A Haunted Dublin Hotel

As a scientist, I have never truly believed in haunted houses, ghosts, and other paranormal stuff. I still am not a believer, even though this experience made me doubt my doubts.

Our Irish Music/Pub Tour with Clovers Revenge had ended. The tour bus driver dropped a handful of us reluctant diehards off in downtown Dublin. We landed on the north side of the River Liffey. With mixed feelings, we said our goodbyes to our comrades who were continuing to the airport to depart from this Emerald Isle. We opted for a couple more nights and rented a room at The Kildare Street Hotel across from Trinity College. I, with my backpack and dragging her suitcase, and she, with her backpack waddling the mile or so towards the hotel. Over ancient cobblestone brick and asphalt streets where countless souls previously stepped, we trudged. The area was bustling with the Sunday crowd. We made our way past iconic restaurants and rustic pubs tucked amidst the old-world stone architecture, now crowded by looming modernization. I recognized many of the old buildings from our guided Dublin days at the beginning of the tour. We passed museums we wanted to visit and decided our next day would be a museum marathon. Wanting to check into our hotel before hitting pubs and eating, we continued onward. Up and down curbs, around some homeless, and after the football field at Trinity College, we arrived at our hotel. We walked up stone steps and through double doors. The lobby was small and attached to the restaurant pub-type bar on the bottom floor.

Three young punks were checking in ahead of us. The desk was a clusterfuck, and rather than wait in line, we followed the scent of beer and heaved ourselves through the double doors behind us. Lo and behold, we faced a gleaming polished wooden bar with empty and inviting stools. Sliding our sore asses in, we ordered our liquid bread from a short, rosy-faced jovial ginger named Tom. I perused the menu and sipped my Guinness as my beer connoisseur partner ordered something more exotic from the cooler and began to sweet-talk Ginger’s ears off. We killed our beers; I dragged her away from the Ginger. Then, went to the desk and did our check-in. There was no working elevator. So we made our way up a narrow, white-washed stairwell with ornate molding. Rounding up to the second flight, I began to feel claustrophobic.

A metallic crispness was in the air. My body tingled with an odd sense of being bombarded with low-grade electromagnetic radiation. Like I was moving slowly upward through a particle collider. I felt the presence of more than just my goddess sidekick. My skin dampened my clothes with that clammy slickness that often preludes a panic attack. The stairs were wooden yet covered by carpet and felt old and rickety as they gave and creaked underfoot. While lugging our luggage, I had an odd energetic sense as we creakily made our way up. It was almost as if there was someone else walking up with us.

Our room was on the third and last floor at the end of the hallway. Opening the door (not with a critical card, mind you, but an actual key attached to a business card-sized piece of sliced wood), we entered a small foyer stand with a wood handrail banister that led down two or three steps and overlooked a large room having twin beds on the far wall under large, curtained windows that faced the soccer fields of Trinity College. There was also a larger queen bed up against that elevated foyer entry. We unpacked, and she bathed. Then we headed back out into the setting sun. We made our way to find the highly recommended Kehoes bar. It was crowded yet iconic with red colors, polished wood, and beers in another 3-story old wood antique building. On an upper floor, we sat out a rain squall nursing more Guinness. We enjoyed the view up the perpendicular street, which ironically had strings of multicolored parasols hanging across the street. They were attached to the buildings on either side. After more Guinness, we ventured up parasol street and found a Thai restaurant where we consumed some choice Asian eats. We wandered back to the hotel over nearly empty, freshly rained-on cobblestone streets. Climbing back up those creaky carpeted stairs, my skin prickled with that electric sensation again.

 The slumber was a difficult one. We or the room vacillated between either extremely cold or sweating under the blankets. Noises were drifting up from the street, and bangs, bumps, and clacks from adjacent rooms. Even over our heads, I could hear the wood creaking like someone walking above us, yet we were on the top floor. At one point, my slumber was lifted by the sound of heavy wood sliding across wood above us, like someone pushing a dresser across the floor. Despite the distractions, it was a much-needed night of closeness and intimate cuddling. Our bodies were constantly in touch, reaching out and checking in on each other. We drifted off to naked high, anxiety-over-stimulated sleep, holding each other in the queen-sized bed against the foyer.

