Speaker 1: You're a listening to the Paranormal UK Radio Network, the
best in paranormal talk radio in the UK and around
the world. Scary Era Era is the Irish or Gaelic
word for Ireland. Do you know much about this ancient gland?
In recent times, its Irish culture has revolved around the
likes of U two, Pierce Brosnan and Colin Farrell, and
of course the literary genius types of William Butler, Yeats
and James Joyce Spere, all world renowned. But it's a
mystical place, this island, from its Druids to its Christianity,
and also brutal, surviving famine and invasion after invasion, Vikings,
Normans and the English who we've seen them all come,
and we've seen them all off. Cheerio, your ancestors kept
your names close as over the rugged seas they fled
to week out a living or fight someone else's war.
Paranormal means all the things that are impossible to explain
by no natural forces or by science, and Ireland is
steep and lower ghosts, blood, sweat, tears, sacrifice, hunger, desperation
and charm. Oh and the paranormal. Welcome to Scary era
Vultua is the Irish word for welcome, and you well
and truly are Hello. My name is Mark Manning and
I'm presenting Scary Era for all things Irish related, paranormal
or ghostly. Before I say anything at all on this
inaugural show, my thanks go out to David Irene and
Mark for allowing me on the wonderful esteemed platform of
Paranormal UK. Perhaps you're Irish or have Irish relatives, it
doesn't really matter. There's nothing that exclusive about it, but
it would be lovely If you can't give us an
Irish related paranormal story, don't be a stranger. You can
contact us at Paranormal Ireland at ProtonMail dot com. You
can email your story or indeed we can set up
a little telephone call or Skype for you. How about
that and we can broadcast your story at a later date.
What have the law of averages got to say about
our first caller, because he hails appropriately enough from at
this time of year, Skull in Southwest Cork. This is
Mark McCarty relating a few paranormal tales.
Speaker 2: What I wanted to do is just chat about an
experience I had when I was in college. I went
to college in Dunnary in nineteen ninety two ninety three.
While I was there, I was lodging the house and
the man you wanted the house, his sister was a witch.
Her name was Sandra ran down me. She was quite
famous back then. But she offered to do a reading
for me.
Speaker 1: And I was very skeptical about that.
Speaker 2: Of course, as a kid, you know, so I kind
of go ahead, sir, listen, what have I got to lose,
you know? But anyways, she started telling me all these
little things about my future and what it would be
like for me, and things like that would be all
very good experiences. And then she said at the engine,
and you know, you have a girl, a little girl,
standing beside you right now. And I thought nothing of it.
But she said something very interesting. She said it could
be somebody from your past, your future.
Speaker 3: Or your presence.
Speaker 2: And I thought nothing of it.
Speaker 3: Look, I was.
Speaker 2: Nineteen then, and a few years later, but four years
later I was in Australia. I was with some friends
and we were up in the up in Queensland, up
in the Cairn and while we were walking back from
the pub one night, an Aboriginal woman called me over.
She was sitting on the on the side of the
road and she said that I have a little girl
standing beside me, and it absolutely freaked me out. It
brought me back to that time when I was in
that house in Dunleary, and I got such a shiver
from it.
Speaker 1: Mark, So, Mark, I think the thing is there's always
an extra layer of scary when a child is involved.
It's kind of very god yeah, very disconcerting because it's
so wrong to have within that context and innocent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, very very odd.
Speaker 2: But that I told all the lads, and I was
like telling a lot of people this, so none of
them believe me. They are all just totally skeptical about it.
But I tell you about about five years ago, six
five or six years ago. I have a couple of
kids now, go all grown up, not very sensible, but
I'm all grown up. And I was in the supermarket
with my daughter and she was standing beside me, and
I looked at her and all I heard was the
conversation from this woman, Sandra about this little girl standing
beside me, and I realized that that was actually my
daughter standing beside me.
Speaker 1: Oh, you know that that's lovely it's like it's like
full circle, Mark, because in my mind, and I didn't
want to say it, I thought, you know, perhaps in
your family there might have been a miscarry or something
like that, because you hear that as well.
Speaker 2: But it's it's an actual it's a good story. It's
it's a very pleasant ending to something that could have
been very, very scary, because it did freak me out.
But when I realized what this woman had been talking about,
and the Aboriginal woman was this future child who was
standing beside me holding my hand in the shop, it
was bizarre. It was just there was a few little
details that both those ladies had said, and a second
when I saw my daughter in the shop, it was like,
that's exactly what they were talking about.
Speaker 3: Very odd.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 1: Like your moment, your revelation, and a happy ending, a
happy ending. Actually, yeah, any more stories for us, Mark,
before you go.
Speaker 2: One little one right. I had this when we were
building our house. That was probably fifteen years ago, it's
more now seventeen years ago. We lived in the soul
Cottage in rural, rural West Cork, like we're right in
the middle of nowhere, and there was a always something
very odd about the house. It was a bit of
a weird kind of vibe about the house.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: It had a tiny little library, like a reading room
off the side, which is very rare for little cottage.
But sometimes you'd go into that room and there'd be
books on the bed. There's a little side bed, and
that was always a bit odd. So you put the
books back in there'll be nobody in the house like
and then you'd go back in again later and there'd
be another book open on the bed, or there'd be
books off the shelf, which was always a bit strange.
And I remember being there on my own night and
I heard somebody. I was upstairs and I heard somebody
cleaning out the fire like the another way that sound
of a great you know when when somebody has a
poker and they're cleaning cold, that kind of grating sound.
And I thought my missus had come in and she
was already lighting the fire, so I went down. No,
I think nobody there was very very odd, which and
things like that would happen all the time in this house.
My missus could have sworn one night she heard somebody
coughing upstairs, like a cough, And you'd always hear noises
on the stairs. I know it was an old house,
no old houses making plenty of weird noises. But we
had a cat, a black cat, and sometimes that cat
would just stand and stare in the door, at the
doorway between the little library and the and the sitting room,
and it would move its head every now and again
as if it was following something.
Speaker 1: So true, I have two of them.
Speaker 2: And about a year later I got chatting to a
friend of mine, his mum, and I will telling her
about the house and She's like, did you meet the ghosts?
And I was like, what do you mean what? We
used to live there, she said, but we moved out
because we couldn't handle it because there was a ghost
in there.
Speaker 1: And it often and often harks back to the land
that was built on.
Speaker 3: Could be Yeah, I heard the.
Speaker 1: Exact same thing earlier this year. I visited an area
of Kilmainham at late at night and it stuck with
me because there used to be an old what do
you call him? Convent? I think on it were certainly
an old old people's home. Locals and Dublin eight would
know where I'm talking about. And as a young salesman
I was in corporate sales for years. I went in there,
what you know, you knocking doors and stuff, and I
found myself in this austere corridor and at one point
a bell went and suddenly it was like it was
like out a thriller. Out of nowhere is walking dead,
and that there were old people, that's all you know.
But they were shuffling discreetly, probably for their lunch or whatever.
It had been run by an order of nuns. And
I think it seems to be about twenty or thirty
years ago, but anyway, I'm going around in circles. The
thing was, we did a bit of research and people
were saying the exact same thing as you, that apartments
had subsequently been built on that land. I think at
one point as well, it was you can fix me
on this one. What's the word where people go to die?
What's that called? The very one? Right? Yeah, And that happened,
but there were apartments on it, and people were talking
about books being moved and fights breaking out because one
would be accusing the other of messing with because they'd
be sharing apartments and stuff. So it does go on.
