In Ireland, one often hears ghost stories. Unique ghost stories. Some so unique, that they contain no ghosts. They are stories of reanimated corpses. These corpses rise from their coffins for whatever the reason, and can only be put back to rest by a priest, and it is said that from that point onward, the priest is cursed, and will not live out the year.

These occurrences are not common by any stretch of the imagination, but they are reported and recorded. When the Irish migrated, they brought such tales with them, and they can still be heard around the fireplaces of such Irish born families.

The day was bright and cheerful, the day that Tyler O’Kennedy’s body was found. His body was pulled from the barn at his farm with one hand scythe in his hand, and the other of the matching pair embedded in his chest.

He was found face down by two of his cousin that worked on his farm with him, Ferris O’Kennedy, a sheepherder, and Margaret O’Toole, an animal doctor. It was taken by the town that he had fatally fallen onto the scythe, which undoubtedly pierced his heart.

His funeral was scheduled for the next day. That night, his body was prepared for burial, by the time the funeral hands had finished with him, you couldn’t even determine the cause of death of the young man.

The evening of his burial came, and most of the town gathered for the funeral. With the exception of his wife. This wasn’t exactly common, but not entirely uncommon either, often the spouse of one deceased is too stricken with grief to leave their abode.

The funeral started, the old town priest read prayers over Tyler’s body. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, until the priest read a bit from his prayer book about sleeping the sleep of the dead. Not many were looking at the body, and so subtle was the movement that many who were looking took no notice that the deceased, with his arms crossed over his chest, seemed to feel the would which had caused his fall. Of the few that noticed, none spoke of it. Soon afterward, as the priest stood down, Tyler’s cousin Ferris stood up to speak. When this happened, Tyler sat bolt upright in his casket, and Ferris fell from the podium, and, so shocked was the he that he ran from the church and onward to God knows where. And the priest, the only priest for miles, the only man who could cast this wayward soul onward to the heaven or hell his living deeds had earned him, had, at this moment, in his age, suffered a failure of heart.

Tyler, who had been a bright and cheerful man in life, now stood before all his peers in death, a solemn man. The townspeople parted in the middle as Tyler was allowed to pass. Just before he reached the doors, however, they busted open to reveal Margaret, who screamed to the town that Tyler’s wife Erin had been found murdered. Then she saw the corpse, screamed, and then fainted.

The corpse then hurried off in the direction of his former home. A few men of the town followed behind him. None of the men would confront the corpse, but all of them seemed content to follow him.

When the group caught up to the corpse, they saw him kneeling next to the body of his wife in the twilight. He pulled from the chest of her body one of his hand scythes. He then looked to the wide sky and from his mouth came a wail of such anguish that would have a banshee weep.

He rose from his kneeling position and walked into the forest around his house. The group followed him until he stopped, at length, where his cousin Ferris was kneeling. The corpse then pulled back with his hand scythe, and just as he started to swing it forward, from the foliage a second priest, summoned from a second town, burst forth, and quickly he spoke:

“Seven prayers, seven times over told,

Mary left to her son of old,

Bride left to her mantle’s length,

God left to his own great strength,

Between us and Fairie kind,

Us and the People of the Wind,

Us and the water’s drowning power,

Us and temptation’s evil hour,

Us and the world’s all the blighting breath,

Us and the bondsman’s cruel death.”

After these words, the corpse fell quickly to the ground. Then Ferris, who never left his knees crawled to the priest and grasped the bottom of the holy man’s robes and wailed “Forgive me father, for I have sinned. It was I who killed my cousin, and his wife just the same!” Then the man fell to the ground weeping as the men that followed from the town made themselves known as they rushed forward to seize that man and the group set to drag the man back to the town to stand trial for murder.

As the group of men entered the farm grounds, and Ferris drew closer and closer, Erin’s murdered body began to stir…

THE END