The vast and eerie Kilmainham Gaol is Ireland's largest unoccupied prison. Its echoing corridors and poignant courtyards provide a vivid idea of what it would have been like to find your self confined in one of these forbidding bastions between 1796, when it opened, and 1924, when it closed. As well as housing many common criminals, it was also the place where fourteen of the sixteen leaders of the republican insurrection, known as the Easter Rising, of April 1916 were detained and executed. A plaque in the gaol's courtyard commemorates those patriotic men who, bravely and defiantly, faced the firing squads in the cold early mornings of May 1916. The last to die was James Connolly, who had to be tied to a chair as he was unable to stand on his own due to his terrible injuries. With such an eventful, and often gruesome history, it is inevitable that Kilmainham Gaol should have several ghosts. The building had stood empty for many years before a dedicated band of volunteers set about restoring it in the early 1960s. At the time, the governor's quarters were being utilised as a home by a resident caretaker. Not in the least bit perturbed by the fact that his front windows looked out onto the place where the gallows had once stood, the man carried out his duties with cool, level headed efficiency. One evening he was preparing for bed when he happened to glance from a side window and saw, to his surprise, that the chapel lights, which he had only just turned off, had been switched back on. He walked across to the chapel, switched them off and returned home where he once more prepared to retire. But on looking from the window, he saw that the chapel lights were blazing again. He made the long cold walk to the chapel a total of three times in that one night. During the restoration yet another man, whom colleagues described as "very religious and teetotal", was painting in the dungeon area of the prison, when a huge gust of wind suddenly blew him against the wall. Battling hard against the tempest, he managed to fight his way out of the dungeon, where his ashen face and shaking hands were vivid testimony to his terrifying brush with the uncanny force. He then refused point black to ever work in or even set foot in, the gaol again. On another occasion, a volunteer was decorating the 1916 Corridor when he heard what he took to be a colleagues heavy footsteps climbing the stone stairs and walking along the passage behind him. Turning to greet whoever it was, he was astonished to find no one else in the corridor, despite the fact that the plodding footsteps continued, as though some invisible presence had just walked right past him. Several children visiting the old gaol have paused, terrified, on the threshold, refusing to go one step further, whilst one guide who was particularly susceptible to psychic sensations claimed that there was an evil and fearsome aura around the balcony chapel. Others, however, sense the gaol to be a tranquil place, and speak fondly of how the eyes of the thousands of past inmates watch them, apparently looking out for their well being. Perhaps the last words on the haunting of the gaol should go to the old caretaker; who was always pointing out that no one should ever fear the inmates, because they knew that those who now run the prison are only trying to tell their often forgotten stories: "But" he would say, "the soldiers and the guards? Now they're a different matter."


Love Angel!!!