Loftus Hall

This is the most haunted house in Ireland!  I had read about it last year and wanted to see it but then forgot about it.  Then, as we were driving to the Hook Lighthouse, there it was!  So we drove down the lane.   It wasn't open until later in the day, and we weren't going to wait around.  I have since seen some of the stuff about it and it seems to me to be a rather cheesy haunted house tour, so I don't have plans to go see it.  I do not go on haunted house tours where they just try to scare me - I am quite easily freaked out anyway!

The story goes that the family living there had a knock on the door and let in a man who said he had come by sea and gotten lost.  They took him in and made him welcome and the adult daughter was entranced by him.  While they were playing cards, she dropped a card and when she bent down to pick it up, she saw his feet under the table.  Instead of feet, he had cloven hooves.  He turned into a spirit and flew out of the house making a hole in the roof.  The daughter went insane and was kept in an upstairs room for the rest of her life and the family firmly believed they had been visited by Satan.

So even though we didn't go inside, it was an appropriate stop for the weekend before Halloween!