A Visit from the Banshee: Migration and the Irish Ghost Story
Nineteenth-century Irish writers rarely brought the gothic home to Dublin, Cork, Belfast, or any other Irish city. Instead, they projected fears and terrors onto crumbling country estates, or packed them up and ferried them abroad to cities such as London. The spectral inhabitants of Irish urban ghost stories, from graverobbers and supernatural stalkers to the wailing banshee, reveal enduring ties to home. Accompanying the MoLI Editions anthology A Visit from the Banshee (2024), this lecture will explore how Irish folk horror travels across borders while retaining deep connections to place and cultural memory.
Dr Katie Mishler is a curator, writer, and scholar specialising in nineteenth- and twentieth-century supernatural writing. She is the creator and producer of RadioMoLI’s annual Christmas Ghost Story, curator of the online exhibition Dublin Gothic, and editor of the collection A Visit from the Banshee (MoLI Editions, 2024)
