“A geologist may describe the hydrosphere, and an astronomer the moon, and their descriptions may be swallowed with tolerable composure and assurance, because we know that the laws of similarity and analogy, when applied to the physical, generally hold good; but no scientist can teach us anything about spiritual phenomena, because such things are actually without the realm of science, just as the game of marbles is entirely without the province of theology. It is our sensations, and our sensations only, that can guide and instruct us when dealing with the superphysical. I have heard the dying screams of a woman murdered beneath my window; I have heard on hill and plain the cries of coyottes, panthers, jackals and hyenas; and I have many times listened to the dismal hooting of night birds, when riding alone through the seclusion of giant forests; but there is something in the banshee’s cry that differs from all these, that fills one with a fear and awe, far—immeasurably far—beyond that produced by a sound which is merely physical. Imagine then what it is to be haunted all one’s life by such a grim harbinger of woe, to have it ever trailing in one’s wake, always ready and, maybe, eager to make itself heard the moment it detects, by its extraordinary and unhuman powers, the advent of death. One curious idiosyncrasy of the banshee is that it never manifests itself to the person whose death it is prognosticating. Other people may see or hear it, but the doomed one never, so that when every one present is aware of it but one, the fate of that one may be regarded as pretty well certain.
“And now once again, whence comes the banshee? From heaven or from hell? What is it? It is impossible to say; at the most one can only speculate. Some banshees appear to be mournful only; others unquestionably malevolent; and whereas some very closely resemble a woman, even though of a type long passed away, others, again, differ so much from our conception of any human being, that we can only imagine them to be spirits that never have been human, that belong to a genus wholly separate and distinct from the human genus, and that have only been brought into contact with this material plane through the medium of certain magical or spiritual rites practised by the Milesians, but for some unknown reason discontinued by their descendants. This appears to me quite a possible explanation of the origin of the banshee.
“One realizes, when dabbling in spiritualism to-day, one of the greatest dangers incurred is that of attracting to one certain undesirable, mischievous, and malignant spirits—call them elementals if you will—which, when so attracted, stick to one like the proverbial leech. And what happens to-day may very well have happened thousands of years ago; in all probability, the Unknown never changes; its ways and habits may be as constant as those of Nature, guided by laws and principles which may at times vary, but which, nevertheless, undergo no material alteration. The superphysical, attracted to the ancients as it is attracted to us to-day, would adhere to them as it now adheres to us. I cannot surmise more.
“Supposing then that this theory accounts for the one class of banshee, what accounts for the other—the other that so nearly tallies with the physical? Are the latter actual phantoms of the dead; of those that died some unnatural death, and have been earth-bound and clan-bound ever since? Maybe they are. Maybe they are the spirits of women, prehistoric or otherwise, who were either suicides or were murdered, or who themselves committed some very heinous offence; and they haunt the clan to which they owed their unhappy ending; or, in the event of themselves being the malefactors, the clan to which they belonged. From all this we can conclude that, whilst the origin and constitution of banshees vary, their mission is always the same—they are solely the prognosticators of misfortune. A sorry possession for anyone; and yet, how truly in accord with the nature of the country—with its general air of discontent and barrenness, with its rain-sodden soil and gloomy atmosphere—as an unkind critic might say, could anyone imagine the presence of cheerful spirits under such conditions?
“But the banshee has the one admirable trait which the average Englishman obstinately refuses to recognize in the material Irish—the trait of loyalty and constancy. It never forsakes the object of its attachment, but clings to it in all its vicissitudes and peregrinations with a loyalty and persistency that is unmatchable. It is thoroughly Irish, essentially Irish; the one thing, apart from disposition and character, that has remained exclusively Irish through long centuries of robbery and oppression; and which, in spite of assertions to the contrary, never has been, nor ever will be shared by other than the genuine clansman.
“The banshee is most fastidious in its tastes—it will have none of the pseudo-celt; none of the individual who, possessing an absolutely English name, and coming entirely of English forefathers, terms himself Irish merely because his ancestors happen to have settled in Ireland. That is nothing like exact enough for the banshee. Others may talk of it and write of it, but they can never honestly claim it; for the banshee belongs wholly and exclusively to the bona-fide O’s and Macs—and them, and them only, will it never cease to haunt so long as there is one of them left.”
My last experience with a ghost in Dublin took place just after I had been medically examined for the R.I.C., and to my intense grief had been rejected, owing to varicose veins, which the examining doctor told me were of a far too complicated nature to permit of an operation; consequently, although I had been “cramming” for two years, and my prospects of getting through the literary examination were deemed extremely fair, it was futile to go up for it, as all chance of my ever being in the R.I.C. was now at an end.
On the night of my failure to pass the medical I had gone to bed early, as I had a splitting headache, and, after vain efforts, had at length succeeded in falling asleep. I awoke just in time to hear a clock from somewhere in the downstairs premises of the house—I was then lodging in Lower Merrion Street—strike two, and almost immediately afterwards there came a loud laugh, just over my face, and so near to me that I seemed to feel the breath of the laughter fan my nostrils. Nothing I have ever heard before, or have ever heard since, was so repulsive as that laugh—it was the very incarnation of jeering, jibing mockery; of undying, inveterate hate. I felt that nothing but a spirit of unadulterated evil could have made such a noise, and that it had come to gloat over my misfortunes—to let me know how greatly it rejoiced at the cruel blow I had suffered. I naturally associated it with the ghost that had tried to strangle me, and my heart turned sick within me at the thought that such a horrible species of phantasm was still hovering near me. Should I ever be free from it? I was not quite so frightened, however, as I had been on the occasion of its visit to me in the house near the Waterloo Road, and determining to prevent myself from falling into that kind of paralytic condition again, in which all my muscles and faculties had remained alike spell-bound and useless, I sat up. The room was in pitch darkness, and everything was breathlessly still. I waited in this posture for some seconds, my heart beating like a sledge-hammer, and then, deriving assurance from the fact that nothing happened, I got out of bed and struck a light. The door was locked on the inside, and there was nothing in hiding that could in any way account for the noise. I went to the window, and, lifting it gently, peered out into the street. There was no moon, but many stars and lamp-lights enabled me to see that the street was absolutely empty—not even a policeman was in sight. I leaned far out, and from immediately beneath me, although no one was visible, there suddenly commenced the sound of running footsteps. Ringing out loud and clear, and accompanied by a queer familiar clicking, they seemed to follow the direction of the street towards Ely Place. I wanted to get back to bed, for I was lightly clad, and the air was cool and penetrating, but something compelled me to keep on listening, and so I remained with my neck craned over the window-sill, till the steps gradually grew fainter and fainter, and suddenly ceased altogether. And with their termination this early period of my ghostly experiences in Dublin terminated, too.