Hauntings

The Tall Man of Ballacurry

Ballacurry, on the road between Bradda and Colby

Tom Craine was walking home from Bradda mine at midnight under a full moon. A little dog came out of the shadows and trotted beside him, and as he watched it, it grew, and grew, until it was enormous, and then it was gone.

At the gate of Ballacurry he saw a man standing: very tall and very thin, dressed in clothes from another century, with a lace ruffle at his neck and shining buckles on his shoes. Tom ran all the way to Colby.

His friends Ben Mylechreest and Bill Teare laughed at him. So the three of them walked back to Ballacurry together to show him there was nothing there. There was. Morrison's story ends with the three men running for their lives, sweating and shaking, too frightened to go to their own homes, and all three sharing Tom's bed that night. What they saw, she writes, they never told any man.

The exact house is not identified.
Evidence
Long-standing local tradition
Access
Access unrecorded
Location
54.095, -4.720 (Parish-level only, treat as an area)

Sources: Sophia Morrison, "Manx Fairy Tales" (1911), "The Tall Man of Ballacurry" (Manx Note Book transcription) [public-domain]

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