(This is the time to say that I was recently diagnosed with REM sleep disorder. Most people experience paralysis during deep REM sleep. This keeps you from acting out your dreams and jumping off a cliff or balcony as you go for that long pass in a football dream. Suffice it to say I’ve had a few REM bruises from my lack of sleep paralysis.) At some point, I crossed over into dreamland.

In my dream, my love and I were wandering up the same staircase. It was hazy, almost fog-like, with a light red hue bouncing and breaking through the soft clouds of mist, making everything glow slightly red. The distant semi-muffled sounds of rave-like techno music were in the background, and I could feel the Bass reverberating through my body. It was like the hotel had turned into a massive, debauched party of some sort. As we followed the rickety carpeted stairsteps to the upper level, we fell behind a beautiful woman dressed only in a 1920s-style loose creamy white negligee that barely covered her ass cheeks. At our angle, we could see into the shadowed darkness between her thighs.

My partner-in-crime pulled off to the right, following the sounds of more party and debauchery on the second level. The woman turned to look back from the top of the next flight of stairs. She locked her eyes onto mine and gave me a hypnotic come fuck me smile. She had one of those small, toned curvy, muscular bodies, with small perky round titties sporting unusually long nipples, like one-third a pinky finger poking out of her gown. Her hair was a dark short, cropped pixie cut. She turned left at the top of the steps. With oxytocin raging through my every vein and leaking from every pore, I followed or floated really, without a choice, sucked into oblivion. I arrived at the first open doorway, and there she was. She had dipped down into a room much smaller than ours with a twin bed on which she was sitting. Her trancelike black eyes shone into my soul. I was drawn toward her through the haze of now red-hued light. She never spoke.   As I descended to her, I noticed movement at her feet. The bed skirt was moving, undulating beneath her smooth Calves. Something was scurrying around under there, poking out. I tried to bring her attention to it. In a muffled foggy voice, I said, “Hey! there is something under your bed.” She never acknowledged it, never said a word, just kept piercing into me with those eyes, beckoning my soul to come to her with a smile that could seal my coffin. I feared for her safety and quickly moved in and knelt at her feet. I whipped up the bed skirt. Six extra-long pasty white slender muscled arms attached to three lean demonic bodies shot out. They grabbed me with intense, slender cold fingers and tried to drag me into the abyss under the bed. They emanated a death throe-like howl out of contorted faces that looked much Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Their eyes were complete, primordial, shiny, black orbs. Simultaneously the succubus on the bed let out the most taunting high pitch cackling laugh from deep within her bottomless throat.

I fought for all I was worth. Thrashing, swinging, kicking violently as I slowly came to. My partner was perpendicular to me, kicking and shoving me, holding me back, with her powerful feet and legs against the wall, yelling, “YO! YO dude, are you OK?!”. “Yeah,” I said. As she replied, “It doesn’t seem like it, dude” The room was freezing again. I lay in bed fighting a panic attack, thinking, “I never remember my dreams.” This dream seemed so real that I could still feel cold streaks from frozen demon fingers burning my skin. I was sure I could see my breath in the Irish summer air as I drifted off for more restless sleep.

The following day we sat for breakfast in the pub downstairs. Feeling relatively subdued, I couldn’t help but casually inquire the ever-beaming Ginger about the hotel’s history. “As far as I know, it has always been a hotel. In the 80s, there was an underground nightclub in the basement where the young people would dance.” He didn’t mention any sinister history. A few Google searches also offered no odd insights or reports of paranormal stuff. So, I still choose not to believe in ghosts. I chalked the whole thing up to brain fog from a ten-day pub crawl across Ireland with an “Irish speed Folk” band from Sarasota. However, a part of me will always wonder if there is a porthole to the nether regions somewhere in that basement.

Edvard Munchs “The Scream”