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Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts

Thursday, 30 October 2014

A haunting continued ....

I'm following on from my last blog post A haunting we will go..... and  keeping with the haunting theme.
I told you about the house my family lived in in Sunday's Well in Cork. I was only 2 when we left the house so I don't have any memory of it. The story i told you was told to me by my parents. Several of my cousins lived in the house at different stages and they all have memories of the place being haunted.
 I was chatting with one cousin yesterday who lived in the house with her parents, my father before he was married and my grandmother . ( her mother was my father's sister) . The story she heard was that the man who was found hanging in the house was Polish and he was found behind the bathroom door not under the stairwell. As a child she didn't know this but remembers always being afraid in the bathroom. She said there was always a chilling breeze flowing through the room. My father heard her crying in the Bathroom one day and knowing she was afraid used to stand watch outside the room to mind her.
She also spoke of a room where the light used to come on by itself.
My grandmother sold the house after my mother took ill on Christmas eve, 1960. Mam was 8 months pregnant with my sister at the time.
 My father, an electrician was in the Bar next door repairing the Christmas lights and no doubt having a pint and a drop. Mam was hanging up Christmas decorations when she collapsed with a brain haemorrhage and was found by my father unconscious on the floor.
My grandmother was convinced that my mother saw something in the room that night. My mother recovered eventually, she was in a coma for a long time in the North Infirmary Hospital in Cork's Northside.
 My sister was born while mam was in a coma. She arrived quite unexpectedly. A priest was doing his rounds and heard the baby crying in the bed. She was called Catherine, Louise after 2 of the nursing  nuns. She was then placed in the drawer of a chest of drawers in the room as they weren't equipped for babies as the hospital was not a maternity hospital.
 Can you imagine the excitement.
 Mam never recovered her memory so wasn't able to tell us if anything happened in the house that night to cause her illness.
It was the straw that broke the camel's back for my grandmother, she felt the house had brought nothing but bad luck to the family and she sold it.
The house changed hands several times afterwards. Eventually it was knocked and some fine apartments have been built there recently. I'd love to know if the residents are having any strange unexplained experiences there.

The following photographs were taken in a graveyard in Cobh recently. I took them especially for Halloween. I wasn't alone, I had an accomplice. Most women bring their daughters to shopping centres, fashion shows, cinema etc I bring mine to graveyards. What makes me laugh is how normal it is to them. One night,  I asked my youngest daughter Marie to accompany me to Ballymore graveyard in the pitch dark, apart from the full moon. Ya she said, no bother. The only stipulation was that we bring the dog.










Camera settings. Camera - Canon 70D, lens Canon 18-135mm. All these images were taken with the same lens at focal lengths between 18 and 41mm. exposures between 22 and 50 seconds. f16, ISO 100. The camera was on a tripod, using a remote release. My daughter used a torch to light up the statue from different angles.
There was a lot of tripping over gravestones and giggles had in the process.



Sunday, 19 October 2014

A sort of ghostly story.

Halloween is approaching and it's a great excuse to be found in 1 of my favourite places, graveyards.

My parents had great ghost stories and really believed that they were true. My mother talked about a girl she knew who while dancing with a very handsome man looked down and noticed that instead of shoes he had hoofs. He was probably just a very bad dancer.

I love giving my friends the willies by telling them ghostly tales and even though they pretend to not want to hear them I know they really do. I'm not easily spooked myself, I have quite a logical mind behind it all. I know there has to be a reason for everything though i lost all sense of reason one night about a year ago.

Much to my youngest daughter's horror I agreed to look after the ashes of a dead relative for a few months. I thought nothing of it but she was really freaked at the thought of us ash sitting. I put the ashes in the attic for safe keeping and to hide them, out of her sight and mind. I was very respectful and placed them at the far end of the house above my own bedroom, I even said a wee prayer before I left them there.

Almost straight away I noticed a difference in the night noises in the house. On a windy night in particular the normal creaks and groans from the attic timbers seemed to be louder and more enhanced than they used to be. I knew i was imagining things, my mind was playing tricks on me. Then one dark winter's night, myself and my youngest daughter were alone in the house. Himself was working the night shift and the other two daughters were away for the night.
 I was heading for bed around midnight and went to lock the front door. As I turned the key an alarming  noise coming from the other end of the house sent chills down my spine and i could feel my blood running cold in my body. I could hear myself saying "what the f#@k was that" and at the same time my daughter was saying something similar. Then it happened again, it was for all the world like someone was moving a heavy wardrobe across a wooden floor. 
At this stage the two of us were clung together shivering with fear in the hall. We thought it was coming from the attic, then it happened again and i thought it was coming from the small box room at the end of the house. You should have seen the two of us clinging to each other and slowly walking down the hall to investigate. I knew there had to be a logical reason and thank God there was. I opened the door of the room just in time to see the venetian blind on the window being played like a musical instrument by the northerly wind through the open window. You would be amazed by how loud it seemed in the empty room. We handed back the ashes soon after and thankfully the house returned to normal. 

In keeping with the story and the time of  year my photographs are graveyard themed.

 Camera settings, Camera - Canon 70D, Lens Tamron 10-24mm@24mm, exp 1/200sec, f7.1, ISO 100 +remote and tripod

 Camera Settings, Camera - Canon 70 D, Lens Tamron 10-24mm@24mm, exp 1/800sec, f16, ISO100 +remote and tripod

 Camera Settings, Camera- Canon 70D, Lens Tamron 10-24mm@10mm, exp 1/10sec, f13, ISO 100 +tripod

 Camera settings, Camera 70D, Lens Tamron 10-24mm@15mm, exp 1/320sec, f9, ISO 100

 Camera settings, Camera Canon 70D, Lens Tamron 10-24mm@10mm, exp 1/320sec, f22, ISO 100

 Camera Settings, Camera - Canon 70D, Lens Tamron 10-24mm@11mm, exp 1/800sec, f4, ISO 100 converted to Black/White
 Camera Settings, Camera - Canon 70D, Lens Tamron 10-24mm@11mm, exp 1/6sec, f22, ISO 100


Camera settings, Camera - Canon 70D, Lens Canon 18-135mm@28mm, exp1/60sec, f22, ISO 100