Labasheeda sits on a quiet peninsula on the northern shore of the Shannon Estuary in west Clare. It is a peaceful corner of the county, with views across the Shannon towards Kerry and a history that includes a Napoleonic-era battery fort and a Famine memorial quay.

It is also home to one of the more unsettling ghost stories in County Clare.

Erribal House, in the nineteenth century, was the residence of a man who had served as a juror in a murder trial. The convicted man – known in the available record only as Letherly – was found guilty and hanged. Whether he blamed the juror personally for his fate, or whether the connection was simply that of proximity between the condemned and one of those who helped seal his conviction, something of Letherly apparently remained.

His ghost, as described by those who encountered it, bore the visible mark of how he had died. The neck was twisted – the unmistakable signature of the rope. It was not a subtle presence, and it was not a welcome one. The family living at Erribal House eventually reached the point where they could no longer tolerate what they were experiencing, and called in an exorcist. Whether the intervention was successful is not recorded with any certainty, though the haunting appears to have ceased.

No further documentation of Letherly, his crime, or his trial has come to light, and the name does not appear in surviving Clare court records that are currently accessible. The account rests on local tradition, preserved in the folklore record of the county.