This is my first reddit post and I really feel I have to post this as I simply can’t keep it in much longer.
For some context I live on the west coast of Ireland, known for its wild weather, raggedy hills and cliffs and folklore. Irelands a pretty scary place to be honest not in the way that’s it dangerous, but in that everyone is superstitious and nothing goes unnoticed. Ive always lived here and so has my family. Its a small Gaeltacht village which means that we only speak our native language Irish and its along the coast. Its fairly quiet, everyone knows everyone and nothing ever happens except when tourists come in the summer. There’s an old tale here that the grandmothers say that a murach which means mermaid calls people to the cliffs and frightens them and breaks them down so that they jump. My granny doesn’t talk about it much but suffice to say lots of people go missing here and the rescue services are a frequent visitor.
One day I was walking my favourite pathway, which goes through a beach and then up onto a cliff which has a wood along it and then it goes out onto a clearing where you can walk along an open cliff just a step away from plummeting several metres into the wild Atlantic Ocean. Its the not the safest in the world. I know the path and I would walk it in pitch black and be fine. No one really knows I come up here and that’s why I haven’t told anyone. My parents would be furious if they knew. There’s a well here along the path in the woods and when my dad was little he fell in. He was fine but a bit traumatised for life and since then he doesn’t mess with water. he won’t even take a bath only a shower. I was thinking about this as I passed the well and how lucky he was to be rescued. It was late and getting dark as I came out into the clearing. I saw a man standing a distance away in what looked like hiking gear. I didn’t think anything of it, I see tourists up here all the time.
Along the cliff walk there’s an old cottage where an old woman lives called Peggy O’Malley. You have to climb through the cliff to get to her back garden. There’s an easier way of course just by an old road but this is the way I’ve always come. She bakes me bread and tarts ands all sorts and we have the chats. She’s so like me. She always wanted to do more with her life and she wanted to study medicine but only got as far as a nurse as that was all the law would allow. Besides when she got married she had to give up working as was the law in Ireland until the 70’s. She’s an extremely logical person and she’s really not that old like maybe early 70’s and I don’t think she’s been sick ever.
She was in good form that day and everything was as usual when suddenly whilst I had a mouthful of rhubarb tart in my mouth she blurts out, you came here alone tonight I presume? I kind of laughed and said “well yea who do you think I’d be bringing here” sarcastically. She ignored me and just watched her dogs, three boarder collies. I watched them too and they seemed to be following something across the room with their eyes. She had about six cats and one of them seemed really on edge, like hairs standing up and starting to hiss and do that arched back thing. I felt at ease though to be honest, probably because of the dogs. Peggy turns to me and says someone followed you here, I felt them last time too. I was so confused and genuinely terrified at this statement. “I don’t understand who?”.
Peggy snapped her fingers for her dogs attention and says “its not a who”. She’s not religious at all or superstitious but she was turning so many things over and whispering something. I just kinda sat there dumbstruck, this was so different to her usual self and I didn’t know what to do. She whispered to me to text my parents that I was staying here and to crawl up in the bunk upstairs. I was honestly so scared at this point that I didn’t ask questions. I can’t remember much more than curling up in a bed far too small for me.
I woke the following morning with a headache and confusion. I suddenly remembered last night and rushed downstairs. Peggy had already made breakfast and we sat and ate in silence. I wasn’t sure how to bring it up. Finally she says, I’ll walk you home. This wasn’t unusual either, she was a hiker for years. We passed the cliffs and went into the woods. We Brought the dogs and all the while they were looking behind us to the right up into another path that follows the first. I finally found the courage to ask. Peggy looks at me and sighs and says, “have you ever heard of the murach that lives here”? I said yes but its just a fairy tale, right? Peggy looks at me and says “ yes well I thought that too of course until about your age.
Back then I was young I would walk through these woods much like you until one day I was followed home. I knew he was behind me the whole way home on this path but I didn’t know what to do. I just ran and when I got out to the beach and down the cliff, I looked back. And by god there he was. Standing there smiling at the top of the cliff just staring at me and waving”. I was shocked to be honest yet again and just blurted out “that’s horrible but I don’t understand what you’re getting at”. She looks at me and says I don’t want you to be next. I was really confused by this and im embarrassed to say I was so scared I started to panic cry. She said on the count of three I want you to run. “Three, Two… one”. I was screaming crying, hauling Peggy with me and I could hear it, I could hear something that wasn’t the dogs, that wasn’t us, that sounded like footsteps but I knew it wasn’t. All I knew was that it was behind me and I wasn’t looking back under any circumstances.
We finally made it to the beach when Peggy stopped me and in-between gasping for breaths she muttered “wave” and pointed at the cliffs. I looked over and I was in utter shock. There was a man who I recognised to be the supposed hiker I saw the night before on the cliffs only now I could see him more clearly. He wasn’t wearing hiking clothes, he was wearing a robe of some sort and I couldn’t see his lower half. He stood there smiling and waving, staring. Peggy waved and so I began to cry again as I held up my hand. We waved for what felt like hours until he began to beckon us. Peggy turned and took my hand to take my with her. I was bawling my eyes out. She walked me home where my parents were waiting, fairly surprised to the state I was in. Peggy spun me around out of my parents earshot and said “I’m leaving now, he doesn’t want me my doll, he wants you. You can’t come back, ever. You understand”. I just nodded and off she went.
A few months went by before I rang her. She simply said that she doesn’t know what it is but she thinks its an omen of death. She thinks its a murach but not in the way we understand mermaids. She thinks when the body sees death as a likely consequence of the action you’re taking, such as walking along a dangerous route where your father almost drowned, your mind plays tricks on you and conjured omens, in part to warn you and also simply because you are aware it is dangerous and so involuntary you begin to imagine what if something were to happen and your brain makes it real. What Peggy was saying was like her, I was afraid of drowning and my brain somehow made it real and warned me away and that we were seeing different people waving us off but the same concept. Im not sure, it explains some of it. But im still not sure
Let me know what you think because I genuinely don’t know what to do :)