{"id":64705,"date":"2025-10-07T08:45:27","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T08:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/64705\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T08:45:27","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T08:45:27","slug":"these-haunted-places-in-ireland-are-perfect-for-halloween","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/64705\/","title":{"rendered":"These haunted places in Ireland are perfect for Halloween"},"content":{"rendered":"

Halloween originated in Ireland, so it’s no surprise that there are plenty of spooky spots to visit ahead of October 31.<\/p>\n

With a long, long history rife with wars and massacres, the Irish land is bound to have a few ghosts here and there. That is, assuming you\u2019re a believer in the paranormal.<\/p>\n

From castles to beaches, here\u2019s a list of our top 10 supernatural destinations in Ireland. Spanning the country, these destinations are supposedly haunted by ghosts of all sorts \u2013 soldiers, brides, court jesters and more.<\/p>\n

Ross Castle<\/p>\n

On the edge of Lough Sheelin in Co. Meath, this five-bedroom stone castle built in 1536 is currently run as a B&B<\/a>. Visitors have reported supernatural activity both inside and outside the castle. Apparently, every May Day for hundreds of years, a medieval knight named O\u2019Donoghue rides along Lough Lane past the castle, accompanied by a group of spirits who play music behind him. Inside the castle, visitors have reported waking up in the middle of the night to sounds of screams or doors repeatedly opening and slamming shut. One of the spirits is believed to be Myles \u2018the Slasher\u2019 O\u2019Reilly, an Irish folk hero who spent his last night in Ross Castle before dying in battle in 1644.<\/p>\n

Kilmainham Gaol<\/p>\n

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Kilmainham Gaol (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Famous for its political prisoners or Easter Rising leaders like Padraig Pearse, James Connolly<\/a>, Charles Parnell, Eamon de Valera, and others, Kilmainham Gaol is supposedly full to the brim with spirits. Many died (some were executed) in the prison, which is now a popular museum. Not only are there ghosts of former inmates floating about, but seemingly, there are plenty of prison warden spirits, who are of the malevolent sort.<\/p>\n

Lough Sheelin<\/p>\n

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Lough Sheelin (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

A limestone freshwater lough between counties Westmeath, Meath<\/a> and Cavan, Lough Sheelin is said to take a life every seven years. You can ask the Local Civil Defense Volunteers who\u2019ve gone out to fetch the bodies from the lake on a few occasions. Sabrina is a ghost that\u2019s well known in the area.<\/p>\n

The story goes that her lover drowned while the two were crossing the river as they were eloping. She still hangs around in search of her lover, and visitors of the nearby Ross Castle (#1) have reportedly had close encounters with her.<\/p>\n

Malahide Castle<\/p>\n

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Malahide Castle (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

King Henry II of England built Malahide Castle for his dear friend Sir Richard Talbot in Malahide, Co. Dublin<\/a> in 1185. One of the oldest castles in Ireland, Malahide Castle is apparently haunted by at least five ghosts: Walter Hussey, Miles Corbett, Lord Chief Justice, and his wife Maud Plunkett, but most notably the castle\u2019s jester, Puck of Malahide. Word got out that Puck had fallen in love with one of the prisoners, Lady Elenora Fitzgerald, and within days, he was found mysteriously stabbed to death outside the castle. As the story goes, with his last dying breath, Puck made a promise that he\u2019d haunt the castle \u2013 apparently, he stood by it. There have been quite a few sightings of the jester\u2019s ghost and he often appears in photographs. When the castle was being sold in 1979, there were several reports by potential buyers of the jester\u2019s spirit roaming about.<\/p>\n

Charles Fort<\/p>\n

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Charles Fort (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

A wedding and three funerals: the story of Charles Fort (near Kinsale) is quite the tragedy. Recent bride Wilful Warrender famously haunts it \u2013 she flung herself to her death from the fort wall after her groom was killed on the night of their wedding. To make matters worse, her father is the one who shot him. It was during wartime that her father was under the impression that her husband was an intruder. Grief-stricken by his daughter\u2019s suicide, he shot himself. Warrender is called \u201cthe White Lady\u201d by locals because whenever she\u2019s sighted, she\u2019s in her wedding dress. She\u2019s often found by children as she wanders around the town of Kinsale, where she grew up, and she gives them a wave. Usually, she\u2019s quite friendly, but there have been reports of people in the fort being pushed down the stairs by her spirit.<\/p>\n

