What do banshees sound like

The Banshee is one of the more intimidating fairies. She is a fairy woman who appears at the site of an imminent death in the middle of the night and lets out a chilling, high pitched wail. As with all mythological stories and figures, she also appears in Scottish, Welsh, Norse and even American folklore in many different forms and doing many different death related things. The origin of the Banshee is really quite ordinary compared to the tales that surround her.

There was good business to be made as a keener, as families would pay very well for a talented one. The best known ones always attended the funerals of the biggest and most well known people and were much sought after, as the more people mourning at a funeral, the greater the person was said to be.

The fact that the keeners were paid in alcohol and often ended up as elderly alcoholic women that were banished from towns and villages also adds to the myth. Originally the Banshee appeared to people who were about to suffer a violent and painful death, such as murder. In later stories, she wailed outside their door at night usually around wooded areas close by but was rarely seen.

The Banshee was usually described as ugly elderly women dressed in white or grey with long silver hair, and occasionally took the form of a crow, stoat, hare or weasel — typical animals associated with witchcraft in Ireland. The Banshee comes in three possible guises depending on who you talk to or where the stories come from. More often that not she is a crouching hag with a horrible wrinkly face, although in other stories she is a beautiful, ethereal young woman or a stately matron type. In yet more stories she is referred to as the ghost of a murdered woman or a woman who died in childbirth.

The three typical guises of the Banshee may respresent the three aspects of the Celtic goddess of war and death; Badhbh, Macha and Mor-Rioghain. In almost all cases, the Banshee has long silver hair that she is sometimes seen brushing with a comb. For this reason, some people would never pick up a comb lying on the ground for fear of being taken away by fairies. She wears a grey hooded cloak or the white sheet or grave robe of the dead, and her eyes are red from crying.

Many believe that she can in fact take on any of the above forms and change from one to the other as she pleases.

Her cry seems to be the subject of much debate; in Leinster, it is said to be so shrill that it shatters glass.

Whatever she sounds like, everyone agrees that she can be heard from a great distance. Some report hearing her cry for several nights in a row before a death occurred, while others say they heard her just once, on the night of the death. Her cry rises and falls and lasts for at least a few minutes, varying in intensity.

There have been alleged incidents when the Banshee cried for a person who was in perfect health, but was found dead within a week from some freak accident. The majority of her visits are paid at night, with a small few taking place at noon.

This is known as countershading. If moonlight hits, say, a uniformly brown owl, it creates a gradient of a lighter top side and darker bottom side, manifesting as a silhouette for potential prey on the ground. With its bright white underbelly, the barn owl counteracts this shadowing effect, thus breaking up its profile. The feathers are also highly adapted for silent flight, with extremely fine fringes that reduce turbulence, and therefore noise. The owls are positively packed with these soft, velvety feathers that help absorb sounds, far more than most birds their size the critters are positively scrawny without their feathers on—like, hilariously so.

And the intense curvature of their wings boosts lift, so the owls can cut down on the number of wing beats required to stay aloft, yet another way to reduce noises that potentially scare off prey.

Such does the critter stalk the night in total silence, save for screaming its head off now and then. References: Rosen, B. Sterling Publishing. I most distinctly heard it about five years ago, previous to the death of my dear brother; he was ailing at the time. I was up with him watching in case he required a drink, when suddenly I heard an indescribably mournful cry. But that was far from the end of it.

The Banshee will be a familiar ghost story. It is a spirit - described as a woman though not always, according to one witness below dressed in white, with unkempt hair and emitting a pitiful, mournful keen or wail that warns of the death of a family member. In some versions, it has a brush unkempt hair, etc. Many accounts link the spirits to families of the oldest Irish stock and the Milesians. Sometimes the banshee appears old and frail, other times the embodiment of a young member of the family who died in some tragic circumstance or other.

Often, nobody seems to see it at all. Accounts differ but one thing is certain. The banshee, like so many other topics, polarised readers in The banshee was then said, or supposed, to be a little woman.

However, she has never been seen or heard of since that time. I hear old Irish people say that there are no witches now; so the banshee and witches must all be gone to the same country.

The cry was heard in Wicklow , too. The next morning they heard of the death of a friend. With the testimonies came the detractors. That letter sparked fresh outrage - not least of all because of the condescending tone and linking of belief in superstition to an unsophisticated class.

But readers seemed to feel the banshee was an enduring folk legend, to be taken more seriously than leprechauns. In the middle of the debate, some attempted compromise unsuccessfully. Two debaters emerged in the final phases. Patrick Farrell in response, spun his own Kildare banshee yarn. On my return I was astonished to find my greyhound trembling violently - the cold sweat actually dripping off him. Being then a disbeliever in banshees, ghosts, goblins, fairies, leprechauns and company, I was glad of an opportunity to test once for all their genuineness.