Curran’s Lane

The House on Curran’s Lane
A Ballykillduff Horror

Everyone in Ballykillduff knows to keep away from Curran’s Lane after dark. Even in the daylight, the lane has a mournful, brooding air—narrow, hemmed in by overgrown hedges, and winding into a clutch of old trees that whisper when there’s no wind. But it’s the house at the end—the crumbling wreck with the scorched roof and shutterless windows—that no one dares approach.

They say the house burned down one All Hallows’ Eve, back in 1956. The Raffertys, a family of six, vanished in the blaze. But no bodies were ever found. Only the blackened stone chimney remained upright, like a charred finger pointing accusingly at the sky. Since then, strange things have been heard. Lights flickering in broken windows. Laughter from the cellar. A smell of smoke when the air is still.

Last summer, a fella from Dublin—urban explorer type—came nosing around with a camera and drone. Said he’d heard the legends and wanted to “debunk” them. Locals warned him off, of course. Told him about the mailman who’d stopped delivering that far down the lane. Told him about the foxes that wouldn’t den near the place, and how even the birds flew wide.

He laughed. Said we were superstitious.

He spent the night in the house.

His camera was found in the ditch two days later, cracked and blackened. No sign of him. Not even a shoe.

One local lad, young Seánie Dempsey, peeked at the footage before the battery died. Said it was mostly just creaks and shadows. But near the end, the lens caught something—just a glimpse—of the fireplace lighting itself. No match. No logs. Just flame. And in the flicker, six faces forming in the soot above the mantel. Watching. Waiting.

Seánie won’t speak about it now. Won’t go near the lane at all.

Some say the house is hungry, that it draws in wanderers with curiosity like moths to flame. Others think the Raffertys never left. That whatever terrible thing happened that Halloween night bound them there, burning in an endless loop.

And if you’re walking by Curran’s Lane in the dusk, and the shadows grow too long, you might hear it too—the crackle of unseen fire, and soft, childlike voices whispering from behind bramble and stone:

“Come in where it’s warm.”

You won’t feel the cold again.

Ever.