Speaker 2: The more interesting stuff there. Actually, if you were to
find somebody willing to talk about it. But there's an
old asylum in Cork, in the city that had been
done up as a Victorian I think it was, and
it had been done up maybe twenty years ago and
turned into apartments, and there's tons of stories of people
of all sorts of strange and mysterious shenanigans going on
in the modernized version of it. Because it was an
insane asylum, and there's some very very odd story.
Speaker 1: I'd well believe it, and would you believe as well
that a lot of those people weren't insane in the
first place. Absolutely they were in the way right, we
had one of them. We had a huge thing of
putting people away, even like if for the wintertime, and
then they'd release them again, so they became institutionalized. It
was a thing here and the threat was you'll be
sent to the big house. You'll be sent to the
big House. So many as the sane person went in there,
and if they didn't acclimatize to it, they went mad.
Because some people did acclimatize and they actually look forward
to going back in. They'd be taken out for the
harvest and stuff. But yeah, we have we have sanatoriums
because of the TB epidemic those so God knows what
rattles around in them in the wee small hours of
the Morning's mark from wend Cork. It's been a pleasure.
I hope we do it again. Wasn't he a lovely boy?
And we'd love to hear from some lovely girls as well,
So why don't you get in touch Paranormal Ireland at
ProtonMail dot com. Okay, you've made it this far on
scary era, so let me relate my own story to
you as to why I've created this. In the early
nineteen seventies or so, I was I don't know, eight
years of age and my father was an army officer
in the Irish Defense Forces and we lived in a
place called calbrew Of Barracks. It was formerly known as
Portobello Barracks. It was occupied by the British for one
hundred and twelve years. Indeed, the building that I was
in the Irish hero Michael Collins, you might remember the
Hollywood movie about him. He had an office in it,
but it wasn't the big fella I woke up to
one morning when I was about eight years of age.
I can still see her. She wasn't menacing in the least.
Definitely someone from another era, very serene, long dark hair
and a blue cloak. I can tell you, folks, the
hair does stand up on your head. And I gingerly
retreated under the covers, and of course I was told
to eat my corn flakes the next morning and to
go to school. Nobody wanted to know, but that has
stuck with me, and I'm sixty one years of age. Now.
That's why I keep an open mind on all things paranormal.
My research yielded that there was a poisoning in the
barracks in eighteen seventy three and a lady was up
on a charge, but she got off and Anne Winford Marshall,
she was suspected of the murder of Gunner Donaldson. He
was found poisoned, slumped across the bed in an apartment.
She went to trial and despite the evidence being loaded
against her, she was found not guilty. I don't believe
in hauntings. I just think it's under certain conditions that
events are replayed, perhaps where a lot of trauma was involved.
I never could pin down the apartment to being our house,
as the records went back with the British in nineteen
twenty two. I think they may be in Q Gardens
in London. Well, I went home this week and visited
the curator of Corlbrewer Barracks, Noel MacDonald. We conducted our
chat right by the main gate in the old guard room.
You'll hear about summary execution, landmarks and ghostly going on.
I'm here with Noel McDonald in corlbrew of Barracks, Mark
and Noel, and this sounds probably a bit smallsy and
over dramatic, but it's good to be home because I
said to you, I spent twenty four years of my
life here. Doesn't matter where I go in the world,
I always think of Corl Brewer Barracks formerly Portobello Barracks,
because of an incident that happened to me here, which
is the only reason the Scary Era podcast was born.
When I came across you in twenty nineteen, you had
a Halloween type thing, which is appropriate we're in the
month of October. But you had your outfit on, your
skeleton outfit. But as you spoke in this very room,
which is the old guard room of Corl Brewer Barracks,
I could tell how pasionate. You were about the place.
I know you organized tours in here. What's your exact
position within the defense forces and relating to Carl.
Speaker 5: Brewer, Well, I joined the army in nineteen eighty eight.
I've don't recruit trying them up and doun dock. I
came straight down to the second Itttalian which is based
in Cattleboro Barracks formerly part of Below Barracks, and I
was involved up in the gym, so I was used
to do all the gymnastics displays. I used to do
all the big competitions the military Pentatleon and used to
go abroad, so that was all very good. And then
I got into being a barber. I went back to college,
so I have the barbershop now, which is at the
back of the depot where I used to live. And
then I got into a fascination with the history of
the barracks. It didn't become me jobs straight away, but
then over time I was asked, well, why don't we
open a visitor center museum, So I said, yeah, I
could be part of that. I could really give a
hand with that. And then I went and done a
couple of courses, curator course and stuff like that, and
eventually then I took over this in two thou and
ten and I'm here ever since. Now it's not a
pay job. It's a voluntary job, like everything on a
soldier force. So I have to do all my military stuff.
Still I do that, but it's becoming more of me
job now. So I run the barbershop and I run
the museum. So if anybody wants to tour, they're going
to touch at me. I'll create a tour for them
and then I'll measure up to that.
Speaker 1: Is there an email address or how did they content? Yeah,
well you can contact me.
Speaker 5: You can ring the barracks here and they'll put you
onto me straight away, and I can gladly give up
the phone numb.
Speaker 6: There's no problem.
Speaker 5: You want to ring me and then our email and
then I'll create a tour for them, and no problem.
And it's done so open there that we it's for
groups from five people, but roughly then we have people
a bill fifteen to twenty people coming in.
Speaker 1: Well, let's just set the scene. First of all, I
don't know, I really don't know acres or anything. Do
you know much acres as bart?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well it used to be fifty four acres now
it's down to forty six.
Speaker 1: Eggre right, So obviously it was a British army established.
First of all, it was Portobello Barracks up until I
think the fifties when they called it after the arch
patriot Carl Brew. There was a battle as well here
it's not related, but a battle of racked mines in
sixteen forty nine I think between the Royalist and Parlementitarians.
And are there are fields around here known as the
Bloody Fingers. In terms of an operational barracks for the British,
I think they were here over one hundred years, so
there would be a lot of regiments come through here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, this is this is really a train in
barracks and you can see back in the old photographs
that when you look them up you'll always see the
lads training and it was like a tented villages as well,
so he had so many people here at the time.
But it wasn't just that it was an open barracks.
It was like a statement. Fifty four acres is a
huge plan and it's prime in the central Dublin, so
this is where people used to come in do the
training and then leave from here, go to the wars,
or go whatever else.
Speaker 1: Talk to me because we're in Halloween at the moment.
In relation to paranormally type things that might happen here.
Speaker 5: Well, I have friends now see, I'm in the barracks
here at a long time and here since nineteen eighty eight,
so it's thirty six years now I'm here. And from
talking to the lads that were here before me and
now talking to the lads that here. I was on
one lad that was on talking to me yesterday and
I was saying that I had Mark coming in and
I was I was saying, where, well I bring the
most thinking to bringing to a couple of different.
Speaker 6: Places that I would have heard of.
Speaker 5: That was guaranteed that the lad sort was talking to
were straight up guys, and they're not going to saying.
Speaker 3: Saying squadies, and they were the things in our minds.
Speaker 5: It is a coming up telling me that it's one
hundred percent that people walking across the floors at night
time they're seeing things that lights go off on and
off shouldn't be going on and off.
Speaker 6: Other things I've heard myself.
Speaker 5: I've heard people talking in this very room that we're
in the garden beyond the guard room.
Speaker 6: So it is.
Speaker 5: It is a creepy, creepy place, but not creepy in
a bad way. It's creepy. And had a group in
their oilgot they were mediums, they're trying to be mediums,
and they came in and they just buzzed around the place.
