I was on a camping holiday in around 2008 with my family and cousins in Kerry, Ireland, right on the west coast, next stop Canada. We would spend the day playing and walking and seeing the beautiful countryside and at night we would play music and tell stories.
We all loved telling ghost stories so one night it was suggested to visit the ringfort - an ancient fortification seen all around Ireland which are about 1500-2000 years old. Now in Ireland, folk belief is still very strong and it is said that the fairy people live in these ringforts and will put bad luck on people who disregard them. So one night we went over to the ringfort across the river, it was about 11pm and the moon was high so it wasn't too dark.
We went around the fort and were joking and laughing about the fairies and ghosts and trying to scare my younger cousins. Sadly, nothing happened in the fort but it was eerie enough to be there at night, so we decided to head back to the campsite. This is when is began to get weird.
Now Irish country roads are very small and tight and are lined with hedgerows and the trees overhead sometimes arch together and make it very dark altogether, even on a bright night. We were driving back along the road and saw a car coming ahead of us so we pulled in to let it pass. I in my parents car, and my cousins in their parents car behind us.
Although we had our headlights on we could only make out the light of the car in front, two dimly lit headlamps, this seemed strange enough but stranger still couldn't make out any other features of the car despite our lights shining at it. We didn't say anything at the time and the car turned left in front of us and seemed to drive on down another road.
We drove on and I had a glance to see where it had gone but there was nothing. I didn't say anything to my parents and wasn't scared because I had assumed it had just continued on or had turned off the lights. Anyway, later on back in the campsite we were swapping stories about the ringfort and if anyone has felt anything strange, and apart from my dad saying he felt a stone hit his head before he left, no one felt anything strange there.
So I asked had anybody else seen the car that turned left in front of us and seemed to disappear into the hedging and straight away my aunty jumps in and says to her family 'See I told you I saw it disappear!'.
Despite not having told anyone what I saw, we described the exact same thing; two dimly lit lamps as on an old car or carriage slowly turning left in front of us and disappearing. Now my younger cousins were scared.
The next day my cousin Jack and I went to the campsite owner and told him what we had seen. The owner has lived in that town all his life and knew it's history well as he had been a schoolteacher.
He listened and when we were done he told us that that side of the town is known for being haunted and that that road is known as Hearse Road, where ,during the Potato Famine in the 1840s, hundreds of victims were buried in a mass grave. A very dark chapter in Irish history. He was sad to even talk about it himself so we knew he was speaking the truth. We were shocked and ran straight to our parents to tell them about it.
What we had seen the previous night was most likely the ghostly hearse that used to bring the bodies of Famine victims to their eternal rest in a mass grave. To this day it is one of the strangest things I have ever seen and will live long in my memory.
--Darragh K.
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