Haunted in Cork

Check out Carr's Hill old famine cemetery on the Cork-Carrigaline road, on your left approx. two miles before you hit Carrigaline town. Literally thousands of famine victims were lobbed into huge mass graves on the site.

Everyone is always talking about Cork City Gaol (old women's jail) being haunted. I've been in there several times - at night and during the daytime - over the years and I never saw or felt anything in the place. I don't know what all the brouhaha is about, tbh.

On the other hand, St. Kevin's Hospital also in the Sunday's Well area is haunted. It's that huge, red-brick building to the right of those Atkins Hall apartments (which used to be the infamous Our Lady's Hospital/Eglinton Asylum/Cork County Asylum).

If you can manage to actually get inside St. Kevin's Hospital (which is prohibited, I'll point out), I guarantee that you'll experience something unpleasant of an 'otherwordly' nature within about 40 minutes - 1 hour.

There are several other places in Cork that have a haunted reputation as well, but I'm looking into those places more thoroughly to come to a definitive conclusion..

DANNY22XX wrote: »

... ive heard a few stories about the hill leading up to the barracks

Are you referring to the route up to Collins Barracks in The Glen area?

MisterCadbury wrote: »

One of my friends was recently ( as in 3 days ago) going for a walk along inch strand in east cork with his girlfriend at dusk....
They stayed chatting in the car for a bit, whatever look he gave he glanced out the passenger side windows of the car and saw " a shadow walk from the back of the car to the front". His gf saw his jaw drop and looked in same direction and screamed because she saw the shadow too. The shadow apparently was eerily this, like too thin to be a person...

He then tore off down the road but pulled in for a second cos he could see what looked like a torch light shining back to where he was. But all of a sudden the light started to come towards the car. He said it was about the size of a tennis ball. He thought it mught be a person with a torch but it was coming faster than even a bicycle could come. He was thinking maybe a motorbike but surely they would have heard that? anyway he floored it and never looked back.

Weird though cos this isnt the kinda guy to believe in anything paranormal or that but he was seriously shaken about it.

Thinking could be a good spot for ghost hunters??

I never heard of that area being a hotbed for paranormal activity. Your friend's is the first story I've came across about Inch Strand being haunted in some way, tbh.

Some people refer to those shadows that look like near-inhumanly thin people as 'shadow people'. Any information that's available on those yokes would be based solely on mere conjecture, so there isn't much to go on.

As for the thing being seen at dusk (along with that tennis ball-sized light)- most 'things' of a paranormal nature tend to come out and play when natural light is ebbing away.

I don't know why any shadow entities would be down near the beach, though! You know that old fable about negative spirits/entities/whatever not being able to cross running water?! :rolleyes:

Well, about 9 years ago I used to do security at weekends (nights) for a few months in an old house that was being converted into offices for the Dept of Education (I think) across from the main gates of UCC on the corner. As far as I know these days it's all done up and painted a kinda cream colour on the outside.

Some nights I just had to leave the place. Too spooky. I never actually saw anything it was more a feeling and when I'd try to dooze off for 10 minutes or whatever I would suddenly get these very vivid frighteneing images of a girl - maybe in her 20's, very pale, with long black hair either standing or walking down the stairs, sometimes stretching out her arms, cying and shivering and wet from head to foot. And images (basically like flashes in your mind when you try to close your eyes, relax and sleep) of a young boy walking down the darkened downstairs corridor tossing his head back laughing (in a scary way) and dragging something along the ground with him....Not nice.

Now, it could have simply been my imagination but these were the images that came into my head each time I'd try to go to sleep there, repeatedly.

I tried to confine myself to the small downstairs office and not venture out of it, unless I had to use the toilet. Pretty frightening. But never actually saw anything.

Léan wrote: »

^ I pass that building every morning on the way to college, sounds quite freaky .

Are there any other buildings around Cork city with paranormal activity? (besides the Good Sheperds, the insane asylum, St. Kevins). Would be very interested in checking them out....

I remember looking at a bedsit there on Western road a couple of years ago (needless to say, it was a dive). It was within one of those houses very near where that guy mentioned that house he was working on before. It's very obscured by trees outside it and there's a long-ish path straight into it.
It isn't the same place the guy was talking about, obviously, but I found the building creepy nevertheless. The fact that it seemed quite delapidated may have had something to do with that perception.

Of course, it didn't help matters that the bloke who was showing me around seemed really weird and secretive and immediately locked the front door behind us when we went inside the building. Talk about strange.. :rolleyes:

I know of an unoccupied two-storey house that's situated south-west of Cork city, in the direction of Innishannon, that's 'haunted'. It's very easy to find when you know where to go.

For many years, it was used as a parochial house but, in recent years, the parish priests have declined to live there. The house is perfectly habitable in a practical sense, but the strange goings-on have kept any would-be occupants at bay.

