In the late 2000s, a family living along the Ballyfin Road in Portlaoise reported a series of unsettling and unexplained events that have never been fully explained. The haunting began in 2008, when the family’s teenage daughter witnessed what she believed to be the ghost of a young man, aged around eighteen or nineteen.

One evening, she saw the figure walk calmly up the hallway before passing straight through the closed kitchen door. At first, she thought it was her brother, but when she called out, there was no reply — and the figure had completely vanished.

The apparition was described in vivid detail: a young man wearing a hoodie and tracksuit bottoms, carrying a shopping bag decorated with autumn-coloured flowers.

A year later, in spring 2009, the girl’s mother was cleaning when she came across a shopping bag in a cellophane wrapper — patterned exactly like the one her daughter had described from the apparition. When the daughter entered the room and saw it, she froze, instantly recognising it as the very same bag the ghost had been carrying.

Startled and unnerved, the mother immediately disposed of the bag, fearing it might somehow be linked to the haunting.

From that time on, the household continued to experience strange disturbances – footsteps echoing upstairs when no one was present, the sound of furniture scraping or being dragged across the floor during the night, and fleeting shadows seen moving through the rooms.

Though no explanation has ever been found, the family remain convinced that their Ballyfin Road home was visited by a presence trying, in some way, to make itself known.