University of Maryland Legends Collection

University of Maryland Legends Collection

Banshees in Garrett County, Maryland

By Robert Glotfelty

October, 2004

Late one night, during a much needed trip home for the weekend, the topic of ghosts entered a conversation I was having with some of my family and friends. One person, claiming to know many true ghost stories, began a long chain of stories about the local area where we live in Garrett County, Maryland. She is a middle aged white woman, who has lived in a rural area for much of her life. Some of her stories sounded ridiculously absurd, but then there were some that seemed eerily possible. One of these stories concerned a type of ghost not often talked about, the banshee. The following is the story of a night in the mid 1920s, when the teller’s relatives were gathered at the house of their dying grandfather.

My grandmother and her sisters were visiting their ailing grandfather one night during the winter. Everyone was sitting inside of the living room, just waiting nervously, just waiting for anything positive to happen with their grandfather’s condition. Not much can be said when death seems imminent to someone who you love. So as they sat there in silence, as their grandfather was dying in the room adjacent to the living room, an eerie sound started coming from the outside. The sound wasn’t a shriek and wasn’t a scream, but was instead a constant almost moaning sound. Not sure if this sound was the wind or an animal they continued to sit there, but now they tried talking in order to drown out the noise from outdoors, which relieved some of the stress of the moment. Yet as time went by, the sound grew louder and louder, and then for no apparent reason, a shelf in the china cabinet in the dining room broke, causing all of the china to break.

Now very scared, my grandmother and her sisters began to run into the room where their grandfather was dying, but as they approached the door they were embraced by their parents bearing news that their grandfather had just passed away. After much escalating in the unnatural sounds from outside, they now noticed there was a silence in the room. My grandmother asked her grandmother what the noises were, and her grandmother said quite calmly, “You don’t have to worry about them. Those are just the banshees, but they are gone now.”

This story, although seemingly unrealistic, is chillingly frightening. At the same time that it shows fear of banshees, it also shows how some people just accept that these creatures exist. Society adopts beings such as banshees in order to explain strange occurrences that may happen around the time of someone’s death. People need to have an explanation for why things happen and banshees help this cause. By having a cause for certain occurrences there is a sense of safety and sometimes comfort. The banshees can either be seen as fearful figures coming to haunt families of the dying or as ghosts lamenting for the loss of a life. Yet the certain group of people who created them did so in order to provide explanations for events that occur around death. Now the phenomena of banshees has been adopted by many cultures, making them have a universal association with death.

A banshee is “a death omen spirit of Ireland that manifests to herald an approaching death, heard wailing or singing mournfully. Contrary to popular belief, banshees do not shriek” (Ghost Hunting Definitions). Tales of these beings, although Irish in origin, now appear in America and other cultures, and there is a plausible reason for this. As immigrants from Ireland began moving to the United States, they carried with them the stories of their culture. Through oral tradition these stories have now been circulated throughout America, and have now become part of a much larger group of people, making banshees prevalent in many different cultures’ folklore today. This story is a working model of how stories have been passed down from generation from generation. A creature that originated in Ireland is now well known throughout the world and even “visits” a larger group of people.

Yet in order for an element of folklore to be passed down for many generations, there is a certain quality that the story must hold. The teller of the story has to act as if he or she believes it. If the narrator does not believe the story, then it is probable that any listeners will not believe it either. When this story was told to me, it was told as a fact. There was no questioning what the noises were. They were banshees. There was no coincidence in the timing of the breaking of the china cabinet. Something supernatural caused it to break. The conviction of the storyteller greatly affects the believability of the story. In this case, the storyteller acted seriously and showed no disbelief in the story, making it all the more believable.

Even though the storyteller makes a person believe that supernatural cause the events in this story, the explanations of these events could be distorted due to fear. In the time of a death of a family member, other family members can become paranoid, and because of this, they become more perceptive of their surroundings or susceptible to hallucinations. They begin to notice even the small things. Banshees are known to sing in mourning for someone’s death, but are the sounds that they make really something supernatural? Or is it just a figment of the imagination? This “singing” could be just an everyday noise that has no meaning in everyday life, but when someone is about to die, when everything is eerily quiet, this sound could be heard differently. For instance, in the story, the teller’s grandmother and sisters did not know what a banshee was, and when they heard this noise coming from outside they acted in fear. The noise they heard was almost inaudible at first, but as time continued to elapse, their fear grew and so did the noise. The escalating in the noise could have just been part of the teller’s grandmother’s imagination because she was becoming more afraid. When an adult was questioned as to what the noise was, she was not afraid at all though. She knew that the eerie occurrences were caused by visitors only mourning an approaching death, and that these visitors should not be feared, for they left once the person they were mourning for died. When there is an explanation for something like the sounds heard in times of death, they become less frightening, yet when one does not know why they are hearing these noises, it can be quite alarming. With some logical intuition one could conclude that the invention of banshees could be coping mechanism for families that are under stress because of the ailing of a family member.

There is also another portion of this story that seems unrealistic as well. The teller implies that the breaking of the china cabinet coincided with the escalating of the wailing outside and the death occurring in the other room. This occurrence was probably just coincidental, but it does add another eerie element to the story. Can death or supernatural creatures cause physical objects to break? Probably not, but this element of the story makes it more mysterious and helps the teller express the fear people in the room were feeling. The china breaking provides this story with a transition for the children to go talk to their elders, and if it really did happen in the story it was most likely coincidental and not caused by a supernatural force. Yet it is still interesting to see how people associate death with calamitous events.

This story is also very entertaining to listen to, but this aspect of the story cannot be captured in writing. Samuel Clemens once said a pause is “that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words howsoever felicitous could accomplish it” (Mark Twain Quotations). By sighing or pausing before a tense part, the speaker makes it seem like the story is hard for them to tell at certain parts. Therefore the listener becomes tense in anticipation for what will happen next, and this causes the listener to believe the story even more. The storyteller was able to not only relate a story, but was also able to captivate the listener by intertwining strategic pauses and sighs along with the story, making it more believable.

Many stories originate in a localized area in order to explain some strange occurrence. In Ireland, the banshee was created to provide a sense of security to families who had a family member dying. Through oral tradition, stories of the banshee have passed through many families through many regions, and this creature is now a well-known figure in supernatural lore. Although the banshee is not supposed to be feared, the way stories are told about it and its connection with death cause it to be disturbingly mysterious. Do not fear though, for the banshees will leave and do no harm. But if you are in a situation where a family member is dying, listen, for the banshees may come to visit.

Works Cited

“Ghost Hunting Definitions.” Ghost Hunting Definitions. 2004. 16 Oct 2004.
http://ghost2ghost.org/definitions.htm.

Mark Twain Quotations. "Pause." 16 Oct. 2004. http://www.twainquotes.com/Pause.html.