Loftus Hall’s haunted history dates back to 1775. Legend has it that Anne Tottenham was living in the mansion, and during a storm, a mysterious stranger arrived at the Hall in search of shelter.

Tottenham and her family welcomed him in, and they passed the time by playing a game of cards. When Tottenham accidentally dropped a card, she bent down and noticed the man had hooves instead of feet.

Believed to be the devil, the man shot through the roof in a ball of flames. Tottenham entered a state of madness and shock, and she never recovered. Her family locked her in the mansion’s tapestry room where she died a few years later. Exorcisms have been done on the building, and paranormal investigations still take place. Over the years, the mansion has earned its title as the most haunted house in Ireland.

The property credits include the 2017 Gothic horror movie, The Lodgers, starring Spanish actress Charlotte Vega and Game of Thrones’ Eugene Simon, and paranormal broadcasts.

It was built by the Marquis of Ely in 1870 on the ruins of Redmond Hall, which was in existence since 1350 and was purchased by the Loftus Family in the 1600s.

The building in which the legend is associated was levelled to the ground in 1870 and the present day mansion was erected.

The mansion was also previously run as a country hotel and convent run by the Benedictine and Sisters of Providence order of nuns who established it at the turn of the 20th Century. It later became a hotel in the 1980s and 1990s.

The house was part of the inspiration for author Eoin Colfer’s Fowl Manor in the Artemis Fowl books. Colfer worked at Loftus Hall as a teenager when it was a country house hotel.