True Irish Ghost Stories

True Irish Ghost Stories is a book by St. John D. Seymour and Harry L. Neligan, first published in 1914. Compiled from first-hand accounts and local testimony gathered across the island, this classic collection visits haunted houses, lonely roads and ancestral homes to record banshees, poltergeists, apparitions and other uncanny happenings rooted in Irish folklore.

The editors present the material plainly — often in the original voice of the tellers — so the volume reads as an anthology of eyewitness testimony rather than fanciful retelling. You’ll find stories of household hauntings, death-warnings and legendary apparitions alongside notes on where the events were said to have occurred, making the book useful both as a spine-tingling read and as a source for those researching Irish supernatural lore.

Measured, curious and respectfully skeptical in tone, the work belongs to the turn-of-the-century effort to preserve oral tradition at a moment when modern life threatened local memory. It helped to popularise Irish ghost stories in print and remains a go-to source for anyone interested in haunted Ireland, banshee folklore, poltergeists and traditional supernatural accounts. For collectors and students of folklore alike, this volume is a tidy, old-fashioned compendium that still rewards close reading.