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.
Contact: scealeenies@gmail.com
Episodes
23 episodes
Benchcrawl
The benches came first.Then the town began moving between them in groups of four. Not officially. Not intentionally. Just… naturally.Soon nobody could remember when benchcrawling had started, only that you were noticed if you st...
Runner's High
After losing his long-held job at a rural supermarket, a middle-aged man drifts into isolation, resentment, and emotional paralysis. Convinced his wife is having an affair and unable to imagine a future for himself, he sets out one night intend...
Dubh Linn
Two urban explorers descend beneath one of Dublin’s most familiar buildings and find something far older than the city above it.In a hidden chamber, figures gather around a black pool, speaking not in chants, but in the calm, measured l...
HONour The Parish
Pride before the fall is what we are told.What happens when local pride meets ancient tradition and modern norms are abandoned in the search for a temporary glory.They didn’t just train harder.They fe...
Salvatore and the Crows
There was a boy who would “go away.”Just for a few seconds.Everyone knew the rule:Don’t touch him.Count to ten.He’ll be back.Until one day… he wasn’t.
Teach Ceoil
A disused church on the edge of an Irish estuary is reopened as a music venue. The sessions are lively, the crowd is warm, and the tradition feels alive again. But something beneath the ground is stirring. And the musi...
The Paradise
There’s a hall in every town that used to be full of music.Ours is called The Paradise.Now it’s empty. Locked. Forgotten.But some nights, you can hear a band playing inside.Old songs. Perfectly played.And when someone dies i...
The End of Its Course
There’s an island on estuary that used to be inhabited.Not many families. Just enough.They guided ships through the channel. They survived hardship. They never left.People said it was skill.Older people said it was a bar...
The Seven Curses of Quilty
There are seven curses of Quilty. No one agrees on the order.The first is peace.What begins as healing, neighbour speaking to neighbour again, land settling, old grievances loosening, slowly becomes something else. Attent...
The Athfhillteach
A scholar of Irish manuscripts begins to notice a pattern.Not in the text. In the margins.Across centuries, in ink, print, dreams, and now machines, something has been repeating itself. Not a story, but a structure. Not a creature, ...
The Hobby Horse
A tired Dublin father goes out on Christmas Eve to find the one gift his son asked Santa for, a rocking horse he can't afford.After every shop fails him, a strange figure by the canal offers him a beautifully carved hobby horse for free, in...
Of Mice and Man
A man buys a cottage with “great potential,” which is auctioneer language for no heating and mice.What begins as romantic renovation quickly becomes a quiet war. Humane traps become snap traps. Flour becomes surveillance. The wa...
The Slavic Defence
At his first international conference, funded to the exact punt and sworn not to disgrace the nation, a young Irish scholar begins exchanging chess moves with a mysterious counterpart. The ritual continues for decades across symposia, Fes...
An tSagart
“We decided, together, not to see.” On a remote Irish peninsula, the priest was the centre of everything.He visited homes at night. Boys came home pale. Once, during a storm, a child saw him in the graveyard, listening.
Departures/Arrivals
Airports - The pinnacle of modernity. Long-haul flights, high technology and ever shorter attention spans. Dolmens - The ancient stone-age sentinels surrounded by folklore and memories older than nations and cultures. Th...
The Inspection Game
A tale about an underground practice, where participants secretly inspect strangers’ homes, document every detail, and leave no trace. As the practice spreads, the boundaries between observer and observed begin to collapse.Best e...
The Emigrant Song
A stormy night folk tale about music, migration, and the pull west. This episode presents a spoken reading of The Emigrant Song, a literary folk-horror story set in Dublin on a stormy night near the equinox.<...
Tale of The Telltale Carpark
A wish, a loophole, and a Lidl car park. This episode presents a spoken reading of a modern folk tale set in a familiar and deeply unremarkable place: a supermarket car park in the Irish Midlands.When an ordina...
An Fear Glais
When the power goes out at sunset, the parish gathers to listen. This episode presents a full spoken reading of An Fear Glais, a contemporary Irish folk tale told through the voice of a child during a time wh...
The Observatory At Birr
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 theolog...
All Aboard
A pub tale of the Celtic Mist, the sea’s memory, and debts that don’t drown. This episode features a spoken reading of a contemporary Irish folk-horror story, told as a pub tale passed carefully from mouth to ear, wit...