Suddenly, near the cathedral, you see a person in the fog. She's a lady, dressed in a very old style, standing with a little parasol and waiting for someone or something. You look back and she's no longer there. You could turn back but it's very late, tomorrow you have to work and the wind is starting to blow... better to think about something else and go home.
 Did you think that she could be one of the famous 'Ghosts of Cork'? “Ghosts in Cork?” you may ask. Yes indeed, and among some of the most scary and popular in the entire Emerald Isle.
 Halloween is in the air and it is the time to remember that popular and folk tales about ghosts and spirits in Cork are often very ancient and rich, and they deserve to be known.
 How about in Kinsale? Maybe you’ll see a ghost while walking on the old fort's ramparts on a beautiful sunny day. Well with luck, because by night Charles Fort is haunted by the ghost of the famous 'White Lady' that sadly died the day of her wedding. It is a tragedy that has been compared to an Italian fifteenth-century tragedy. (Romeo and Juliet, does it sound familiar?) When the White Lady’s father killed her new husband by mistake, out of sorrow she decided to throw herself off the fort. Sad story. For the record, her father, Colonel Warrender, did the same from the shock of his daughter’s suicide.
 Or consider the tale of the well-known Father Theobald Mathew (1790 – 1856, you can see his statue at the very beginning of St Patrick Street), who, in the Blackmoor Lane Capuchin Friary one night, met the ghost of a late monk whose soul had been banished to purgatory. The tale says that Father Mathew celebrated a midnight mass with the late monk and after that the soul of the monk was able to find peace and the ghost disappeared forever.
 Those tales come from the work of the late Irish writer Padraic O' Farrell, and if you wish to know more about those stories you can find most of his books in the Cork Public Library.
 So, the next night that you are walking home know that you may not be alone in the fog and watch your step. But at the same time, do not worry too much. Someone said that a ghost is like a true love: “everyone is talking about it but no one has ever seen it.”