Leap Castle

This is so typical of me, I make one blog then I get all excited that I go searching for what I want to blog about next! Well that is exactly what I did. I finish writing about the caves of Ireland last night and then today I went and did some searching about the haunted castles of Ireland. And one of the one that stood out the most to me was Leap Castle. It is reportedly one of THE most haunted castles of Ireland.  If you have ever seen the show "Ghost Hunters" which is one of my favorite shows. They have actually been there and done an investigation there. So let me start tell you about Leap Castle!


Leap Castle



Leap Castle

 Leap Castle has a violent and turbulent history. It was built in the 14th or 15th century as a stronghold of the O'Carroll Family, powerful Irish Princes, Chieftains of the area.  The Gaelic name for the castle is  "Leim Ui Bhanain" which means  "The Leap of the O'Bannons".  Under the O'Carroll Chiefs, the  O'Bannon Clan were the first owners of Leap Castle. Later occupied by the O'Carrolls themselves. From here the O'Carroll's would set out for victory and defeat, and here they would bring their brides and there captives.

Leap was an impregnable fortress impervious to attack. In 1513, Leap Castle was attacked by Gerald Fitzgerald, but was  not taken. Gerald Og Fitzgerald of Kildore attacked the castle in 1516. In  1557 during an attack led by the Earl of Sussex, the O'Carroll's made a successful escape. In 1532, on the death of the  O'Carroll Chieftain a fierce rivalry for the leadership erupted within the family. The bitter fight for power turned brother against brother. One of the brothers was a priest. The O'Carroll priest was holding mass for a group of his family in what is now called the "Bloody Chapel", while chanting the holy rites, his rival brother burst into the chapel and  plunged his sword into his brother, fatally wounding him. The wounded priest fell across the altar and died in front of his family. The heinous act of brother killing brother and the blasphemy of a sacred mass cut short by murder is said to have sent an echo of misery ringing throughout the castle.

After the failure of the Revolt of the Earls in 1619 the plantation of Ely O'Carroll took place. Along with the English rulers, loyal protestant Scots and Englishmen settled into the area depriving the local Gaelic population of their land. Leap Castle then passed into the hands of the Darby family. After this many Darby's became High Sheriffs of Kings County.  The most famous Darby is Admiral Sir Henry Darby who fought at the Battle of the Nile and escorted Napoleon Bonaparte into exile after leaving France.

Another source of evil  at Leap Castle was the Oubliette (a form of a dungeon) which was found off the Bloody Chapel.  It was a small room with a drop floor. Prisoners would be pushed into the room to fall through the floor and land on spikes eight feet below. If they were not lucky enough to die quickly on the spikes, they would have died from starvation in a doorless room with a narrow window where they could see others come and go in freedom. Around 1900 workmen who were hired to clean out the Oubliette made hideous discovery, human skeletons laid piled on top of each other. It took three full carts loads to remove all the bones. Among the bones workmen found a pocket watch  made in the 1840's. It is not certain if the dungeon was still in use then.

The Oubliette

Shortly after Leap's dungeons gruesome discovery, a psychic disturbance may have caused the emergence of the Elemental Spirit. In 1659 ownership of Leap Castle passed in marriage from the O'Carroll family to an English family, the Darby's.  The Darby family turned Leap Castle into their family home, with improvements and additions and landscaped gardens. In the late 19th century descendants Jonathan and Mildred Darby were looking forward to raising their family here. The occult was the fashion of the day, and Mildred Darby did some innocent dabbling, despite the Castle's history and reputation for being haunted. Mildred's dabbling with magic awakened the elemental with ferocious velocity.

In 1909 Mildred Darby wrote an article for the Journal Occult Review, describing her terrifying ordeal. "I was standing in the Gallery looking down at the main floor, when I felt somebody put a hand on my shoulder. The thing was about the size of a sheep. Thin gaunting shadowy....its face was human, to be more accurate inhuman. Its lust in its eyes which seemed half decomposed in black cavities stared into mine. The horrible smell one hundred times intensified came up into my face, giving me a deadly nausea. It was the smell of a decomposing corpse." The Elemental is thought to be a primitive ghost that attaches itself to a particular place. It is often malevolent, terrifying and unpredictable.

After Mrs. Darby's experiments in the black arts, Leap Castle has never been the same. Hauntings plague Leap Castle leaving a sinister air throughout the Castle. The Darby's remained at Leap Castle until 1922. Being the home of an English family, it became the target of the Irish struggle for independence. Destroyed by bombs, completely looted, nothing but a burned out shell remained. The Darby's were driven out.

In the 1970's Leap Castle was purchased by an Australian who had a White Witch brought in from Mexico to exorcise the Castle. She spent many hours in the Bloody Chapel, when she emerged she explained that the spirits at Leap Castle were no longer malevolent, but that they wished to remain. In the 1990's during restoration to the Castle the Owner suffered a "freak accident"  which left him with a broken knee cap delaying restoration for for nearly a year. One year later while on a ladder working on restoring the Castle, the ladder suddenly tilted backwards away from the wall causing him to jump several stories resulting in a broken ankle. Both were strange accidents.

The owners say they would be happy to share the castle with the spirits as long as there are no more "occurrences".  In 1991, Leap Castle's Bloody Chapel held christening of the owner's baby daughter. For the first time in centuries the  "Bloody Chapel' was filled with music, dancing, laughter, and most of all love. The day had been a "happy, pleasant, wonderful day". If the troubled spirits of Leap Castle did not leave, maybe they had finally found some peace.


I am really hoping that Dan and I can get a tour of Leap Castle!  Those of you who know me pretty well know that I am really interested in the paranormal and that I belong to a paranormal research group here, so getting the chance to see and walk through one of Ireland most haunted Castle would be like winning the Stanley Cup, World Series and the Superbowl all rolled into one!!!!  I only wish that I could take my fellow investigators with me!! Oh how they would love it!!!!  I could just see Dom now he would be like a kid in a candy store! LOL  Well keep your fingers crossed that I can get a chance to get in there an see it, If not I would be happy with just seeing it from the outside and taking pictures!


Until next time!