Captive Banshee - a Halloween Story

This year the pixies brought me a tale of a Banshee as my Celtic Halloween story. At least, I think it was a pixie. It is sometimes difficult to keep the various Fay folk of the Emerald Isle in the proper category.

In any case this is the story of a captive Banshee and how she is finally freed. As with all my Celtic stories, some of this is historical, some is Irish myth, and some is literary license. I leave it to you to determine which is which.

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WARNING! This warning is probably not needed for this story, but my other stories are usually much stronger. If you are not familiar with my writings and look for other stories, please read the introductory notes so you have an idea of the type of content involved.

All of my writing is intended for adults over the age of 18 ONLY. Stories may contain strong or even extreme sexual content. All people and events depicted are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Actions, situations, and responses are fictional ONLY and should not be attempted in real life.

If you are under the age or 18 or do not understand the difference between fantasy and reality or if you reside in any state, province, nation, or tribal territory that prohibits the reading of acts depicted in these stories, please stop reading immediately and move to somewhere that exists in the twenty-first century.

Archiving and reposting of this story is permitted, but only if acknowledgment of copyright and statement of limitation of use is included with the article. This story is copyright (c) 2016 by The Technician.

Individual readers may archive and/or print single copies of this story for personal, non-commercial use. Production of multiple copies of this story on paper, disk, or other fixed format is expressly forbidden.

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I normally ignore emails sent to me by people I don't know-- especially ones with attachments-- but this particular message piqued my curiosity. That doesn't mean that I didn't do a special virus scan on it before opening it. According to my anti-virus program, the email itself scanned clean and the attachment appeared to be a standard pdf file with no links, so I opened the main email to see what ParaIrish101 had to say.

ParaIrish101 was actually Marie O'Callahan. That was a name I recognized-- especially since her signature section included her picture and the name of her television program. She was the host of one of those cable paranormal investigation programs that you watch at one am when nothing else is on.

The subject line of the email had said, "A Celtic Halloween Mystery." The text said simply, "From the Celtic stories you've posted, I think you would be interested in this. If so, give me a call." It then gave two cell phone numbers. One was labeled, "Official Business." The other was labeled, "Personal."

I called the one which said, "Personal." A soft feminine voice answered and I said, "Did you just send me a file?"

She stammered a moment and then answered, "Yes."

"Call you back after I've read it," I said as I broke the connection.

Yes, I act paranoid. But you aren't truly paranoid if there are people out to get you. I've upset enough people in the electronic world with my stories that I have to be suspicious.

Ten minutes later I called her back. The file was a scan of a newspaper article. The headline was, "A Connecticut Banshee." The story was about a Banshee which supposedly haunts an Irish pub in a small community just outside of The Devil's Den Nature Preserve in Connecticut.

According to the article, the pub, which was called The Captive Banshee, had been established in the early 1800s. For over 200 years, local residents reported sightings of the Banshee, especially near Halloween. Her keening wail, which could regularly be heard splitting the night, was assumed to be a portent of death for the person who heard it.

When Marie answered this time, I asked, "Why me?"

She laughed and answered, "Because you are a man of few words who gets right to the point." I heard her moving something around on a desk or whatever. "And," she continued, "you have an understanding of Celtic myth and folklore."

"There are a lot of experts out there," I replied. "Many of them are better than me."

"But none can write as well as you." she said, starting to sound like a saleswoman making a pitch.

"And you need the publicity my stories would generate to leverage a jump to a major network with your show," I answered.

After a long pause, she said flatly, "Yes." Her voice then switched to desperate. "But that doesn't mean this isn't something that you would really like to do. ... Something I need you to do."

"Tell me what is so special about this Banshee for you," I said. "Stay with the truth or I hang up and you can get a different expert."

"I think this one is real," she answered shakily. Her voice had that tension that comes from revealing a truth to someone you aren't sure of.

"I think there is a Banshee... or something... held captive at that pub." She said firmly and then paused... for a long time. Finally she said, "And this isn't for my show. There will be no cameras or crew."