Speaker 6: They tar it was just open to everything.
Speaker 1: I would have no believe in it at all, but
I kept an open mind because of what happened to
me here where I saw an apparition as a child
when I grew up here. But I think more so
than haunting, I just think it could be atmospheric noises.
You know, this place here could be almost as for
a lot of energy. But the guard room people get
locked up in here for being on the batter or whatever,
for fighting, and so I think conditions can be played back,
conditions of trauma or explanation if that's a word of energy,
et cetera. So i'd say it have a field day
or of those mediums. If they set up what's known
as EVPs, you know the recordings. I'm sure there'd been
many nights you'd hear nothing, but at some point you would.
If my father was commanding officer of here on and off.
I mean his heart was with the Defense forces. He
loved it heast forty years.
Speaker 5: Then it becomes a family. It's a family.
Speaker 1: So a couple of things as well. The first balloon
took off from here that across the Irish Sea. That
was I think eighteen seventeen.
Speaker 5: When William Wyndham Saddler he was the man and it
was it wasn't that good. What happened was the job
was good. Well. He done to raise money and he
was going to sell tickets for everybody to come into
the barracks, but nobody came into the verdicts and they
watched them for free. So bombed a bond. Money money
was or it was a success. They made it over
to England. It was the first ever balloon rood over
the sea. So you've done very.
Speaker 3: Well the depot. What has been reported to you.
Speaker 5: I don't hear anything bad about the hauntings or anything
like that. What I do here is that the lads
when they're staying there and to be early sergeant, they'll
be there to mind the building that night, make sure
they're up early in the morning to hand out the
weapons that the lads everything is okay.
Speaker 6: But they'd telling me that they'll be.
Speaker 5: They'd be sitting in the room and there's people walking
up overhead, banging doors and up the stairs. Myself was
a witness that I was going up the backstairs. They
be the Michael Collins stay and nobody uses yeah. So,
and I was going up there. I had to meet
the see you there at the time. And when I
was going up the stairs to meet and he was
handing at the top, and there was somebody in the
middle between us that wasn't there, and somebody whisking away,
and the two of us looked at each other as
if this was three feet away from the boat of us,
and we couldn't believe it.
Speaker 3: This was just now.
Speaker 6: We started laughing the off an.
Speaker 3: We ran for help, and we.
Speaker 6: Always heard it was later on.
Speaker 5: It was only later on the head that Michael Collins
was known as the whistler so, and it was it
was all about Michael Collins there what.
Speaker 6: I was going up to.
Speaker 1: He would have been General Michael Collins so at the time.
But he wasn't actually here that long.
Speaker 6: No, he's only here for a few months. But he
lived here in the bar.
Speaker 3: He did and that's a couple of yards from where
we are.
Speaker 5: That's true.
Speaker 3: Were people sniping at that at once?
Speaker 6: That's right, because were getting in they were coming.
Speaker 3: To Republicans would have been chooting at them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but they were coming in. You could only come
in with handguns because you were coming through the army
accommodation and you went a little guns in accommodation. That's
just a no. Not So you're coming in through the
army house dressed as army soldiers pistols. They jump up
onto the wall beside the house and they were forwarding
in and just clif sign of how we tried to
get rid of that.
Speaker 6: So we blocked up a window there.
Speaker 5: They blocked up just to make sure that no bullets
went down through the staircase.
Speaker 1: And introduced, were you looking well for what is thirty
six years six?
Speaker 6: Yeah? I listened. The one thing that marked that I
do here.
Speaker 5: I have a passion for all I do, and I
think if you have a job that you have a
passion for, totally enjoyful. In the day, I enjoy meeting people.
As I said, fifty odd people yesterday came in.
Speaker 6: Here to do the tour.
Speaker 5: The way they went on about it after I just
knew that I cut horse. I cut them because you
spartled them. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. And it's
not because I cot paid, Because look at pay for this.
It's fallunt.
Speaker 6: You might ask, what ag I'm fifty five that Jesus
guys like.
Speaker 3: Only six years older than you, and you you if
you're a way perfect Look at Jerry, you've run on
every day or yeah, no, you have to exercise.
Speaker 5: The army is all built iron and how you do,
how you stand, and how you portray it. Course, so
I come in here like every morning even now to today.
Miss slackskare armed. Miss shoes get polished.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just rafty. That's my father used to
say to me. We'll have to talk about some of
the characters in this barracks. There was a notorious triple murder. Well,
it was an execution. So what did captain, the notorious
Captain Bowen Culthurst do.
Speaker 5: Well, you see, if it went back and went back
in the day, that really would have to go a
little bit deeper because he was involved in the ball
wall and they got a section of men and he
led them into a skirmish where they should have been
and they got whipped out, and he went back to
the officers mess over there, and he got a terrible
time after the other officers because losing losing one man,
bad team, but losing a section of ten men.
Speaker 6: That's that's just a nomo.
Speaker 5: But a couple of months later he got another section
to look after and make sure everything was okay.
Speaker 3: And as a.
Speaker 5: Captain, you should know your business, and the senior captain
back then nobody. He didn't take no for an answer,
so to get another section of men and he was told.
Speaker 6: You'd be very careful with this.
Speaker 5: But he got another section, led them into a skirmish
where they shouldn't have been and they got whipped in.
Speaker 3: So it's just an army baronie reckless.
Speaker 5: Well, if you think about that now, a good officer
in the army will will lead the men in. But
he didn't get hurt, you know, So if you think
about it that way, you go in there, he'll stand on
the outside, which is not really the dunb thing, but
that's the way it was.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 5: He didn't go back to the officersmith. He went to
the doctor and he told me he didn't feel well
over this, that this shook him. And back then, if
you had mental health problems, they sent they record you
and that was it. Now, in nineteen sixteen, World War
One was on and all the able bodied soldiers and
officers were sent over to the frontline Belgium, France. So
what he had here were people who were after being shot.
Are people who were brought back in because of mental
health problems. But we were brought back in to mind
the boxes here because there was nobody to mind the barns,
so they were brought back in. Please don't realize that.
So he was one of them that came back in
and all was good for a period of time, and
he was back in the.
Speaker 6: Uniform and he felt good.
Speaker 5: But then when the rebellions started, the bombs and bullstart
going off, they started to really kick up in these minds.
So we started to see things now. It just so
happened that the night before that, Skeffington Francis She Skeffland
was taken off the road because he was trying to
hold a meeting down Hardcourt Street and he was coming
up towards the Huntback Bridge. A group of lads behind
him just talking to him. But the young leftenant that
was on the bridge, that they were going to take
over his position. Now when they sent his the officer
of young officer, when he sent his men out to
get them, the young lads ran off. Skeffington was on
his own. Was as pascifist, passive. He wasn't into war,
Oh yeah, absolutely. But they brought him up and they
put him into the cell. Wait, but this, by the way,
for those things we're we're.
Speaker 3: Speaking with him feet of this and the place hasn't changed.
Speaker 6: You're right into the cells. You're right in here.
Speaker 1: Two other guys got taken with him as well, and
I think that was the next identified.
Speaker 5: That was the next morning.
Speaker 3: They were actually union supporters.
Speaker 6: Well, i'll tell you what happened the next morning.
Speaker 5: I think a bond cultures took over the duty and
he got the two of them out.
Speaker 6: He got started a bigger pardon.
Speaker 5: He got caught a Skefferton l the cell and he says,
I know you you right against us because he was
he was a journalist.
