In a turret room at the top of a 400-year-old castle, the temperature plummets.
There is no sound within its thick walls, and in the corner a small window overlooks Ballygally Bay on the dramatic east Antrim coastline.
This is the tower room from where Lady Isabella Shaw reportedly fell to her death; her ghost is supposed to haunt the dwelling (now a hotel) centuries later.
Visitors pad quietly across the room’s creaking floors after mounting a steep spiral staircase on a mild Thursday in October.
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Space is tight and the ceiling is low.
One woman stands close to the door and appears anxious.
“I feel a heaviness on my chest,” she says. “It’s like there’s something pressing down on me.”
A wedding party is in full swing two floors below.
Part of the original castle survives, and four rooms have been converted into bedrooms.
The building is reputedly one of the most haunted in the North.
“Truth be told, this is only about my fifth time up here; it’s always very eerie,” says Samantha Jones, events manager at Ballygally Castle hotel.
Some 50 other rooms are in the modern wing.
Built as a defensive dwelling in 1625 by James Shaw, from Greenock in Scotland, the castle’s former dungeon is now the ladies’ toilets.
At the foot of the staircase the initials of Shaw and his bride, then Isabella Brisbane, are carved in stone above the castle door.
Shaw is said to have locked his wife away in the turret after she gave birth to a girl. He wanted a male heir. She tried to escape through the tiny window and reach the infant before falling to the rocks below, it is said.
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The so-called ghost room, once available for overnight stays, is now for visiting only.
“It is without a shadow of a doubt haunted,” says psychic Fiona Stewart-Williams.
“When you get up to the top of the tower room, that’s an active space. It’s not like the chairs are flying around the room. It’s subtle intelligent workings.”
During a previous visit to the former dungeon, Stewart-Williams says she was overwhelmed by a “terrible feeling”.
“There’s a darkness to that place,” she adds.
“I felt something overpoweringly negative, so I ran.”
Paranormal investigators from Japan are among those who have visited the castle to probe claims of supernatural activity.
Hotel bar manager Mark Lappin from Armagh was urged by his wife, a New Yorker, to spend the night in one of the haunted tower rooms.
“She was a paranormal investigator in New York. We stayed here on a wild Halloween night in 2019 and loved it. We couldn’t get over the fact no one wanted to stay below the ghost room,” he says.
“We sensed something being at the window. I’m interested in this sort of thing but don’t believe in it ... though a lot of people ended badly round here. There were many deaths and battles fought. There’s a long history of violence.”
Guests have reported unusual happenings and some long-standing staff members don’t like discussing the supernatural, according to Lappin.
“The night porter; you can’t bring the subject up with him,” he says.
“There’s supposed to be child ghosts in here; it’s not just Lady Isabella, there’s been reports of small hands pulling at your bed clothes at night.”
Villagers having an early evening pint in Matties Meeting House pub – a mile away in the neighbouring village of Cairncastle – smile when asked about ghostly sightings.
“The story goes Lady Isabella jumped to her death. But if you see how small the windows are in that tower ...” says Jim Connolly, trailing off.
“There’s a whole pile of stories that people witnessed different things. I knew a woman who worked in it. She said there was a couple staying in the room below the ghost room one night who told her there were strange things happening all night. They said they would never stay there again.”
But some express concern about how “commercial” the room has become.
“It used to be more scary and grotty,” says Angela Davis, who is serving drinks in the small 200-year-old bar (also investigated by paranormal enthusiasts).
“From being very young, I remember going up to the haunted room. You’d get halfway up and then you’d come down. When you were a teenager, you got a bit braver … I’ve so many memories there.”
Connolly recalls how a friend became terrified when he stayed in the ghost room “for a dare” more than 20 years ago.
“There was something went through him, he said it was just like pure ice passed through him. He told me it scared the bejaysus out of him.”
The hotel’s housekeeper for almost 20 years insists the castle is haunted.
“There is something there, I tell you. There’s definitely a spirit,” says Maggie Wilson.
She speaks quietly about a sighting that unsettled her.
“I was working here about a year when I went up one morning to one of the old castle rooms and seen the shadow going across the room so slowly,” she says.
“It took me a while to go back up again, I still have an odd feeling when I go there.”
Stewart-Williams has attended seances that take place in the castle’s former meeting room.
The psychic is familiar with “hauntings all over the Antrim coast”.
“Look at how old that castle is and look at how many people have died at sea,” she adds.
“There’s a lot there but it’s up to people whether they want to believe or not.”
