“I have heard ‘the Banshee’ cry. It is simply like a woman wailing in the most unearthly fashion. At the time an O’Neill was in this house, and she subsequently heard that her eldest brother had died on that night between twelve a.m. and three a.m., when we all of us heard the Banshee wailing. I heard her also at my mother’s death, and at the death of my husband’s eldest sister. The cry is not always quite the same. When my dear mother died, it was a very low wail which seemed to go round and round the house.

“At the death of one of the great O’Neill family, we located the cry at one end of the house. When my sister-in-law died I was wakened up by a loud scream in my room in the middle of the night. She had died at that instant. I heard the Banshee one day, driving in the country, at a distance. Sometimes the Banshee, who follows old families, is heard by the whole village. Some people say she is red-haired and wears a long flowing white dress. She is supposed to wring her long thick hair. Others say she appears as a small woman dressed in black.

“Such an apparition did appear to me in the daytime before my mother-in-law died.”

“I remember vividly my first experience of our Banshee. I had never heard of it at the time, and in fact I have only heard of it in recent years.

“It happened one day that I went into the hall, in the daytime, I forget the exact hour, and as I climbed the stairway, being yet a small child, I happened to look up. There, looking over the rails at the top of the stairway, was an object so horrible that I shudder when I think of it even now. In a greenish halo of light the most terrible head imagination could paint—only this was no imagination, I knew it was a real object—was looking at me with apparently fiendish fire in its light and leering eyes. The head was neither man nor woman’s; it was ages old; it might have been buried and dug up again, it was so skull-like and shrunken; its pallor was horrible, grey and mildewy; its hair was long. Its mouth leered, and its light and cruel eyes seemed determined to hurt me to the utmost, with the terror it inspired. I remember how my childish heart rebelled against its cowardice in trying to hurt and frighten so small a child. Gazing back at it in petrified horror, I slowly returned to the room I had come from. I resolved never to tell anyone about it, I was so proud and reserved by nature.

“I had then two secret terrors hidden in my Irish heart. The first one I have never till recently spoken of to anyone; it happened before I saw this awful head. I was asleep, but yet I knew I was not asleep. Suddenly, down the road that led to our home in Ireland came an object so terrible that for years after my child’s heart used to stand still at the memory of it. The object I saw coming down to our house was a procession—there were several pairs of horses being led by grooms in livery, pulling an old coach with them. It was a large and awful looking old coach! The horses were headless, and the men who led them were headless, and even now as I write, the awful terror of it all comes over me, it was a terror beyond words. I knew, I felt certain they had come to cut off my head! This procession of headless things stopped at our door, the men entered the house, chased me up to the very top of it, and then cut off my head! I can remember saying to myself, ‘Now I am dead, I am dead, I can suffer no more.’

“They then went back to the coach, and the procession moved away and was lost to view.

“Night after night I lay shivering with terror, for months, for years, there was such a lurid horror about this headless procession.

“Some weeks after I saw the head, we heard that our father had been killed about that time in Egypt, murdered it was supposed. My mother died some years afterwards.

“One evening, when I was grown up, we were sitting round the fire with friends, and someone said:

“‘I don’t believe in ghosts. Have you ever met anyone who has seen one? I have not!’

“A sudden impulse came over me—never to that moment had I ever mentioned the head—and, leaning forward, I said:

“‘I have seen a ghost; I saw the most terrible head when I was a child, looking over the staircase.’“To my astonishment my sister, who was sitting near me, said:

“‘I saw a most terrible head, too, looking over the staircase.’

“I said:

“‘When did you see it? I saw it when our father died.’

“And she said:

“‘And, I saw it when our mother died.’

“In describing it, we found all the details agreed, and learned not long after that it was without doubt our own Banshee we had seen.

“People have said to me that Banshees are heard, not seen. This is not correct, it all depends if one is clairvoyant or clairaudient.

“I remember when my mother was alive, how I came in from a walk one evening and found the whole house in a ferment, the most terrible screaming and crying had been heard pass over the house. Our mother said it must be the Banshee. Sure enough we heard of the death of a very near relation directly after. If I had been present, no doubt I should not only have heard the screams but I should have seen something as well.

“A few years ago in Ireland I was talking about these things, and a relation I had not met before was present. He said to me:

“‘But as well as the Banshee do you know that we have a headless coach attached to our family; it is proceeded by men, who lead the horses, and none of them have heads.’“Like a flash came that never-to-be-forgotten vision of that awful procession I had seen as a child, and of which I had never made any mention till then. I remember now that after I saw the headless coach we heard that our grandmother was dead. I believe that the headless coach belongs to her family.

“Petronella O’Donnell.”

“I certainly remember, one night, when we were living in Cornwall, hearing a most awful scream, a scream that rose and fell, and ended in a long-drawn-out wail of agony. I have never heard any other sound at all like it, and therefore cannot think that it could have been anything earthly. At the time, however, I did think that possibly the scream was that of a woman being murdered, and did not rest until my husband, with other inmates of our house, had made a thorough search of the garden and premises.

“Shortly after we had had this experience, we heard of the death, in Ireland, of one of my husband’s aunts.

“I also recollect that one night, shortly before we received the news of my sister-in-law’s death, I heard a crash on our bedroom door. It was so loud that it quite shook the room, and my husband, apparently wakened by it, told me he had dreamed that the Banshee had come and was knocking for admittance. This happened not very long ago, when we were living in Norwood.

“Ada O’Donnell.”