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SeanF1989
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Please forgive the silly question but does the Church have a view on them? I thought maybe there was an explanation since banshees originate from Ireland which is a Catholic country.
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Buck_Crosswhite
Guest
Demons are real.
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karbear
Guest
They seem to be some sort of, well I don’t know hat they are, but they seem to attach to a family and warn of death. I have irish relatives. One had a traditional sort of banshee, the sort that howled the night of a death. He pointed out to me the bush where the banshee cried the night his mother died. Other families get some other sort of sign. My dad was in the room with a friend one night when the friend heard three knocks on the door, then went white as a ghost and started crying. Sure enough, there was no one at the door, but the knocks came at the same time his mom died. Apparently, it was like this for every death in the family. Other families get different signs. As odd as it sounds, these stories are true. So, what is a banshee, it it some sort of angel?
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jannes
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I live in Canada born of Irish/Scottish parents.In Dec 1979 I awoke one night 3am with the most awfull shreik in my ears.I wondered if I’d made the noise myself,but I was very calm ,no bad dreams or anything and I thought to have made the noise myself I would stil be feeling the sensation in my throat but I was completely at peace.and went back to sleep.the next day I receved the news of my mothers death.My sister found her at 9am UK time and the doctor said she had been dead for about an hour .So that would coincide with my hearing the shreik .So who knows our g/parents swore by the bansheeand they were very devout Catholics so maybe it followed me to Canada
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Cirdan_XII
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In Irish mythology, banshees are spirit beings associated with death. Whether they are evil or good appears to be ambivalent.
The Catholic Church discorages interest in demonic matters. Not because these things are not real but precisely because they are real and a person without the necessary strength and training can get drawn into these very real demonic circles through excessive innocent interest. This is the same reason you should stay away from astrology for example.
So you should be careful what questions you ask about them and maybe prefer to stay ignorant to certain matters.
I definitely do believe these things myself. When my mother died, an old mirror that had once been hers crashed off the wall in what, as far as we could work out, must have been the precise moment she died, hundreds of miles away.
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karbear
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Sounds like good advice. I was just wondering if there was a reason to understand these things as necessarily demonic. I guess as long as there is a doubt, best to stay away.
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jannes
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To add to my previous post.My MIL BORN OF tHE AULD iRISH SWORE TO ME WHEN THERE WAS DEATH IN HER OLD FAMILY THE KNOCKS WOULD COME TO THE DOOR,.SHE WAS A TEENAGER AND HER FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THIS WAS WHEN HER DOOR WAS RATTLED THREE TIMES AND NO ONE WAS THERE IN A SHORT TIME SHE RECEVIED THE NEWS OF HER BELOVED AUNTS SUICIDE FROM THEN ON SHE WOULD KNOW THE SIGNS OF DEATH INCLUDING THE PERFUME OF FLOWERS
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A_G
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Banshees are associated as bad omens, usually the death of a family member. Not that the banshee herself is evil, but that she brings or acts as a messenger of bad news to people. It is said that Banshees never appear to the one who is to die but to their loved ones. To hear a banshee cry, scream, or wail, foretells death in ones family. Is it possible? Sure, I think so.
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jfmarm81
Guest
Being of Irish descent, I do believe in banshees. I have never heard tem myself, and truly hope never to, but I believe. Beyond that, I don’t go looking for proof and leave it at my personal belief…
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Cormacnl
Guest
Being 100% Irish, I believe in leprechauns. I am proud to say I have gone out of my way to look for proof . Over the years I have chased from one end to the other of many a rainbows. Occasionally I have found tiny footsteps in the wet ground but to date no leprechauns or pots of gold.
Nevertheless, I am steadfast in my belief.
The fairies living in my local park say leprechauns exist and fairies never lie…well hardly ever.
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bmullins
Guest
You’re much faster than I, I’ve yet to manage to get to the end of the rainbow, it keeps moving on me.Being 100% Irish, I believe in leprechauns. I am proud to say I have gone out of my way to look for proof . Over the years I have chased from one end to the other of many a rainbows. Occasionally I have found tiny footsteps in the wet ground but to date no leprechauns or pots of gold.
Nevertheless, I am steadfast in my belief.
The fairies living in my local park say leprechauns exist and fairies never lie…well hardly ever.
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OrdinaryMelkite
Guest
That is my point of view. I believe that they exist, but that they are not of God and that devout Catholics should not get involved with them.