She paused again and I waited her out. Finally she said, "It's personal. Whatever it is, I have to free it... It has to be me... I'm the one who has to do it... because I'm the only one who can free it."

That last came out almost like a question, as if she was afraid to say it, or thought that I wouldn't believe it.

"What makes you think that?" I asked. I was now genuinely interested.

Perhaps my interest showed in my voice because her answer sounded much more relaxed. "For two reasons," she said calmly. "One, I am a direct descendent of Shane O'Callahan who built the pub in 1809." I could hear her clear her throat. "And two," she continued with a bit more hesitancy, "the Banshee comes to me in my dreams and begs for my help."

"Ooooh!" she blurted out in a deep, almost painful growl. "Now you probably think I'm weird or crazy or both."

I laughed. "I've heard a lot weirder," I said while still laughing, "from people who are a lot crazier than you." Without intending it, my voice snapped to serious as I continued, "and what they had to say to me turned out to be absolutely true."

"So you are willing to help?"

"Count me in," I replied. "What do you want to do and when?"

"WHEN is part of the reason I came to you rather than some other expert," she replied. "You are one of the few people who understand the difference between dark night and Halloween. Halloween is always October 31st, but true Celtic Dark Night is always the dark of the moon following the autumnal equinox. This year Dark Night is a full moon cycle before the Roman All Hallow's Eve."

Her voice became almost hard as she said very firmly, "Whatever this spirit is, it's Celtic, not Roman. And to free it, we have to be there on Dark Night, not four weeks later when the rest of the media will be there for Halloween."

While she was speaking, I was quickly consulting a moon phase calendar. "So," I said, "we need to be at the inn the weekend of October first if we are going to meet this Banshee or spirit or whatever she is."

"I've already made reservations for two rooms from Friday, September thirty through Sunday, October second," she answered. "Do you want to meet me there or should we meet somewhere else first?"

"I'll meet you there," I answered. "I assume one room is in your name and the other is in mine."

"Good assumption," she replied, "I'll see you Friday night."

***

I should have gotten better directions to the inn. My GPS took me hell and gone down the wrong road. I finally got back to the highway and stopped at a gas station and asked the attendant for directions to The Captive Banshee inn.

"Never heard of it," was his quick reply.

"Shit!" I said loudly and then calmed myself. "Is there a haunted Irish inn or pub in the area?" I asked.

"Oh, yes!" he responded enthusiastically. "The Happy Irishman is just up the road. They rent rooms too." He paused as if thinking deeply, "But the she devil isn't supposed to show up until Halloween. That's when all the news people are going to be here."

"Good for them," I said as I turned to leave. On the way back out to my car, I sighed and said softly, "If this is actually real, they're going to be a month late."

***

Several miles down the road I arrived at a colonial style building set back just a little ways from what had once been the main road through the area. Evidently they built the new road right alongside the old one, so the old highway formed part of the parking lot for The Happy Irishman.

As I got out of my car, I looked up at the sign which hung out over the door. It was done in a typical colonial style with green, old-English lettering on a white background. Beneath the words, "The Happy Irishman Pub and Inn," there was a caricature of an old Irishman, or perhaps it was supposed to be a Leprechaun. He was holding a full stein of beer and had a silly grin on his face. Somehow he looked familiar to me. Maybe I had seen a similar image in an ad somewhere, but I couldn't imagine an advertising agency using an image that looked that fakey.

"Very authentic," I muttered as I stepped through the front door into a very small entry area. Marie was already checked in and was waiting for me in the public house portion of the inn. I quickly checked in and took my bags to my room. It was basically a bed and breakfast type of place.

My room on the second floor was a very small, but serviceable bedroom. Since the building was from the 1800's, there were no closets and the shower was down the hall, but somewhere along the line, someone had added a very small bathroom in the corner that I evidently had to share with my neighbor. There was a small sign on the door which said, "Remember to keep this door closed and locked when not in use."

