Irish Ghost Tales by Tony Locke

Luttrell’s charges against the girl and her family were later dismissed in court.
    Simon Luttrell was created Baron Irnham (of Ireland) in 1768 and Earl of Carhampton in 1785. After the usual fashion of satirising any unpopular character, the first Lord Irnham was woven into a satirical ballad, in which the devil is represented as summoning before him those who had the strongest claim to succeed him as king of hell. Irnham, the base, the cruel and the proud, eagerly cried, ‘I boast superior claim to hell’s dark throne; Irnham is my name.’
L ORD S ANTRY
    The Lord Santry Trial chronicles events that took place in eighteenth-century Dublin at the Hellfire Club. The club had acquired the name, ‘The Devil’s Kitchen’, and its members were called ‘bucks’. They were often the bored sons of the aristocracy who engaged in drunken sexual orgies. One of the leading lights of the Hellfire Club was Lord Santry, an infamous 29-year-old aristocrat. He caused outrage when he stabbed a servant named Laughlin Murphy to death with his sword.
    Following the incident, Santry simply tossed the landlord of the tavern where the incident had occurred a coin and implied that the whole thing was better hushed up. However, that didn’t happen. Santry was tried for the death of Murphy and found guilty by his peers, causing a major scandal in those times. However, Santry never went to the scaffold. He was awarded a full pardon thanks to the Duke of Devonshire, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who had been largely responsible for petitioning King George II.
    If Santry had gone to meet his death, he would have been beheaded. Instead he continued living his rakish life. He was attainted, which meant he had to forgo his estate, but it was returned to him after the pardon in 1740. A year after his pardon, Santry travelled to see George II in person and thanked him face to face. On Lord Santry’s death his title became extinct.
T HE B LACK C AT OF K ILLAKEE
    In the early 1960s, workmen renovating a derelict eighteenth-century farmhouse near the notorious Hellfire Club in Rathfarnham witnessed strange phenomena culminating in the appearance of a gigantic black cat. Artist Tom McAssey, who was helping to convert the house into an arts centre, said the temperature in the old ballroom plummeted suddenly and a locked door swung open, revealing a hideous black cat with blazing red eyes. Afterwards the house was exorcised and no sightings were reported for several years. Then in 1969, a group of actors staying at the centre held a mock séance and apparently invoked the spirits of two women. The women had assisted at the Hellfire Club’s satanic rituals, during which black cats were worshipped and sacrificed. The arts centre was replaced with Killakee House, in which a portrait of the hellish cat painted by Tom McAssey glowered down upon brave diners. The house was demolished in 1947.

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T HE I RISH R ESURRECTION M EN
NATIONWIDE
    N ot that long ago, we had a certain class of criminal who preyed upon the dead. In some parts of the world such criminals still carry out their macabre trade. Thankfully it is no longer the case in Ireland, but at one time their name would cause fear to many grieving families. They were the Irish resurrection men.
    Body snatching was a morbid way of making money. In the nineteenth century body snatching was a lucrative business for those who chose it as a profession. The resurrection men robbed the graves of the recently deceased and sold their corpses to medical schools. It became so common that it was not unusual for relatives and friends of the deceased to watch over the grave after the burial to stop it being violated. Iron coffins were also used and sometimes graves were protected by iron railings known as mortsafes. They came in a variety of different designs and sizes and could be reused after six to eight weeks.
    One method the body snatchers used was to dig at the head end of a recent burial, using a wooden spade