Unfortunately, many pagan religions and New Age ideologies encourage interest in them.
Too bad.
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OrdinaryMelkite
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Ridgerunner
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My dad and his family were 100% Irish and not terribly removed from the Old Country in time or ways of thinking.
He and they sorta sorta believed in Banshees, and they had stories to back it up. While they did not believe Banshees were demonic, exactly, they did not in any way think of them as benevolent, but as objects of dread. To them, Banshees meant us no harm, necessarily, but no good either. They were a sort of “natural” warning, like the sound of an approaching tornado.
My dad, who was extraordinarily well self-educated in a wide range of things, and very orthodox Catholic, did think there were things to which most people close themselves off in the way of perception, but that the Irish were less so. Consequently, he believed, there were spiritual things; some good and some bad, that the Irish could perceive that others could not. He believed that was a cultural, not a biologic propensity.
But while I am a very practically-oriented person, I think there is some truth to all of this in at least a general sort of way. I had an Italian grandfather whose intuitions were absolutely uncanny. He seemed to know things in advance of their happening, sometimes without even being conscious of it. One example (from many). One morning he was traveling to one of his pieces of land. Before leaving, he just thought he would take a water hose along. He had no reason to do it at all, and certainly didn’t need it where he was going. He just thought he should. Then, well before lunchtime, he decided to stop at the front gate of my parents’ house to eat his lunch. No reason to do that, and good reasons not to. Then he noticed smoke by their house. Went to look. Saw a fire under the propane tanks. Connected the hose and put it out. Nobody was home.
There were a lot of things like that. I don’t think the Irish have a “lock” on strange perceptions, but I don’t particularly doubt my dad’s thought that there are lots of things going on around us that we mostly filter out, but could know if we didn’t do that.
So, do I believe in Banshees? Well, mostly not, but I certainly don’t count them out.
He and they sorta sorta believed in Banshees, and they had stories to back it up. While they did not believe Banshees were demonic, exactly, they did not in any way think of them as benevolent, but as objects of dread. To them, Banshees meant us no harm, necessarily, but no good either. They were a sort of “natural” warning, like the sound of an approaching tornado.
My dad, who was extraordinarily well self-educated in a wide range of things, and very orthodox Catholic, did think there were things to which most people close themselves off in the way of perception, but that the Irish were less so. Consequently, he believed, there were spiritual things; some good and some bad, that the Irish could perceive that others could not. He believed that was a cultural, not a biologic propensity.
But while I am a very practically-oriented person, I think there is some truth to all of this in at least a general sort of way. I had an Italian grandfather whose intuitions were absolutely uncanny. He seemed to know things in advance of their happening, sometimes without even being conscious of it. One example (from many). One morning he was traveling to one of his pieces of land. Before leaving, he just thought he would take a water hose along. He had no reason to do it at all, and certainly didn’t need it where he was going. He just thought he should. Then, well before lunchtime, he decided to stop at the front gate of my parents’ house to eat his lunch. No reason to do that, and good reasons not to. Then he noticed smoke by their house. Went to look. Saw a fire under the propane tanks. Connected the hose and put it out. Nobody was home.
There were a lot of things like that. I don’t think the Irish have a “lock” on strange perceptions, but I don’t particularly doubt my dad’s thought that there are lots of things going on around us that we mostly filter out, but could know if we didn’t do that.
So, do I believe in Banshees? Well, mostly not, but I certainly don’t count them out.
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jfmarm81
Guest
Haha…leprechauns are tricky fellows…Being 100% Irish, I believe in leprechauns. I am proud to say I have gone out of my way to look for proof . Over the years I have chased from one end to the other of many a rainbows. Occasionally I have found tiny footsteps in the wet ground but to date no leprechauns or pots of gold.
Nevertheless, I am steadfast in my belief.
The fairies living in my local park say leprechauns exist and fairies never lie…well hardly ever.
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Cirdan_XII
Guest
I can believe this. Some parts of the world are older in a certain way, and less touched and less changed, and I don’t mean that in terms of the people or what they do but really in terms of the land and what happens there, with both angels and demons being less hidden than in other places. Ireland is one of those countries. You’ve only got to read about St Patrick and his various encounters with hostile beasts to fathom some of the things that happened there not too long ago (in the bigger picture of things) and whereas probably some of that is legend and myth if not pure invention, there is a grain of truth in many myths. I hope you get what I mean.
