October 26, 2007

The Phantom Stage Coach

Rate this encounter:[an error occurred while processing this directive] [Name Withheld Upon Request], North West Ireland, Summer 2004

It was a typical summer holiday day to me. I was down staying in my granmother's house with my first cousin. My granmother's house is very isolated in the countryside -- the only neighbors being the owners of the castle roughly half a mile away. The castle and the grounds around are called the planting. This area is rich in history due to clashes between Catholics and Protestants. There are seven oak trees planted merely 400 meters away from my Gran's house due to seven Irish freedom fighters who were shot dead by the black and tans in the early 1900s (English brigade). Also there are rooms in the castle which haven't been opened in over hundreds of years.

It was almost midnight and me and my cousin were sitting up watching TV. My granny and granda were in bed sleeping. The night before me and my cousin had a few beers. I asked him did we have any left from last night and he said he had two. We continued watching TV and I asked if we could drink the last two beers. Me being 15 (cousin 18) at the time, we always drank outside in the garden or walked down the road.

Now roughly 2 AM in the morning we walked out to the road. We made our way down the road and went into this field directly across from the planting (to a tree log we would always drink on). We finished our one beer each and crossed the road into the planting grounds. We walked up the field just beside the road on our way home. As we neared the top of the field, we were greeted by newly planted trees only 5 feet tall or so. The lights went on behind us up at the castle so we thought we would hurry along.

As we began to run through the trees (only about 20 meters away from my Gran's garden) I heard something breathing straight in front of me like hur hur… it sounded so evil. It shot straight past my right shoulder. If I had a been a little more to my right it would have ran straight into me (perish the thought). My cousin heard it too. We didn't look behind us to see what it was, it was pitch dark anyway. This field has never had any livestock in it so it definitely was no animal.

Immediately I thought it was a person just up to no good. I ran up to the house and reached for a lump of wood (youthful stupidity). We then went back down to the bottom of the garden and sat on a wall beside were that thing had ran past me and right beside the road.

We whispered quietly fearing to be heard. We spoke of who was that that ran past us. We thought it was somebody up trying to break into the house.

Suddenly we heard a noise coming from the bottom of the road (20 meters less elevation from where the house is and about 200 meters down the road) down beside where we had been ten minutes ago. It was a squeaking noise like a pram (pushchair) being moved back and forth. It became louder and sounded like a horse and cart. It grew fiercely louder into a full gallop coming up the road toward us. We made a dash for the house and I jumped in the bedroom window in front of my cousin. We were inside the house now and the noise now was deafening -- like storm force winds and an airplane at once with a full-on shuddering gallop. I begged my cousin to look out the window with me but he wouldn't. I wasn't going to look out on my own.

When it reached the house, the noise fell dead just as if it had never happened. It fell completely silent. By this stage we were shocked beyond belief. (We had a few stiff whiskeys belonging to my Granda) We wondered what had happened.

The following week there was an opening day in the planting. My cousin and I hadn't breathed a word to anyone incase they thought we were crazy. As we walked about the planting with our grandparents we came across a big rock which had a carving in it (it is rumored along this road that a horse and carriage is heard at night occasionally). We looked at one another in disbelief. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck and I got a strange chill all over.

We had often been told stories from my grandparents one being that their house is built on a grave yard -- possibly from famine times. People have seen ghosts in the house. Maybe the carriage was taking a body to the grave yard from years ago. Maybe not. What happened, though, was supernatural without a doubt. That night was calm and still until the horse and carriage scared us to death.