Speaker 6: And he says no, he says, I'm a pacifist. I'm
not into it. So he said, I don't know what
to do.
Speaker 3: What you do?
Speaker 5: There's two snipers down the road there, just over the
hump Back Bridge, and it was on the corner and
just one hundred yards when you go over the Humpback
bridge from that, mind, so you're going to hotel on
the canal.
Speaker 3: Yes, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 5: When you go over on the yes, just over the
hump back bridge on the canal you go towards town.
I think his Handling Road is on the left hand
square and then Harcourt Street is on the right right.
On the corner there was Kelly's Tobacconist. I think it's
called Hardcourt Health now, yes, but next door to that
was a coffee shop. Now in his mind, there was
two snipers and there he went down. He opened the
door and he threw in the grenade blew the shop
that one man Didentally, another man came crawling out, the
councilor Richard O'Carroll was his name, Very prominent, very prompt man.
He shot him in the stomach. He's screaming the pain.
At the same time, next door to the back of
the shop opened up and two men came over there
with the explosion. Next door he grabbed them too, and
he said, you two are involved in this. But Missied
Dixon and mister McIntyre, that was their two names. He
got them up and he collected Skeffington on the way
back up, because he left him on the bridge just
case thatting happened to them. He was left there to
be shot. But he collected three of them and brought
him back up here the part of Bellow Barracks and
he put them into number one cell right where we
are now. And he put them in there. The next
morning he was told to let them go, but he
came in and he was told to letting go with
helly commander. He came in here and he says, I'm
not to be told to let them go, but I
don't want to. He says, we're going to bring them
out to the yard behind the guard room. We're going
to execute them. And that's exactly what they're done. And
he was in charge at the barracks.
Speaker 1: At the time because he's a good guy and is
a bad guy. And the good guy was the officer.
I think who's in commanding officer? Was it Major Sir
Francis Vane.
Speaker 5: He was a major commment. He wasn't the CEO. When
he had heard what had happened he said, this can't
be happening. This is absolutely outrageous. This is only a
few weeks after he went to the Brittany commander and
he pleaded, room, you're going to have to do something here.
He's after Mordern three men, he's after burying them in
the shallow grave and the barracks.
Speaker 6: Here, we have to do something here.
Speaker 5: His wife has after going over to London and she's
in the High Commission in London. She's screaming because she
wants a court martial. We have to do something here.
He said, okay, and that's when that happened. That's when
they said, okay, look, we have to make this happen.
And then it went to a court martial and he
was sound guilty now insane gids guilty one saying because
he said that he was in saying because what happened
to him all from the ball of course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now what happens dramatic.
Speaker 5: That man in major Commlan, thein he got let go
down as well, he got let go of the army
because he told I'm a fellow officer and for the
rest of his life. He pleaded his ind.
Speaker 3: Describe that very well, because I was saying to myself.
Speaker 1: It's just because the Brits couldn't stand what was going on.
Because the General Maxwell I think he reported to, and
General Maxwell was quoted as I think said that they
probably deserved it or something like that, but you just
couched it very nice. So that's what it was. It
was the fellow officer thing reporting on more so than
the actual moral swings and rounds about of it. That's
very interesting. Coulthurst ended up in broad More, yes, prison,
But the last I believe that was heard of man,
I think of dates from a documentary I saw in
the seventies he went to Canada.
Speaker 5: Who went to Canada, lived the rest of his work,
and I think he won an election out there or something. Okay,
but he poloitician was an incredible way of being, like
he had an upper sense that he was entitled to
what he got when he came from money he did.
Speaker 3: I think that there's a castle down there now, is
a killarney or a badly that's right. His people were
from from there.
Speaker 1: So if we go straight out the door here of
the guardroom and we continue going down straight, we will
hit the depot that we've been speaking about. There is
footage on YouTube. Just put in Michael Collins in uniform
pathay and you see him and in what was our garden.
I wish there was a lip reader out there because
it's totally in silence that leads onto a field.
Speaker 6: Yes, listens to.
Speaker 1: That was the house that will Kay had and Black
and Pans had that we'll talk about them as well.
Speaker 3: They had it as a bit of a HQ where
they had it as a as a as a place.
At one point.
Speaker 1: Just beyond that is Rathmand's church with a distinctive dough that.
Speaker 3: Then fired at one point as well.
Speaker 1: And our acquaintance Bowen Cultures, he's sumarily executed a young
fellow that's a teenager called to I think that's what
it called out there before the execution of the of
the gentleman we just spoke about.
Speaker 5: When he brought when he was bringing Skeffington down the road,
those two lads stepped out to ask where they were gone,
and it was Bone called host said martial laws only
have to be announced. You two shouldn't be on the street.
He took it out his revolver now a Mouser revolver.
Speaker 3: Which very need German think, Yeah, yeah, and he.
Speaker 5: Took it out and shot Cody dead. His friend that
was there ran. He was trying to show him as
he ran, but he missed him. And that's where we
got how we found where he shot the three men
because there was a bullet left in the wall, and
when we took it out, it was a mousing bullets.
Speaker 3: Apparently, this is how callousy was.
Speaker 1: When Cody was questioning, says, well, what are you doing here,
he said, I'm here for my sidelity. And sidelity is
that kind of was a religious occasion or something you
attended weekly, and he shot him in the head and
with the words take that far sideality.
Speaker 3: Wow. So as you go straight down, there used to
be an AMMO dump on the right. It's gone.
Speaker 6: That's gone.
Speaker 3: There was the the.
Speaker 1: Comm's house, the two red houses down at the end.
They're the priests now the priest houses are they? They'd
be chaplains now. And the the aid to come to
President devil Air and probably a few more was Tom McNamara.
You'd see him on all the old nineteen sixties, nineteen
you know, when Kennedy was here, you'd see Tom McNamara
in the background. You're right, there was there was two
priests that I knew of in those houses as well.
One was Father Breslan lovely man the breads, Yeah, the
breadth I forgot that.
Speaker 3: I think he might have been in the leb as well,
or Lebanon as well. At one point.
Speaker 1: President was a nut right, he looked like Tom Tommy Cooper.
There was another priest I called McCabe before him, real gentleman.
This was a cavalry barracks as well. So they were
old stables you were sharing with me.
Speaker 3: Are old tunnels there? Or there was yea and they
never never appeared on any maps. That's what I would
say if.
Speaker 5: You foulnd tunnel and split in two. So when you
went into the tunnel, if you went to the left,
it went right down on the canal, and then if
you went to the right, that will bring you halfway
across Listen Field.
Speaker 6: Heading towards the church, the Dawn Church.
Speaker 5: So we only got halfway across that nobody nobody else
went any further. So I think it may collapsed.
Speaker 1: We cannot mention this place without mentioning the notorious Black
and Tans who were there.
Speaker 5: Well, the black and Tans came in and be honest,
Churchill order. Yes, but you see what happened. What happened
here with them was now half the two houses where
they used to stay here, so they'd be up at
the back of the officers mess that's where they used
to commit.
Speaker 3: These guys were bastards.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, well they were.
Speaker 5: They came in to do They came in to do
the dorty, the dorty walk.
Speaker 6: Now look, yeah, I was looking at a couple of
them and pat.
Speaker 5: The news and they were interviewing them, and amazing what
was in their mind everything that they were doing. They
were doing the writing. They had it in their mind
that this was the writing to do, and that may.
Speaker 6: Came down from upper.
Speaker 5: Yes, course, to be sure that you have to you
have to do this. This is some portant. So they
were doing the dirty woman. Do you do the interrogation here?