D\u00fan an \u00d3ir<\/p>\n

The Dingle Peninsula, one of Ireland’s most picturesque places, is actually rich in history and reportedly home to some ghosts as well. 1580 had the Siege of Smerwick: a Spanish force of about 400 soldiers (close allies to the Irish) was defending Ireland against the British<\/a> during what was the Second Desmond Rebellion. They retreated to D\u00fan an \u00d3ir on the Dingle Peninsula and were then besieged by the English army, who massacred the whole fleet and left them on the shore without burial. Today, Dingle locals and visitors claim to hear Spanish cries, see occasional skeletal remains on shore or in the ocean, and smell the stench of rotting flesh coming in with the gusts of wind.<\/p>\n

Belfast\u2019s Grand Opera House<\/p>\n

It\u2019s like the Phantom of the Opera, but in Belfast<\/a>. Although the Grand Opera House has been brilliantly restored in recent years, numerous actors and stagehands have claimed to have seen a face staring at them through an outside window, a figure wearing a long black robe, and have also had a strong sense of being followed when alone on stage. Just ask the Northern Ireland Paranormal Research Association, who\u2019ve made direct contact with deceased stagehands George and Harry, as well as an unnamed cleaner and another unnamed electrician.<\/p>\n

Thoor Ballylee<\/p>\n

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Thoor Ballylee (Ireland’s Content Pool)<\/p>\n

A fortified 14th-century Irish-Norman tower house, Thoor Ballylee, once belonged to Lady Augusta Gregory, a lifelong friend of poet\u00a0W.B. Yeats<\/a>. She passed it on to the famous poet, and he spent many a summer living and writing in the peaceful tower in rural Galway. Yeats himself believed it to be haunted by a young Anglo-Norman soldier; after Yeats\u2019s death, the tower was converted into a museum, and the curator of which also felt a spirit present. He had plenty of accounts of an apparition walking up and down the stairs, and his pet dog seemed to feel it too. In 1989, a visitor asked if he could photograph Yeats\u2019s old sitting room, and the developed photograph contains a clear human figure (albeit blurry and black) in the picture that hadn\u2019t been in the room at the time.<\/p>\n

Castle Leslie<\/p>\n

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Castle Leslie (Castle Leslie Estate, Facebook)<\/p>\n

Though today\u2019s connotations of Castle Leslie in Co. Monaghan are along the lines of a modern spa or hotel or fancy cooking school, it\u2019s apparently fairly well haunted. Each room is \u2013 or has been \u2013 home to an apparition, the most famous of which is the Red Room, where soldier Norman Leslie\u2019s ghost appeared in front of his mother, Lady Marjorie, in 1914, just a few weeks after he\u2019d been killed in battle in France. She recalled him appearing in a cloud of light, sifting through a pile of letters. When she addressed him, he smiled at her and then faded away.<\/p>\n

Saint Michan\u2019s Church in Dublin<\/p>\n

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Saint Michan\u2019s Church (St. Michan’s Church, Dublin – Facebook)<\/p>\n

If you start to hear faint whispers upon entering Saint Michan\u2019s Church in Dublin, they\u2019re probably coming from the mummies in the crypt below. Many of Dublin\u2019s most influential families between the 17th and 19th centuries are interred there, as well as a famous thief and nun, the Shears brothers who were executed by the British in 1798, and many more. There have been some visitor accounts of \u2018whispering mummies\u2019 in the crypt.<\/p>\n

Recently, a woman peered into an unexcavated section and suddenly became aware of many voices around her. On her blog<\/a>, she wrote she had heard \u201cA sort of whispering, murmuring noise, but I couldn\u2019t make out any of the words,\u201d she said. She also felt the passageway becoming rather tight, as if there were many people suddenly surrounding her.<\/p>\n

* Originally published in 2014. Updated in October 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Have you ever visited a haunted location in Ireland? Let us know in the comments!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Halloween originated in Ireland, so it’s no surprise that there are plenty of spooky spots to visit ahead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,2674,2673,2672,43],"class_list":["post-64705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-entertainment","tag-irish-news","tag-irishcentral","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}