Its Halloween, time for ghouls and goblins; when everyone gets a chance to pretend for a day that they are a fairy princess or Babe Ruth. Its time to bob for apples and scare your friends. When you have a ghost story lke the one we have uncovered in the family, it is easy to scare your friends just by telling your own family history.

This is Loftus Hall (click the pic to see the whole thing). t is located in Ireland near the Hook Lighthouse, the oldest lighthouse in Ireland. It is also considered the most haunted house in all of Ireland! Depending on who you talk to, the stories differ, but all involve a haunting.

~*~ The Stranger~*~

One dark, stormy night, the family living in the Hall, The Tottenham Family, Charles, his second wife Anna Loftus, and his daughter from his first marriage, also Anne, were playing cards when there was a strange pounding on the door. Charles invited the strange man at the door shelter from the storm and asked him to join their card game. The stranger did not give a name, or if he did it has been lost to antiquity. Anne, the daughter, was said to be quite smitten with this stranger and they exchanged flirtatious looks all evening.
During one hand, the younger Anne is said to have dropped a card on the floor. When she ducked under the table to retrieve it, Anne noticed the stranger had cloven hoofs instead of feet. Upon this being discovered, the stranger became enraged and shot up through the ceiling, never to be seen again.
The younger Anne, being in shock, was said to have curled into the fetal position, never to be consoled, and she was cloistered in the tapestry room. She died in that room, her bones fused in the fetal position. She was buried in the position she lived.
It is said her ghost haunts the Hall to this day and, even though the original building has been torn down and rebuilt, the ceiling above what was the game room can not be repaired.

~*~ Variations~*~

This story can not, of course, be proven. Some say the stranger played with Charles and several gentlemen friends while the two Annes were not at home. Some say the story was invented to cover for the younger Anne vanishing from society due to pregnancy out of wedlock and Charles killed the baby, telling younger Anne the infant was born dead. Others say the younger Anne ran off with the stranger and Charles and Anne came up with the demon story to explain why she is gone. Still others say the younger Anne went mad living so close to the sea so her father, not knowing what else to do, locked her in her favorite room in the mansion, the Tapestry Room, where she lived the rest of her days, and the story was just a cover. And there are still others who take the story at face value.
Despite which story you believe is the real one, the mansion is still said to be haunted. The spirit of Anne roams the halls. Is she mourning her lost child? The loss of her own childhood? Or, is she perhaps longing for her lover to return to her? Or is she still in shock after seeing the cloven hoofs and unable to go to the next world?
What do YOU think?