And we still have the interrogating places where they used
to do it. He had a hanging house, but just interrogation.
So it was interrogation through strangulation. So what he would
do was drop a rope down, toy it around your neck.
You'll be toied to a chair and they would hoist
you up. So they were strangling three.
Speaker 3: Spanish, incredible, and then inquisition.
Speaker 5: And in this place where they used to do this,
the hanging house, that's what we call it.
Speaker 6: What do you used to do?
Speaker 5: Was that the people come in and walk down the
next day in there in the right side, on the
left side of it. Only when I joined, the people
used to come in to be walking slightly on one ladder.
Me and he's telling me, only there recently. He was
telling me, Oh my god, he says, the footsteps that
you used to run through that place, and the screaming
and the roar. When he was there on his own,
he'd say, yeah, enough of this. He'd lock up and
go home, because you're started to get louder and louder.
But this was this is common practice, common practice.
Speaker 1: These guys were called black and tans for those of
you who don't know, because they were kind of coupled
together in a uniform.
Speaker 6: But they had got the uniform. They hadn't got the uniform,
so they got a bit.
Speaker 5: About uniforms and through them allyone known as the black
and dried the whole of art. But you see, it
was good to see because you saw the black and
tan coming overall because you knew boys you. Yeah, so
that was a good thing when if you hadn't been
dressed like everybody else.
Speaker 3: Were they all a mixture of officers or something to know?
Speaker 6: Auxiliaries?
Speaker 3: The auxiliaries were.
Speaker 5: They were worse black, yes, but they were worse than
the black and town they were. No, they destroyed, they
did really worse. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Right, then again, how can you get the horse? Okay,
well it's worse, you know, because the children were killer No, of.
Speaker 1: Course, they were laws onto themselves essentially, because as you
can see, when Colthurst was taken to task, it was
all covered up by the powers that be. As you
go up, you're hitting to the you go to the
Garrison churches. Now the Patrick say Patrick's when does that date?
Speaker 3: For a roughly?
Speaker 5: You know, that was one of the first buildings that
was built in the boxes. Yeah, so you're talking about
eighteen fifteen to eighteen eighteen twenty. And you see, if
you think about it, it was all done religion. Everything was religious,
so it was short of wor in church. That's what makes
it special because the the changing off to a Catholic church,
and that's what it is now.
Speaker 3: There's a bit of paranormal around that as well. Isn't it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well you see and if you look at the church,
you're standing out to the church, you're looking at it.
And the roy hands is number two guard room, so
that goes onto the canal, so you can entrance at
the canal there, so if anybody's roving along the canal,
you can look into the bark stair. But that was
number two guard room and that's where the Black and
Tans used to do the doughty walk.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: You found a bullet on the wall, didn't and your
market all right, do you have it on video? Yeah,
that's not on video. Very bad phone at the time,
but but yeah I do when I hear your adults
at tones and to do my research. As you move
up then again they towards the mess, the main officers mess,
but up the top corner of the barracks. I think
that might have been a priest's house as well. But
now it didn't have and it's an exaggeration to say
a moat around it, but it did have a kind
of a brain right.
Speaker 5: The way around that that was the quarter Master General's house.
That's where the tunnel that goes to group of barracks.
That's where it's up the collapsing in around there. That's
where they collapsed. Before you get into that corner. If
you back up a small bit, you'll have the old
school house. Yes, on the left hand side the church
was the old schoolhouse. Just beside that. What we'll have
to find them was an execution one. All the bullet
holes are all still Martin Martini Henry's.
Speaker 3: This was an old rifle.
Speaker 5: Yes, Now you'll see this being used if you've ever
seen the film Zulu. Yeah, of course, Michael came okay,
and you'll see them for And the one thing that
you notice was that a plume of smoke came out.
Speaker 6: You see that.
Speaker 3: Brilliant.
Speaker 5: Now they got rid of them and they got three
of trees in and that's what they.
Speaker 6: Used back then. And what happened was that you took
the bullets.
Speaker 5: And when we looked at the bulls, Martini Henry and
the only people who had the Martini Henry with the
black and hands.
Speaker 3: Really they were the bones. But surely they were an
older weapon.
Speaker 5: Why would they because they had no weapons to give
them when they.
Speaker 1: Would you imagine, these are the guys that want to
do the business and give them the best like the assets,
give them the best weapons.
Speaker 5: They only got uniforms, did nothing for them, so they
gave them all weapons that were there.
Speaker 6: Martine.
Speaker 1: Have you heard any happening in that house, in that
house that's at the corner one that Sarsfield.
Speaker 5: Yes, we had a person here only doing a tour,
gone back a month ago.
Speaker 6: Yes, And I was bringing them in.
Speaker 5: They said, oh my god, the memories in here, like
really really vivid memories of strange things kind of you
know what.
Speaker 3: We're going to tell you this. No, right, I've got
one to add for you here.
Speaker 1: I did. I presented a TV program. It's now long
defunct Channel City Channel Television, and it was to do
with the environment and all that. I got to know
this guy. I was interviewing him, like I am you.
We got talking about our childhood and I said I
was an army. Brady said so was I. Where were
you and I said brow He said so was I.
I was up in that house in the course. I said,
that's Quinnan's old house or something, who featured in the
film Jaded Ville, by the way, And he said.
Speaker 7: To me it was as haunt as as really, he said,
Yet it was a room there used to go freezing cold,
and he was a bit of a meal because he said,
you know, it bothered me, he said, And as an
older guy, I rang one day. I rang a medium
and the medium was actually based in the UK, and
the medium picked up he was ringing from the house.
He or she said, there's a there's activity there, all right,
but it's not it's not malevolent, it's not menacing or anything.
Speaker 3: It's to do with horses. It's an ostler. I think
it was some good. He's mischievous, but he's harmless.
Speaker 1: No, I was looking at the map for nineteen oh
three of the barracks, right, I'd look at that house.
Sarsfield has what's at the back of it stables. Oh yeah,
by the way, the gymnasium that you trained him. That's
some building. I don't think many Dublin Dubliners are aware
of what a fine building that is.
Speaker 5: It's possibly the best equipped gym around. It's just amazing. Well,
it's what the soldiers need.
Speaker 3: It might get Krude the boxer train there.
Speaker 5: When we were all part of the gym team back then,
Michael would have been among the star players.
Speaker 3: It's a fabulous.
Speaker 5: Really, And then we had the other boxes there like
Phil Subcluff, Phil Subpliffe on two Olympics for or Phil
was probably one of the best boxers that ever came out.
Speaker 3: For them Barracks.
Speaker 1: It's also mentioned in Unises in passing in the context
of the boxing match.
Speaker 5: Yeah, now, what we had was that gym goes back
to the British days when it used to be a gym.
But nineteen sixteen they opened up as a prisoner and
they used the cells inside, they used them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So if they picked up anybody down minds, they bring
them up, They put them into the gym.
Speaker 6: They keep them there.
Speaker 5: For a night or two, and if anybody downtown had
seen somebody doing doing something, they bring them up here
and they put them in the lion and they'd spot
they'd spot them out to see who done I did.
Speaker 1: They have a bit of fun as well, in the
nastiest possible way, by shooting bullets.
Speaker 3: Around them, making them stand against the wall.
Speaker 5: You showed me the chicken dances, the chicken dance, Chicken dance,
give us information, always shoot you, yeah, and then they
shoot all around them. The bullet marks are still in
the wall.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 6: Of course hang ons would be more, you know, a
layer around.
