HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Hello and welcome,  I want to wish you all a very Happy Hallow`een.

 

                            

Tonight I have ghostly tale to tell, sit back and prepare to be afraid..................

 THE ELEMENTAL OF LEAP CASTLE

 

Over 400 years ago in what is now known as the "Bloody Chapel" a shocking murder happened.  Leap Castle was at that time a stronghold of the O`Carroll family of Irish Princes, Chieftains of the area.

In 1532, on the death of the O`Carroll Chieftain, a fierce rivallry for the leadership took place within the family.  The bitter fight for power turned brother against brother.  One of the brothers was a priest and was holding Mass for a group of the family in the chapel.  While chanting the holy rites his rival brother burst into the chapel and plunged his sword into his brother the priest.  Fatally wounding him, the 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 such an evil act sent an echo of misery ringing throughout the castle.

                                                           

Another source of evil was found at Leap Castle that may have compounded and nurtured the spirit of the elemental. A hidden dungeon was found off the "Bloody Chapel"  It was a small room with a drop floor.  Those that were forgotten within this room suffered unimaginable pain and and misery until their eventual death.  Prisoners would be pushed into the room to fall through the floor and land on a spike eight feet below.  If they were not lucky enough to die quickly on the spike, they died slowly of starvation while the aroma of food and sounds of merriment drifted up from the rooms below.  A narrow window would let the prisoners watch who came and went in freedom from the castle.   In c1900,  workmen who were hired to clean out the dungeon came upon a hideous discovery, human skeletons lay piled on top of each other.  It took three full cartloads to remove all the bones, among them was a pocket watch made in the 1840`s.  It is not certain if the dungeon was still in use then

 

                                                                        

Because of its bloody history Leap Castle has always had a reputation for being haunted, a reputation so strong that local people avoided it at night.  It was completely gutted by fire and boarded up and its gates padlocked for over seventy years.  Locals have described seeing the windows at the top light up for a few seconds as if many candles were brought into the room late at night.  The castle laid ruin for many years.

                       

                                                                                             

 

Shortly after Leap`s dungeons macabre discovery, a psychic disturbance may have caused the emergence of the elemental spirit.  In 1659, the ownership of leap passed in marriage from the O`Carroll family to an English family named Darby.  Leap became the 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 there.  The occult was fashionable at the time and Mildred 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 a magazine, describing her terrible ordeal.

" I was standing in the gallery, looking down when I felt somebody put a hand on my shoulder.  The thing was about the size of a sheep,thin, gaunt and shadowy......, it`s face was human....to be more accurate, inhuman.  It`s 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."

 

"Each night my father fills me with dread,

When he sits on the foot of my bed,

I`d not mind that he speaks

In gibbers and squeaks,

But for seventeen years he`s been dead."

Edward Gorey.