Irish Ghost Stories and Premonitions of Death

Kelly’s dad told her Irish ghost stories her whole life, but she didn’t expect to live one when his came to an end. The premonition she had after his death was eerily similar to experiences multiple people in her family have had. Do premonitions run in her family, or just deep soul connections?

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Irish ghost stories and superstitions

Can the bonds we have with our loved ones go beyond this plane and into the next? Can we feel those connections so strongly that we know when someone we care about is in trouble? Is dying? Or is dead? And how do those connections persist throughout generations?

Today, we speak with Kelly Fordon, an author and podcaster, who has a myriad of experiences about these connections, and their effects on the living. Her stories are both spooky and uplifting, and we know you’re going to enjoy them.

About today’s guest, Kelly Fordon

Kelly tells us that POV matters more in fiction writing than the traditional hero’s journey story arc we learned in grade school. She’s published through Wayne State University press. Her books include I Have the Answer, Garden for the Blind and a full-length poetry collection, Goodbye Toothless House. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, On the Street Where We Live, which won the 2011 Standing Rock Chapbook Contest, and Tell Me When It Starts to Hurt. Her fiction, poetry, and book reviews have appeared in The Boston Review, The Florida Review, Flashquake, The Kenyon Review, and various other journals.

You can find Kelly’s podcast, Let’s Deconstruct a Story, at kellyfordon.com.

Do we all get 6 weeks to haunt before moving on?

Kelly experienced messages from her father from beyond for just a short while, then his spirit must have moved on. She recalled hearing the belief that, when a person dies, their soul has 6 weeks to remain on Earth, tying up loose ends, before moving on to reincarnation or whatever other eternal reward they’ve earned.

Can you get directly into heaven by dying on a Saturday?

This type of heavenly fast pass isn’t canonical to Catholicism in general; it must have been a colloquial Irish superstition. Which really begs the question; what’s more likely: to manifest one’s own death with the strong belief that one will die on that day, or to have a premonition that accurately predicts one’s own death? Both may seem quite supernatural, and neither story is unique to Kelly.

By this point in the story, we were thinking “man, Kelly’s whole family has premonitions related to death!”

Are premonitions of death due to deep connections, or The Gift?

Far from taking her familial ghostly premonitions of death to mean she’s inherited a psychic gift, Kelly believes anyone can have these types of premonitions. It’s more who you’re close to, and based on what kind of a link you had in life.

Although she’s probably right about that last part, we’re curious if that explains her prediction of her dad’s friend’s death. Or all the people who lose loved ones without any sort of premonition, and never do hear from them again. Surely it must be a little of both?

Comforting hauntings and practical premonitions

It is a comforting thought that a loved one can reach out from the beyond, but that doesn’t mean they’re stuck in an Earthly purgatory between planes of existence for the long haul. We really like the idea of a 6 week goodbye tour. What do you believe? Even if we can predict someone’s death through premonitions, none of us will ever know for sure what happens after this life until it’s too late. But better to die on a Saturday, just in case. No need to go having a spooky day.