Midnight at the mountains of Mourne
I remember the first time I saw the Mourne Mountains in the mist. It was a Friday, just after the rain had passed, and the clouds were still clinging to the peaks like a shroud over a corpse. I was young then, just fifteen, but already too familiar with the violent world of Northern Ireland — a world that made your skin crawl and your heart beat like a drum at night. The Troubles were in full swing, and the air was thick with fear, suspicion, and the crackle of gunfire. It was my uncle Dan who first took me to the mountains. He was a quiet man, the kind whose silence made you nervous, as if he were hiding something just out of reach. He was a big man, broad-shouldered with hands that looked like they could break a neck in a second. I’d always known that Dan was involved in things — things my mother warned me to stay away from, even if she didn’t say it outright. “We’re going to the Mountains of Mourne tomorrow at dusk,” he’d said, his voice low and grave, like a whisper from the grave itself. “Some business that needs attending to.” I didn’t ask questions. No one did, not with the way things were at the time. My cousins had been involved with the IRA for years, but Dan, though he wasn’t as vocal about it, was tied to the underground in ways most people couldn’t imagine. I just knew that if he said “business,” you did it — no matter what. His calls were cryptic, but they were never ignored.We drove out of Belfast in the early evening, the sky darkening like the bruises on a child’s skin. As we got closer to the mountains, the landscape began to twist and change. The rolling hills gave way to jagged rocks and cliffs that seemed to claw at the sky. It was like a place out of time, untouched by anything human. We parked the car by a small stone wall, the engine’s dying hum mixing with the faint sounds of birds calling from the trees. Dan didn’t say a word as we climbed over the wall and made our way up the rough path that led into the hills. The air was colder now, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise. We passed the ruins of old stone cottages, their windows shattered, their roofs caved in. Remnants of a time long gone, but not a time before the British had come, I knew. Every step seemed to echo in the emptiness, like the mountains themselves were watching us. Eventually after a long, wordless hike, we went off the course up to the peak, instead veering into the woods in a slightly flatter area. A few minutes later we reached a small clearing, a patch of land where the grass grew tall and wild. There were trees in every direction, but where we stood we could see clearly up to the night sky. In the centre of the clearing there were a bunch of large rocks of about the same size, some toppled over in a vague circle. But the way the ground devoted in some spots and shaped around the rocks told me that at some point in time, they must’ve been placed more uniformly. Dan stopped, his eyes scanning the murky woods. He pulled something from his jacket — a package wrapped in brown paper — and laid it carefully on the ground. “Wait here,” he muttered. I didn’t argue. I knew better than to ask questions. But something about the place set my nerves on edge. It was as if the land itself was alive, and it didn’t want us there. The wind whispered through the trees, and I could hear the faint crackling of static in the air, as if the mountains themselves were speaking in a language I couldn’t understand. I turned my back for just a moment, trying to steady my breath, and that’s when I heard it. A voice. Low and guttural, like a growl or a murmur, coming from somewhere deep in the woods. “Dan…” I breathed, but my voice was swallowed by the wind. My eyes scanned the trees, but I saw nothing. My heart raced. I wasn’t sure if I’d heard it at all or if the stress of the situation had finally gotten to me. But I knew something was wrong. The air felt thick, oppressive, like it was pressing down on my chest. I could hear the wind pick up, swirling around us in a frenzy.And then, I saw it. It was a figure, that much I could make out. It was standing out in the trees, half hidden in the shadows. I froze. My breath caught in my throat. “Dan.” I said again, but the words came out strangled, as if something had lodged in my chest. My uncle was still standing by the package, his back turned to me, unaware. The figure in the trees moved closer. It moved in an unnatural way. You know how in older video games, characters don’t exactly walk, they sort of just slide glide forward while displaying a walking animation? It was like that. I wanted to run, but my legs felt like they were made of stone, unable to move, as if the mountains themselves had taken root in my bones. And then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the figure was gone. No footsteps, no rustling of leaves. Like it had melted back into the earth. “Come on, lad,” Dan called, his voice flat. “Job’s done.” I blinked, my heart still pounding, and when I looked up again, the clearing was empty. The figure was gone, as if it had never been there. My mind was spinning, but I forced myself to walk over to my uncle. He gave me a sharp look, but I said nothing. There were a lot of things you just didn’t talk about in Northern Ireland back then. Later, when we were driving back down the mountain road, I asked him, almost against my will, “Who was that man? Was he one of ours?” Dan didn’t answer at first. He just kept his eyes on the road, the headlights cutting through the mist like two white knives. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he spoke. “Not everything that roams these lands are our of society, of our factions, lad. Some things never left. And some things… they come back. Forget about tonight. What happened tonight stays here, up in the Mournes.” I didn’t ask any more questions after that. But I’ve never forgotten the look in his eyes that night. The terror behind them. Not then, not now, and not five years later, when I returned to that place. I joined the IRA in 1973, as soon as I turned eighteen. The Troubles were in full bloom, each day a new round of bloodshed and madness. In the streets of Belfast, you couldn’t go a day without hearing the crack of gunfire or the screech of tires as another bomb went off. You could feel it in the air, a tension so thick it seemed to press down on your chest, making it hard to breathe. People looked at each other like they were waiting for a reason to pull a trigger. It was the kind of place that could make even the toughest man turn soft, or worse, make him tough in ways you didn’t want to know. And for a long time, I knew I wanted to fight for our cause. Back then, I would have died for a united Ireland. Without hesitation. But that changed, when I returned to the Mountains of Mourne. It was the winter of ’76, the year everything started to spiral out of control. The British had made it clear that they weren’t backing down, and neither were we. The war had become a game of attrition—tit-for-tat ambushes, bombings, checkpoints, and killings. The usual. I was a lieutenant in the Belfast unit at the time, just a kid by the standards of the older men, but I had a reputation. You didn’t make it as far as I did without learning how to kill with precision, how to move in silence, how to erase every trace of your presence in the world. But that wasn’t what mattered to the ones who called the shots. What mattered was my loyalty. And when they said jump, I jumped. “Tommy,” said Callaghan, one of the senior men in the barracks, his eyes burning with some fever I couldn’t place. He was a hard bastard, the kind who didn’t flinch at much. His face was a craggy map of scars, the kind of man you wanted on your side if things went south. “You’re going up to the Mournes tomorrow night. There’s a job for you, a special one. Just you.” I remember the weight of his words, the way he said it—like it wasn’t a question, but a command. There wasn’t a shred of doubt in his voice. I nodded, not wanting to ask too many questions. I remember thinking it was odd, being sent alone. I’d always been part of a team—guys you could rely on when the shots rang out. But not this time. Callaghan didn’t give me much more than that—just a nod, a brief handshake, and a look that told me not to ask questions. I didn’t. That’s how things worked. You didn’t ask, you just did. And yes, of course I’d always harboured a weird feeling towards the mountains of Mourne. Even though I had stowed away the memories of my visit to the place with my uncle five years ago in some corner of my brain, the idea of returning to the place filled me with dread. I didn’t like it, but that didn’t matter. I had orders. About a month passed, and the date of the mission rolled around. I packed light—a pistol, a spare mag, a grenade, and a map of the area. Sure, I knew what the objective was: Go to the location on the mountain chosen by the information broker and collect the document; but in truth I had no idea what I was really walking into. None of us ever really did. But Callaghan was always able to remind us that it wasn’t just one mission, one robbery, one shootout – it was a war, no matter what label the Brits put on it. And when a man like that tells you to do something, you just do it. I grabbed my pack and made the long drive down the narrow roads toward the mountains, the sky bruised purple with the coming night. As I came to the outskirts of Belfast the night grew wet and cold. The rain beat down on the windshield like it was angry, like the weather itself was trying to stop me. But I didn’t care. I was used to it. As the city faded behind me, the air grew heavier. That was around the time the weight of things settled in my chest. Back to that place, back to the mountains of fucking Morne. I drove through Newry, but it wasn’t long before the familiar roads fell away, and the land opened up in front of me—a cold, dark expanse of rocky terrain, blanketed in mist. The Mournes, rising high and impossible, looming over me, an old nightmare I couldn’t wake from. When I arrived at the foot of Slieve Donard, the highest peak, I left the car parked by the side of the road and started on foot. The night had already swallowed the daylight, and the mountains seemed to hold their breath as I walked. The air grew colder with each step, and the silence pressed against me like a physical thing. There was no wind, no sound of animals, no rustling of the trees. It was as though the mountain itself was waiting. Watching. As I climbed the trail, the mist grew thicker, curling around me like a living thing, a slow-moving fog that swallowed everything in its path. The crunch of my boots against the stones was the only sound for miles. The mountains stretched ahead of me, vast and cold, their peaks shrouded in the darkness of night. Every step felt heavier, like the land itself was pulling me down. I didn’t know why I was here. Why this was the location chosen by an information broker. I’d asked Callaghan once, a few weeks back, when the orders first came through. But he just gave me that look—the one that told me to keep my mouth shut. “You’ll understand when you get there,” he said, and that was all. I knew the terrain well enough. I’d done plenty of jobs in the various hills around Belfast, plenty of walking through fog and shadow. And I’d never