Speaker 5: And that's how the bulleholds are all still there. Yeah,
it's hardly been. A tree or three would have went
straight through the wall.
Speaker 1: And within literally feet of that there are the old
shooting ranges.
Speaker 3: Are they in brown Stiller? There they were? They were
kind of gone on I.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, no one put you down there all right. Yeah,
well we used to good all to to all too too.
But back then you could. You could make the f
M rifles, you could take the.
Speaker 3: Modified and put them in to use them.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Perfect, because I used to go down there and you're not.
Speaker 1: I was intrigued as the amount of graffiti and it
will be dating from the Second World War and the
fifties and all the service men that have gone through there,
so is that there.
Speaker 5: Will be a training walls. So we used to use
them walls every morning. Yeah, you'd be thrown over the walls,
ten walls and they were all seven eight foot hard
and you'd be made get over them, you know, So
that that was your training there.
Speaker 3: You kind of NCO's messics. It's still knocking around in
that still.
Speaker 6: Exact same down the corner.
Speaker 5: You used to have the sargest message across the world
but that went into the military archives took all over,
so now they have a lot of their paperworking there,
and then they'd have the bomb disposal una and then
you'd have right down to where Skefton was executed and
the Michael Collins help.
Speaker 1: So you discovered you did a bit of detective work
yourself for years. Right behind this guard room there was
a little ornate garden and I was a child and
I used to go down and pond little pond that's right,
the little god that's going back, the little pond of
and it was it was flowers. Or there was a
plaque on the wall where the three guys had been, but.
Speaker 3: That that's not where they were shot.
Speaker 5: Well or was see I'll tell you what happened. They
were when they were shot. They said, he said, bring
them out to the yard behind the guardroom. We're going
to execute them.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 5: When I went into looking at the ladies that were
at the gate was Hannashy Skeverton and mister Dixon and
mcintoy was their family. They were ladies who are at
the gates here. Now when I went more into it
just makes sense to say that they were shot in
the yard, that belonged to.
Speaker 6: The guard room.
Speaker 5: Just didn't make sense because it's only literally ten yards
away from the gates. So but yet the ladies never
heard that the men got executed to three days after
the battalion commander's office, and the battalion commander told them
to let them go. He gave him an order to
let the three men go. His office is attached to
the guardroom. It's attached here to the guardroom. He never
heard the shots. So the more I looked into it,
the more I said, this just doesn't sound right. No,
I went more into it than that. It went more
in depth, and then I said, do you know the
barraks was broken up back then into two different places.
There was the hospital area and there was the barricades.
And then it was more investigating that I realized that
there was a hospital yard. So when they said bring
them out to the yard behind the guard room, did
he mean the hospital yard to get them away from
the gate. And I believe that he brought them to
the hospital yard, which is about one hundred yards down.
But the hospital yard was kind of in a sea
a letter C shape, and he brought them behind that
annie noise or any volleys shot that went off when
they went off the building and the other direction. Also,
you had the range that we were just talking about,
that's just up the way, so it would have been
common his shots coming from there, so it wouldn't have
been unheard of. Just here, something in the distance, that
would be common. But to hear something come from the
yard here, absolutely no, no, because nobody heard it. So
I went up had a look. Not only did we
find where they took the bricks out of the wall
to try the disguise where he'd done. Because the bullets
went through the bricks, went through the men and through
the bricks, destroyed the bricks, so we found that the
bricks were freshly put in. Also, we found a hole
in the brick and we went in investigated with X
ray machines from the bomb disposal. We found as a
round sill in the world.
Speaker 3: It's still there, still there.
Speaker 5: We pull it back, we took it out, we sent
it off. It's a mouse around and what gunned the pistol.
Speaker 6: But he was involved in it as well.
Speaker 5: So I always wondered why did they bring two men
out to shoot three men? And it was only then
that I realized. But the bullet went.
Speaker 6: Through a tree.
Speaker 5: See what they said was bring them down to have
a cigarette. And this when they went down, they stood
under the tree. There's no tree going to ever be
in the guard room. This is what made me made
me think. But so when they went down, the litt
up a cigarette and as soon as they did, they
cocked the weapons and they fured on the men. All
the evidence is still there. So we got the bullet out,
we had the look, we put it back in the wall.
The shallow grave that is still there. So what we've
done is that we cleaned up the whole area. The
bodies were exhumed by the officers that were hearing the
barracks while the carcase was going on, and they want
to give them back to the families because the officers
didn't want to people outside to think that they were murderers.
So they took the bodies up. They're going to touch
the families, and they even paid money.
Speaker 6: For them to be buried.
Speaker 5: Two were buried than glass never at one's buried in Deansgrange.
Then they covered up the area. It's like everything else.
You get a dog burrs a bone, he digs it up,
takes the bone out, a week later when you put
the door back. Over time with rain, it'll sink. You'll
often get that devil like a bowels exactly what we
found up there to where the lads were about it,
and that that's how we knew where they were about it.
The tree is right beside the weady history and the
bricks are out of the wall, and yet the bullets still.
Speaker 6: In the wall.
Speaker 3: To you, because I mean you rewrote history.
Speaker 5: Well, it's as I said, it's a passionate walk and
you know you've just triggered something else off We were
talking about Sarsfield House, but just beyond that, it's.
Speaker 1: Occurred to me that's some time, not that long ago,
in contemporary times.
Speaker 3: There was a bunch of skeletons found that's right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, it was around the back round the.
Speaker 3: Back date them. Maybe it's a battle of red.
Speaker 5: Mines or god knows, God knows going back that far
they came up because we started up a lot months there.
Speaker 6: There mused to be a lot of them.
Speaker 1: We had one yeah years ago at the Garrison church,
but the flats are.
Speaker 3: But anyway you're saying.
Speaker 5: Well, around the corner from that the round it is
where they were found. There was skeletons found there and
I think it happened before it happened at the back
of the gymnasium as well. There was a couple of
the found their skeletons film back there. But it could
be you could be talking way way back.
Speaker 3: Well known see the whole land.
Speaker 1: We've just toured the whole barracks virtually and I hope
you've enjoyed it. But nobody will have done it more
justice or have explained things more comprehensively. The blood of
the place runs through you know than your good self.
So no MacDonald, thank you so much. It's been an
absolute pleasure and a revelation to me as well, so much.
Speaker 3: I didn't know.
Speaker 6: It's a pleasure.
Speaker 5: And do you know what, I'm the lud you came in.
What I will say is that if you have any
listeners and are interested in it, you're can in touch
with the barracks and ask me in touch with Noel
and then all organos of tour and make sure that
they have a good day.
Speaker 1: Well, the inaugural scary era of podcast was built right
around here and it couldn't have gotten off to a
better start.
Speaker 3: Now, make sure that that happens. Thanks again, No, thanks you.
Speaker 1: If you've got an Irish paranormal experience you'd like to share,
get in touch Paranormal Ireland at ProtonMail dot com. I
have a feeling, my dear, you're going to enjoy it
is quite a lot. Earlier this week, the Squire David
McGlynn plunked himself into the Scary Era studio and told
us all about the northeast of Ireland. I could not
start a Scary Era episode without my bachelorhood friend. Welcome
the Squire McGlynn.
Speaker 3: Hello.
Speaker 1: Yes, he's a man of few words, but in his
time he was known as the catch of the county.
Why was that, David?
Speaker 8: I tended to catch a lot of things.
Speaker 1: They did, and we won't go into that here, but
most of.
Speaker 4: Them were treated. Some of them have recurred, none of
them permanently.
