The Blood-Drawing Ghost is an Irish folktale found in “Tales of the Fairies and of the Ghost World”) (1895) collected and transcribed by Jeremiah Curtin, an Irish-American scholar among others.

John has three sweethearts but can only marry one. He hides his blackthorn walking stick in the haunted church graveyard, promising to marry whichever girl retrieves it. Kate agrees to go. As she nears the stick, a corpse in an open grave calls for help. Under its spell, Kate helps the corpse, which climbs onto her back and orders her to carry it through town.