Haunted Buildings 4: Leap Castle

Leap Castle has had an unfortunately dark and bloody past, with a vicious family murder and a hidden torture dungeon; there is little wonder why it has been nominated as such. It has been said that the building is so haunted that the locals avoid it at night.

During the 1500’s, Leap Castle had belonged to a royal Irish family named the O’ Carroll’s. In 1532, there had been a bloody rivalry between two brothers over leadership. Apparently, the O’Carroll priest had been viciously slain by his brother while he was delivering a sermon in the chapel in front of his family. The chapel has now been dubbed as “Bloody Chapel.” Today, there have been sightings of the priest within the chapel.

During the early 1900’s, a group of laborers were hired to clear out a dungeon that had been discovered near the chapel. There, they had made a grisly discovery; countless human skeletons stacked on top of each other. It has been said that three cart loads had been required to remove the remains.

The dungeon had consisted of a small room that had been equipped with a drop floor. The unlucky offender of the time had been pushed into the room, where they would fall through the floor and land on a large spike that had been located at the bottom eight feet below. Those who had escaped impalement on the spike had been left in the dungeon to starve to death. It is hard to imagine the pain the people had suffered due to this cruelty. They would have to endure the aromas of fresh food and listen to festivities that were being held within the living areas above them.

Soon after the grisly discovery, reports of an elemental spirit had been disturbed through a séance. By this time, the castle had been handed over to a prominent English family named the Darby’s. The Darby’s had transformed the castle by adding new landscaped gardens and improving the interior of the castle, with the intentions of using the castle as a family home. During 1909, Mildred Darby, had experimented with the occult and had performed a séance. It was believed that Mildred had raised a malevolent elemental spirit, which had been known to attack Leap Castle’s residents and visitors.

Mildred had written an article for an occult magazine named Occult Review, describing her terrifying experience.

“I was standing in the Gallery looking down at the main floor, when I felt somebody put a hand on my shoulder. The thing was about the size of a sheep. Thin gaunting shadowy…its face was human, to be more accurate, inhuman. Its lust in its 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.”