In level pasture at Minish in County Kerry, with Mangerton Mountain visible to the south, a standing stone is recorded that has left no trace above ground. No stump, no socket, no scatter of displaced rubble. Just the land, and the local memory that something once stood here.

What makes the absence particularly interesting is the relationship implied by that memory. According to local information, this stone once stood approximately six metres to the west-southwest of a neighbouring standing stone, which does survive. Standing stones in Ireland were occasionally erected in pairs, and the spacing of around six metres, if accurate, would place them in close enough proximity to suggest the two were conceived together, perhaps marking a boundary, a route, or a site of ritual significance. Whether the lost stone was removed deliberately, robbed for building material, or simply fell and was cleared away at some point, nobody now recorded knows. What survives is the pairing itself, or rather the ghost of it, one stone present and the other gone, the arrangement readable only if you know to look for the gap.