THE EYRE FAMILY HAUNTINGS(Charles E.J. Moulton) THE EYRE FAMILY HAUNTINGS
A look at my father’s encounters with Irish ghosts
By Charles E.J. Moulton

Herbert Eyre Moulton returned to the land of his ancestors with the hope of starting anew. Both his parents now dead, his two week vacation turned into a prolonged stay.
As Herbert Moore, his career performances for MCA Records had brought him wide attention at the dinner clubs of Manhattan. His friendship with the likes of Joan Crawford gave him the possibility to expand his professional field.
Now, Ireland quickly became the home of his heart. Reconnecting with the old Eyre family proved a thankful experience. Baron Giles Eyre’s two mansions in Eyreville, the township his family founded centuries ago, were now ruins.
Thanks to my grandmother Nelle’s conscientious contact with her long-distance relatives all through her life, however, Herbert now was a welcome guest. Charity, George and the rest of the Eyre heirs were no longer Barons with a big B. They were farmers. But they were mighty proud of their heritage, coat of arms and all. My father was a part of that heritage.

I heard the stories all through my childhood. My father told me about his work in seven Dublin theatres, about his work in several motion pictures, including Attack Squadron, his overseas correspondence collaboration with American magazines and the countless walks through the Irish countryside with his beloved sheepdog Fred.
What really fascinated me were the ghost stories.
My father being a true Eyre heir, he was taken on strolls to see the old ruins. The family mansions had window shutters that banged open and shut constantly, even when there was no wind. A friend witnessed an old horse-drawn carriage disappear into a dip in the road near the ruin and never reappear again. A wagonload of revellers, dressed in elegant 19th century clothing, resided within. Were these people perhaps real ghosts haunting the village or were they only holes in the curtains of time?

Herbert lived on the west of Ireland in between acting jobs. Changing address, a couple of months on one of Dublin’s many theatrical stages and then a month with his relatives, proved an exhilarating experience. Ireland’s fantastic nature on the west coast gave him a fulfillment Dublin lacked. The relatively inexperienced spectral viewer saw an old lady lurking around the corners of the family house one day. She disappeared behind a corner and was never seen again. No matter how hard he searched, the woman was never found again.
The Eyres told him that he had just seen a ghost.
Of course, the canines of the house were no strangers to a sixth sense, either.
When the grandfather of the house died, the resident Cocker Spaniel positioned himself in front of the bedroom door and howled.
The Eyre Estate simply reeked with tales of hauntings. My father awoke one morning at four-thirty, startled to his wits. In the ground floor kitchen, an assembly of people were busy with clanging pots and pans and passing cutlery. Madly busy conversing about nothing at all, they seemed completely disinterested that sleeping people dwelled in the house. Herbert rushed into the private bedroom and asked the lady of the manor what on Earth that noise was in the kitchen. The woman simply and calmly stated:
“Oh, take no notice of them, dear. It’s just the family ghosts. They always make a racket of a noise at this time of the morning.”
What Herbert later found out was that these “family ghosts” were actually the old kitchen staff still caught up in their old work from way-back-when.

Ireland not only opened spiritual and ancestral doors to Herb Moulton.
It also provided food for thought for his age-old love-affair with the supernatural.
That old love affair turned dark one New Year’s Eve at the end of 1962, seven years before I was born.
He had spent his evening at a colleague’s house in the west of Ireland that night. Herbert eventually decided to walk home, tired from the feast. It was a bit of a way to walk home, which spurred the host to insist on him staying the night. Herbert told him that his own bed was calling. The half-hour walk and the fresh air would do him good.
The other guests told him that he under no circumstances should cross the field with the thornbushes that lay to the right of the main road. The fairies lived there, or so they said. If any local cut down the bushes, the crop would turn bad and the cows would die. It was better to leave the fairies alone. My father nodded, thanked his friend for the tip and went on his way.
Eventually, he came to exactly that field. Remembering his friend’s words, of course, he contemplated taking the long road home. However, inspired by an earlier arrival under his own blanket, he decided to criss-cross the said meadow his friends had warned him not to cross.
The night chilled him to the bone. The snow was not high enough to give him trouble, yet not low enough to provide him with an easy trespass.
Somewhere along the way, Herbert Eyre Moulton lost his way. The thornbushes always blocking the view, the way back out of the darkness onto the street posed an increasingly bigger problem.
He ended up walking in circles for a considerable amount of time.
That lengthy walk on the field gave the American actor a dazy slumberlike waking sleep. He saw men in tuxedos and women in gala dress. Chandaliers hung from the ceilings and pianists played familiar melodies close to the bar. He recognized the place, although it was no way near where he was at the moment.
He told me, many years later, that people tried to communicate with him, where ever he was, but that their words in no way were intelligible to him.
At around three in the morning, Herbert Eyre Moulton passed out in the snow.
If it hadn’t been for his friend, who somehow felt that something was wrong, my father would have died in the frosty chill of the fairy meadow. His friend called Herbert’s home phone. When there was no answer, he dashed off and found the American passed out in the snow on the infamous field. He took Herbert to the hospital, gave him a jolt of Irish whiskey, slapped him on his back and gave the Yank the sound advice never to cross that field again.

