Unsolved and Haunting Occurrences: The Motherland

This week, we all are going to have a wee bit of the Irish in our blood!

With St. Paddy’s day right around the bend, I though it would be fun to do some spooky, unsolved mysteries of the country of me ancestors, Ireland! Along the way, we will learn all kinds of ‘must know’ slang from our UK people. It will be ‘grand!’ By the by, grand is one of the most used slang terms in Ireland. Note the following imaginary conversation for reference:

Me: “I just got me hair done.”

Random Irish dude: “Looks grand.”

Me: “My daughter finally won the spelling bee.”

Random Irish dude: “That’s grand.”

Me: “I think I just swallowed a cockroach.”

Random Irish dude: “How grand.”

You get the idea. Irish slang aside, we will also explore some weird Eire mysteries that remain unsolved.

We begin with The Vanishing Triangle. In the 1990’s, in the province of Leinster, eight woman went missing over a span of five years. Police believed they were victims of an unidentified serial killer, one who may have been responsible for several unsolved murders in Eastern Ireland years earlier. Speculation is that the woman are buried somewhere in the woods or bogs of the Dublin mountains. What makes it even more eerie is that, to this day, no witnesses have come forward, despite the fact that several of the women went missing in broad daylight.

Search parties start off to look for missing woman Annie McCarrick. Image credit: Rollingnews.ie

There have been no clues to their whereabouts and no trace of them has been found. Like the case name states, they simply vanished.

Speaking of vanishing, we have the sad case of six-year-old little Mary Boyle. On March 18, 1977, while visiting her grandparents in County Donegal, Mary was following an Uncle across a field after the two had called on a neighbor. On their way back to Granddad’s house, Mary, walking about 500 yards behind her uncle, disappeared. She now has the unenviable distinction of being the longest missing persons case in Ireland’s history.

Personally, if I were investigating, I’d be looking at that uncle. But that’s just me.😉

The field where Mary Boyle disappeared. Image credit: istock.com

Meanwhile, over in County Sligo, we have the mysterious death of a man who called himself Peter Bergmann, an identity that was later determined to be false. In June, 2009, “Peter” checked into a hotel in Sligo with, what police believe, was the sole intention of erasing his identity entirely. His bizarre behavior in the days leading up to the discovery of his body on a beach only added to the mystery.

Authorities uncovered CCTV footage that showed Peter leaving his hotel room no less than 13 times, each time carrying a stuffed, full sized, purple bag. Oddly, each time he returned, he was empty-handed. (Here is where my author brain kicks in, thinking ‘He’s disposing of body parts!’)

He was also seen buying several postage stamps (perhaps to mail the dismembered body to a jilted lover?) but never shipped or mailed anything. Additionally, witnesses saw him doing a recon trip to the beach he where his body was eventually found (perhaps to meet a secret lover? A drug king-pin? A member of the Irish mafia who was crafting his phony passport? Somebody, please stop me!)

Weirder still is that the luggage he arrived with at the hotel was never found in his room (or anywhere for that matter).

Investigators originally believed he died from drowning. He was wearing a pair of purple-striped swimming trunks (this guy obviously liked purple) with his underwear on TOP of them and a blue shirt tucked into both. Hmmm. (Author brain here again…was Petey skinny dipping when he encountered a killer, who took his life and then, in a panic, dressed him hastily so it looked like a natural death? Mistakenly putting the clothes back on in the wrong order because he was interrupted by an attractive woman walking her small dog on the beach, her blonde hair swaying in the breeze? )

It’s hell to live inside my mind sometimes🙄

But, if I bet on that scenario, I would be wrong. Instead, it seems the old chap was dying from cancer. But that’s not what killed him on that overcast day. As it turns out, Peter had a bad ticker and died, quite naturally, of a heart attack.

Saddest of all, he never got to encounter an attractive woman on the beach with her little dog and her hair waving in the wind. Maybe if he did, he would have died a happy man.

His identity remains unknown as, despite a large-scale campaign, no one ever came forward to either identify him or claim him. He is buried in Sligo in an unmarked grave.

Poor, poor Peter. Some may have said he was ‘acting the maggot’, which, in Irish slang, means behaving foolishly. I’m sure there were those convinced he was guilty of something, anything, and hoped that he ‘be afflicted with the itch without benefit of the scratch.’

Others may have felt badly for his situation and assured him that, ‘Tis only a stepmother would blame you.’ And his closest friends (if he even had any, poor bastard) would proclaim, “Well, shite in a bucket, me boyo! You be needin’ the BlackStuff!”

Which, obviously, refers to a pint of Guinness. Speaking of….

I never knew how many terms the Irish use for being drunk. Here in the States, we have toasted, polluted, hammered. I’m quite sure I am missing a few. But in Ireland? In Ireland, you’re fluthered, langers, locked, on a tear, ossified, plastered, write-off stocious (don’t ask🤷‍♀️) rat-arsed, shitfaced, pissed, off yer face, bollocksed, and battered off yer tits.

Especially love that last one.

But don’t get the wrong idea. It’s not like all we Irish do is drink. (We also do jigs, eat only white potatoes, and spend our lives looking for four-leaf clovers and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.) Seriously, though, generations of my family have been devout church goers all their lives.

Especially after getting ‘wankered.’

And that’s a grand thing.

Until next time, I leave you with this blessing. “God is good, but never dance in a small boat.”😜

And…”May you live as long as you want,
And never want as long as you live.”

Sláinte, my friends.🍀🍀

—Q