a funeral procession is about to take one or several nights prior to the actual funeral. The lights are also said to mark the way from the home of the deceased to the churchyard where they are to be buried. These lights are seen in some parts of Ireland and Scotland during, or just after, the signing of the banshee and are their to guide the soul of the person about to die to their final rest in the local churchyard. The corpse candle is most well known in Wales, where legend dates its appearance back to St. David, the patron saint of Wales, who first ordered the lights to appear. St. David did this to warn a person of his or her approaching death and give them time to repent of any sins. He also did this so the souls of the Welsh dead would not go alone to their final resting place. The candles are said to be small and blue flamed lights for children and large, yellow flamed lights for adults. A multitude of corpse candles foretell a disaster, such as a mine cave in or a plague. All three of these legends have found their way to America with our Irish, Scots and Welsh ancestors. The banshee is still heard in some of the lonely hollows of North Carolina and Kentucky, while the death coach may have been transformed into one of the many legends of headless horsemen, such as the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow made famous in the short story by Washington Irving. Many parts of the country have tales of mysterious lights that are seen in graveyards and along back country roads, New World versions of St. David’s corpse candles. So this month, when the corned beef and cabbage has all been consumed, the Guinness has been exchanged for a wee dram of whiskey in the late night hours of March 17th, instead of speaking of the little people think on their solitary sisters, the bean sidhe. Think, and then pray to St. Padraig that she does not come singing for you.