A few people (who are locals) told me that someone had once hung themselves in the house many years ago, and that their body had lingered in one of the upstairs rooms for over a week before its discovery. They then brought up the topic of the house being haunted and, while I laughed at that comment, there wasn't a smirk or a glint in their eyes to be seen.

At the time, the then-parish priest (I won't name him here) had moved home to live with his mother in Carrigaline because he was so terrified of remaining in the parochial house. He very openly spoke about lights switching on and off of their own accord, hearing unaccounted-for footsteps, the television basically having a life of its own, the faucets of taps winding themselves into action, etc. That priest wasn't 'mental' because I met the man several times and you couldn't have met anyone more balanced and 'with it'.

Anyway, ever since then (when I first heard of the house's spooky reputation), nobody has since set foot in the place.

If you're interested in going to the house and you would like directions, just PM me. I don't want to be exact about the house's location here in the event that it will attract idiots wanting to deface the place.

polishpaddy wrote: »

Lads in all fairness i'd sleep in any place in cork wihtut a care n the world all this ghost business is funny.
Who cares they're dead and they can't scare you at all.
Grow some balls men Oh is there any haunted places in cobh???

What gave you the impression that you would be sleeping in a derelict hospital (St. Kevin's) at any point?? In any case, I happily dare you to go ahead and venture up to St. Kevin's for a nap, and then return with an honest and comprehensive report of how you got on up there. I would be really interested to hear/read the results of that.

razorblunt wrote: »

...
St Finbarre's Hospital is well know to be haunted especially the top floor of a few buildings. The ghost of a nun apparently.

Yeah, I've heard that as well. A couple of years ago, I spoke to a nurse who worked there and she said that several members of staff (including herself) had often seen this nun walking around the wards and down the corridors. Her style of 'uniform' looks to date from around the 1940s, apparently. The nun is a friendly spirit, though...

My father spent three weeks in St. Finbarr's when he was a kid and he has very unpleasant memories of the place that still make him grimace all these years later...

The daftest thing I ever heard about the hospital was that there's a werewolf buried underneath the place. Where did I hear that nonsense, I hear you think? Why, the White Witch of Cobh, of course! Enough said. :rolleyes:

polishpaddy wrote: »

Oh so the spirits of the dead only come out at night time, if your scared enough?

As much as I can recall my momentous, little nighttime adventures throughout my life so far, I have never once ran around any places demonstrating fits of overwrought terror. Nor have I creeped around v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y whilst constantly looking over my shoulder squeaking, "What was that?! I heard/saw something!" and welding my arm to someone else's arm in the process.
Apart from two locations in Cork, I don't ever feel nervous about or slightly fearful of anything or anywhere else. But, yes, it is traditional for spirits to 'come out' at night. I think the 'Witching Hour' runs from 12am to 3am...

What if i'm not scared enough, will i feel them?

How the f uck should I know? To be honest, the primary factor that has always made me nervous or edgy in a place like St. Kevin's is the possibility of some local, epically inebriated idiot(s) with anger management issues suddenly popping up in one of the rooms. The building is popular for getting drunk/drugged out of your mind. That has always been at the forefront of my (and others') concerns initially but we walked through the five floors first on each occasion to be sure there weren't any delightful dipsh!ts lurking anywhere.

Lol , i will happily meet up with you and spend the night in there, or are you too afraid?

Oh, is that an invitation? How kind of you. I'm not "too afraid" at all, once the 'drunken/stoned idiot spotcheck' on-site has been sorted out first. There isn't any need to worry about the 24-hour security patrol (even though they were nice guys, apart from one - there's always one ) nowadays because that was removed during April.

When i asked about cobh i was genuinely asking about cobh. I have never been scared of anything, so, please do share.

Tbh, I don't know too much about Cobh's 'haunted history'. I know a guy who was showing me this book called 'Paranormal Ireland' before, and there was a listing of 'Pillars Bar' as allegedly 'the most haunted building in Cobh'. There's a story about the bar, where people have said that mirrors on the walls always smashed of their own mysterious accord. Yet, this guy I know went for a few drinks in that bar with his wife before he had bought and read that paranormal book, and he said they both didn't notice anything unusual about the place whatsoever at the time. He was very surprised to see it featured in the book's list of haunted places in Cork some time later.

The Commodore Hotel in Cobh is also said to be haunted (the sounds of a crying baby where there have been no babies present, have apparently been heard), but all of this is only folklore as far as I'm concerned. I have never been to The Commodore Hotel.

By the way, I don't think it would be possible to spend an entire night (like, six or seven hours) in St. Kevin's Hospital. The most I have ever spent there (along with other people) on one particular occasion has been just under two hours. The atmosphere becomes very uncomfortably intense after a while. You don't need to be a 'believer' in any of this stuff to sense that you aren't welcome in the building. I'm not trying to be all dramatic about it - that's simply the truth. Of course, the idea of that is complete bullsh!t to people who haven't been in there.