The Enniscorthy Poltergeist: the Redmond lodging house on Court Street

July 1910. Enniscorthy, County Wexford. On Court Street stood a five-room house belonging to Redmond, "a labouring man". His wife took in boarders to add to his wages.

On Monday 4 July a carpenter named John Randall arrived. He shared one large bedroom above the kitchen with two other lodgers, among them George Sinnott. There were two beds. One stood in a recess.

Thursday 7 July. Randall thought at first it was a joke. The bedclothes were gently pulled off his bed. At that moment the other bed, a piece of furniture that ordinarily took two people to move, had been rolled. Then came hammering. "tap-tap-tap-like. This lasted for a few minutes, getting quicker and quicker." As it sped up, their bed started to move out across the room. Redmond searched the house and found no one. Footsteps came up from the kitchen and stopped on the landing. The noises went on until daybreak.

The men went home, then returned on Sunday 10 July. The disturbances came back nearly every night. The bed kept running out from the wall with its three occupants. They kept a lamp lit, and "a chair was seen to dance gaily out into the middle of the floor." On 14 July one boarder was lifted out of the bed, "though he felt no hand near him."

Friday 29 July was the worst. The pillow was taken from under Randall's head three times. Then, in his words, "The bed turned up on one side and threw us out on the floor." It fell back without making any noise. The bed was so heavy it took both the woman and the girl of the house to pull it from the wall. The men moved to the other bed. It began to rise too, held only by its recess.

Murphy, of the Enniscorthy Guardian, came to see for himself with a companion, Devereux. They searched for wires or strings, but "nothing of the sort could be found". They stood against the wall between the beds. Randall in one. Sinnott in the other.

At about 11:30 p.m. a tapping began at the foot of Randall's bed. Devereux likened it to a rat eating at timber. "You'll soon see the rat it is," Sinnott answered. The raps rose to about a hundred or a hundred and twenty per minute. Randall shouted that his clothes were slipping off. The watchers saw them going back under the bed, as if a strong breeze were blowing. Later he cried, "I'm going, I'm going, I'm gone." A light was struck. He was seen to slide from the bed, all the bedclothes with him. Trembling and bathed in perspiration, he said: "Oh, isn't this dreadful! I can't stand it; I can't stay here any longer."

William F. Barrett of the Society for Psychical Research obtained Randall's signed statement and the watchers' account, and published the case in 1911 in "Poltergeists, Old and New". In 1914 St John D. Seymour and Harry Neligan reprinted it in True Irish Ghost Stories, writing: "There is therefore very little room to doubt the genuineness of either story."

Later writers have raised rats, hysteria, or a hoax by the Redmonds. No one accused the household at the time. Randall had lost three-quarters of a stone in weight. To this day, the Enniscorthy poltergeist has no accepted explanation.