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Ghost Stories for St Johnston and Carrigans area

Stumpy's Brae

Stumpy's Brae is the steep brae between Craighadoes and Lifford.   

Stumpy was a pedlar man who was allegedly buried there according to a poem from 1844.  He had been murdered in a farmhouse nearby by an elderly couple who gave him shelter.  They killed him for his belongings.  They tried to put him in his pack after emptying it of the goods but he was too tall.  So they cut off his legs at the knee to bury him.  Legend says he was buried among the roots of a tree.  He came back for vengeance as a gruesome ghost that walked about on the stumps of his legs and tormented his killers to their dying day.  

The legend tells us that the ghost went over the bridge and there is bridge near the Brae. 

Mrs Cecil Frances Alexander the author of Once in Royal David's City and All Things Bright and Beautiful and There is a Green Hill Far Away preserved the legend for us in poetry form in`1844.

Ghost of Nion Ruadh

This Ghost is a female from the Bronze Age.  She was a princess.  She is thought to be buried near Croghan Hill.  Some people believe she died by drowning.  She appears at different locations and was known to have appeared on the Craighadoes road.  She often seems to be walking as if in a hurry but she never moves.  She wears a shawl.  

She may have been the apparition reported by a female member of the Dunleavy family of Binnion and two men who were going up the brae between Craighadoes and Maggies Tavern.  They saw a glowing woman with a shawl who kept her head down and who was all in white.  The two men were very disturbed by what they had seen but the lady was more mystified by it than upset.

 Another legend is that she is Carolina Wilson who was forbidden to see her lover and who drowned herself near where the apparition was seen in a wet marsh land.  Marsh means methane. Methane is a luminous gas and in a scary situation with a bit of imagination running awry it could easily be taken for a ghost.!

Mongavlin Castle

According to the Dublin Penny Journal in the 1830s, there was a servant lad who worked in the Castle in the eighteenth century.  There were a lot of ghost stories about the building.  The most famous of which was that Ingean Dubhs spectre garbed in white was prowling the Castle and the grounds.  He was very shaken by the stories he heard that he left his employment.  Later, indicating that he had been disturbed by things he thought he had seen, hanged himself.

Patrick Gormley

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