The Dullahan
In Irish folklore, a headless rider gallops through the night, and where he stops, someone will die.
What was reported
The dullahan is a figure of Irish folklore: a headless horseman, or sometimes horsewoman, on a black horse, carrying his own head under his arm, its eyes darting and its grin stretching across the face. Where he stops and calls out a name, that person dies.
Locked gates are said to fly open before him, and those who watch him too closely are punished. The only protection is gold, which he fears.
Explanations offered
Folklorists see the dullahan as an omen of death, like the banshee, perhaps linked to older Celtic beliefs about the head as the seat of the soul. Washington Irving's Headless Horseman in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) may owe something to him.
- When
- Told for centuries
- Where
- Rural Ireland
- Witnesses
- Irish tradition
- Status
- Legend
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.