Ireland's scariest experiences

Ireland may be the Home of Halloween, but did you know that there are some great scary spots around the island that you can visit all year? From old haunted castles to ghostly tours –if you want to see the ghoulish side of Ireland on your next visit, here are the places to go.

Take a Ghost Tour

You can’t miss the Ghostbus as it snakes its way through Dublin – this purple double-decker is emblazoned with ghoulish characters and it only gets scarier when you step inside, with its thick black curtain and bone-chilling tales. You’ll travel to Dublin’s most haunted sights, with actors telling stories of body snatchers, ghosts and paranormal activity. Be warned – you’ll jump out of your skin on more than one occasion.

In the medieval city of Kilkenny, there are ghouls around every corner. On a walk with Kilkenny Ghost Tours, you’ll stroll the narrow cobbled streets guided by one of those very characters, such as Dame Alice Ketyler, the first woman to be tried as a witch in Ireland.

Things are spookier still in Belfast’s Titanic Dock, where you can not only take a Supernatural Ghost Tour, but help to find the spirits yourself, using EMF (electro-magnetic field) meters. Under the blanket of nightfall, you’ll head 12 metres below sea level in the dry dock in what was once the most dangerous part of the shipyard.

Tour a jail at night

There’s always something ghostly about a former jail. But they’re particularly eerie at night. You can visit Belfast’s Crumlin Road Gaol throughout the year on a self-guided visit, but they also run regular paranormal and nighttime tours led by a guide who’ll show you the scariest corners of the jail, like the tunnel and the Hangman’s Cell.

Down in Cork, Spike Island was once the largest prison in the world, a star-shaped fortress just a short boat trip from Cobh. Walking down into the former cells is spooky no matter when you visit, but on an After Dark Tour, you’ll walk the empty corridors at night, sit in solitary and experience what life was like in a place known as Ireland’s Hell.

On Ireland’s eastern coast, Wicklow Gaol is known as one of the most haunted places in all the land. You can get a sense of the supernatural activity on one of their night tours, or even on a special paranormal tour, where you might just see one of the resident ghosts with your own eyes.

Hike the Hell Fire Club

The abandoned hunting lodge known as the Hell Fire Club overlooking Dublin city always has a mysterious, spine-chilling feel, the empty arched windows giving a glimpse into the eerily dark space within. And while it’s more commonly used as a spot for Dublin hikers and dog walkers, this was once a meeting ground for the dark-arts loving 18th century Irish Hellfire Club, described by author Jonathan Swift as “a brace of monsters, blasphemers & bacchanalians”. For the spookiest experience, take a nighttime Horror Hike to the site with Hidden Dublin Tours.

See Ireland’s “gate to hell”

Want to see something truly scary? Oweynagat in County Roscommon may be part of a complex of more than 250 archaeological sites known as Rathcrogan, but it’s also known as the “gate to hell”. This natural cave, known as a souterrain, is where people believed the gateway to hell opened during the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. All the more reason to visit outside of Halloween…

Visit a haunted location

Head there on a sunny afternoon, and Charles Fort in Kinsale, County Cork, seems like the last place in which you’d happen upon a ghost. But this fortress has a gory history, and one of the victims of its horrors still roams the grounds to this day. The White Lady, as she’s known, threw herself into the ocean after her father shot her betrothed. There are plenty more ghosts in Leap Castle, County Offaly – a place where so many murders took place it makes sense that there are a few restless souls who have stuck around for some hauntings.

Want to go one further and spend the night in a haunted hotel? On the Antrim coast, 17th-century Ballygally Castle is home to the spirit of Lady Isabella Shaw, whose husband locked her in the top of the turret after she birthed a daughter instead of the son he wanted. When she tried to escape, she fell to her death on the rocks below. Some guests see her walk the corridors to this day, and you can even see the room where she was imprisoned.

Discover a haunted tomb

Back in 1867, renovations began at St Columb’s Cathedral in Derry~Londonderry. There was only one problem… those building works disturbed the grave of William Higgins, the former bishop. Since then, people have heard footsteps in locked rooms, the sound of the organ echoing through the nave, and seen ghostly apparitions in photographs. Who knows what you’ll see when you visit?