19/09/2026
I don't normally do long posts but this story cropped up last night... if you don't like true ghost stories do not read on.
There are still a few people around Mullaghmore who know about the light. They don’t generally speak about it, and if you ask outright you’ll probably be told you’ve heard nonsense. But sit looking out across the harbour from the Pier Head on a calm autumn evening, when the village has gone quiet and the water is almost still, and it’s easy to understand how the story survived.
Nobody seems sure exactly how old it is. One version puts it sometime before the Great War. Another says it happened much earlier, when nearly every second house around Mullaghmore had somebody going to sea. What everyone agrees on is that a small fishing boat left the harbour one autumn morning with three men aboard. Only two came back. The third had gone overboard beyond the Head. They searched the following morning, but nothing was ever found. Not a coat, not a boot, not even an oar.
The missing man had been staying in a house above the harbour. There was a woman living there. Some say she was his wife, others say she was his sister. After he disappeared, she began leaving a lamp burning in the upstairs window every night, facing the harbour. Weeks became months, and months became years, but the lamp still appeared.
Then, one winter night, a fisherman walking home heard oars outside the harbour wall. There was no wind. Two strokes, a pause, then two more. He leaned over, expecting to see somebody coming in late. There was nothing there, but the sound kept coming, slowly and steadily, getting closer.
A few nights later somebody else heard it. Then another. Always on calm nights.
The first person who claimed to have actually seen the boat was a young lad returning from the Cliffoney side. He saw a small dark boat inside the harbour with one man sitting in it. As the lad passed, the man called to him.
“Is the light still there?”
The lad looked towards the house. The upstairs lamp was burning.
“Aye,” he said.
The man nodded.
“Does she still wait?”
The lad glanced back towards the house. When he turned again, the boat was gone.
Years later, after the woman died, the lamp stopped appearing. The night after she was buried, people around the harbour heard the oars again. This time, two men went down to look.
A boat was beside the pier. One man sat inside it, soaked through, even though the sea was flat and there hadn’t been rain all day. He looked towards the dark upstairs window. One of the men asked if he needed help.
The stranger only said, “She’s gone, then.”
After a while, the boat moved away towards the harbour mouth. The two men watched it disappear. The tide was coming in, and the boat was going against it.
But the man never once put the oars into the water.
The story faded as Mullaghmore changed. Old houses were altered, fishing changed, and fewer people bothered telling it. Most people around the village would probably laugh at the story now, and maybe rightly. Harbours make strange noises at night. Ropes knock, boats shift, and sound carries differently across still water. That is probably all it ever was.
Probably.
But years ago, an old man who had worked around the harbour for most of his life was asked about the story. He laughed and said there was no such thing as a ghost boat.
Then, after a pause, he added, “And anyway, people always tell it wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
The old man looked out towards the harbour entrance.
“They say the strange thing is seeing the boat come in,” he said. “That’s not the part you should worry about.”
“What is?”
“The boat always comes in with one man aboard.”
He stopped there.
“And?”
The old man looked back at him.
“It doesn’t always leave with one.”
So next time you’re sitting comfortably in the Pier Head, looking out across Mullaghmore Harbour as the evening settles in, keep an eye on the water.
If you ever hear the slow sound of oars on a night when the harbour is completely still, perhaps don’t be too curious about who is rowing.
Because according to the old story, the man in the boat has been waiting a very long time.
And sometimes, he doesn’t row back out alone.
