The Devil's Muse

Category: haunted Ireland

  • The Dargle Lovers

    “A young lady of the locality was faithless to her lover giving her attentions, instead, to another young man who had started to woo her with dash and charm. But while she was singing a favourite song to please him, as she paused between verses, she heard the distant toll of a church bell, unmistakably signifying a death. On inquiring, and with a terrible fear clutching her heart, she discovered that her former lover, stricken by her unfaithfulness, had died of a broken heart.

    “Overcome by remorse, she left her new admirer and hurried to the graveyard where they had just buried the youth who had died for her. There, despite the entreaties of her friends, she spent a night of sleet and rain at his graveside. On each following night she came again and, although her worried family tried to dissuade her, she continued her lonely vigil, only going back to her home during daylight hours.

    “Indifferent to the pleadings of those who loved her and the entreaties of her new admirer, who had been responsible for her desertion of the dead youth, she continued to spend each night at the graveside determined, it seemed, to die for him who had died for her.

    “Eventually, inevitably, her mind collapsed and she told her distraught sister that her lover had risen from the grave and walked with her through the Dargle glen, promising to meet her again and take her to a place where they would be together forever.

    “Much alarmed, the girl’s family tried to keep her confined to the house, but she managed to escape. Her absence was discovered a few minutes later and her brother quickly followed her, heading with all speed to the churchyard, where he knew he would find her.

    “He arrived too late, only in time to catch a glimpse of her scarf fluttering in the breeze as she ran towards the river. Trying desperately to overtake her, he saw her climb up the huge crag surmounting the Dargle, pause a moment on its treacherous brink and then plunge into the swollen river below, doubtless lured to her death by the phantom lover conjured up by her tortured imagination.” (p. 86 – 87)

    From J. Dunne’s Haunted Ireland: Her Romantic and Mysterious Ghosts (1977), online source: County Wicklow Heritage.

    “The symbol of the clasped hands were often accompanied with words: ‘farewell’, ‘goodbye,’ and ‘until we meet again.’ The carved hands were almost always portrayed as right hands and they represent a husband and wife sharing a last handshake. One hand is usually flat and loose, its fingers extended, which may be interpreted as either a final embrace, or the deceased leading the living to follow them.”
    – arlene stafford wilson: Irish Graveyards
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  • Ireland’s Haunted Leap Castle

    Image from Ireland Before You Die: The World’s Most Haunted Castle Is in Ireland

    Built somewhere between the 13th and late 15th century, this Irish castle has seen more gruesome deaths than a Game of Thrones wedding. As legend has it, during a struggle for power within the O’Carroll clan (which had a fondness for poisoning dinner guests), one brother plunged a sword into another, a priest, as he was holding mass in the castle’s chapel. The room is now called “The Bloody Chapel,” and the priest is said to haunt the church at night. And the horror doesn’t end there. During castle renovations in the early 1900s, workmen found a secret dungeon in the Bloody Chapel with so many human skeletons, they filled three cartloads when hauled away. The dungeon was designed so that prisoners would fall through a trap door, have their lungs punctured by wooded spikes on the ground, and die a slow, horrific death within earshot of the sinister clan members above.

    From Condé Naste: 15 Haunted Castles Around the World

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  • Haunted Ireland: The Faceless Lady of Belvelly Castle, Cork, Ireland

    “Belvelly Castle sits prominently on the shore of Great Island in Cork Harbour. It is said that in the seventeenth century Margaret Hodnett lived there. Mirrors were a status symbol with the wealthy at that time and Margaret was known for her love of these to remind her of her renowned beauty. She had an on-off relationship with a local lord called Clon Rockenby who asked for her hand in marriage many times but was refused.

    “Eventually, Rockenby decided that the humiliation was enough and raised a small army and went to the castle to take her by force. He thought the Hodnetts, used to a luxurious life, would not withstand a siege.

    “However, they surprised him by holding out for a full year before surrendering. When he entered the castle Rockenby was shocked to see the state of Margaret, skeletal and starved, a shadow of her former self, her beauty gone. Out of rage, Rockenby smashed her favourite mirror to pieces, as he did so one of the Hodnetts killed him with a sword.

    “After these events Margaret descended into insanity, she was said to have sought out mirrors constantly to check if her beauty had returned. It never did. She died in old age at the castle. Her troubled ghost appears as a lady in white, sometimes with a veiled face and sometimes with no face at all. Those who have seen her say that she looks at a spot on the wall, then rubs it as if looking at her reflection.

    “Apparently, one stone on the castle’s wall has been rubbed smooth over the years, perhaps the spot where her mirror used to hang. Belvelly has largely been unoccupied since the nineteenth century but is currently being renovated.”

    From The Five MOST TERRIFYING Ghost Stories in Ireland

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