by Bob Curran
And such presences are not unique to the chapel area, for people have complained of them all through the castle—along the corridors and even in the Knight’s Study. While staying in the Hunting Lodge in the grounds of the castle, a lady named Zdena Vrzalava awoke from a relaxing sleep in her room when something loud fell close by. She awoke her husband and together they saw two dark figures in the corner of the room. They seemed to be engaged in some form of conversation and, as Zdena looked at them, they seemed to fade away like shadows. However, she had caught a little of their whispering and she thought that she’d heard the word murder amongst it. A chill crept through her, though whether it was a chill from what she’d heard or an actual physical chill from the figures themselves she could not say. The sight of those dark conspirators troubled both her and her husband for many years afterward.
It is said that some of the castle corridors are haunted by the form of a great hound, which can transform itself into a black-robed cowled figure, like a monk. A number of visitors have sought to approach this figure, but when they do, it simply melts away. Some guests in the castle have complained about an unpleasant and overwhelming stench as it does so.
A more traditional ghost sometimes stares down from one of Houska’s high windows into the yard below. A woman dressed in white, with dark ringlets falling about her shoulders, stares wistfully out into the night and rubs her hands in a mournful fashion before turning away. She seems to be waiting for somebody in the courtyard below, although who she is or who she waits for is unknown. Many people have seen her and those who have done so have been gripped by a great and terrible sadness. The “White Lady,” as she is known, is the more recognizable sort of ghost around Houska, although she certainly has the power to strike fear into all who see her.
Other people have experienced curious phenomenon in the castle—doors will suddenly open and close without warning, mirrors will fall from the walls, chairs will move, and crockery will smash without reason. One guest, Jaromir Simonek, was having a drink with some friends in a room on the third floor when glasses that had been placed on a table suddenly started moving around of their own volition. They rose high above the table, before the eyes of the astonished company, as though they were being carried round in unseen hands. Finally, they were lowered back to the table again and placed in a different position in the center of the table. There was no explanation for the amazing event, although several of the witnesses blamed the intervention of evil spirits that had come up from the chapel.
The cellars of the castle are dark and gloomy and are known as Satan’s Office or as the Devil’s Antechamber. There is even a large and ornate chair down there that resembles a throne, though nobody knows who created it or for what purpose. However, it is said that a black-robed and faceless priest appears there from time to time, sitting in the chair and then rising to walk up the stairs before vanishing. What his connection might be to Houska is unknown—perhaps he is someone from the old abbey that once stood on the site. There were rumors that some of the monks there were not exactly as holy as they should have been, and that Black Magic was practiced within its walls. Maybe this is some ancient memory of that time.
A corridor that runs down to Hell; tales of strange and flapping creatures and animalistic entities; a White Lady and a faceless monk; and peculiar Nazi experiments—these are some of the things that give Houska its strange and often overwhelming atmosphere. Does the castle truly stand over a rent in the veil of space and time or is there something even more sinister and more diabolic lurking far below it, waiting to burst through into our own world? It certainly isn’t a place to spend a quiet night—especially if you’re of a nervous disposition!
Leap Castle (County Offaly, Ireland)
“Raised in blood; blood be its portion.”
—The Curse of Leap Castle
If, as an old country saying goes, all houses in which men have lived and died are haunted, then maybe some places are more haunted than others. Buildings with a long and dark history or where barbaric acts have taken place are perhaps more likely to hold an aura of supernatural danger about them than others. And in Irish folklore, it is also widely believed that an already-haunted building will often attract other phantoms and ghostly beings, drawn to it like moths to a jaundiced flame. Even certain items that are found within the building might draw ghostly and unwelcome entities to a place—the unwashed clothes of a “scandalous” woman for instance, human bones from a person who died before their time, religious artifacts that have been stolen or misappropriated, the stain of blood spilled in anger, or even moldy food or dirty crockery all hold a supernatural attraction. Understandably in this list, it is the idea of spilled blood or human bones that can often draw down (or be used to draw down) the most dangerous of all the phantoms which prowl the spiritual outer reaches.
