Ballygally Castle

Ballygally Castle was built in 1625 by James Shaw, a native of Greenock in Scotland who had come to Ireland in 1606 as part of the great wave of Scottish settlement in Ulster, and his wife Isabella Brisbane. Shaw rented the land from the Earl of Antrim and built his new home in the style of a French chateau, with steep roofs and corner turrets, a fortified house rather than a true castle but sturdy enough to matter when trouble came.

Trouble came within a generation. During the Irish rebellion of 1641 the castle was attacked several times by the Irish garrison at Glenarm, a few miles up the coast, but the attacks were unsuccessful and Ballygally held.

The castle stayed in use as a private house for centuries before it was sold in the early 1950s to the textile millionaire Cyril Lord, who refurbished it as a hotel. In 1966 it was bought by the Hastings Hotels group, which still runs it today. The original 1625 tower, with its turrets, survives at the heart of the hotel alongside later extensions, and it is in the old castle that the ghosts are said to keep to. More recently Ballygally gained a different kind of fame: it is home to Game of Thrones Door 9, one of the carved Game of Thrones doors displayed around Northern Ireland, depicting the battle between House Stark and House Bolton in the sixth series.

Ballygally has been described in the press as the most haunted location in Northern Ireland, and the reports that support the claim are consistent. Guests have long claimed to hear knocking at their doors at night with no one outside, which the castle attributes to Lady Isabella Shaw. Others report the rustle of silk skirts along corridors and stairs in the old part of the building, attributed to Madame Nixon.

The Ghost Room itself is the focus for most visitors. It is a small chamber in the corner turret that the hotel keeps unoccupied rather than letting as a bedroom, and the hotel's own account presents Isabella as a friendly ghost rather than a menacing one. Visitors who write about the castle tend to mention the turret first and the knock at the door second.

The sceptic's case is easy to make: the Isabella story has the shape of a folk tale, the male-heir motive and the fatal fall recur in castle legends across Britain and Ireland, and a hotel with a ghost room has every incentive to keep the story alive. The documented history, that James and Isabella Shaw built the castle in 1625 and that it survived siege in 1641, is unaffected either way. What happened to Isabella herself is not recorded, and the legend fills the silence.

Ballygally Castle is a working hotel, so the way to see it is to stay or eat there. It stands on the Antrim Coast Road at Ballygally, about three miles north of Larne in County Antrim, right on the Causeway Coastal Route with the sea across the road and the Glens of Antrim beginning just up the coast. Ask the hotel whether the Ghost Room in the turret can be seen during your stay, and check its website for current arrangements and any Halloween events.

You can stay in the castle itself. The hotel has bedrooms in both the original 1625 tower and the later extensions, and the rooms in the old castle are the ones to book if you want to be near the Ghost Room. Game of Thrones fans come for Door 9, which is displayed in the hotel, and the Glens of Antrim and the rest of the Causeway Coastal Route are on the doorstep.

The old tower involves narrow stairs, so ask about ground-floor or extension rooms if accessibility matters. There is parking at the hotel, and Larne, with its ferry port, is the nearest town for alternative places to stay.