This is talk spooky with me, where Host Kimberly Nicole shares the weird, the haunted and the stories that leave you sleeping with the lights on.
Welcome to Talk Spooky with me. I'm your host, Kimberly Nicole, paranormal investigator, and storyteller. For over 30 years, I've chased shadows, spirits, and all the things that go bump in the night. I didn't just stumble into the world of the strange I was raised in it.
I've been a lifelong resident of the haunted and unexplainable. The house I grew up in, knocked, whispered, and watched. While other kids feared the dark, I listened to what lurked Inside, and I never stopped. So pull your chair closer because tonight the spirits are ready to talk and I'll be right here translating every whisper.
Thank you to all those who have been listening to this podcast and cheering me on your kind words, your listening your views, and your follows. They mean the world to me. They keep me going.
So thank you to you all. I appreciate each and every one of you.
I'd also like to give a huge shout out to my family in Norway that have been listening to my podcast, mange takk. I love you all. You may be across the ocean, but I'm sending you hugs. Virtual hugs, audio hugs, , I guess. Yeah. Anyway, so carrying on.
I would also like to say to my Irish listeners if I mispronounce any names in this episode, I am very sorry. I tried to make sure that I pronounced everything correctly, but if it still comes out wrong, I am so sorry. And as I have learned in my endeavors of being a podcast host, I have learned that.
When being recorded, I forget how to speak even my native language and I can't pronounce those words either.
So close your eyes, unless you're driving. Picture a land so old. Its bones groan under the weight of memory.
Rolling green hills. Stone cottages weathered by centuries of rain. Mist, curling across black bogs at dusk.
This is Ireland, 1913.
A place where old superstitions still lingered, whispered from mother to child.
Where saints and spirits shared the same prayers,
and where one family would learn that some doors once opened, could never be closed.
Tonight we set sail into one of the strangest true hauntings in history. This is the story of the Cooneen Poltergeist, the spirit that terrorized a family and crossed an ocean. To finish what it started,
Cooneen County, Fermanagh.
Tucked in a quiet, forgotten corner of Ireland. Life here in 1913 was hard. There were no modern conveniences, no cars, no electricity, just endless fields.
And howling wind
and the slow March of survival.
Bridget Murphy was a widow. With seven children, her husband had died young, leaving her to tend their meager farm alone.
Can you imagine it rising before dawn to milk cows by hand? Gathering turf from the bogs to fuel the fire. Kneading bread with blistering hands. Praying for rain when crops failed, or for sun when it rained too much.
But no prayer prepared her for what came next. At first, no one noticed, as it so often happens, a misplaced object here. Tapping at the windows at night, cold spots in an otherwise warm kitchen. Would you have noticed it or would you have told yourself it was nothing?
Just the creeks of an old house, just a tired brain after a long day, but soon the knocking grew louder. Persistent rhythmic, and always, always after dark .
By winter of 1913, the Murphy's Home had become a minefield of activity. Of the paranormal sort. Beds were stripped bare. While the children slept in them, furniture dragged itself across the floor.
Heavy footsteps echoed from empty rooms. Even the Holy Crosses and Bibles were thrown violently to the ground. Mrs. Murphy, a devout Catholic, turned first to her faith. She sought the local priest who came with holy water and prayers.
He blessed the home, but it didn't help according to early accounts. Notably those documented by Saint John d Seymour and Harry lNeligan. In true Irish ghost stories, the disturbances only grew worse after the blessing.
A provoked entity becomes angrier, more dangerous. Neighbors begin to talk, not just of a haunting. Of a curse, a dark force they whispered.
To understand what happened next, you have to understand the world they lived in.
In early 20th century, rural Ireland.
Belief in the supernatural was.
Not superstition. It was survival.
The veil between the living and the dead was thin. Folklore wasn't just storytelling, it was protection. There were countless warnings, never disturb. A fairy fort. Never cut a Hawthorne tree. Never ignore a knocking at night.
It could be a warning from the other side.
The Murphy family lived in a landscape layered with invisible dangers. Was it a restless spirit? A fairy curse? Or an ancient elemental, awoken by grief and despair, the townspeople whispered, in hindsight, far too late, what would you have believed?
Finally, Mrs.
Murphy made a desperate choice with what little money she could gather. and Help from a relative in New York. She secured passage for herself and her children to America. A new land, a fresh start. Surely the spirit would be left behind right?
But from the first day aboard, steamship strange things began happening. Passengers, complained of cold drafts in sealed cabins. Of whispered voices in the night. Of doors, slamming themselves shut some claim to see shadowy figures, tall and thin. Moving below deck where no passengers
were allowed.
And then the worst night of all . A violent storm rolled in the ship was tossed
by massive waves.
Passengers huddled below. Praying for their survival.
Suddenly a horrific crash.
Furniture hurled across the cabins.
Footsteps pounding outside.
But when they opened the door, no one was there.
Clutching a rosary. Mrs. Murphy screamed.
He's here. He followed us. She sobbed that they would never be free.
According to oral history recorded later, By paranormal researchers, witnesses,
claim, a priest board performed an impromptu blessing on the deck. Holy water was flung into the raging sea. Prayers shouted into the screeching wind, and one family trunk
said to be the source of the haunting
hurled overboard.
The ocean swallowed it whole. After that night, the ship. Fell silent.
New York. The land of opportunity, the Murphy's arrived exhausted but hopeful, but peace was fleeting. Within weeks, small disturbances resumed:
knocking , footsteps.
Cold hands, brushing their faces at night.
Some accounts suggest another priest attempted a private exorcism, but if so, the church kept no record. Eventually, whether through time, faith, or sheer exhaustion the activity faded, but the family never fully spoke of it again.
As if giving it a voice would invite it back.
Today, paranormal investigators look at the Coonen and Poltergeist with fascination and skepticism. Some proposed classic poltergeist activity, unconscious psychokinesis movement. Physical objects by the mind without use of physical means, fueled by emotional trauma.
Others suggest an elemental entity. A spirit of the land furious at being disturbed, refusing to let go. Still others argue for a mass psychogenic illness, a collective psychological phenomenon, born of stress and superstition. But skeptics can't easily dismiss the number of independent witnesses, neighbors, police ,priests.
Too many eyes, too many stories, too much fear,
and the old Murphy Cottage still stands abandoned,
overgrown.
But watching.
So what do you believe?
Was the Murphy family cursed by a spirit they disturbed . Victims of their own grief and terror, or something older.
Something that doesn't recognize oceans or prayers or mercy.
Tonight, the Atlantic sleeps quiet. Somewhere out there in the fog, something waits.
And before you go, I have a challenge for you.
Was it a ghost, an elemental or something far worse. Come find me on Instagram at talk spooky with me and tell me what you think haunted the Murphy family.
And hey, the Creepiest theory just might get a special shout out on the show.
Until next time. Keep your lights low, keep your mind open. And remember some spirits don't care how far you run. They're already waiting at the door.