What is it about Ireland' s past that so haunts the imagination? More than one answer can be found in Michael Scott's powerful new collection of 29 tales. To start with, in a newly Christianized Ireland, monks do battle with a devilish monster that has killed a river. All the water in this collection, from rivers to lakes, conceal dangers that men and women would best avoid. Ready to tempt Ireland' s new conquerors -- humankind-- supernatural forces hide beneath waves, in bogs, in the very land, waiting. With his usual inventiveness, Michael Scott juxtaposes the old and the new, the ancient and modern, showing that in everyday situations, the curses of Ireland' s mythic past lie imp- like, threatening destruction.

Ireland is known as the Emerald Isle, a land of history and mystery, beauty and enchantment. But there's much more to this jewel of the North Atlantic than meets the eye. Hans Holzer is a renowned ghost hunter who has traveled the world trailing the elusive spirits of souls anxious to be sent beyond the Veil. Here he recounts his fascinating journey across this island in search of its soul...and its spirits. There is an 18th-century swordsman who defends the hidden treasure of Ballyheigue Castle, a proud house now gutted by fire; Princess Orloff, originally known as Angelica Parrott, who returned home to haunt a jealous sister; Lilith, a young inhabitant of eerie Skryne Castle, who was strangled with foxglove fronds in 1740; Mary Masters, a young girl who refuses to forget her horrible death and continues to haunt Dublin's Shelbourne Hotel; the ghost at Number 118 Summerhill, Dublin who sends workmen into a panic; and many more.

Ireland’s Haunted Women tells the chilling tales of nine modern Irishwomen, and one young girl, who have experienced hauntings. This is not just another ghost book – no rehashing of old tales or stories borrowed from other collections. These cases are told here for the first time, collected from women the length and breadth of Ireland – women who are vulnerable to seeing ghosts, to house-hauntings and to demonic possession. We have come a long way from headless horsemen, pookas, banshees and the like. The modern ghost has to be more sophisticated than that. On the other hand, poltergeist activity has remained virtually unchanged down the centuries; scenes of past wickedness continue to haunt the living; the spirits of the deceased stubbornly insist on returning. Riveting, suspenseful, these tales of the paranormal will draw you in and leave you petrified! Whether you accept them as truth or reject them as delusion or false memory, we guarantee that they will leave you shaken and slow to switch off your bedside lamp for many nights to come.

Illustrated with atmospheric photographs and supported by extracts from original documents, this guide will appeal to anyone with an interest in things that go bump in the night. The sites covered are open to the public.

Blend the wild and fevered Irish imagination with a wonderful facility for recounting a dark, compelling tale, add a dash of the supernatural, and you have a potent brew of spine-tingling tales. This anthology of the best ghost stories from Ireland and Irish writers includes contributions from such masters as Sheridan Le Fanu, Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats and Rosa Mulholland. Within these pages you will find strange accounts of haunted houses, death warnings from beyond the grave, and revengeful spirits, all guaranteed to stir the imagination and chill the blood. The haunting tales featured in this beautiful Macmillan Collector's Library edition of Irish Ghost Stories have been selected and introduced by David Stuart Davies. Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

Published for the first time in over a hundred years, Mildred Darby's "The House of Horrors" is her first-hand account of one of the world's most terrifying hauntings. Although written under the pen name of Andrew Merry, with the name of the castle changed from Leap to Kliman Castle and using pseudonyms in order to protect the identity of those involved, all of the incidents dramatized in her narrative are true, having occurred in the Darby's Leap Castle home. With sightings over the centuries of at least nineteen individual ghosts, accounts of the sounds of a phantom battle being heard to play out upon the castle grounds, a banshee and the frighteningly hideous and oppressively foul-smelling Elemental; Leap Castle truly merits its longstanding reputation as "The most Haunted Castle in Ireland." In addition to Mildred Darby's original account, this new edition features a comprehensive Introduction providing relevant historical background as well as first-hand witness accounts attesting to the factual basis of Mildred Darby's account.

The spirits of the dead return in many shapes and in many locations in Ireland. There are the wraith-like ghosts and the full-bodied type, the dangerous and damaging, the threatening and the merely frightening. There are notorious buildings where down through the centuries spectres have been seen or heard, some, such as Leap Castle, where psychics have been overwhelmed by the intensity of the atmosphere. There are families pursued by spirits who warn them of impending death or seem to be trying to get back at them for some long-forgotten wrongdoing. Here are stories and details of the amazing variety of hauntings to be experienced throughout the country.