Most eerie place in Ireland

The Sidewards Man wrote:

Stunning views of what? water and rocks and men with the hind leg of sheep in their wellingtons.

Of mountains, waterfalls, bays. You must be either blind or purposely keeping your eyes closed if you can't see it

minibear wrote: »

Years ago I lived in Kerry and every weekend I would do some exploring around the county and stop for coffee somewhere. On one of these trips I ended up at Ballyseede Castle Hotel. As I drove in the gates I realised I didn't want to go any further but there was no way of turning around so I continued on up the drive until I got to the hotel itself.

I've never experienced the feeling of utter dread that I felt that day. It was almost like a physical force and I sat in the car trying to rationalise it. I was shaky and my heart was pounding. I made myself go into the hotel and when someone eventually appeared and I enquired about getting some coffee I was actually relieved that the bar wasn't open. I legged it as quick as I could. I just had a look at the website now to see how I felt and although the interior photos show a beautiful building and beautiful rooms, it's the lawn at the front that still frightens me.

A few years later I was back down that way with friends who insisted we go there to see this place that freaked me out so much. I felt a bit safer with them there but still terribly uneasy. They thought it was hilarious.

You were possibly spooked by the Ballyseedy Monument:

The Ballyseedy Massacre and its aftermath[Wiki]
March 1923 saw a series of notorious incidents in Kerry, where 23 Republican prisoners were killed in the field (and another five judicially executed) in a period of just four weeks.

The killings were sparked off when five Free State soldiers were killed by a booby trap bomb while searching a Republican dugout at the village of Knocknagoshel, County Kerry, on 6 March. The next day, the local Free State commander authorised the use of Republican prisoners to clear mined roads. Paddy Daly justified the measure as, 'the only alternative left to us to prevent the wholesale slaughter of our men'. National Army troops may have interpreted this as permission to take revenge on the Anti-Treaty side.[27]

That night, 6/7 March, nine Republican prisoners were taken from Ballymullen Barracks in Tralee to Ballyseedy crossroads and tied to a landmine which was then detonated, after which the survivors were machine-gunned. One of the prisoners, Stephen Fuller, was blown to safety by the blast of the explosion. He was taken in at the nearby home of Michael and Hannah Curran. They cared for him and although badly injured, he survived. Fuller later became a Fianna Fáil TD. The Free State troops in nearby Tralee had prepared nine coffins and were surprised to find only the scattered remains of eight bodies on the scene. There was a riot when the bodies were brought back to Tralee, where the enraged relatives of the killed prisoners broke open the coffins as a statement of contempt for the Free State and its troops,[28] and in an effort to identify the dead.[29]

This was followed by a series of similar incidents with mines within 24 hours of the Ballyseedy killings. Five Republican prisoners were blown up with another landmine at Countess Bridge near Killarney and four in the same manner at Cahersiveen. Another Republican prisoner, Seamus Taylor was taken to Ballyseedy woods by National Army troops and shot dead.

On 28 March, five IRA men, captured in an attack on Cahersiveen on 5 March were officially executed in Tralee. Another, captured the same day, was summarily shot and killed. Thirty-two Anti-Treaty fighters died in Kerry in March 1923, of whom only five were killed in combat.[30] Free State officer Niall Harrington has suggested that reprisal killings of republican prisoners continued in Kerry up to the end of the war.


Memorial to the Irish Republican soldiers executed by Free State forces at Ballyseedy, County Kerry.
The Free State unit the Dublin Guard, and in particular their commander, Paddy Daly, were widely held to be responsible for these killings. They, however, claimed that the prisoners had been killed while clearing roads by landmines laid by Republicans. When questioned in the Dáil by Labour Party leader Thomas Johnson, Richard Mulcahy, the National Army's commander-in-chief, backed up Daly's story. A military Court of Enquiry conducted in April 1923 cleared the Free State troops of the charge of killing their prisoners.

It has since emerged, however, that the prisoners were beaten, tied to explosives and then killed. At Cahersiveen, the prisoners were reportedly shot in the legs before being blown up to preclude their escaping. Two Free State officers, Lieutenants Niall Harrington and W McCarthy (who both resigned over the incidents) later stated that not only were the explosives detonated by the Free State troops, they had also been made by them and laid there for this purpose.[31] Documents released in late 2008 show that the Free State Cabinet was aware that the Army's version of events was flawed. An investigation concluded that the prisoners had been killed by a party of National Army soldiers from Dublin known as the 'visiting committee' and that those at Cahersiveen had been beaten and shot before being blown up.[32]

What exactly prompted this outbreak of vindictive killings in March 1923 is unclear. While the National Army troops in Kerry were clearly enraged by the killings of their comrades at Knocknagoshel, a total of 68 Free State soldiers had been killed in the county and 157 wounded up to that point. A total of 85 would die in Kerry before the war was over. Why the deaths at Knocknagoshel prompted such a savage response remains an open question. However, it has never been proven that the National Army atrocities of March 1923 were authorised by the Free State government or the National Army high command.

Sir Osis of Liver. wrote: »

Thought I might bring the kids to Loftus Hall this week to scare the sh1te out of them.

it sure scares the sh1te out of many a NUIM student come exam season.