Editor’s Note: this related to Sooey in Co. Sligo

One night over fifty years ago, I was conversing with an old man who has since passed to his eternal reward. Abut two hundred yards from where we were standing an old woman was ill. Suddenly a weird cry started about a half a mile from where we were standing. For the moment I got a fright – I was in my teens at the time. The old man noticed me and told me not to be afraid, that it was the banshee. He then said, ‘Mary Anne [referring to a woman who was ill] will die tonight.’ The cry came from the south of the house, it apparently hovered over the house for about give minutes, then went north for a bit, returned, delayed over the house for a short time, went south again and became silent. I asked the man how he knew [that it was Banshee’s cry] and he told me that he had heard it on other occasions, and it always followed the Flynns. The woman’s maiden name was Flynn and she was the last of that race… That woman that was ill died that night… This is a true account. (quoted in Lysaght 1998, 31)