Irish Ghosts and Hauntings

What is it about Ireland's past that so haunts the imagination? More than one answer can be found in Michael Scott's powerful new series of twenty-nine tales, spanning the centuries with the ease of... a ghost. To start with, in a newly Christianised Ireland, monks do battle with a devilish monster that has killed a river. All the waters - rivers and loughs - in this collection conceal dangers that men and women would best avoid. The pagan spirits of the legendary Tuatha De Danann, peoples of ancient Erin, take on the forms of mermaids and knights on chargers. Ready to tempt Ireland's new conquerors, the humankind, supernatural forces hide under waves, in bogs, in the very land, waiting... Anyone with a sense of adventure, or who is just curious, is potential prey. A pregnant woman is drawn to a standing stone with terrifying results, A priest determined to conduct a vengeful exorcism finds his faith apocalyptically challenged. A Dutchman tries to build a house between two mounds inhabited by an army of spirits, lethally disturbed by his efforts... With his usual inventiveness, in each story Michael Scott juxtaposes the old and the new, the ancient and modern, and shows that in everyday situations the curses of Ireland's mythic past lie, imp-like, threatening destruction.