The Grey Man of the Cliff: a Halloween tale from the Clare coast

The Grey Man

Long before there was a pier in Kilkee, they say, there was a fisherman called Diarmuid who kept a small sailing boat in the bay. She was called Brigid's Star, after his mother, and she was tarred black, patched in three places and as stubborn as the woman she was named for.

Diarmuid was not a talker. The neighbours called him the Grey Man, partly for his coat, which had gone the colour of wet slate, partly for his hair, and mostly for his silence. He would nod to you on the road and that was a long conversation. But he knew the bay the way other men know their own kitchen. He knew where the pollock lay over the reef and where the current turned against you after the ebb, and he knew, better than anyone, when the sky was lying.

He had a wife, Nora, and a son of nine called Pádraig who followed him everywhere on the shore like a small grey shadow. Every evening that the boat went out, Nora put a lamp in the window facing the bay. Every morning she took it down. It was a small rule, and she never missed it.

The last night of October

Now, the old people kept Samhain, the night that closed the summer and opened the winter. It was said that on that one night the door between the living and the dead stood ajar, and that the dead walked home to see who had kept the fire lit for them. You did not go to sea on Samhain. You stayed in, you kept the fire in, you left a bite of food on the table for whoever might call, and you did not whistle on the doorstep.

That year the mackerel had come in late and thick, and the winter was going to be a hard one. The boats along the shore all stayed ashore on the last evening of October, as boats always had. Diarmuid stood on the strand for a long time with his hands in his pockets, looking at a sea as flat and grey as a plate. The glass was steady. The sky was clear to the west. He said to Nora, in more words than he had used all week, that a man could fill the boat in two hours and be home before the dark was properly down.

Nora said nothing for a while. Then she said, you'll be back before the second tide, and put the lamp in the window early. Pádraig wanted to go and was told no. He stood at the end of the strand with a stick in his hand until the sail was a grey scrap against a greyer sea, and then he went home.

What came in with the wind

The sky was lying. It always is on Samhain, the old people would tell you afterwards, with the satisfaction of people proved right. A little before ten the wind dropped to nothing and the whole bay went quiet in a way that made the dogs stand up. Then the first gust came in from the west, cold and smelling of deep water, and rattled every door in the village. Within the hour it was a gale. The sea came up the strand in long black rolls, and the foam blew down Main Street like snow.

Nora stood at the window with her hand flat on the cold glass. Out on the bay there was a light, a small one, rising and falling, rising and falling. It was the lantern on Brigid's Star, and it was too far out and too far north, on the wrong side of the reef. Then a big sea went through the bay, and the light went out all at once, as if someone had closed a hand around it.

The men searched the shore in the morning, when the wind had worn itself out. There was no boat and no man. There was a single oar lying on the rocks beneath a black headland north of the village, wedged upright between two stones, as if someone had stood it there on purpose. That headland has been called the Grey Man's Rock ever since.

The lamp in the window

Nora kept the lamp lit in the window for the rest of her life. She lit it on the last night of every October, and she said, whenever anyone asked, that it was just in case. Pádraig grew up, and grew grey himself, and never once went to sea.

And the people along the cliff path began to tell a story. They said that on Halloween night, when the wind swings round to the west and the tide is making, you can hear a slow step on the path behind you. It is the sound of a boot coming out of the sea, heavy and wet. It stops when you stop. If you turn around there is nothing there, only the path and the dark and a smell of salt and wet wool. Some people say that if you look out over the bay at that moment you will see a small lantern far out on the water, rising and falling. It burns for the space of three slow breaths and then it goes out.

Nobody has ever been harmed by him, the tellers always add. He is not angry. He only walks the way he walked the last time, up from the shore towards the lights of the village, as if still working out which window is his. That is why, in the old houses on this coast, someone still leaves a lamp in the window on Halloween night. Just in case.

A note on this Halloween story. The ship, the cliff and the people in it are invented, and any resemblance to a real vessel or a real family is not intended. It is the sort of tale that might have been told by a fire on the Clare coast, and it is told here for fun. Put the kettle on, and read it with the lights low.

Why this coast, and why this night

The real roots of Halloween are in the old Irish festival of Samhain, which marked the end of the harvest and the start of winter, and was believed to be a time when the boundary between worlds was thinnest. A fishing village on the Atlantic edge of Ireland is exactly the place such a story would grow. The sea is big, the nights are long, and every family had someone it was afraid for.

That is also why we take the real sea seriously. Kilkee faces the open Atlantic, and swell and onshore wind change the bay quickly. Check the conditions, stay back from cliff edges, and treat a Halloween gale as seriously as the fishermen did. We dive and teach here from May to September.

Kilkee Spooktacular: Halloween in Kilkee this year

If you would rather your Halloween spooks were friendly, Kilkee Community Group and Kilkee Chamber of Commerce are running the Kilkee Spooktacular:

• Flashlight Hunt: Tuesday 27th October, 6pm, starting at Kilkee Bandstand. Solve the clues and explore Kilkee in the evening. Free, and bring your own flashlight.

• Pumpkin Carving: Thursday 29th October, 3pm to 4pm, Kilkee Community Centre. Free, and the pumpkins are supplied. Bring your own carving equipment, and children must be supervised by an adult at all times.

• Halloween Disco: Saturday 31st October, 4:30pm to 6pm, at Kilkee Bandstand. DJ Brian, treats and refreshments from The Galloping Grind, and a few spooky surprises. All welcome.

• Witchy Walk: starts outside Kilkee Library, heads down Main Street and finishes at the bandstand in time for the disco.

Check kilkee.ie for more information and any updates.

Got a Kilkee ghost story of your own? Tell us at hello@oceanlife.ie or on 085 255 2064. Happy Halloween.