Scéaleenies
Scéaleenies, noun, plural. A weekly podcast of Irish short stories. Intimate, slightly off-beat. A patent-pending blend of Irish inflection, wit and observation focused on the moment, voices and strangeness of life.
Scéaleenies
The Observatory At Birr
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At Birr, the telescope was built to look outward. Something answered.
This episode presents a spoken reading of The Observatory at Birr, a literary horror story rooted in Irish scientific history and theology.
Set around the great Leviathan telescope and a hidden programme of church transmissions into deep space, the story follows the discovery that the universe may have received the message, and understood it far too well. As signals repeat, archives whisper, and boundaries between sender and receiver blur, the narrator confronts a terrifying possibility: that faith, once broadcast, does not remain one-way.
A restrained and unsettling meditation on belief, transmission, and the fear that silence itself may already be a form of worship.