#folklore

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.

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.

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.

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.

This was supposed to be a radio documentary.

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

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

My wife has been buried in the old graveyard at Killevy, under Slieve Gullion, since the 9th of October 2025.

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

[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.]

[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.