Marshal Brain of Clongowes Wood

Clongowes Wood, near Clane in County Kildare, was the seat of the Wogan-Browne family before it became a Jesuit school in the nineteenth century, and one of the most discussed ghost stories of eighteenth-century Ireland is set there. In 1757, two sisters living at the house are said to have seen the apparition of an officer in the uniform of the Austrian army, his chest streaming with blood.

At the time, the sisters' brother was serving abroad as an officer in Austrian service, far from any news the family could quickly receive. They identified the ghostly visitor as their brother, and within days — before any letter could plausibly have reached them — word arrived that he had indeed been killed in action at the Battle of Prague that same year, at almost exactly the time of the vision.

What made the case unusual, and kept it circulating in accounts of Irish ghost-lore for generations afterwards, was a further detail: local people with no knowledge of foreign military dress were said to have been able to describe the Austrian officer's uniform precisely as the sisters had seen it. The episode is still cited today as one of Ireland's best-documented 'crisis apparitions' — a vision of a death occurring at the moment it happened, far away.