Not only this, but the site where a house is built can often affect the type of spirits that is drawn to it. A house built on the site of a graveyard (or even of an unmarked grave) will undoubtedly be a troublesome place, but so can buildings constructed on the sites of prehistoric tumuli, of old churches or monasteries, or ancient hospitals or workhouses. The spirits of former residents or inmates can sometimes linger on and bring similar beings to them. And where very ancient structures are built upon, very ancient forces can sometimes be retained in the very earth and stones of the site. When looking at an allegedly “creepy house,” great attention must be given to both its situation and its history. No dwelling exemplifies this notion more than Leap Castle, built on the borders between County Offaly and North Tipperary in Ireland.
The casual passer-by on the road between Birr and Kinnity might miss Leap Castle, lying deep in a small valley surrounded by dark trees. Situated just beyond the present-day village of Clareen, it once guarded a strategic trade route through the frowning Slieve Bloom Mountains, which connected the coast with the plains of Leix and Offaly. During the unsettled 15th and 16th centuries, routes such as this were fought over by various factions who sought to control trade in the region and used for military purposes. The area around the Slieve Bloom was often a bloody battlefield, just the place to lure dark creatures from the beyond. But there was something else—something that was even older.
A little way along the road from Clareen lies what remains of Seir Kieran, long regarded as one of the oldest Christian sites in Ireland. It is said to date from AD 401 which would put it roughly 50 years before the arrival of St. Patrick in Ireland, and it is dedicated to the obscure holy man St. Kieran the Elder (or Ciaran of Saigir, not to be confused with St. Kieran, the founder of Clonmacnoise). Before the holy man set up his hermitage there, however, the site was probably an important pagan earthwork, which dates back to the Iron Age. It may have been a ritual centre in the ancient Kingdom of Osraige, which would later be incorporated into the Kingdom of Ossory, and may well have been a place where the druids practiced. There are even suggestions that human sacrifice might have been carried on there. In many minds, the place was a concentration of dark and pagan forces, which were not entirely dissipated with the coming of the Christians. Indeed, some of the “ghosts” that prowl the countryside around Leap are “elemental powers” that have been stirred up by the latter partial destruction of the ancient earthwork. One of these is supposed to lurk around the main staircase of the tower-house—an eerie, twisting climb—ready to attack the unwary who are making their way to the higher levels of the castle.
On one of my last trips down there, I stopped at a little roadside shop at the village of Clareen. There is much reverence for the ancient earthwork in the village where nearly every family names a son Kieran in honor of the saint who made his hermitage there. But there seems to be a fear of the place as well.
“When they cut up that earthworks to build churches and castles” the old lady behind the counter told me when I asked her about Seir Kieran, “they let all manner of pagan things loose. Things that had been sleepin’ there for thousands o’ years rose up to wande
r the world again. Some of them are up in the castle—I’ve heard that often ever since I was a girl.”
The first “overlord” of the area was the Norman knight Theobald Fitzwalter who destroyed much of the earthwork by building a motte and bailey on the site, but who also “encouraged and developed” some of the Irish clans in his domain, many of whom took quasi-Norman names such as O’Carrig, Fanning, Lawless, Purcell, and O’Bannion. Important though these clans were, it was another, more ferocious sept that really left its mark on the area. They were the O’Carrolls—“the dark princes of Ely,” a name by which that portion of Offaly was originally known.
The O’Carrolls were a northern clan—possibly from the present-day Border area around Tyrone, Monaghan, and the Slieve Beigh Mountains—who had been pushed south by a massive expansion of the O’Neills in Ulster. Reputedly tracing their lineage back to Cearbeall, a 9th-century Irish king, they were described as a “lordly and princely sept.” As settlers they were savage, subduing all the indigenous clans and seizing large tracts of land for themselves. As the territory in the Kingdom of Ely was excellent land, lying as it did on the edge of the Golden Vale in Tipperary, the clan prospered and expanded, soon controlling an important area and establishing themselves as princes of the entire region. In order to defend these estates, they built Leap Castle, once described by the Earl of Desmond, as “one of the most strategic and best defended fortresses in the Irish Midlands” in the late 15th century.
