Get ready for Halloween with some spooky travel tales - the most haunted places in Ireland

From old castles to deserted prisons, the scariest spots in the Emerald Isle

The Northern Ireland Paranormal Research Association recently investigated the Grand Opera House, and claim to have come in contact with the spirits of Harry and George, a pair of deceased stage hands who worked at the theatre in the 1980s.

Ghost hunters have also identified an unnamed woman who used to clean the building and an anonymous electrician who used to work for the Opera House.

7. Renvyle House Hotel

Connemara, County Galway

Today, Renvyle House in Galway is a charming rural hotel, but its guests, including William Butler Yeats, have experienced frightening ghostly happenings within this charming home’s walls.

The hotel has an eventful history, having been burned to the ground by the IRA in the 1930s.

Before this, the famous Dublin surgeon and poet Oliver St. John Gogarty owned the property.

Several of Gogarty’s servants reported fearful “presences” in the home, and reported bedsheets inexplicably flying off beds and doors opening and closing on their own.

One night, Gogarty even experienced a ghostly presence himself.

The Irishman was woken up by heavy, limping footsteps along the hallway, slowly approaching his door. Gogarty lit a candle and went to investiage the strange noises, but as soon as he entered the corridor, the flame blew out and he was alone in the dark.

Gogarty said his limbs became heavy, as if he “were exercising with rubber ropes.”

The supernatural activity at Renvyle increased when Gogarty’s close friend Yeats and his wife Georgia came to stay.

Yeats and his companions were sitting in the library at the home, when the door suddenly creaked wide open. Though his friends were terrified, Yeats raised his hand and shouted, "Leave it alone, it will go away, as it came.” The door then slammed shut.

The Yeats later held a séance, in which a vapory mist appeared, and eventually assumed the form of a red-haired, pale-faced boy who looked to be about 14. "He had the solemn pallor of a tragedy beyond the endurance of a child," Georgia Yeats later said, and discovered that the boy was a member of the Blake family, who originally owned the house.

Renvyle House was soon after burnt to the ground by the IRA, but it was rebuilt, and ghosts are said to still roam its corridors today.

PHOTOS - See the 10 places where Ireland's scariest ghosts reside

8. Grace Neill’s Bar

Donaghadee, County Down

Grace Neill’s in County Down is one of the oldest pubs in Ireland.

Built in 1611, the pub was originally known as “The King’s Arms,” but was renamed after Grace Neill, who ran the inn for many years until her death in 1918 at the age of 98. Neill was an Irish woman with a big personality, and liked to keep a watchful eye on things at the inn.

But Grace hasn’t let her death interfere with her work at the pub.

A ghost of an old woman in Victorian clothing has been spotted in dark corners of the inn, and her spirit can be seen at the front bar, straightening glasses and furniture and switching lights on and off.

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Nster.com