Farmer refuses to plough field after he sees ghost

Accord­ing to the West­meath Topic, a farmer between Rochfort­bridge and Mill­town­pass is refus­ing to plough a field after he saw a ghost wan­der­ing in it. The paper urges farm­ers to beware and be aware when they  are on the fields this summer.

The eerie late-night encounter with the spirit occurred in an area known as “Cas­tle Field”, on the side of the road between the two vil­lages, while the man was plough­ing the field last week.

The farmer who did not wish to be named for fear of being ridiculed (or maybe in fear of the ghost) said, “I was plough­ing the field and it was just an ordi­nary evening, when I spot­ted some­thing out of the cor­ner of my eye.

I thought it was some­one com­ing up to stop me but then I noticed that it didn’t look right. It just seemed to be kind of bob­bing up and down.”

The man, from Ballinbrackey, said it looked like a sol­dier “with lots of chains around its neck, really heavy chains like you would see on a Nor­man. Then it took out a cross from around its neck and blessed itself six times.”

The farmer stopped plough­ing imme­di­ately and has not returned to the field since.

Accord­ing to the Topic it’s not the first time that strange goings on have been heard of in the area. One con­cerns a man try­ing to buty an ani­mal in the same field, but the ground refused to break. As the name sug­gests Cas­tle Field was once home to a cas­tle, where many hang­ings took place “around the time of Eng­lish rule”

MAN FORGOT HE TRIED ON HAT

There are some head­lines that really cap­ture your atten­tion. The Dun­dalk Leader has just done that with the sim­ple, effec­tive ‘Man For­got he tried on hat’.

It is the story of a a Ukran­ian man who was called up to Dun­dalk Dis­trict Court on a charge of theft, though it what he stole, and his rea­sons for doing so were neatly summed up in the headline.

It turns out that Yun Solod has served in the past with the Soviet Spe­cial­ist Forces and was described in court as a “colour­ful char­ac­ter”, and this inci­dent really demon­strated he is mad as a hat­ter. The Dun­dalk Demo­c­rat has the story this week under the some­what less inane head­line ‘For­got he put hats on his head’

What’s the beef?

- Meat on wash­ing line wor­ries locals

An eerie pic­ture is on the front page of the Blan­chard­stown Gazette  this week, with nearly 30 huge lumps of meat and small car­casses pho­tographed hang­ing on a wash­ing line. Laura Webb reports that a Dublin 15 res­i­dent  has made a com­plaint to the HSE after she saw a wash­ing line filled with unusual meats in her neighbour’s back garden.

Irish bush meat in Blanchardstown

The Clon­silla res­i­dent, who has been liv­ing in the area for the past 12 years, said there were about twenty eight meats hang­ing from a wash­ing line, beside another line that was filled with clothes.

The res­i­dent is now look­ing for help from the HSE to stop this from hap­pen­ing again.

“This is a rented prop­erty. We have had incred­i­ble anti-social behav­iour for some time, but this is the worst case so far… I am so mad,” said the res­i­dent, who did not wish to be named.

The res­i­dent has been in touch with the gar­dai, the HSE and the Pri­vate Res­i­den­tial Ten­an­cies Board (PRTB) to report it, but says she “keeps get­ting stoned walled”.

“This is the sec­ond time this has hap­pened with the meats being hung within days of each other.

“I emailed all the pho­tographs to the HSE and I haven’t heard any­thing back from them. I have been in touch with the land­lord, tele­phone com­mu­ni­ca­tion, face to face. The land­lord has called in and talked to us, but noth­ing has been done.

“It is sick­en­ing. I am there since 2001 and I haven’t seen any­thing like this before… This is quite a unique sit­u­a­tion. I am hop­ing this will just stop… It’s just very unpleasant.”

Local coun­cil­lor Kieran Den­ni­son (FG) says it is a wor­ry­ing sit­u­a­tion and it could attract ver­min, which is “one con­cern” but there is also “a major pub­lic health issue” attached with it.

A spokesper­son for Fin­gal County Council’s Envi­ron­men­tal Health unit said:

“We under­stand that this activ­ity is not being car­ried out on a com­mer­cial scale, and there­fore does not pose a large scale pub­lic health risk.

“The main con­cern would be from a localised envi­ron­men­tal nui­sance per­spec­tive as this activ­ity may attract ver­min includ­ing birds such as magpies/seagulls, and we will ensure that this is addressed,” the spokesper­son added.

In response, the HSE said its envi­ron­men­tal health office has inves­ti­gated this complaint.

“There is no breach of Food Safety Leg­is­la­tion as the food is for domes­tic use and there is no evi­dence to sug­gest that the meat was slaugh­tered illegally.”

One small step for man, one giant leap for the local res­i­dents association…

Fair play to the res­i­dents who live near — or use — Tralee Town Park. they grace thhe front page Kerry’s Eye news­pa­per this week hav­ing saved the green from nasty traf­fic! Under the head­line ‘We saved the Green!’ the paper reports the res­i­dents recived ‘a stand­ing ova­tion after pro­pos­als to cre­ate a con­tro­ver­sial road through a sec­tion of Tralee Town Park were ditched this week.

Plans for a new link road along the pedes­trian stretch of the Town Park, now known as the Neil Arm­strong Way, had been strongly opposed locally.

The Save the Green Com­mit­tee had col­lected over 10,000 sig­na­tures in sup­port of their cam­paign to main­tain the Park as a traffic-free zone. Local coun­cil­lors were lis­ten­ing as they voted in favour of a new €5.6m plan. So it’ss one small step for man, one giant leap for local people.

The mys­tery of the lost Cork village

Are you look­ing for Don­eraile in Cork? Well, accord­ing to Joe Leogue in the Cork­man so is Google.

The inter­net giant has been left red-faced after it was revealed that its pop­u­lar Google Maps ser­vice has been direct­ing users look­ing to go to the North Cork vil­lage to a loca­tion some 60km away out­side Macroom.

No records exist of any address of that name in the Mac­room loca­tion and the glitch has already been blamed for Min­is­ter Brian Hayes’ late appear­ance at the open­ing of Doneraile’s Tea Rooms last September.

A local devel­op­ment group says it has brought the error to Google’s attention.