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Currently a carpet store and restaurant in Ballyshannon town, this building used to be the military barracks for the town. It's home to not just one but two famous ghost stories. #FolkloreThursday
The first is about the Green Lady, originally the daughter of an old general named Folliard. According to the legend she persuaded a young soldier called Edward Finlay to desert the army and elope with her. #FolkloreThursday
Unfortunately Finlay was caught and court-martialled, eventually being sentenced to death by firing squad. As his corpse fell to the ground the young woman appeared - prompting a cry of horror from her father. She had died of grief a few days earlier. #FolkloreThursday
The ghost carried young Finlay's body to the river, where it was swept over the salmon leap and down the rapids. He was never seen again...except from a distance, late at night, dancing on the surface of the water with his corpse-bride. #FolkloreThursday
The second story comes to us from Sir Walter Scott, who was told it by Lord Castlereagh. When he was a young soldier Castlereagh stayed in the barracks and woke during the night when the fire blazed up and a young child walked out from it. #FolkloreThursday
Th child walked towards him, growing in size until "it had assumed the appearance of a ghastly giant, pale as death, with a bleeding wound on the brow, and eyes glaring with rage and despair”. #FolkloreThursday
He sprang from his bed and the apparition disappeared. Castlereagh went on to become a government minister who was blamed for the Peterloo Massacre, where cavalry charged a group of protesters seeking parliamentary reforms, killing 18 and wounding hundreds. #FolkloreThursday
Why is Ballyshannon so haunted? Well, it might have something to do with the thousand bodies discovered buried in a field just outside town back in 2003. #FolkloreThursday
These are not victims of some ancient monster though - it's a medieval graveyard that disappeared off maps when the church there was demolished in the 17th century. Hundreds of years of people unwittingly walking on graves - no wonder the dead slept lightly. #FolkloreThursday
First picture by me, last picture from the Donegal Democrat, the two green ghost pictures are from the ether of the internet (sorry!) and the rest are Wikimedia Commons. For a bit more about Ballyshannon and the ghosts, see: https://dailyscribbling.com/the-odd-side-of-donegal/the-haunted-rugs-of-ballyshannon/
