’Tis the season... for scares: Your guide to Ireland's Haunted experiences
From the Nightmare Realm to portholes to hell in a family home, there’s a whole frightful world out there this Halloween. That’s without mentioning the prevailing paranormal panics, writes .
I smell and hear them before I see them. A putrid pong of petroleum fills the air, followed by the rabid harangue of gurning metal. Shrieks of terror are followed by howls for health and safety before my date for the evening — from whom I got separated in an actual maze of maize earlier — runs past me, followed by two chainsaw-wielding yokels.
We’re at Causey Farm in Girley, Co Meath, for Farmaphobia, the Murtagh family’s annual transformation of the family business from functioning farm to porthole to hell, employing upwards of 200 people to scare the bejeesus out of us.
Almost 2,000 people will scream their way around the property every evening between now and Halloween. It features a House of Dolls, a Zombie Morgue, the aforementioned Field of Screams, as well as new attractions Evilution and The Facility.
It’s a far cry from the early days when they first started. “This is how bad we were. We made a tunnel of terror out of silage plastic which had Jack-o’-lanterns with real candles in them and different attractions made out of various bits of metal we had around the farm,” laughs Deirdre Murtagh, who runs it with her brother and six sisters and who is, herself, in charge of events.
“But there’s a whole global industry built up around Haunted House attractions. We started attending trade shows in the US and UK and saw just what was out there and were determined to become the best of the best.”
ScareCON, the European conference of Haunted Attractions. thinks it’s accomplished that goal. In 2015 it was awarded best independent European scare attraction at its annual awards and Murtagh says that in the whole US, there are only 20 attractions as big and as popular as Farmaphobia.
“We were growing at the same time as social media was growing so word of mouth was phenomenal. We have a huge amount of return visitors and each year we are having to open up earlier and earlier to facilitate demand.”
Some people are so scared they freeze up and can’t go any further. “There are lots of panic attacks. Some people get really terrified and I feel awful cause we have taken their money,” says Murtagh.
“But most of the experiences are really, really positive. Some people are scared but most are laughing as when one person in a group is petrified, they almost become part of the entertainment for the rest.”
A repeat visitor myself, I can attest to the fact Farmaphobia is going out of its way to keep the scares fresh. The highlight this year was being propelled from a spinning, tubular room into a hall of mirrors where I was stalked by a knife-wielding clown never quite sure if I was running from him or fleeing his reflection directly into his path.
Stumbling through the pitch-black Field Of Screams axe-wielding lulas appear as if from nowhere, sending my date scuttling off in the opposite direction straight into the arms of a moonshine-swigging hick. The stomach-churning makeup of one character in the House of the Dolls had me fleeing myself, slamming the door in his face... leaving my poor, terrified date trapped in there alone with him. Farmaphobia operates a bus service to and from Dublin, but there’s still enough to scare the remaining city slickers don’t have to leave the county to pee their pants.
Nightmare Realm, a walk-through haunted house, is operating out of the RDS this year with the theme Witches Children.
Karl O’Connor is the man behind the screams but for him, it’s less about scaring people and more about entertaining them.
“There’s a good bit of research done into why people like scaring themselves. When you get a fright, but you’re fine afterwards, there is an enormous sense of satisfaction in that relief.
“So at Nightmare Realm, it’s not all blood, guts, and gore. We scare people, but we bring them back up again.”
My on again, off again, vegan stomach went into convulsions as I made my way through The Abattoir where the stink and sight of rotting swine agitated all my senses, while the shriek-outs of the teenagers ahead and abaft attest to how effective the sudden, violent, and verbose appearance of the dozens of actors dressed as demonic clowns, zombies, and kiddies were. My ears were ringing.
We’ve had grown men refuse to carry on and cower in the corner and we’ve had to turn on the lights to lure them out
“But all our actors are trained in how to read the customer. If what you are doing isn’t having the desired effect, they are clued in on how to witch it up and keep them moving, so there isn’t any problems.
“We try to give a broad spectrum of characters and scares. We’re not just putting in one thing and we avoid being in anyway niche. We are putting in a bit of everything, trying to catch all those fears in one attraction, so there is something to give a shiver to everyone’s spine.”
But what about ‘real’ haunted houses? Where the thrills are less about acting and animatronics and more about an evil presence making itself felt.
Paranormal Researchers Ireland is a not-for-profit group that provides private consultations for people who are worried their house is haunted. “Usually we just provide peace of mind and debunk it,” says Tina Barcoe, who founded the organisation nine years ago and travels all around Europe looking for the preternatural. “We have about one big case a year and seven smaller cases.”
Faulty electrics, creaking pipes, or mental illness often cause the latter. “People might be living on their own for the first time or their child might be talking to an imaginary friend and they get a little freaked out or paranoid. With most cases we don’t even have to get our gear out. Just talking to them can calm them down.
The former is something they can’t debunk. “Phenomena we catch on our sensors or monitors that we can’t explain,” says Barcoe.
Tours are available of some of the places that PRI had found the highest suggestion of paranormal activity. Places like Wicklow Gaol, where prisoners were starved, tortured, locked up in plague-riddled cells until the last one died and then fed to the birds; or Leap Castle in Offaly, whose Bloody Chapel earned its name after the brother of a priest slaughtered the congregation over a family dispute.
“People have reported feeling threatened in Leap Castle. In Loftus Hall we have the recording of what sounds like nuns chanting, while in Wicklow Gaol people have reported seeing faces coming out of the wall, mist appearing and light anomalies"
For those who want to see how exactly PRI operates, it will be doing a demonstration at the Horror Expo in Dublin’s Sugar Club on October 25, demonstrating how it debunks the most perplexing of cases, while at the same time revealing details of inexplicable instances of paranormal activity.
Asked why attractions like these have become the starting gun, for many of us, for Halloween, Deirdre replies; “It’s such a huge market and such a popular holiday. But there is not a lot out there for teenagers and adults who want a good scare. That’s why we have people travelling from as far away as Kerry to get the life scared out of them.”
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