As I said previously, an excessive interest in those things is unnatural, but the sensitive cannot help notice there is something.
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Cormacnl
Guest
I don’t want to be offensive but, come on…believing in banshees is pure nuts. 
Banshees, leprechauns, fairies, goblins and incubi are not manifestations of a spirit world. They are ignorant superstition.
Ask yourself this: if you take these folk myths seriously how solid is your belief in God?
Banshees, leprechauns, fairies, goblins and incubi are not manifestations of a spirit world. They are ignorant superstition.
Ask yourself this: if you take these folk myths seriously how solid is your belief in God?
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Ridgerunner
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How, exactly, does at least a cautious regard (or even belief) in the first preclude belief in God?I don’t want to be offensive but, come on…believing in banshees is pure nuts.
Banshees, leprechauns, fairies, goblins and incubi are not manifestations of a spirit world. They are ignorant superstition.
Ask yourself this: if you take these folk myths seriously how solid is your belief in God?
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GoldenLight
Guest
Sometimes ‘superstion’ and ‘legend’ has a basis in realities…I don’t want to be offensive but, come on…believing in banshees is pure nuts.
Banshees, leprechauns, fairies, goblins and incubi are not manifestations of a spirit world. They are ignorant superstition.
Personally speaking regarding ‘banshee’ I’m on the fence neither a believer or not … I think Banshee is perhaps a Irish name for what other cultures call a messenger of Death… Although my mother of Irish Catholic parents would tell us… We better be good or the Banshee with come for us! For her it was someone who came for souls that needed a lot of praying for…
I’ve had experiences when someone has died of a wonderful feeling of love, warmth and peace… I think of that person and a ‘knowing’ that he/she has died… To me these souls were on the right path in life…
My father had a awful experience, he was on Manouvers in Germany, would probably have been around 1959 (actually ‘it’ went to my brother in boarding school first) So 2 people experienced the same thing… My Dad was woken by heavy weight on his chest, he couldn’t move his body, but managed to get his rifle up from under the bed… It was a Large Black winged ghoul… It got up off him and went to the door of the tent… My dad took a shot at it…(had to do some explaining in the camp for that one) ! ‘It’ bowed and left… In the morning he received a Telegram to say his father (who I am told was a very nasty and evil man) had passed away that night…Along with this Ghoul was a incredible feeling of hoplessness and despair… As Dad said it was as if he was given a glimpse of what the lower depths of purgatory would be like…
So, some of these recent ‘movies’ depicting dark winged Angels… Are imo based not only in ‘legend’ but fact !!
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You
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‘Ban - shi’, I cannot do the ‘fadas’ [accent marks on letters] on this keyboard, but the word means fairy woman or more correctly spirit-woman. Ban is woman, shi is spirit.I don’t want to be offensive but, come on…believing in banshees is pure nuts.
Banshees, leprechauns, fairies, goblins and incubi are not manifestations of a spirit world. They are ignorant superstition.
Ask yourself this: if you take these folk myths seriously how solid is your belief in God?
I never believed in banshees at all; until, that is, I had a dream one night. On opening my eyes in this terrible dream I saw floating above my face, as I lay in bed, a young woman’s face with long hair flowing out behind her, and she had her arms outstretched towards me; and slowly she was pulled back by an invisible force away from me into the darkness. And the screams of abject terror as she was pulled back caused me to walk around the house in the dark in the middle of that night wondering to myself if someone had died, or what had happened.
Well it happened that a woman had died, I heard a week or so later but she died alone and had not been found for a week, until the neighbours broke down her door.
Yet, it was not this woman I saw in my dream, but a young woman with long flowing hair; but the impression left with me that night was that someone must have died, and I wondered if I heard their soul being dragged backwards down to hell, with them screaming in horror.
But the cheerier side of this story is that I have since, unaccountably, dreamt of this woman, and she is in the dream, alive and useful, if somewhat mildly surprised looking.
I’ve never dreamt of her before or since and truthfully, I hardly knew her at all; though I had heard she had cancer and I tried saying a prayer for her recovery. Later a mutual friend said she had had a dream of a flower pot which had been broken but was know fixed. People are not in the habit of telling me their dreams, nor are third parties in the habit, ever, of communicating their dreams to me. But anyway she did recover from the cancer, but died later on from something I don’t know of.
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