Ireland After Dark

A friendly monk appearing as a reflection in a bedroom mirror, and mingling with unsuspecting wedding guests.

Guests waking to find spectral strangers in their rooms. A floating figure spotted in a corridor. A ghostly child and a dark secret.

With Halloween fast approaching, I recount my visit to Kinnitty Castle, one of Ireland’s most intriguing haunted hotels.

Have a story of your own? I want to hear it. Email content@s...

Three haunted theatres where the show may not be over, even after the final curtain.

From mysterious figures lurking in the wings to unexplained footsteps, ghostly faces and spirits said to linger among the seats, Ireland’s theatres have more than their fair share of backstage stories.

In this episode, I visit three supposedly haunted venues: Mullingar Arts Centre, Dublin’s Olympia Theatre, and Belfast’s Gra...

The banshee - Ireland’s legendary death messenger, whose mournful cry has been feared for generations.

From old tales of fairy women combing their hair by moonlight to stories of families who claim to have heard her warning, the banshee has remained one of Ireland’s most enduring supernatural traditions.

In this episode, I explore the folklore surrounding the banshee, from a 17th-century eyewitness account to mode...

Three historic estates where family tragedy, old folklore, and stories of curses as well as ghosts have become part of the story.

Seafield House in Sligo - now a ruin, where an old woman is said to have cursed the Phibbs family. Years later, it’s claimed that the family and their staff fled in terror.

Duckett’s Grove in Carlow - a once-grand Gothic estate destroyed by fire. For generations, there has been talk of ...

Five historic churches and graveyards where centuries of history, old folklore and reports of the restless dead have become part of the story.

St Audoen’s Church in Dublin, one of the city’s oldest surviving churches, where a ghostly Green Lady is said to haunt the steps and one notorious Dublin character reportedly came face to face with the Devil.

St George’s Church in Dublin, now offices, this former plac...

Three historic hotels where tragedy, institutional history and the restless dead have become part of the guest experience.

The White Horse Hotel in Derry, built on the site of a nineteenth-century coaching inn with a brutal past, where an attack in 1819 is said to have set in motion a spectral visitation that returns every seven years.

The Clayton Hotel in Sligo, a former asylum reborn as luxury accommodation, where guests an...

A centuries-old university where murder, body-snatching and the restless dead have become part of campus folklore.

A stern fellow shot dead in the Rubrics, whose ghost is said to still wander the corridors. Human remains uncovered during construction, and the grim history of resurrection men supplying Trinity’s medical school.

The spirit of a mathematician said to have returned to the college after death, a professor wh...

Three ordinary Irish homes where families found themselves confronted by something they could not explain.

Strange footsteps and the sound of an animal dragging chains, lights switching themselves on and off, and a family who eventually chose a caravan rather than return home.

A four-year-old girl describing a mysterious figure, holy statues bursting into flames, and a warning that left a family convinced they had to flee the...

A fairytale castle where the ghost of a murdered young woman is said to still wander the corridors.

Objects moving in bedrooms, chandeliers swaying in empty rooms, and a scream heard when the castle was empty.

A shadow crossing a television, strange figures appearing in photographs, and a story that reaches back centuries. A tragic tale of forbidden love and death.

From its romantic setting to its unsettling legends, this ...

A canal where a strange light was said to be responsible for several deaths.

A haunted lock feared by generations of boatmen, and a ghostly voice with an unusual message.

A bridge marked by rebellion, tragedy and stories of screams rising from the river.

And shadowy figures, vanishing strangers and restless spirits that still haunt Ireland's waterways.

From Dublin to Belfast, these are the stories of Ireland's haunted b...

A house where the line between history and legend has blurred for more than 250 years.

A lonely young woman whose tragic fate became one of Ireland's greatest ghost stories.

A newspaper account from 1937 that tells a very different story to the version made famous on television.

And a mansion that still inspires claims of footsteps, whispers and a ghost said to wander its halls.

These days, many know Loftus Hall for the...

A belief that shaped how people farmed, built, and raised their children.

A tomb moved for a quarry - and an empire that crashed not long after.

Trees left standing for centuries because no one dares cut them down.

And in one Tipperary farmhouse in 1895, a husband who was certain his wife had been replaced by something else entirely.

These days, many will call it superstition. But across Ireland, "the old ways" still in...

A Victorian prison, built to break people down.

A cell with a sinister secret. 

Figures glanced in doorways. 

Whispers and choking sounds in empty spaces. 

An oppressive presence that doesn't seem to want visitors. 

These days, you can get married at Crumlin Road Gaol, but more than 60 years after the final execution, it seems that some of its former inmates are still locked in.

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An ordinary council house. A family who had lived there for decades. Then, without warning, everything changed.

It began with a foul smell. Then came the lights, the footsteps, the cries of an unseen child, and a series of events that would make headlines across Ireland.

Some called it a hoax. Others believed it was one of the country's most compelling poltergeist cases.

Nearly thirty years later, the Corrib Park haunting ...

Three military sites. Three very different hauntings.

A museum in Meath where the artifacts seem to carry their own history - a nurse who sings in French, a uniform no one can place, a figure that's been caught on camera twice.

A live army base in Kildare, where the dead of the Gibbet Rath massacre may still be heard in the dark, and where one room's quiet tragedy ended in a noose.

And a 300-year-old barracks in Dublin, no...

Ireland's roads connect communities, carry history - and on occasion, carry something else entirely.

From the Barnesmore Gap in Donegal, where a woman climbed into the back of a car on a freezing night in 1983 and told the driver exactly where she had died, to the Murder Hole Road in Derry, where a highwayman's ghost is said to still patrol the route he once terrorised - the accounts in this episode share a common thread. A figu...

Leap Castle has been called Ireland's most haunted home. Given its history, that's not hard to believe.

A priest murdered at the altar. A hidden pit filled with the bones of the forgotten. A creature so disturbing that even those who share the castle with it urge caution.

Seán and Anne Ryan bought the ruins in 1991. They are still there. They have heard things they cannot explain - voices in an old Irish dialect, the sounds o...

Alanbrooke Hall was a student tower block attached to Queen's University Belfast.

Over several years, a series of students and staff reported experiences they could not explain. A shadow figure radiating pure evil. Violent banging on doors with nothing on the other side. Objects moving of their own accord. A warden living alone in a locked tower, hearing the lifts move in the night.

The witnesses are not ghost hunters. They ...

A dark figure standing over your bed. A scream only you can hear. Eyes in the rear-view mirror that shouldn't be there.

This is Ireland After Dark - and this short test episode is your first look at what's coming.

I'm Jonathan, and starting on Midsummer's Eve here in Ireland (23 June), I'll be sharing true ghost stories from across Ireland's 32 counties every week.

Subscribe now so you're ready for episode one, and if you'...