Kilkenny, Ireland

Just a month before we left for Europe, I booked the first hostel on-line at HostelWorld.com. “It’s haunted!” I’d tell anyone who would listen. “We’re going to be staying in a haunted hostel in Ireland!” I got lots of raised eyebrows and even a few, “wow, that sounds great”s, too.

According to the experts at the BBC television show Ghost Hunters, at Foulksrath Castle - a 16th Century Gem, “their machines recorded the best ghostly sounds of any place they visited in Ireland.” Whispers and murmurs, it was said. I couldn’t wait to visit!

We made our way to the hostel the LONG WAY (more on that later), but once we arrived, I started to get a little nervous. It had the perfect look of a haunted castle and the gray, drizzling day didn’t make it look any brighter. While we waited for the heavy wooden door to swing open, the shadows seemed to lengthen and I seriously questioned my level of sanity when I made the reservations.

Castle steps

Once in, I couldn’t stop staring around in wonder. We were inside a real castle! Jack, the caretaker of the castle and our host, took us to his studio to “check-in”. Lugging our heavy bags up the first staircase wasn’t too bad, but when we trudged up the steep spirals, going round and round as the steps seemed to get smaller, the cool dampness settled in on us like only the walls of a castle can.

The two nights we spent here were magical. Our rooms high in the castle tower overlooked fields of sheep and rainbows. At night, the dining room was lit with candles and it was as if a knight from King Arthur’s court might drop in at any minute. We had no ghostly encounters while we were there, only the sense of living within the pages of a 16th century history book!