It was some weeks afterwards, however, and not till then, that Miss Delane, who was back again in her home in Ireland, received any explanation of the phenomena she had witnessed. It was given her by a friend of the R----s who happened to be visiting one of Miss Delane's relatives in Dublin. "What you saw," this friend of the R----s said to Miss Delane, "was, I believe, the Banshee, which always manifests itself before the death of any member of the family. Sometimes it shrieks, like the shrieking of a woman who is being cruelly done to death, and sometimes it merely stares at or touches its victim on the shoulder with its skeleton hand. In either case its advent is fatal. Only," she added, "let me implore you never to breathe a word of this to the R----s, as they never mention their ghost to anyone." Miss Delane, of course, promised, at the same time expressing a devout hope that the phenomena she had witnessed did not point to the illness or death of either of her friends; but in this she was doomed to the deepest disappointment, for within a few weeks of the date upon which the Banshee--if Banshee it really were--had appeared, she received tidings of the deaths of both Ellen and her sister (the former succumbing to an attack of some malignant fever, and the latter to an accident), and in addition heard that Major R---- had died also. As Major R---- would never discuss the subject of his family ghost with anyone at all, it is impossible to say whether he believed the haunting to be a Banshee haunting or not; but many, apparently, did believe it to be this type of haunting, and I must say I think they were wrong. To begin with, the R----s were Anglo-Irish. Their connection with Ireland may have dated back a century or so, but they were certainly not of Milesian nor even Celtic Irish descent; and, for this reason alone, could not have acquired a Banshee haunting. Besides, the Banshee that we know does not appear, as the R----'s ghost appeared, attired in the vestments of a religious order; and the coach or hearse phantasm (which in the R----'s case preceded the manifestation of the supposed Banshee) is by no means an uncommon haunting;[8] and since it is more often than not accompanied by phenomena of the sepulchral type (the type witnessed by Miss Delane and the Major's nieces), it may be said to constitute in itself a peculiar form of family haunting which is not, of course, exclusively confined to the Irish. Hence I entirely dismiss the theory that the notorious R----'s ghost had anything at all to do with the Banshee. À propos of coaches, I am reminded of an incident related by that past master of the weird, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, in a short story entitled "A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family." As it relates to that type of phantasm that is so often foolishly confused with the Banshee, I think I cannot do better than give a brief sketch of it.