Once rehabilitated, he forgot about the incident.
The epilogue of this tale turned spooky sometime in the spring of 1963.
Herbert was back in Dublin, working with Siobhan MacKenna and Michael MacLiommoir at the Gate Theatre. They were performing Joan of the Stockyards. Air-Bear, as they called Herbie, was having the whale of a time.
On the way back home from work one night, Herbert met an old colleague that he had not seen for ages. Hooting with joy, he offered to buy the gal a drink. They stepped into a pub and began chatting about old times over two pints of rich and meal-worthy Guinness.
“Herbie,” she said, finally. “What was actually the matter with you on New Year’s Eve?”
My father totally perplexed, he shook his head and inquired what she was talking about. He had no idea. “I haven’t seen you for a year,” he answered.
“Well, you were at our New Year’s Eve party this year. We had rented this really big place and you came wandering in, totally out of dress-code.”
“I was out in the west of Ireland on New Year’s Eve, Dierdre,” my father answered.
“No, you were here in Dublin. You came in, unannounced, at about two o’clock at night. We really noticed you, Air-Bear, because everyone was in tuxedo and gala-dress. You were wearing a pullover and some jeans and a long coat. We were gazing at the chandaliers and mumbling something. We tried to speak to you, but you didn’t answer. Then you walked out and we couldn’t find you again. What happened? Where did you go?”
“I was no where near Dublin on New Year’s Eve,” he mumbled. “I was caught by the fairies on a West-Irish field of thornbushes.”
It hit him like a bolt of lightning.
He had been on the field the night he almost died.
The night his friend, over on the west of Ireland, had warned him not to cross it.
His conclusion, even many years later, was that the fairies somehow had transported his soul over across the country for a brief moment. He was never meant to die, he concluded. He was meant to go on and make me. But he never ceased to have respect for those fairies on the field somewhere on the way home in the beginning of 1963.

Yes. My father was full of stories. Playing the wolf in the high school musical rendition of “Red Riding Hood”. Working Off-Broadway. Being compared to Tyrone Power. Praying himself out of the Korean War by working as a chorus conductor. Holding up the curtain for opera diva Maria Callas. Acting with the likes of Mickey Rourke and Clint Eastwood.
But nothing fascinated me so as the stories of the ghosts of Ireland.

Three years after he was caught in the snow somewhere on the Irish west coast, he found himself as a freelance-baritone in Hannover, Germany. Deeply in love with a beautiful Swedish mezzo-soprano, he proposed marriage with her acceptance as a result. They soon went on to sing with her on Irish TV and moved to Austria.
More importantly, though, during that 1968 tour Herbert Eyre Moulton’s wife became pregnant. The baby boy would soon hear of his father’s encounters with the supernatural.
And that boy, me, always wondered what actually happened on that New Year’s Eve in 1963. Was my father’s soul really abducted and somehow transported over to Dublin that night?
As with many things in life, that will perhaps always remain a mystery.
We end this ghostly account with a tale that entails some wit.
Arriving late after a concert, he had been promised a room in a friend’s house for the night. The man of the house knew that Herbert was arriving with his dog late that night. However, the wife didn’t. Fred, the sheepdog, had been granted a meal after the lengthy trip. A sheep’s heart, purchased on that day in a butchery, seemed a fitting supper.
So, an American artist clad in a white bathrobe wandered down the stairs that night. The candleholder with the three candles sparkled lights on his face, making the shiny metal of the knife flicker shimmers of fire on his face.
Awoken by the creaking stairs, the wife appeared from her bed chamber.
Needless to say, she shrieked at the sight of this stranger with the knife and the candles on her own stairs.
Herbert assured her everything was all right.
“I’m a friend of your husbands. I’m just staying for the night.”
No answer.
“I’m just going to the kitchen to cut up a heart,” he continued.
Now, the woman shrieked.
“It’s all right,” he concluded. “It’s my dog’s!”
The woman was not seen again.
At least not for as long as my father was there.

Ireland remained wonderful, if also surprisingly mysterious.

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