Ballygally Castle

OVERVIEW

A tower house built in 1625 by James Shaw of Greenock on the shore of Ballygally Bay north of Larne, in the style of Scotland, with corner turrets and a steep roof; it survived the 1641 rising and is the only seventeenth-century building in Northern Ireland still in use as a dwelling. It became an inn in the 1950s and is run by Hastings Hotels, which keeps the small turret room at the top of the old tower as the Ghost Room and tells the story on its own website.

HISTORY

The tradition is that Lord Shaw, wanting a son, locked his wife Isabella in the turret after she bore a daughter, and that she fell to her death from the window trying to reach the child; another version has her thrown. There is no record of it; the Shaws held the castle for two centuries.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Guests report knocks on their doors at night and no one there, a woman on the turret stairs, and a presence in the ghost room, which the hotel invites guests to climb to; another ghost, Madame Nixon, in a rustling silk dress, belongs to the nineteenth century. Northern Ireland World has reported it and a survey named it the UK's most haunted castle. Recorded as the hotel's tradition.

VISITING

A working hotel; the ghost room is open to guests and is empty of furniture. The Antrim Coast Road runs past the door.