Speaker 1: When I met this guy, the Squire David McGlynn, I
arrived in this outfit. It was the closest thing to
being in Goodfellas, Tan.
Speaker 4: Colored BMW five twenty diesel. I think he was arriving
at the time. That was your company car?
Speaker 1: Was I couldn't tell. I just knew I'd been headhunted.
I knew I had jumped on the Titanic, and I
bid my time, but I sure as hell wasn't. I
wasn't gonna go down with it. There I was in
the corridors one and this bespectacled you remember the red
Spectacles very eighties, actually it was early nineties, but you
did spectacles. He had the suit probably Hugo Boss walking along. You,
by the way, were the first person talk to me
about laptop computers, and I subsequently made quite a nice
living at a laptop computers.
Speaker 4: Was actually called a compatible loggable at the time. It
was like a small suitcase but very heavy. Came out
of the IBM PS one, which was the very first
personal computer PC in any office in the world.
Speaker 1: I don't doubt scintilla of that. But we're here to
talk about the northeast of Ireland, which is imbued, it's steeped,
it's immersed in history, Am I correct.
Speaker 4: It's actually the place where it's believed that Saint Patrick
arrived in around the sixth century, fifth century, but way
before that, the Irish as a race arrived through the
Iberian Peninsula. So basically the Basque region of northern Spain.
We all basically come from there, and the first people
to arrive were the Milesians.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a disease. Yeah, yeah, sorry, it.
Speaker 4: Does sound similar to Lesions, but it's not quite the
same thing. But the Mylesians were Middle East kind of area.
Speaker 1: But they were dark skinned with blue eyes, so I.
Speaker 4: Heard could have been I don't know. I don't know
about that. They but they arrived, and it's believed they arrived.
Simpatrick arrived at the point that was the first place
he arrived in and then traveled from there throughout Ireland.
Mylesians arrived in the same place to the point, which
is northeast, which is what exactly the area we're talking about.
Their king was called Amagin, and he's believed to be
buried underneath mill Mount. Mill Mount is in Drahada. So Amagin,
who is a famous I believe poet, was the king
of the Mylegians, the first people to arrive in Ireland.
Speaker 8: They arrived in the northeast.
Speaker 1: I want to talk of just about a few of
these spots in the northeast. Of course, probably the world
renowned New Grange be the place to start. It's a
neolithic I'm told tomb. It's three two hundred years old,
David at least, yes, which makes it older sorry English people.
Older than Stonehenge. It's older than the Pyramids.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's older than both Stulling place. What can I
say about New Grange?
Speaker 1: Talk to me about the salstice? What happens.
Speaker 4: Saltice happens around the twenty first twenty second of December.
Speaker 8: Every year, and it's the end.
Speaker 4: Of the winter cycle of the sun. And basically this
place has been built in such a way that at
a certain time on the morning of twenty first or
twenty second of December, the sun comes through a slit
in a piece of stone which is above the doorway
to New Grange. New Grange is a tomb, so there
is a passageway into the main chamber of the tomb.
There's a slit in the stone above the doorway, and
light comes in from the rising sun through that slit
in the stone and illuminates the entrance the whole chamber.
It eventually reaches the back of the which is the
walkway up to the chamber itself, and then illuminates the
whole chamber. And this happens just once a year at
this particular time of the solstice. The brains or intelligence
needed at that time to be able to construct something
that would achieve that is just phenomena. It's phenomenal. How
did they think it up? They obviously spent a long
long time watching the sun, everything about the seasons.
Speaker 1: Well, the first time I heard about it was do
you recall a show called Arthur C. Clock's Mysterious World
that aired. I heard him say, this is older than
the pyramids. Can be very cloudy. A lot of people
are disappointed.
Speaker 4: Watching the northern lights and asteroids in the far off
night sky, complete waste of time. If it's cloudy, and
if it's cloudy at all, you won't see it.
Speaker 8: It doesn't happen.
Speaker 4: So you have to have completely clear skies for the
sun to be able to shine.
Speaker 1: And there's a waiting list on this and people are
picked every year.
Speaker 8: There's a lottery.
Speaker 4: You can put your name on a waiting list, and
there's a lottery every year and you can get to
go inside. I put my name down on that list
probably about fifteen twenty years ago and have never heard
a word since. That's how difficult it is. So it's
very much a lottery.
Speaker 1: Northeast it's it's a bloody place. And David one of
his pier tears. Here's a fancy word. What's that mean, David,
I don't even know myself on the ground, all right,
Well I did know, right, freckin' egghead. So he had
a gate lodge, right the colonel was there was old
British army influence and David, as a young bachelor, decided
that major.
Speaker 8: Actually was he a major?
Speaker 1: Sure that's less than a colonel. As you know, he.
Speaker 8: Always corrected everybody that he was a major.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about this place. It was
a gate lodge of a big house. Was at a farmhouse?
What was it? What was the major involved in? He
was very brave by the way to be a British
Army major and living up that Negadi woods or foolish.
Speaker 4: What was actually very funny about him, and I don't
remember his name, but what was very funny about him
was that he was very eccentric, very British at West
Briti as he would be called in Ireland, and a
West Britain would be somebody who the Irish would consider English,
or who have somebody who has an affinity to England.
But the major was a retired British Army major and
when he left, his responsibility in Ireland was.
Speaker 8: To recruit for the army and that was actually his job.
Speaker 4: Well that's what he always good luck with that, that's
what he always told us.
Speaker 8: And he drove around in a battlet ol.
Speaker 1: He drove around in an armored car.
Speaker 4: Say, drove around in a battered old red BMW three
series and it was an eighties three series Beam with
a Maltese cross.
Speaker 1: So we could give a mout to snout resuscitation if
any of the animals keeled over.
Speaker 8: It was more to do with colonialism owning Malta.
Speaker 3: God.
Speaker 1: Well, I remember this. Sorry, I need to bring it
back to the Gate Lodge. So you inhabited that as
a as a kind of a bachelor pad. We would
nurse hangovers there and you would hold little kind of
mini like microcos, make baronial meals for the invited. That's
which I was one, and I was asked by you,
did I want what's that cheese? Sare is sware swarre?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Baronial is a bit.
Speaker 8: Too small to be baronic? Is this such a word?
Speaker 1: Folks? Sorry we are We will get back to the paranormal.
We were having some kind of of spaghetti and you
said to me, would you like some parmesan cheese with that?
And I said yes, please, David, and you told me
to f off that you didn't have any. So that's
what you were dealing with. But let's set the scene.
This place, if I remember correctly, was set on. Was
it the battleground or a site of the Battle of
the Boyne.
Speaker 8: No, I'm shaking my head.
Speaker 4: No, the battle site of the Boyne is just beside
the Boyne River, so it's a couple of miles away
from there.
Speaker 1: So what was that sixteen ninety something? Was it sixteen
ninety or sixteen ninety Explain to the people what the
Battle of the Boinne was? Just roughly a thumbnail sketch.
Prince William or King William was of Orange.
Speaker 8: King William of Orange was drafted in.
Speaker 4: This is very, very roughly, so the best thing to
do is research this if you want accurate. King William
of Orange, who was Dutch, was drafted in by the
royal family of the UK to take over the crown
of England. And it was around the time of James
the First. James the First was a Catholic. William of
Orange was a Protestant, and as with most of Irish history,
it's all to do with religion. So basically, William of
Orange arrived here to have a battle against James the First,
and James the First at the time was the king
of the United Kingdom and Ireland, or at the time
it was Great Britain and Ireland, so he had a
lot of his troops were Irish Catholics against.
