Before electricity became common in rural County Wexford, stories about men becoming lost at night were frequent. Without streetlights or illuminated houses, the darkness reportedly caused men to “lose their sense of direction,” leading them in circles around fields or across stretches of countryside.
In 1937, a Wexford farmer named Nicholas Fitzgerald spoke of this phenomenon. Fitzgerald, who had experienced it himself, recounted several cases of men going missing in the Foulksmills area.
The farmer told the story of a man named Lar, who became lost in a field. Despite knowing the layout intimately, Lar could not find the path to the exit. Throughout the night he searched, but his efforts ended in failure, leaving him no choice but to sit down and wait for sunrise.
As daylight broke, Lar realised he was not in the field he had become lost in. Instead, he found himself sitting on Cloney’s Bridge in Old Ross, several kilometres away.
Fitzgerald’s neighbour, Nicholas Furlong, had a similar experience. On one dry and overcast night, Furlong went into his field to check on his horses.
As he walked through the field, Furlong said he began to feel as though thousands of people were in the field around him. Despite hearing voices on all sides, he could see nothing.
As he walked around his field “one hundred times,” Furlong could not find the gate. It was only when he sat down and removed his shoes and socks that the outline of the gate appeared before him. Without performing this act, Furlong believed he would have spent the night outside.