Inside Ireland’s Most Haunted Mansion — And The Dark Truth About Its Cursed Past

This terrifying episode is said to have taken place back in the 18th century, but the story doesn’t end there. No, in the years that followed this alleged incident, countless more supernatural occurrences have apparently taken place within Loftus Hall. Even today, people still insist that the house in County Wexford is home to beings not of this world.

Loftus Hall has seen a great deal of visitors over the centuries. The enormous property has, after all, served as a school, a hotel and a convent at different points in time. Maybe, then, some of the souls that once resided within this place never quite managed to make it out again?

There are those, for example, who claim that a young girl can sometimes be seen wandering around the house. This girl, it appears, lost her life there long ago. Rumor has it that a priest was even brought to Loftus Hall in order to perform an exorcism on the girl’s spirit. His efforts were not successful.

The tale of the girl and her exorcism has been passed down through the generations, creating an immense sense of unease about Loftus Hall. And when the property was opened up to visitors back in 2012, this reputation was only reinforced. People have left that house with some very strange memories.

Now, with the property on the market, someone has the opportunity to experience the oddities of the house for themselves. But according to one of Loftus Hall’s current owners, it won’t just be a random person that buys the place. As Aidan Quigley, who bought the property in 2011, told Atlas Obscura, “I won’t pick the buyer… the Hall will.”

Loftus Hall is on Hook Head — a headland flanked by the sea in County Wexford, southeast Ireland. The elegant mansion has an extremely long history, one that stretches back to the 12th century. Throughout all that time, several different groups of people have taken ownership of the now-infamous estate.

The property is known to date back to 1170, after a Norman, Raymond le Gros, raised a castle on the site. Le Gros was a knight who had laid siege to Ireland, so he wanted to appear a little more inconspicuous to the locals in the area. With that in mind, he took on the more Irish-sounding name of “Redmond.” But who knows if this really did help him blend in? He did, after all, still live in a massive castle.

By the middle of the 14th century — a time which saw Ireland and Europe engulfed in the Black Death — the Redmonds had decided to replace their castle with a manor house. This new building was christened Redmond Hall, though it wouldn’t stay in the family’s control for long. Around the middle of the 17th century, the property fell under the control of the Loftus family.

The Loftuses were an aristocratic bunch, with some vague ties to royalty. In fact, towards the end of the 1800s, they even expected Queen Victoria to pay them a visit. John Wellington Graham Loftus had convinced himself that the British monarch was going to stay at Loftus Hall, so he remodelled the house at great expense for her benefit. Victoria never showed up, though and Loftus died still owing money.

A lot of money had been poured into the renovations, but over time the property fell into disrepair. It became unsustainable for the Loftus family to hold on to it, so it was sold to the church. For many decades Loftus Hall acted as a convent, before eventually changing hands again in the 1980s. The place was then passed along a number of times, even acting as a hotel for a period.

For the time being, the house is owned by Aidan and Shane Quigley, who picked it up in 2011 for $800,000. After they bought the place, they began to renovate it. But no matter what they did, they were never able to overcome the creepy vibes that radiated through the historic house.

Aidan Quigley has spoken out about the feelings that the creepy house supposedly gives him. As he told Atlas Obscura, “There is always a feeling that you are not alone in Loftus Hall.” That’s an unnerving reputation for any home to have — especially when it comes from one of its owners.

Like the Loftus clan before them, the Quigleys invested a huge amount of money in trying to renovate the mansion. Among their efforts were attempts to strengthen the building’s foundations and also to rebuild the walls of the estate’s gardens. In short, they tried to ensure that the property would survive for generations to come.

Given the vast scale of the property, Aidan Quigley recognized that he’d need to seek some training if he was going to have any success in renovating the property. So, he signed up to a course to help him learn about restoration. Still, nothing could have prepared him for how much work would be required.

Speaking to The Irish Times in July 2020, Quigley lamented his decision to purchase the property in the first place. “I wouldn’t have bought it,” he said. “It was costly, time-consuming and unrewarding from a public point of view, for much of the works remain invisible to the naked eye.”

Even after all the money that the Quigleys spent on securing the house’s integrity, they still came nowhere close to completing the job. Even replacing all of the mansion’s 97 windows would require some $400,000 in funds. It was too much for the family to afford, but they did have an idea to drum up some extra cash.

Since Loftus Hall has a reputation among believers of the supernatural, the Quigleys sought to benefit from it. Many people have a macabre fascination with ghosts and spirits, so they decided to open up their haunted mansion to the public. It was a logical way to raise money for the property’s repairs.

Reports from people who have been inside Loftus Hall have often focused on the uncanny nature of the place. The general vibe tends to disturb certain people, with some becoming struck by a great sense of anxiety. There have even been those who claim to have witnessed things there that they can’t explain.

Of course, these feelings of dread that people attribute to the supernatural may simply be a manifestation of the house’s general state of disrepair. The mansion, after all, is big, empty and dark, with signs of decay absolutely everywhere. Such an environment is bound to give anyone the heebie-jeebies, right?

But for some people, the eerie atmosphere of Loftus House comes from something else besides its dilapidation. These folk believe that certain parts of the property are home to forces beyond anything that can be easily explained. The staircase, for instance, is said to experience some incredible and terrifying occurrences.

