The ghost 'lady' of Long Walk, Galway

The ghost 'lady' of Long Walk. 
In October 2012, the Galway Independent (another Galway ghost newspaper) reported that photographer Jonathan Curran was “freaked” when he noticed he'd captured the image of a lady in a cloak when taking photographs of the end of Long Walk (beside where the mud-dock is). He took 12 other pictures and the ghost 'nun' did not appear in any of them, just in the one photo. The long Walk, he decides, was 'haunted'!

Since then the 'paranormalists' in the city have debunked the photo, rounding on the photographer for his ghostly photo-shop stunt. But was he trying to pull the wool over our eyes, or did he actually inadvertently capture the spectral image of a woman from another ear. 

That is what our ancestors believe that 'Samhain' was all about, where spirits could slip through the crack between the fabric joint at the end of the old year, where it met the beginning of the new year. Could the spirit have been seen through this ethereal tear between the two years, just for one split second, becoming visible to us humans, and the photographer, a glimpse of the otherworld, that parallels ours, a continuous, perpetual reliving of our world, and theirs, with occasional glimpses of one from the other? Who knows, maybe that is what ghosts are, faint and random glimpses from their timezone to ours, from another life, a parallel, and previous one, where the cracks have appeared in their zone, and through the cracks we catch a glimpse, the ghostly images we see sometimes reported,especially at Halloween. 

Whatever this photo is, the garb she is wearing is unmistakably a Kinsale or Kerry or Galway cloak, which were worn by Irish women, to cover their indoor clothes, protecting them from the dust and dirt of 19th century Ireland, and providing them with shelter from the weather and perhaps a bit of anonymity too, especially if she'd prefer to remain out of sight, unrecognised, given the male-dominated nature of our society two hundred years ago, much as a burqa or hijab provides to women in the more closed muslim society today. 

Was this a ghost, or a fake? If it was a ghost was she a victim, or just a phantom? Was she drowned, murdered, a suicide, an accident, or was she simply slipping out of her 19th century cottage to enjoy the tidal effect on the constant in our world and her's, in Galway, the river Corrib? 

I guess we will never know. 

With thanks to Alan Micheal Fahy and Galway Memories for prompting this story. Galway Walks, Walking Tours of Galway. Haunted Tours. Ghost Tours. Horrible History Tours.