Haunting night left me open-minded

I’M easily spooked. For someone who would swear on any given day to being a rationalist, I find the irrational incredibly seductive. Especially around the subject of the spectral, things that go whoosh in the night and all matters of the unexplained.

For me it has little to do with Halloween, which has been reduced to a tacky festival of trick or treat Americana, replete with pound-shop luminous skeletons and talking skulls that glow in the dark.

But this time of year does prompt such notions and trigger lapsed memories. One, in particular, stands out.

When I was 12, the family rented a holiday cottage on Sherkin Island, in west Cork’s glorious Roaringwater Bay. It was summer, 1968.

Remote and basic, what it lacked in modern amenities it made up for in character and atmosphere. A bit too much of the latter perhaps.

It was odd, for instance, that the south-facing parlour that was generally bathed in warm sunshine was never less than bracingly chilled. But we shrugged it off.

Or the fact that the back door, bolted from the inside every night, seemed to unlock itself by morning. That was put down to carelessness on our part.

Then one night, when I was alone with my mother, a terrible argument broke out downstairs. There was shouting and we could hear crockery being smashed. Or thought we did.

Afterwards we summoned up the courage to cautiously venture down the creaky stairs. But all was still and peaceful. The crockery, displayed in an old dresser, remained undisturbed.

Perhaps she imagined the episode, but her fear was tangible and sickeningly contagious. In any case, the following morning she generously splashed the place with holy water and prayers were murmured. I’ve never had an experience like it since. Once is enough for any one lifetime.

Still, I’ve always kept an open mind. Perhaps that’s why I am very relaxed about the top room in our current home. We are the seventh family to own this house, built in 1904. We’re simply passing through. It is, by virtue of its longevity, a museum of memories.

It would over that long time have been a witness to everyday joys and disappointments and, more likely than not, births and deaths.

The top bedroom, bright and cheery, has always felt different. Nothing overt or malign, but something nonthreatening and passive lingers there all the same.

It’s not that the room is haunted in the way that cottage appeared to us back then. Not remotely. But it is, for whatever reason, a private space that seems intent on protecting memories either treasured or painful. It’s where we put guests, so you know…