The name Leap is puzzling, but local folklore puts it down to a rather gruesome legend. The full name of the site is Leim Ui Bhannain or the Leap of O’Bannion, and tradition states that when the O’Carrolls seized the land, the O’Bannions were the indigenous clan. They refused to pay tribute to their new overlords, and to resolve the dispute, the O’Carrolls made them a surprising offer. On the newly acquired lands, two great pieces of rock rose out of the ground near the old earthen fort. If an O’Bannion champion could leap between these two rocks and land safely, the clan would be excused their tribute, but if the champion fell, the O’Bannions must accept the O’Carrolls as their masters.
The feat was agreed and an O’Bannion champion came forward, only to miss the leap and be dashed to pieces on the ground below. The O’Carrolls then turned on the O’Bannions, slaughtering many of their best men, seizing their lands and building a number of fortifications there. In a macabre addition, it is said that they used some of the O’Bannion champion’s blood to mix the mortar for the foundation stones of the castle on the spot where he’d met his end. This gave rise to a terrible curse, which hangs over the place today: “Raised in blood, blood be its portion.”
Whether or not this story is true, Leap was built around the late 1470s by Mulroney O’Carroll, possibly on the site of an old O’Bannon fortress. And if there is a curse, then it affected the O’Carrolls from the time the castle was raised. Some of those born there were mentally deficient; others died from what the chroniclers call “the creeping plague,” a strange unspecified disease that took its victims to a slow and lingering death. In 1489, John O’Carroll died “most horribly” at Leap from an ailment referred to in the records as the “bloody flux and a pox.” Was it the curse of the dead O’Bannions, or something that had arisen out of the destroyed prehistoric earthworks at Seir Kieran?
Much of Leap’s sinister reputation arose out of the turbulent 16th century. Ely O’Carroll, as the area was now called, had become an important “buffer zone” between the English-backed Dukes of Ormond and North Tipperary—the Butlers—and the Fitzgerald Earls of Desmond and Kildare, whose conflict tore through the Irish Midlands. Families were torn in their loyalties between the two factions—none more so than the O’Carrolls. And in these bloody times, Leap Castle took on an even greater strategic significance.
In 1541, following a period of intense fighting, Leap passed into the hands of Tadhg Coach O’Carroll, known as One-Eyed Tadhg. He was, however, not the eldest of his immediate family and was therefore not the obvious heir to Ely. He was also already at war with his cousin Calvagh O’Carroll over territorial matters, and he had at least two elder brothers who should have taken precedence over him. The eldest, John O’Carroll, was weak-minded and was therefore unfit to lead the clan, while Thaddeus McFir was considered incapable of the necessary ruthless leadership because he was a priest. Nevertheless, Thaddeus had formed an alliance with the powerful Earls of Desmond and despite his Holy Orders, was well-skilled in politics and devious dealings. His dabblings in the political field often brought him into conflict with his younger brother Tadhg.
Tadhg ruled his domain with an iron fist, murdering all those who opposed him. As a prospective ruler in Ely, he sought to extend the border of the Kingdom through a program of slaughter and burning. He created treaties with James the Lame, Duke of Ormond, in order to gain Butler support for his murderous activities. Meanwhile, his brother Thaddeus had been negotiating with the opposing Fitzgerald faction and was undermining Tadhg at every turn, a dangerous thing to do. Tadhg decided enough was enough and that his brother would have to die. He nonetheless invited Thaddeus to use the chapel at Leap as his own personal religious sanctuary.
