When I was a kid, my cousins took me to see a haunted house. It was old and had been unlived in for many years. We went upstairs and entered an old room that had a huge fireplace. There was a rocking chair in the corner and some pictures of the past occupiers left scattered by the fireplace.
We looked through them and there was one photo there of a little girl sitting on a rocking chair and holding a rag doll. I was told that a little girl had fallen into the fire whilst trying to retrieve her rag doll, which had also fallen in. As a result the girl caught alight and died.
Then, suddenly, whilst sitting in the room, the rocking chair started to move and we became scared, but then it stopped as we heard the front door open. We quickly ran to the cupboard door and hid inside. I was petrified. I thought nobody lived here anymore, but it was still owned by a distant relative who didn't live in the house, but kept it there - empty and cold.
We heard footsteps and my cousin said, "Don't make any noise. If he hears us he may shoot us." I knew that this could happen, because it was known that many Irish men owned rifles, as they used them for hunting.
We were so lucky, because we heard the front door closing afterwards and it was safe for us to leave.
I wanted to get out of that house immediately, but I didn't want to seem like a coward in front of my cousins.
The next day was worse, because I thought I had learnt my lesson the first time, but it was obvious that I hadn't.
It was my cousins that had told my two brothers about the house and it was my brothers who had pushed us all into going there again.
I thought the first time was scary, but the second time was even more creepier than the first.
It was my brothers who wanted to go there. Not me. But I wasn't about to tell them that. I didn't want them to think I was a coward.
We arrived at the house by walking through the fields and then we climbed over a wall to get to the front of the property.
This time the front door was locked and not open. My cousins thought it was unusal for it to be locked, as it wasn't as if there were many thieves about in those days.
We couldn't get inside, so we looked around the outside of the house to see if there was any windows open. We were making too much noise, so my cousin told us to be quiet.
"Shush, or the owner might hear us!"
But after she said this we all jumped, as a man holding a whip appeared from nowhere in particular and started growling at us and started to whip us.
It was horrible. My brothers ran through the bushes and escaped the whipping. My cousins jumped over the wall and got away, but my smallest cousin who was probably about nine years old then and myself (I was thirteen then) couldn't get away quick enough. We were lashed at with this man's whip. He was a giant as far as we were concerned.
He shouted at us, "Get away from here now!"
He kept on whipping us until we finally got over the wall and ran away. The funny thing was, I had lost my shoes with fright. They had fallen off and were left behind.
We all eventually got back to my Grandma's house in Tubbercurry and immediately she knew something was up, so we told her where we had been. We told her about the man who had whipped us and threatened us, and I told her that it had been weird the way he had just appeared from nowhere. I told her about how we had walked around the house and we hadn't seen anyone around there at all.
She said, "Nobody is looking after that house anymore dear. There was a man not so long ago who used to go there and look after it and he was a distant relative, but he died about two weeks ago. Now I'm that the house has been left to another relative to look after, so it must have been that person you saw."
We all couldn't believe it. Was we imagining it? And who was that man who had whipped us? Was it someone else who had turned up there?
My Grandma didn't think there was anyone about to look after the house now, so she couldn't understand how someone would want to chase us all away.
Later, my Grandad asked around the town to see if anyone had claimed the house from the Will that, but, apparently, no one had come forward for it. So, for years the whole episode of who this man was that had lashed out at us was still a mystery.
So, what do you think? Was it a ghost? Or some weird man trying to scare us?