Speaker 8: Their own people. It was very confused, yes, but it happened.
Speaker 4: Basically, it was the last major battle of its type
on Irish soil that I can remember, and William of
Orange won the battle. James the First fled the battlefield
in disarray, and there's a story that he was on
his way to Dublin. He stopped at a hostelry and
it was said to him or he was asked why
he was where he was and he said, oh, everybody
ran away from the battlefield.
Speaker 8: Everybody betrayed me. And the person who.
Speaker 4: Asked him the question said, well, that's that's unusual because
you're the first to arrive, which obviously.
Speaker 1: Yes, he ran before.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, sure, well that's true, and I don't know
it's one of the stories out of it.
Speaker 8: So sixteen ninety still a major.
Speaker 1: Of course ramifications to this day. Luckily we seem to
be over the worst of it. There's there's a pretty
it's always just below the surface. But Deytonte has ruled
supreme since nineteen ninety eight or so, and let's hope
it stays that way.
Speaker 8: Yeah, we don't seem to have any problems.
Speaker 4: Really, there's still an underbelly you'll always get that doesn't
tend to rear its ugly head.
Speaker 8: And we're in relative peace these days.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to stick with the blood
end of things. You're a drah De man, right. It
was sacked by our friend who's the baddie that did
all the killing and Oliver cro Oliver Cromwell, wharts and all.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he was.
Speaker 4: He was in opposition to the crown in the UK
at the time. Anti royalist Charles the First was on
the throne at the time. Cromwell got together what was
called the New Model Army and basically set off against
the Crown. Part of his insurrection involved trying to overtake
parts of Ireland, one of which was Drahda. There are
other battles as well, but Drahoda was particularly gruesome and
bloody one.
Speaker 1: The sacking of Drahada that was men, women and children, really,
wasn't it. It was just horrendous.
Speaker 4: There are various reports about what happened there. There are
reports of over two and a half thousand men, women
and children being slaughtered by Cromwell's troops. There are differing
opinions on that. I personally know an historian who's written
a few books on the subject, and he brought up
a very well I find interesting point, and he said,
if two and a half to three thousand people were
actually slaughtered, where are the skeletons. There are no skeletons.
Nobodies have been found in that kind of number, No
mass graves have been found. With all of the archaeological
digging and stuff that has gone on in the area
of which there's play, there's no actual proof, but that
doesn't serve the narrative of people who want to paint
Cromwell as an absolute evil monster, evil monster, which no
doubt he was to a certain extent, But I think
there's more to it than that. There seems to be
it looks like he got a very bad rap. He
was very, very heavily supported at the time. Everybody thought
he was great, and everybody turned on him. And history
is written by the victors, and he wasn't a victor
for very long. And the ones that came after are
the ones that wrote his history.
Speaker 1: He did something, I mean, he really over through the monarchy,
and I mean as far as you can get them,
which was behead the king.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you? And you can obviously say no,
And it's a quick but just when we talk paranormal
and ghosts and stuff like that, anything ever happened to
David McGlynn.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a couple of things over the years. But I've learned,
well I don't. I suppose it's not learned. I've just
become accustomed to it. And I think it's kind of
it's maybe it's it's another sense or something. But often
when you go into places, you will get a feeling
for the place, and you'll get a feeling of whether
or not it's comfortable for you. And whatever cause is that,
who knows what causes that. But we have an intuition,
We have an inbuilt intuition. I can't describe what it
is or where it comes from or the physics of
it or the chemistry of it. But it's there, and
anybody will will tell you to stick with your intuition.
If you think something doesn't feel right, then don't hang around.
I've had that feeling quite a few times over the years.
I've had there's a few different stories that There was
one which actually happened in Drahad. A friend of mine
and myself we're walking home one night from the pub,
and I have to add we hadn't imbued bites.
Speaker 8: We had two drinks.
Speaker 4: We were both nineteen years old at the time, and
we passed a place called Tommy Hanrattis Tommy Handerties is
a pub that had been there for at least a
couple of hundred years. And as we were walking past
this place, it was about half past twelve at night,
an old guy in a long woolen coat, long black
woolen coat, wearing what I later found out was a
Homburg hat, which is a type of troll bey but
very specific to the turn of the century Edwardian era.
It's very very specific type of hat. And the reason
I know that now is because I was trying to
describe him to so many people. But I couldn't describe
the hat. Just as we were turning the corner, this
figure came around the corner said good evening, lifted his
Homburg hat, and that was it, basically, and I said
to him good night. My friend, who had carried on
a couple of steps further, turned around and said to
me who you're talking to? And I said, the old guy.
Did you not see him? The old guy who just
came around the corner. And he said, nobody's just come
around the corner. I didn't think an awful lot of
it until the next day. I had to go to
Tommy Handrotty's Pub and I went in there ostensibly for
a pint, but while I was in there, I asked, actually,
the guy's name behind the bar is Tommy Handroton. He's
related to his grandfather opened the pub originally. And I
said to him, was your dad around or was your
granddad around? And he said, my grandfather's been dead for years.
And I said, well, we were walking past last night
and an alfala in a long black coat wearing a
black hat said good night to us out of nowhere
and he said, that's my grandfather. In Ireland, it would
be ah, yeah, that happens all the time. That's that's
you know, that's common occurrence. We discussed briefly what the
guy looked like. A yeah, it happens all the time
in the same thing. We get that all the time.
And he was very offhand about the whole thing, to
be totally oun That was one story. There were a
couple of others. I'm sure I saw my grandmother once.
I'd never seen my grandmother. She died before I was born,
but I was in growing up in a house in Birmingham,
and she appeared in the ceiling above my bed, just
looking at me. As far as I I just saw
an old woman looking at me from the ceiling. It
was absolutely Gary's not the word. But the next morning
I asked my mother. I said to my mother, there
was an old lady looking at me. I would have
been about ten or eleven at the time, and my
mother just asked me what did she look like? And
I told her and she said that was your granny. Now,
my mother may have just said that to placate me
and to calm me down and lay the whole thing,
lay it down, but she said I had described my grandmother.
Whether or not it was her. I don't know, but yeah,
a few things like that have happened over the years.
I tend to kind of believe them. Don't believe them,
it's just something that happens.
Speaker 1: Well, David, it's been lovely reacquainting myself with you. I
think I'll probably use a third of what we have
recorded here. I joke, of course, I can chop it
up anyway I want. And oh, that Scary Era, I
can shove it up anyway. Could you do Alia Lieson alone?
Would you do a Liam?
Speaker 6: Can you do it?
Speaker 1: Because David's very good at unprshing something else.
Speaker 8: I will find you.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you, I'll know your name. We'll be coming off,
so we'll send the boys around to nail your knees
to the door. Thanks very much, David. That was brilliant. Bye.
What an old smoothie the Squire is. I hope you
enjoyed today's inaugural Scary Era show. Thanks to the good
people at Paranormal UK for putting up with me for
the last hour. They're going to retire to their bood
war to decide whether it's worth doing another one. But
if you've been impressed and you'd like to get involved
at all. The old strap me to a pig and
roll me in the mud top of the morning, in
the bottom of the evening Shenanigan's malarkey. We'd love to
hear from you. Email Paranormal Ireland at ProtonMail dot com.
Tell us your ghostly Ivory story, now, won't you? You
won't see what I'll be giving you for Christmas. I'll go,
so mind yourself and don't get your leg cut in
the door of your bicycle from a south Mark manning.
Take care because I care.