The Dunluce Castle Banshee had proved a dud, no ghost nun had appeared on the Long Walk in Galway, and Robert Evans, hanged in 1803, wasn’t still hanging out at the Brazen Head in Dublin. Snow closed the pub and barred me from Leap Castle, the most haunted site on the Emerald Isle.

Only Ballyseede Castle remained on my self-guided pub-and-haunting tour of Ireland. I had high hopes. And I wasn’t disappointed: it proved a luxurious historic site and one of the most haunted castles in Ireland. A winding carriage road through woods opened to an expanse of green. The castle itself rises three full stories, with two curved bows at the front and a battlemented parapet.

Stag statues atop a gate and stone lions at the door guarded the entry, and inside the castle, suits of armor in the vestibule, plus Chippendale and Georgian décor galore. Marble columns led to a grand staircase. To the left were two Georgian drawing rooms with ornate plasterwork and working fireplaces, and to the right, a library/bar and formal dining room. I was escorted up three flights to a tower room, bigger than all the previous Airbnb rooms together. Hell, the bathroom was bigger than the entire Galway space. Guest rooms were named for writers and was assigned the Crosby room. When I returned home, I discovered it was the haunted bedroom, the one where the owner Hilda once lived. I didn’t know that then, but I discovered it was haunted on my own. More about that later.

Let me digress regarding the room, because I absolutely adore old houses. The Crosby room is huge. Its bow windows open to the green lawn, and the trees are lit eerily at night. Ceilings are perhaps 18 feet high. The wallpaper is figured red silk and gold. There’s a divan, a massive four-poster bed, a huge Elizabethan carved wardrobe, a Chippendale vanity, and a smaller twin bed in a corner. The bathroom looked to be Art Deco fixtures. I could have stayed forever.

But I wanted food and drink. Stripping my muddy hiking attire as fast as possible, I donned my little black dress, the one upscale outfit I’d brought, and elegantly descended the stairs looking like entirely and different redhead. Opting for the less formal library bar, I drank decent Cabernet and met an engaging caretaker/bartender and Einstein, a corgi-sheepdog mix. (I have no idea how that union was managed.) Einstein’s quirk was regurgitation. He’d spit out a mouthful of stones at our feet and wait for us to toss them for him to fetch. There were six stones in all. He was persistent.

All this entertainment and ambience PLUS the food was outstanding—oak plank salmon for me.

After dinner, I retired to one of the drawing rooms, where I entertained myself at the piano by trying out some “newest tunes” from 1928. To enjoy the full gamut of the haunted castle experience, I waited until near midnight and then took a self-guided tour, checking for reputed ghosts and checking out the basement book case. I chose a mystery with the word “dead” in the title, having finished my trite Harlequin on the train and a gruesome horror novel back in Dublin. The disapproving eyes of the many portraits hung all along the staircase stared as I made my way back to the Crosby room with the purloined book.
Then I enjoyed the spacious hot shower and Gilbert and Soames soap. It had been a very long day. Sighing in sheer luxury, I donned the terry robe, ate the complimentary chocolates, and tested out the acre-wide bed.

My book proved to be well written, but I hadn’t slept the night before and knew there’d be miles of hiking on the morrow, so at last I turned out the light and tried to snuggle into the enormous bed. Although the room grew chilly (the window was cracked open), I like a cold room, and the blankets weighed heavy. All was extraordinarily quiet. I slept at last.

And woke screaming. Now that never, ever happens. Ask my family. I may snore. Sometimes I sing in my sleep. I haven’t had nightmares for decades. But something dragged me by my leg. I think I dreamed it. I hope I dreamed it. I can still feel it.

Remember, I didn’t know the Crosby room was the haunted bedroom. I was thrilled with the ambiance, overtired from travel and a sleepless night in Galway, and drowsy from great food and two glasses of wine. And I don’t scare easy. Hey, I write paranormal romances for a living.

Eventually I wrote the sensation off as a nightmare and went back to sleep, waking to–at last–a sunny, snow-free day. When I opened the window, I watched Irish wolfhounds gambol on the green. After a fortifying Irish breakfast of four kinds of meat and terrific breads, I fed most of the meat to Einstein and stomped about the grounds until it was time to leave.

I’d go back to Ballyseede tonight if I could pull it off. Feeling guilty for taking the book, I confessed as I paid the bill and later sent my three Something in the Dark novels to fill their shelves.