forgotten that night with Dan years ago. It scared me, I feel no shame in admitting it. But orders were orders. This felt different to any mission before, though. There was something about the air, something about the way the landscape seemed to close in on me, that made me feel like prey. I reached the spot the map marked for my destination by the time the moon was full overhead, casting long, thin shadows across the ground. An open area, close to the very peak of the mountain. I paused for a moment, my senses on edge, but I forced myself to walk towards the centre. My orders were clear: meet the contact, get the information, and return. That was it. No questions. Quiet, no fuss. The fog was so dense up here that I genuinely couldn’t know for certain if the person I was sent to meet was there or not. But as I hesitantly made my way forward, something changed. The air thickened, the temperature dropping even further, until I could see my breath hanging in the air like smoke. I didn’t understand it. The cold wasn’t normal. It wasn’t just winter cold. It was a deep, unnatural cold that seemed to come from the very ground beneath my feet and encompassed me up to the tip of my scalp. And then I heard it. A voice. Low, guttural, and ancient. “Tommy McGrath…” I froze. It wasn’t a human voice. It was… older. It came from the earth itself, from the stones. It was as though the mountain was speaking directly to me. My heart raced, my hand instinctively reaching for the pistol at my side. “Tommy…” The voice repeated. “You’ve been chosen.” The words echoed in my head, vibrating through my bones. “Chosen for what?” I whispered, not meaning to speak aloud, but unable to stop myself.The mist swirled around me, thickening, until I could barely see the hand in front of my face. A figure emerged from the fog—a man, tall and thin, dressed in black. His face was hidden in shadow, but I knew it was him. Callaghan. It had to be. “You’ve come,” Callaghan’s voice came from the figure, but it wasn’t quite his voice. It was deeper, older. “It’s time.” “Time for what?” I demanded, stepping back, my grip tightening on the gun. “What the hell’s going on here, Callaghan?” He stepped closer, his eyes gleaming like coal in the dim light. And then he smiled. But it wasn’t the kind of smile I’d ever seen on him before. It was the smile of someone who knew something you didn’t—something you could never know. A smile that was as old as the hills themselves. “You’ve been chosen, Tommy,” he said again, this time with a slow, deliberate drawl. “For the final stage of the war. The war you don’t understand yet.” I stared at him, not sure if he was speaking in riddles or if I was just losing my mind in the mountains. “Listen, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, but this isn’t funny. Where’s the contact?” “There is no contact,” Callaghan said, his voice suddenly cold. “There never was.” “What in God’s name are you playing at?” But Callaghan didn’t answer. Instead, the fog around us thickened again, and the ground beneath my feet trembled. The stones of the circle began to glow faintly, a sickly green light pulsing from within them. I took a step back, my instincts screaming at me to run, but the fear in my chest held me in place. “You’ve been part of this all along, Tommy,” Callaghan continued, his eyes burning with an intensity that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “You were chosen before you even knew what was happening. The mountains have chosen you. The war was never just about politics, or even blood. It’s about something much older.” I shook my head, trying to process his words, but they didn’t make sense. The Troubles wasn’t a war for gods or for land. This was a war for the Irish people, a war for survival.“You’ve been feeding it,” Callaghan said, as though reading my thoughts. “The blood. The violence. The hatred. The Mournes have fed on it for centuries. You, and all the others like you, are just the latest offering.” The stone circle began to tremble, and the figures in the fog moved closer. Callaghan stepped forward, and I realized with a sickening certainty that he wasn’t one of us. He was one of them. A servant of whatever dark force had been awakened in the Mournes. A force that fed on blood, on war, on the sacrifices we made without even knowing it. He grinned again. “You’ve been feeding it, Tommy. And now it’s time for you to give it what it wants.” With that, the fog closed in further. I reached for my gun, ready to blow a whole through Callaghan, but he’d already sank back into the fog. And I never saw him again, not after all these years. I stumbled after him, but lost my way, running blindly, and eventually I realised that I was lying to myself if I believed I was chasing him. I was really running away in fear. I used to think the scariest thing in the world was the guy in the streets of Belfast who would shoot you without a thought. But I was wrong. I hadn’t felt fear like this before in my life. I kept running, running, running downhill and found my way into a wooded area. It wasn’t long before I came upon a clearing—a wide space where there were no trees. And then to my absolute horror, I realised where I really was. There, in the middle, was the old stone circle. Where Dan took me all those years ago. I stood there for a moment, staring at the stones in total helplessness. In the dim light of the moon, I realised that the stones were different to how I remembered them. I could see faint markings on them—symbols I couldn’t understand and words in old Gaelic I couldn’t translate; under British occupation we were never taught our country’s own language. They were the kind of things you might expect