"I think the name (of the Banshee) was OBENHEIM, but I am not sure.
Two or three people have told me that she appeared before my
grandfather's death, but none of them either saw or heard her, but
they had met people who did say they had heard her."
Writing also for particulars of the Banshee to a cousin of the head of one
of the oldest Irish clans, I received a long letter, from which I will
quote the following:
"I have heard 'the Banshee' cry. It is simply like a woman wailing in
the most unearthly fashion. At the time an O'Neill was in this house,
and she subsequently heard that her eldest brother had died on that
night between twelve a.m. and three a.m., when we all of us heard the
Banshee wailing. I heard her also at my mother's death, and at the
death of my husband's eldest sister. The cry is not always quite the
same. When my dear mother died, it was a very low wail which seemed
to go round and round the house.
"At the death of one of the great O'Neill family, we located the cry
at one end of the house. When my sister-in-law died I was wakened up
by a loud scream in my room in the middle of the night. She had died
at that instant. I heard the Banshee one day, driving in the country,
at a distance. Sometimes the Banshee, who follows old families, is
heard by the whole village. Some people say she is red-haired and
wears a long flowing white dress. She is supposed to wring her long
thick hair. Others say she appears as a small woman dressed in black.
"Such an apparition did appear to me in the daytime before my
mother-in-law died."
The writer of this letter has asked me not to publish her name, but I have
it by me in case corroboration is needed.
In reference to the O'Donnell Banshee, Chapter XIII., my sister,
Petronella O'Donnell, writes:
"I remember vividly my first experience of our Banshee. I had never
heard of it at the time, and in fact I have only heard of it in
recent years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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