Rumors about the supernatural elements of Loftus Hall have been circulating for a long time now. The most famous story, though, takes us to 1775, when the property was inhabited by a family known as the Tottenhams. This tale takes place, as yarns of this nature often do, during a violent storm.

As the storm raged outside, the Tottenham family sheltered inside their home. But amidst the din of rain pelting down and thunder blasting through the sky, a round knocking at the front door was heard. A stranger was outside, hoping to gain entry into the house.

This was not an unusual situation for the Tottenhams, as they often received visitors during the night. Loftus Hall is located by the Hook Peninsula in Wexford, so sailors would often show up looking for shelter for the night. Besides, this man standing at the door seemed perfectly personable. The family welcomed him into their home.

The man seemed to fit in well with the family, and he stayed with them for a few nights. During that time, the Tottenham’s daughter Anne became very fond of this stranger. But all that was soon to change. Days into the man’s visit, they all sat down to play cards. As this was happening, Anne dropped something on the ground and went down to retrieve it. That’s when she saw it — this strange man didn’t walk on feet. He had hooves.

Anne was terrified, screaming with the shock of what she’d seen. This man, with his cloven hooves, was clearly satanic. And now that his identity had been exposed, he made to escape. A loud bang erupted, with smoke and the stench of sulfur sent floating through the room. The man — the Devil — had vanished.

This horrific experience took its toll on young Anne, who went into shock and never snapped out of it. The young girl suffered a great deal of mental distress, so her family hid her away from the outside world. She stayed inside Loftus Hall’s tapestry room for the rest of her life. She died tragically young.

It was a sorry end to the girl’s life, but her story didn’t end there. Instead, members of the household and their attendants began to make some disturbing claims. Anne, they said, had remained inside the house after her death — and her spirit could be seen roaming around after nightfall.

Terrified, the Tottenham family sought help. They brought a priest named Father Broader to Loftus Hall and asked him to perform an exorcism. Father Broader, apparently, was able to perform his tasks in certain parts of the house. But Anne’s tapestry room, for some reason, was impervious to his influence. He was unable to rid the room of the girl’s spirit.

It’s a decidedly creepy story, and it still retains some power over people today. Some people who spend time inside the walls of Loftus Hall become overwhelmed with a sense of the supernatural. Even as renovation works have taken place throughout the house, this scary atmosphere has never faded.

Carol Tubrid is married to Aidan Quigley and is a co-owner of Loftus Hall. Given her familiarity with the property, she spoke with Irish news website TheJournal.ie to explain how it feels to spend time there. She remarked, “In the daytime, it’s not too bad... But when it gets dark, it plays with your mind a little.”

Disturbingly, Tubrid explained, sometimes people visiting the mansion even manage to snap photographs of inexplicable things — specters. “Usually in windows,” she said “and we do not have props in windows, I promise.” One particular photo taken at Loftus Hall was so strange that it actually went viral on the internet.

This terrifying picture was snapped by a 21-year-old, Thomas Beavis, who visited Loftus Hall in 2014. Not thinking anything was unusual, Beavis took a picture of the mansion. But when he was in the car later in the day, he discovered something horrific in his picture.

It looked like someone was standing at the window next to the house’s front door — but this person didn’t seem quite right. They looked scary, spectral. Beavis initially thought that this figure was simply the reflection of another person, but that didn’t quite add up. Maybe, then, this was one of the spirits still trapped in the house.

Beavis spoke to U.K newspaper Metro in 2014 about his terrifying photo. “I only really looked at the photo while we were driving home — I was actually stunned,” he said. “We were all feeling a little edgy from the tour but when I showed the photo to my friends we freaked!”

Beavis explained that he only made his discovery after zooming in on the photo. He must have gotten quite the shock when he did. “I zoomed in on all the windows to find this girl in the window,” he said. “I had to take some time before I showed it to everyone just because I didn’t really understand what I was looking at.”

“I got chills, and still do,” Beavis said. “The girl could be the spirit of Anne Tottenham still walking around Loftus Hall. It could have been some strange occurrence because of a supernatural power, but I don’t know. Normally I am a guy that believes in what he sees, but with this, I still don’t understand what’s going on in that photo.”

The Quigleys have decided to rid themselves of Loftus Hall once and for all. And Aidan Quigley, for one, is frankly looking forward to that moment, as he explained to The Times. “I’ve enjoyed my time here but we bought it, we didn’t inherit it,” he said. “This building will stand well after I’ve gone. I’m not even a chapter, I’m a footnote in its history.”

But who is going to buy such a property? The €2.5m price tag is pretty steep, plus the mansion still needs a lot of renovation. And that’s to say nothing of the spirits and specters that supposedly wander within its halls. Indeed, anyone thinking of placing an offer for the house might want to take note of a warning from archdeacon of Dublin, Reverend David Pierpoint, one of Ireland’s most esteemed exorcists.

Reverend Pierpoint was brought into the house to investigate the spirits within. And according to him, the next owners of the house will have a lot to deal with. As he told The Irish Times, “While visitors may report a cold feeling in one or more of the rooms it is not until new owners take up residence that they are likely to manifest themselves.” So, purchase Loftus Hall at your own peril.