#folkhorror

If you were on TikTok or Instagram in the week before Christmas 2024, there's a good chance you've seen my brother die.

The first thing my granny ever taught me about food was that you never, ever leave the house without a bit of bread in your pocket.

[Originally posted to a paranormal forum in March 2023, split across four posts because of the character limit. Reproduced here in full, with the poster's section headings.] My counsellor thinks I should write this down. Not to post, necessarily. Just to get it out of my head and onto something that isn't my head. I'm posting it because if I only write it down, it's just me and the page again, and I've spent five years being the only person who knows the whole of it.

The following are notes I wrote on my phone during my night shifts in December 2025, mostly on my breaks, sometimes in the toilets, once lying on the floor of a linen cupboard. I've fixed the spelling and nothing else. I'm posting them because the Trust's investigation has closed, and it says what it says, and this says what happened. — Clare

This is the culmination of the first series of stories, and the one that ties them together. It mostly stands on its own, but it was written for people who've read the rest. If you've only time for a few first, read 9 West, Stock and The Roll, which it leans on hardest. The full order is: The Road Over Crockanroe, The Hearthstone, Red Jenny, The Keeper's Bowl, The Brandy Pad, 9 West, Caldragh, Stock, Each Uisce, Hungry Grass, The Roll, The Fetch, The Narrows.

[Originally posted to a forum in March 2026 under the title "Anyone from Carrick remember what happened in January last year? I was there. This is all of it." Reproduced here in full.] My daughter says if I don't write this down she'll do it herself, and she'll put in the bits I'd leave out. She's eighteen now, and she means it, so here we are.

She arrived without warning one day, tall and pale with a pretty face. Dark hair hanging down, tangling with the wind. It was a Sunday, the only day the mines of Gavinvill were closed. With slender hands curled, she rapped her knuckles on the door. And when it opened, she would simply ask: “Need a stitchin’? Need a fix’en?”

The snow had been falling since lunch, soft enough to seem harmless, steady enough to turn the whole world quiet. It smothered the street in a pale hush, muffling the sound of Andy's footsteps as he walked home. Every few steps, he breathed into the wool of his scarf and watched the warmth bloom against the cold before vanishing.

This was supposed to be a radio documentary.

[Originally posted as a reply in a thread titled "Irish folklore creatures that are actually terrifying," on a paranormal forum, January 2026. The reply was long enough that the poster later moved it into its own thread. Reproduced here in full.]

If you've ever done a walking tour of the Derry Walls, there's a fair chance I've told you about the fetch.

There's a name tattooed on the inside of my left wrist.

On the morning of Tuesday the 16th of December 2025, I took a dead woman off the stones below the Old Cross at Ardboe.

In June this year, my son came up in one of my lobster pots. He'd been dead nearly seven years. I'll explain that. But I wanted you to have it first, the way I had it, on the deck of my boat at half five on a Sunday morning in June, with the tide going slack in the Narrows and the gulls screaming and the pot coming up over the gunwale dripping, and something in it that wasn't a lobster. Once you know the rest, you'll not hear it the same.

Lainy held her cup of coffee to her chest, tried to trap its warmth inside her body. She should've dressed warmer. Autumn had arrived and it was forcing its chill through her body. Logan was twenty minutes late. She tried not to hold it against him, but her nose was starting to run. They had matched online, exchanged only a few messages before he asked her out on a date. It was bold but he was attractive enough, plus the cafe was filled with people. What could go wrong?