May 2004

Charleville Castle
Shown on Fox TV's Scariest Places on Earth, Mike and Sherry Adams were anxious to take a closer look at this renowned Castle. The current owners are trying to rebuild it for the purpose of running an international school from it. The castle dates from between 1798 and 1910, which makes it quite youthful as far as Irish castles go. We booked our one night stay through White Rabbit (See our Links Page for more information.) Check out their "Donations" page on their website if you are interested in donating your time and labor, in exchange for staying at the Castle.

We got to the Castle about 6:00 PM. The long driveway was surrounded by primordial forest sprinkled heavily with bluebells. What an awesome sight! We explored indoors and out and were impressed all the way through with its history and beauty. We were shown a suite of three finished rooms where we could sleep (yeah, right!), eat and enjoy the warmth of two fireplaces. The rest of the Castle was available to us all night, but all of the lights would be extinquished at 1:00 AM. No problem. We came equipped with flashlights.

After making ourselves familiar with all danger hazards and planning where we would be filming, we took a nap to wait for the lights to go out. When they did, we grabbed our gear and went to work. It didn't take us 10 minutes to discover that we were not to be alone on this ghost hunt. The resident-castle dog, Marklar, found us and latched on tight. He looks like a Great Pyrenees-German Shepherd mix and is as sweet as they come. We're both dog lover's so it was a pleasant surprise to us at first. Then, we realized that his presence was not conducive to ghosthunting in the least bit. As Mike says, he's a chicken-hound. I compare him to Scooby Doo. He's afraid of every late-night sound in that castle and he makes a lot of his own noise as well. He found a plastic plant cup early on in the night and delighted in chewing it and intermittently throwing it up in the air so that it would bounce loudly on the marble floors.

Plan B. We gave up the notion of recording E.V.P.'s, left our camcorder running in a remote part of the castle, and took turns investigating the castle while the other person babysat poor little Marklar. He appeared to be especially fearful of a doorway opposite the library in the main foyer. We took a lot of pictures in this area, hoping to pick up something to indicate the source of his fear, but we came away clueless.

We also set up the camcorder on two landings of the "haunted stairwell". A young girl fell off these stairs at the turn of the century. The current owners once had their bedroom off one of these landings. They awoke to the sound of a young girl screaming on at least one night and could find no source of the screams anywhere on the property. Despite the fact that these stairs are dusty and unfinished, we found no anomalies on the film.

We were disappointed that we didn't have an experience to approximate that of Fox TV's Scariest Places on Earth. (It was one of the few shows where the family didn't make it through the whole night in the castle.) But, for the price we paid, it was well worth the experience and we hope to duplicate it again sometime soon. Marklar, included. Enjoy the photos. You can get a brief description by waving your cursor over the individual images.

Click here to see orb photos for Charleville Castle.