Spooky Abbeyleix tales get Halloween launch

A GHOST with a lantern who roams local roads and a castle haunted by a banshee are just some of the spooky tales in a new Laois book, which will be launched before Halloween.

‘Abbeyleix Folklore: Halloween & Winter Tales’ is the fourth collection of stories from his hometown by author and historian Noel Burke, who won an ‘Unsung Hero’ award at this year’s Lovely Laois Homecoming Festival.

Woven from local streets and fireside conversations, the collection of eerie stories and memories will be launched in Morrissey’s pub at 7pm on Friday 23 October. The launch will be led by Jack Nolan whose voice, humour and deep connection to Abbeyleix played a central role at all three previous book launches.

Together with photographer James G. Carroll, Noel published his third book at the end of last year, commemorating the 250th anniversary of the founding of Abbeyleix.

The duo’s latest collection contains Halloween tales that are rooted in real places and families, drawing on local folklore and traditions that have been passed down for generations.

“This is not just another book,” says Noel. “It’s Abbeyleix itself - its voices, its characters, its whispers on frosty nights - bound between two covers.” 

The book’s chilling tales include The Gortanaclea Banshee, who is said to haunt the eponymous castle near Shanahoe; ‘The Lantern Man of the old Ballinakill Road’ who leads travellers astray and ‘The Night the Black Coach came for Richard McCabe’, which will make readers look twice at every lonely road around Shanahoe, Blackhill Woods and Abbeyleix.

Giving a rich flavour of these supernatural tales in his account of 'The White Lady', Noel writes: ‘There are roads around Abbeyleix that locals avoid after dark - not out of superstition, but out of memory. The Blackhill Road is one of them.

‘Even today, it has no public lighting, as if the town itself refuses to illuminate what walks there. Long before electricity, long before the De Vesci estate was trimmed and tamed, Blackhill Woods was a place of uneasy silence.

‘Deep within these same woods stands the famously well known Blackhill House, a large, imposing residence that served travellers journeying the old Dublin to Clonmel route, which then continued on to Cork.

‘Many who stayed there spoke of one particular bedroom: the Purple Room it was called. It was here that a mysterious White Lady was said to appear at night, standing silently at the foot of the bed. Travellers en route to Cork claimed she watched them as they slept, vanishing only when they tried to speak or rise.

‘Her presence became part of the lore of Blackhill Woods, another whisper in a landscape already thick with uneasy stories.’ 

Copies of the book will be available for €10 at several retail outlets in Abbeyleix following the launch and will also be available on Amazon.