I left my bags unpacked in my room and went back down to sit with Miss O'Callahan. She had gotten us a booth. Menus were already on the table as well as a tankard of dark ale. It was on my side of the booth. She was sipping what looked like a standard pale American lager.

"I see you've done your homework," I said as I picked up the tankard.

"This may be my only shot at this," she replied. "I did my research."

"And your research brought you to me," I said.

"Actually," she said firmly, "my research brought you to this inn." She shoved a menu across the table to me and said, "The owner has agreed to meet with us later after we eat. They have everything from Black Pudding to Cottage Pie. He recommends the corned beef if you want something Irish. Otherwise they have a full range of steaks."

I wasn't sure that ordering a steak in an Irish pub wouldn't put me on the bad side of whatever spirit or sprite was trapped there, but I also couldn't see eating sausage made with pigs' blood or a mixture of mashed potatoes and beef stew, so I opted for the corned beef sandwich. It was surprisingly good and was served with a side of English-style chips.

As we ate, I attempted to make small talk, but mostly I watched Marie. I knew that she was in her mid to late twenties, but she looked much younger. There was something about her that seemed so "innocent" but I couldn't quite say what it was.

She had blue eyes that could come only from Ireland. They didn't have the cold, steely grayness that Nordic or German blue eyes often have. Instead they were bright, flower-in-the-spring blue. And when she talked she had this way of opening them so that the whites of the eyes showed all around the bright blue iris.

Her skin had that almost ivory paleness that you find in parts of Ireland. Normally that skin tone is accompanied by dark black hair, but hers was a subdued light brown with a heavy hint of orange when the light struck it from behind her. It was no surprise that she was successful on television.

It was difficult to assess her body while she was sitting in the booth, but if the fit and shapely legs which I glimpsed as I approached the booth were an accurate indication, her lily-white body was probably what many men dreamed of.

After we had exhausted the polite topics of weather, sports, and politics I suggested that we get down to business. "What exactly do you know about whatever this is that we are trying to free?" I asked.

"I know more about my great-great-great-whatever grandfather," she answered. Her voice turned harsh and the brightness went out of her eyes as she spoke. "He was an evil man," she said harshly. "And not just for what he did to this bean-sidhe." She pronounced the old name for a dweller of the fairy mound in a Gaelic fashion that sounded very much like a badly inebriated person trying to say, "banshee."

"So you think she is a fairy of some sort?" I asked, interrupting her.

"She's definitely fay," she said firmly, and then just as firmly, she said "and Shane O'Callahan was just as definitely evil." She set her sandwich down on her plate and looked across the table at me. There was fire in her eyes now, and it wasn't a pretty fire. It was anger.

"He made his money in Ireland acting as a foreman for the British landowners," she said very heatedly. "In 1803 he saw his chance for blood money and sold Thomas Russell's location to the conquerors. That's what he used to come to this country and build this inn."

She took a deep breath and continued, "When the inn wasn't prosperous enough for him," she practically snarled, "he advertised in the rural areas back home that he had guaranteed jobs for young men in the New World. He promised them that they could make enough to bring their families over in just a few months. But when the ships arrived in New York, those who had survived the passage as steerage were all but sold into slavery to the mines and the mills."

Tears welled up in her eyes as she finished softly. "Many were never heard from again." She paused and said slowly, "And he was evil enough to entrap a Fay and keep her captive forever."

I gave her a moment to compose herself and then asked a very needed question. "Are we sure that we are dealing with a captured spirit and not just old Shane hanging around and causing trouble?"

Her eyes fired once again and she spat out, "Shane O'Callahan is in hell! That is for sure. The last thing my great-whatever grandmother did was to see that her son and daughter would be taken care of and then she took that bastard to hell with her."

She smiled somewhat strangely. "There are still burn marks on the outside walls in back where the owner used to live. This isn't Shane. It's whatever unfortunate Fay he tricked or overpowered. He's gone, but whatever he did to hold her here, still has her bound."

"How can you be so sure about Shane?" I asked.

