Happy Halloween - the most haunted places in Ireland

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

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6. Grand Opera House

Belfast

The magnificent Grand Opera House was opened in Belfast in 1895. Though the building was damaged during the Troubles, it has since been restored to its original splendor.

Several ghosts haunt the theatre, but sadly, most of them are unidentified.

Cast members have often seen a face looking in at them from a round window on their way down from the dressing rooms on the top floor. Opera House staff members have also reported a feeling that someone was behind them when nobody was there, especially while standing on stage.

Actors say they often feel like they’re being followed in the stage area, and the most commonly spotted specter at the theatre is a mysterious figure in a long, black hooded cloak that is always seen on stage. Some think the ghost to be a former actor, still waiting for the curtain to go down on his final role.

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.

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Nster.com