It's not something of which everyone is aware, but the Renvyle House Hotel in Co Galway has a resident ghost. In fact, depending on your ability to suspend disbelief, it may have more than one ghost.
Renvyle, the former home of the Gogarty family, has a colourful history. Burned down by Republican sympathisers in the early part of the century and subsequently rebuilt, its guests have included W.B. Yeats, who stayed there as a guest of Oliver St John Gogarty and conducted a number of seances on the premises; at one time he believed himself to be in contact with the ghost of a dead child. Subsequently, guests complained of a presence in Room 27 of the Renvyle House Hotel; one female guest testified that she was watched by the spectral figure of a man while putting on her make-up. I know all this because Hans Holzer said so and he should know. Holzer, a New Yorkbased ghost-hunter, arrived in Ireland in 1965 to write a study of Irish spectres, eventually published under the title The Lively Ghosts of Ireland.
Oirish rope
The degree to which one can take Holzer seriously - this is a man who once wrote a book called Ghosts I've Met - is roughly equivalent to the amount of Oirish rope which one is willing to give him before he hangs himself. "I had been told that the Irish are just naturally prone to the supernatural, from leprechauns to ghosts, and I would have a field day the moment I set foot on the Ould Sod," writes Holzer, in the tone of a man just looking to be beaten up as he walks the streets of Limerick looking for leprechauns, which he once did.
Holzer did not arrive in Ireland alone. He brought with him a lady called Sybil Leek, a British psychic whose role was to sniff out the spirits with her other-worldly nose. To those who believe in such matters, Ms Leek was an individual of extraordinary psychic sensitivity, a woman in touch with other worlds, other planes of existence. Anyway, Holzer and Leek stayed in Renvyle and, in the course of his stay, Holzer decided that the ghost in Room 27 might well be Yeats, on the grounds that both Yeats and the spectre were tall men and Yeats, "being a man of great inquisitiveness, was just the type to stay on even after death." (One would have hoped, however, that he was not the type to skulk around in lady's bedrooms watching them undress or apply their make-up. He always looked a bit too dignified for that.)
Holzer and Leek also checked into the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin and, lo and behold, that turned out to be haunted as well, according to Ms Leek. She was staying in Room 526 and experienced the sound of material moving over the floor of her bathroom, sudden cold spells and the unexpected billowing of her curtains. Instead of just closing the window more tightly, she believed that there was a presence in her room. This is her description of what took place:
"I called out quite gently and not in fear at all: `What's the matter?'
`I'm frightened,' said a child's voice. `Come to me then,' I said. A few seconds later, I felt the foot of the bed being touched and then grasped as if some child were hauling itself onto the bed. Than a very soft arm went around my neck.' "
Scared yet? Didn't think so. Sybil then did what any rightminded person would do with a spectral child's arm around her neck: she nodded off to sleep. It takes a very special kind of person to do that. Holzer and Ms Leek were nothing if not tenacious in their search for portals into the next world. They even attended a performance of Holiday Hay- ride, starring Jack Cruise, in the Olympia. Afterwards, they were regaled with tales of the haunted dressing-room, number 9, which was presumably haunted by people who had died on stage.
Ms Leek had a different view: "I have an opinion that this is something in the year 1916, and something very unruly, something destructive. It is a man. He doesn't belong here. He wishes to get away."
Shot accidentally
An Olympia stage-hand, Albert Barden, told Holzer that a civilian had been shot accidentally in the theatre between 1916 and 1922, so it could be true. Ms Leek certainly thought so, but then she appears to have been otherwise engaged when God was dosing the people of this world with a spoonful of healthy scepticism.
Holzer and Leek made a second visit to Dublin in 1966, when they were the subject of considerable press interest and enjoyed the co-operation of Paddy Byrne of the Evening Herald, who had been writing a regular column on ghost lore for some years. Holzer and Leek duly investigated the haunted fireplace of Dunsandle, which apparently played violin music; a ghost in Number 118 Summerhill, which caused demolition to be delayed when workmen refused to enter the house after dark; and the haunted rectory of Carlingford, which was troubled by both a clergyman and a young woman in a velvet dress - an interesting combination, if nothing else.
Incidentally, they didn't stay in the Shelbourne on their second visit. They stayed in the modern - and presumably spirit-free - Jurys. Even ghosthunters need a break sometimes.