"She showed me," Marie answered flatly. "I already knew most of it from family stories, but she showed me everything."

"I have to ask," I said. "You study paranormal phenomena. You know that sometimes unexplained things are just projections from a troubled mind. How can you be sure that all of this isn't just your own projections of a family history that is very difficult to accept?"

She smiled at me. "I am twenty-seven years old," she answered. "And the Fay has been raising havoc here at the inn for two centuries."

At that point the pub owner interrupted us and Marie slid further into the booth to allow him to sit with her. "I'm Sean O'Brian," he said. "I understand ye want to talk to me about the banshee." His slight Irish brogue surprised me. He didn't look Irish. If I were to bet, I would have placed him much farther south, perhaps somewhere in the Mediterranean area.

"That is part of the plan," Marie answered. "But we are trying to do more than that."

"Can you get rid of it?" he asked, sounding very eager. "Can you make it go away and stay away?"

"Yes," she answered in a very measured tone, "we think we can free her."

"I have a question," I said, interrupting them. "If the name of this place is The Captive Banshee, why does the sign say The Happy Irishman?"

"Because she won't let me put that on the sign!" he said emphatically.

"Who?" Marie asked.

"The Banshee," he growled. "After I read that piece about the Connecticut Banshee, I got rid of my bar in Brooklyn and figured I could make a killing down here with the tourist trade. But when I put the old name up on the sign, she tore it down. I tried again, and she repainted it. You don't think I put that silly, grinning leprechaun up there do you?"

His Irish brogue was now completely gone. "The local historical society is threatening to sue my ass and fine me a couple thousand a month if I don't restore the inn back to its true name. I told them that the Banshee wouldn't let me put the sign back up and they sent some naturalist over to explain things to me."

He huffed heavily, "He told me there was no such thing as banshees and he was going to prove it to me. He put a big rat in a cage out on that little strip of grass right in front of the building. Then he set up a night scope video camera and told me to wait to see what took the rat."

He looked back and forth between Marie and me before continuing. "About an hour after it got dark, the cage started rattling. 'Now you will see that your Banshee is just a barn owl,' he said to me. But when we looked at the screen, all we could see was the cage being torn apart. Something tore the door off the cage and the rat ran across the lot."

He was starting to get a little excited as he spoke. "The guy said he would come back the next night with a stronger cage. ... He did. He drove stakes into the ground and chained everything in place. He told me it was just a really big owl."

He slapped his palm on the table between us. "She tore that cage apart like it was pipe cleaners. Then she flew over to the camera and looked right at me. 'Carlo,' she said, 'don't taunt me or certain people on the lower east side will find out that you didn't die in the fire that destroyed your bar.'

"Yeah," he said, "I ain't Irish. And I've got gumba hitmen who would be looking for me if they knew I was alive, but I'm more afraid of that Banshee than I am of anyone down in New York that wants me dead. I'll never forget that blue-white face and that white hair. That hag wasn't just looking at me through the camera. She came right out of the fucking television set and screamed in my face."

He slid out of the booth and stood up. "Do whatever you want," he said abruptly. "Just tell me in advance where you want your things sent when you don't come back."

As he started to walk away, he shouted back over his shoulder, "Oh, and the meal's on the house. It's the most I can do for someone who might free me of this damned spook. Besides, it might be your last meal."

Marie looked over at me with a wide smile. "Do you still think this Banshee might just be my hysterical projection?" she asked.

"Not at all," I answered. "Not at all." I took a sip of what was left of my ale and asked, "So what's the plan?"

The plan was simple. The next night Marie and I would go out into the small field behind the inn just before dark. We would wait there until midnight. When the Banshee showed up, Marie would find out what was needed to free her.

***

My mother often said, "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans." As I have lived out my life, many different occasions have proven that saying true. Tonight was one of them.

A little after midnight I was awakened by a soft knocking on the bathroom door. As I pulled myself out of bed, I heard Marie's voice. "We need to talk," she said. "I made a very severe miscalculation."