Cormac Stain of Leinster Paranormal behind bars at Carlow Gaol.

LeinsterParanormal, one of the better sites out there dedicated to the pursuit of truth, made a news in an interview with Cormac Stain.

WHEN Cormac Strain was a 17-year-old student in Derry, he and his housemates got the fright of their lives when nothing less than a poltergeist had decided to cause ructions in their home.

What started off as a gentle tapping noise accelerated into full blown thumping, with pictures trembling and shaking on the walls.

Cormac turned on his heels and ran all the way into Derry city.

‘I legged it,’ he recalls. ‘I was terrified, what would you expect from a 17-year-old boy?’

He’s since discovered that the housing estate in which the ghostly happenings went on in had been something of a urban battle ground between the two sides of the sectarian divide. A whole lotta people had died and it seems, they weren’t too happy about it.

Zoom forward a couple of decades and you’re likely to find Cormac up to his oxters in the paranormal.

He, along with Danny Carthy, run Leinster Paranormal, an organisation that investigates and researches strange happenings.

Cormac is still buzzing after spending the night of Friday, February 13 in Carlow’s old gaol or debtors’ prison. Thirteen listeners of K.C.L.R. were invited to spend the night with Cormac and Danny, along with a historian.

But the night didn’t turn out like Cormac expected. While he thought that it would involve a historical tour of what’s now Carlow Shopping Centre, was instead a night of what could be ghostly goings on.

There was the sound of a heavy steel door slamming, despite the fact that all the doors are incapable of being slammed. There was a recording of someone screaming, even though the gang didn’t hear any such thing and there was unexplained electrical activity that might suggest the presence of a spirit.

‘There was no power in the area of the gaol that we were checking yet we found spots of energy, moving about the room,’ Cormac explains. ‘Now, I’m not an electrician but I’m told that that shouldn’t happen.’

Legend has it around Carlow town that the place is haunted by a young girl who was mistreated by the wardens in the gaol. Cormac is convinced that there are presences in the old goal because of the sheer amount of unexplained activity they’ve recorded there.

But surely if you’re hunting ghosts in the pitch dark, then an element of the heepie jeebies creeps in? After all, it would be very easy to scare the knickers off yourself, let alone anyone else in such circumstances?

‘There are two different kinds of people who do this,’ he points out. ‘There’s the research route that we go down, then there’s the group that just want to be scared.’

‘Of course, people will be afraid initially because we work in the dark,’ he continues. ‘It’s better to work in the dark because people talk less and there’s less distraction. It also cuts out any possibility of light interfering with the activities.’

Cormac doesn’t go in for the idea of blood curdling screams or visions of dead people with their guts hanging out. He says that programmes such as Most Haunted go in for the ‘scream factor’ where the audience wants to be entertained through being terrified. The reality of tracking ghosts is less Hammer House and more humdrum, he explains.

‘It can involve sitting in the dark for hours with nothing happening,’ Cormac smiles.

‘And 99 per cent of the time, we can find explanations for any noises that we investigate. As far as we’re concerned, a lot of this comes from ourselves, from our own brains. If you believe strongly enough that your place is haunted, then the more likely it is that you’ll see something,’ he says, explaining how the night can play tricks on your mind.

Most of the work carried out by Cormac and Danny is in private residences, where house holders suspect some paranormal activity.

He cites an example of an old pub in County Laois that dated back to 1582. The landlord and the customers were fully convinced that the place was haunted. What Leinster Paranormal discovered, however, was that the electrics for the building were located behind the bar and had created a magnetic field around the entire area where the customers supped.

While the pub owner was a tad disappointed with the result, Cormac says that as an investigator of the paranormal, you just have to be as level headed as possible.

He also says that the number of weirdos that he meets in his line of work is low because they have to have some grounding, else their imaginations would run away with themselves.

‘Most people I know who work in the paranormal are logical, straight forward people,’ he says. ‘They’re the last people to jump to conclusion but we’d be open minded about things, too. I’d also say that if you think that the paranormal is all bunkum, then get out there and explore it for yourself.’

Full source: Carlow People