to find on a tombstone or a forgotten altar. It was as if someone had carved them into the rocks long ago, as if the earth itself had grown old with them, even though I knew they’d been placed sometime in the last five years Then I heard it. A voice. Low, rumbling, like a growl from deep beneath the earth. “You shouldn’t have come.” I froze. The voice didn’t sound like a man, or even a human at all. It was as if the mountain itself had spoken, the words carried on the wind, vibrating in my chest. My breath caught, and I gripped the gun at my side. But then, through the fog, I saw movement. Figures, tall and gaunt, slipping in and out of the mist. They weren’t quite people—more like shadows, their bodies flickering like candle flames caught in a gust of wind. They moved without sound, without footsteps, their faces obscured by the fog. My heart hammered in my chest. “Leave now, or you’ll never leave.” I spun around. There, just outside the stone circle, staring straight at me from just a metre or two away was a man—or at least, what looked like one. His clothes were tattered, like he’d been out here for years, and his face was impossibly pale, almost milk white, as though he hadn’t seen the sun in decades. His eyes were dark, not the kind of dark you’d expect, but great black orbs in his sockets with no visible iris, pupils or white parts. Even hunched over, he towered over me, his arms hanging down to almost his shins. And his voice. His voice was the same as the growl. It came from somewhere deep inside him, like it was being pulled out by something far older than him. “You’ve trespassed on sacred ground, soldier,” he whispered. “You don’t belong here. You were never meant to find us.” And then I understood. The man wasn’t human. No, not exactly. He was something far older, something tied to the land, to the mountains themselves. He wasn’t here by choice. He was a part of the Mournes. A part of the ancient earth that had seen too much bloodshed, too many sacrifices, too much history soaked into the soil. And I—I—had just walked into the middle of it. “Don’t you see?” he said, low and rasping as he drew closer to me. “This land has known war long before the likes of your armies ever set foot on it. It’s soaked in the blood of those who died here, in battles you’ll never understand. And now you’re part of it.” I stumbled back, the weight of his words sinking in. The mountains, the stones, the fog—everything around me seemed alive now, as though the earth itself was watching me, judging me. The men I had killed, the bombs I had planted, the lives I had taken—suddenly it all felt like a grain of sand in an ocean of blood, meaningless against the weight of something far darker. “You’ll never leave, Tommy,” the being whispered again, and for the first time, I felt it—the pull. It wasn’t just in my head; it was physical, like the earth itself was reaching for me, drawing me into the stones, into the silence of the mountains. For a moment, I stood there, my mind spinning, my body frozen. And then the truth hit me like a slap to the face. This wasn’t about a simple message. It wasn’t about the IRA, or the war, or Callaghan or some mission. It was about something far older, far darker than anything I’d ever known. The Mournes weren’t just mountains. They were a place of power, a place of blood, a place where the past never died. And I had trespassed. I had disturbed the land. The fog began to swirl, faster now, the whispers louder, more insistent. I could feel the cold grip of the mountain on my chest, and I knew—I knew—I would never leave this place. Not really. More and more figures flickered in and out of my peripheral in the fog as the impossible being I was facing took a final step forward and looked at me, his almost mummified, haunting face twisted into an expression of what seemed to be pity. “You were never meant to leave,” he rasped, quieter now despite him being right in front of me. “You’ll be lost for as long as you live, tied to this place. You and I and those who here already and those to come.” I blinked, and suddenly the fog was completely gone, the wraith-like things swirling in it disappeared with it. But not whoever I was speaking to. Before my eyes he remained. “Please leave now, soldier, you may be lucky enough to not lose yourself.” And with that, he turned around, and slowly walked away unnaturally, back into the treesAs I turned and ran, my feet stumbling over the uneven ground, I felt the darkness closing in around my mind. The mountain’s voice echoed in my ears, a low, suffocating hum.You were never meant to leave. And when I finally looked back, all I saw was the fog, and the cold, empty stones of the Mourne Mountains. And I knew, then, that I was lost. Forever. I’ve lived a long life, left the IRA, started a family and made the best of the world despite the things I’d done as a soldier. But through all of it, the call of the mountains has never left me, never given my mind true peace. The mountains of Mourne want me to come back, and I don’t know how long I’ll be able to resist their pull. My wife’s been dead just over a year now. My son never came back from America for longer than a week at a time once he finished college and moved there to pursue some dream or the other. I’m just an old man with declining health living alone in the same old Belfast street, and the Mournes haunt me more than ever before. I fear the day I’ll give in and give myself to the mountains, let them take me fully, but I often wonder if maybe they already have.The war was never meant to end – it was meant to feed the darkness, forever. Credit: Swagemandbagem Reddit Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.