What does a banshee’s wail sound like? That, of course, was one of the central challenges of turning this chapter into a podcast.
Those of you who listened to The Supernatural Housewives of Ballystrange will know a banshee played a central role in that podcast, and will play a bigger role whenever I get around to Season 2. However, Maeve was a character, being one of the supernatural housewives. The banshee in Werewolf of Connemara was written as the type of banshee most of the superstitious folk would have experienced in Ireland – not as a character or a figure you ever see, but as an eerie keen, a haunting cry, a wail, that signified a family member was going to die.
As I was left unsatisfied by the banshee clips I found on paid audio clip websites, I did record some sounds myself during Supernatural Housewives.
I cannot remember exactly what I did – what I recall doing was using a singer-songwriter voicebox called Voicelive Play. This has numerous settings once you plug in your microphone, to slightly alter your voice and make you sound like everyone from a band like The Beatles to even sounding like a Robot or an Alien. There was also a setting for Male-to-Female. My male wail, however, sounded scary in the wrong-way as a female wail. The only danger was of someone dying laughing.
What to do? I saw my old pennywhistle, key of D. Could that work? I blew that into the microphone. A shrill whistle turned into a female wail was as good as I was going to get. I would not want to hear that outside my window at night. Again, thank you for listening and hope you enjoy The Wail of the Banshee.