The chapel at Leap still lies at the very top of the central tower and is accessed by the winding stone staircase. It is small for a chapel, but is isolated, and would have been ideal for prayer and reflection. Tadhg, however, had other plans and, as his brother knelt in prayer at the altar rail, Tadhg crept into the chapel and slit his throat. Although this was an act of murder, it was also an act of blasphemy (to kill a man whilst he was talking to God) and it ensured the total damnation of One-Eyed Tadhg O’Carroll.
With Thaddeus dead, Tadhg’s excesses became even more horrendous. He embarked upon a program of unparalleled killing and pillage. So much so that one of the local clans—the O’Mahons (who had supported his brother)—commenced all-out war against him.
During a lull in hostilities, Tadhg made overtures of peace by inviting about 40 O’Mahon clan-members to a grand banquet in Leap Castle. Of course, he had no intentions of allowing them to leave alive. The food and the wine he gave them were all drugged and, as the O’Mahons succumbed to the effects, Tadhg had them carried one by one to the chapel.
There, in the chapel wall, Tadhg had built a long, vertical shaft known as an oubliette, almost like a dumbwaiter, which dropped steeply all the way down to the bottom of the castle. The name comes from the French oublier (to forget) and prisoners were hurled into this shaft, which was then bricked up, and they were forgotten about. Tadhg had also lined the sides of the oubliette with metal spikes. It is said that those O’Mahons who remained conscious asked to be thrown down head first, hoping to break their necks rather than die slowly on the spikes. The oubliette remained sealed until the mid-1920s, when it was finally excavated and four cartloads of human remains—perhaps all that was left of the O’Mahon clan—were taken away.
As Tadhg seized more and more lands, extending the boundaries of Ely O’Carroll, the English in Dublin became increasingly alarmed. They sent a large army under the command of Edmund Fahy to curb his power. Fahy was unfortunately betrayed by his allies and was forced to face Tadhg’s fury with only a skeleton army. He was comprehensively defeated at Carrigahorrig on the Shannon, and in retaliation, Tadhg burned several towns that were sheltering his troops, including Nenagh, and took scores of prisoners. Back at Leap, he had constructed a massive network of underground dungeons stretching for miles under the countryside. Into these he put the prisoners, sealing them in lightless tombs and leaving them to rot without food in the dark. That network is still there and the cells remain bricked up and unopened, and access to many of them is virtually impassable. Only rats come and go at will.
In 1552, Tadhg made peace with the English and accepted a knighthood, but internal disputes among the O’Carrolls continued to rage. In securing an English title for himself, Tadhg incurred the enmity of his surviving brothers. They approached an old enemy, Calvagh, who, with their urging, e
ntered Leap through a secret tunnel (the location of which has since been lost) and murdered Tadhg as he dozed by the fire. Tadhg died in 1553, bringing an end to his bloody lordship. In 1688, the O’Carroll clan finally left the area in return for a grant of 60,000 acres in Maryland, America. Their ancestral lands became part of the English Plantation, but even then, the dark history of Leap Castle wasn’t finished.
Another bizarre and colorful character now became master of the castle. Jonathan Darby, known as “the Wild Captain,” was a strong Royalist of eccentric and immoral habits. He had strengthened his claim on the area around the Slieve Bloom Mountains by marrying an O’Carroll princess, but it is said that he greatly abused his wife, his servants, and his tenants alike. Wild and orgiastic parties were held at Leap as Darby’s name became infamous throughout the region.
One of the stories about him concerned a fortune of gold and precious stones that he had somehow amassed. He hid this fortune in a secret chamber somewhere in the castle (which has never been found), the wealth being transported by two servants whom he subsequently killed, bricking their bodies up in the castle walls. (There may be something to this legend, because in the 1960s when some renovation work was being carried out, two skeletons were found behind plaster in one of the chambers.) Sometime afterward, however, he was arrested and accused (falsely, as it turned out) of plotting against King Charles II and was imprisoned in Dublin. When released, many years later, he was on the edge of madness and had completely forgotten where he hid the treasure. It has never been discovered to this day.
