AN IRISH start-up company has combined innovation with apparitions having created an interactive ghost-hunt game centred around Scotland’s Falkland Palace. It is to be launched this Halloween.

Zolk C, a commercial, spin-out company from the Telecommunications Software Systems Group (TSSG), part of Waterford Institute of Technology, has teamed up with Haunted Planet Studios and the National Trust for Scotland and developed a game which gives visitors to historical locations content and images on a hand-held device using GPS positioning.

Visitors touring the Fife palace and its grounds will be given a hand-held device which, through GPS technology and augmented reality, will allow them to hear disembodied voices and see ghoulish images through the device, including historical characters such as Mary Queen of Scots, creating a ghostly virtual reality as well as information about the castle’s real history.

“Harnessing the popularity and power of dynamic mobile technology is a new and innovative way for tourist and cultural sites to engage with audiences to bring history to life,” Paul Savage, chief executive of Zolk C said.

“Having won the UK Museums Heritage Award in 2008 for a project completed for the National Trust of Scotland at the historic Culloden battlefield, we are finding that there’s a real need for this technology at historic sites.”

The company, launched in 2007 to develop innovative, interactive, tourist experiences using mobile technology platforms, is also working on other e-tourism projects with the Ros Tapestry in Wexford and the Dunbrody Famine Ship project in New Ross.

Based at Waterford Institute of Technology’s west campus at Carriganore, the TSSG works with many organisations and has successfully created a mobile services cluster of high potential start-ups, creating over 55 extra jobs in addition to the 150 employed in Waterford Institute of Technology.