In the old demesne of Coolderry House, generations of locals and former estate families told one of Offaly’s strangest Christmas traditions – the appearance of a ghostly coach that was said to thunder along the avenue every year on Christmas Night.

Coolderry’s 19th-century owner, Sir Oriel Foster, was famously puzzled by one particular iron gate on the estate. No matter how securely it was bolted, the gate would be found wide open by morning. Grooms and servants swore they had fastened it shut, yet something unseen seemed determined to pass through. The staff, half-joking and half-afraid, insisted that “the Christmas visitor” needed the way kept clear.

According to the old tale, at the stroke of Christmas Night a carriage appears on that very avenue — driverless, yet moving with purpose. The horses are invisible, but the carriage does not run silently: witnesses spoke of the rattle of wheels and the heavy rhythm of hooves striking gravel. Two footmen in powdered wigs are said to sit stiffly on the box, their livery illuminated by a cold, unnatural glow from the lanterns hanging at the coach’s sides. These lamps burn not with ordinary flame, but with a pale, flickering light that dances like fire seen through mist.

Those who lived in the house claimed they often heard the crunch of wheels long before the spectre was seen. More than one resident supposedly rushed to a window or ran out onto the avenue, catching only a glimpse of the lanterns as they swept around a bend and dissolved into the night.

Eventually, Sir Oriel conceded defeat. If the gate could not – or should not – remain closed at Christmastime, he reasoned, then there was little point in fighting whatever force insisted on using the road. According to the story, he had the troublesome gate removed entirely, remarking that it was “best to let the Ghost make his rounds in peace.”

Today, little remains of the old demesne avenue, but locals still repeat the tale. Some say that if you stand there late on December 25th, you may feel a sudden icy gust, as if something large has just passed by. Others swear they’ve seen faint lights drifting through the trees, moving with the steady, purposeful pace of a coach keeping a long-established appointment – the phantom carriage of Coolderry, forever making its Yuletide journey through the dark.