On Midsummer’s Eve, traffic begins to slow on a motorway in the west of Ireland.

Hares run alongside the cars. Birds gather overhead. Music drifts across the road. Then figures appear in the fields, riders, antlers, banners, shadows, moving according to laws older than the motorway itself.

No one agrees on what they saw.

No crash occurs.

The official explanation calls it “an unauthorised equestrian gathering.”

But every year, at the same bend, the traffic still slows.

🎧 Solstice, the final episode of Season 1 of Scéaleenies.

This is the last episode of Season 1. Liking, sharing, following, and leaving a comment all help the podcast reach more listeners through the algorithm. Season 2 will follow later in 2026.

A strange arcade cabinet appeared in a seaside amusement hall in the 90s.
Nobody saw it arrive.

John Joe Malarkey wakes up in Dublin to a leaking ceiling, broken appliances, dead buses, failed Luas machines, impossible clocks, and the growing suspicion that the city itself has turned against him.

Everyone keeps saying the same thing.

Things will be grand.

They will not.

The benches came first.

Then the town began moving between them in groups of four. Not officially. Not intentionally. Just… naturally.

Soon nobody could remember when benchcrawling had started, only that you were noticed if you stopped.

After losing his long-held job at a rural supermarket, a middle-aged man drifts into isolation, resentment, and emotional paralysis. Convinced his wife is having an affair and unable to imagine a future for himself, he sets out one night intending not to return.

What follows is not redemption in the sentimental sense, but something quieter and more recognisable: the gradual rediscovery of motion, habit, and endurance through running.

Two urban explorers descend beneath one of Dublin’s most familiar buildings and find something far older than the city above it.

In a hidden chamber, figures gather around a black pool, speaking not in chants, but in the calm, measured language of decisions and public life.
What they witness is not a secret, exactly.

It’s a system.

They weren’t exploring Dublin.
Dublin was letting them in.

Pride before the fall is what we are told.

What happens when local pride meets 
ancient tradition and modern norms are abandoned 
in the search for a temporary glory.

They didn’t just train harder.
They fed something.
And it worked.

There was a boy who would “go away.”

Just for a few seconds.

Everyone knew the rule:
Don’t touch him.
Count to ten.
He’ll be back.

Until one day… he wasn’t.

A disused church on the edge of an Irish estuary is reopened as a music venue. The sessions are lively, the crowd is warm, and the tradition feels alive again. 

But something beneath the ground is stirring. 

And the musicians have learned that the music isn’t just for enjoyment, it’s keeping something vast, old, and awake from rising too close to the surface.

There’s a hall in every town that used to be full of music.
Ours is called The Paradise.
Now it’s empty. Locked. Forgotten.
But some nights, you can hear a band playing inside.
Old songs. Perfectly played.
And when someone dies in the town…
the music draws a crowd you can’t see.
If you pass by, don’t stop.
Don’t look in.
It’s not for you.