Ireland's hills, mountains, and woodlands were never empty. Long before they were mapped, named, or walked for leisure, they were understood to be occupied - by something older than the settlements that grew up around them. Fairy hills. Cursed peaks. Forests where the trees grew wrong and the paths didn't behave as they should. These were not places you entered without consideration.
That wariness hasn't entirely disappeared. Reports from Ireland's wilder places tend to be harder to explain away than those from buildings - there are no pipes to blame for sounds, no draughts to account for cold spots, no history of previous occupants to fall back on. What people encounter in these places, they encounter in the open.
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