Ghosts get around in creepy pub where patrons don’t leave

It’s the pub whose patrons just won’t leave.

Never mind last orders – some of the regulars in this bar are still nursing their pints after last rites.

Welcome to Ireland’s spookiest boozer, where everyone is either dying for a drink – or already dead.

Even Pub Spy and his team were too scared to drink in McCarthy’s of Fethard, County Tipperary – so the boss sent yours truly to check it out.

As a teetotaller I was sure I’d be OK – at least I wouldn’t be influenced by spirits of the liquid variety.

But within minutes of arriving at the 160-year-old watering hole, I could have done with a hot toddy, as the locals told me some spine-tingling tales about apparitions, strange noises and even poltergeists.

Retired circus tiger tamer Frankie Napier and his daughter Amanda were treated to the spookiest show on earth three times. Last year a door opened and closed “but there was no-one outside”, says Frankie.

“And one night, a voice came from the porch and called Jasper [the publican] – but there was no-one there. Another time I saw a bottle of Coca Cola flying off the shelf and through the door into the back room.”



While Amanda admits she was spooked, Frankie wasn’t.

“I’m not easily scared,” he says. “I used to train tigers and other animals for circuses all over Ireland and England including Robert’s Circus, the Moscow State Circus, Fossett’s and Courtney’s. It’d take more than a ghost to frighten me.”

Chef Brian Egan has to share his kitchen with an angry poltergeist.

“Heavy things fly across the kitchen – things that shouldn’t move. About a year ago, a glass jug flew off the shelf,” Brian says.

Barman Owen Whyte (34), nearly served one of the ghosts a pint nine years ago.

“Out of the corner of my eye I saw the door swinging open and closing, and a guy in a pale blue shirt came in,” Owen says.

“He looked like a guy who had died two weeks before. He just did this [tipped his hand off his forehead in a salute] as if to say ‘goodbye now!’ and left.”

Publican Jasper Murphy, also known as Vincent, is not scared of the dead – he doubles up as an undertaker. But he, his New Zealand-born wife Sarah and their daughters Kate (9), Lily (7), Suzy (6) and Evie (2) have yet to see a ghost.

Local ghostbusters Pamela Daly and her partner Gary Loonam camp at haunted sites including Kinnity and Tullamore Castles.

“But we feel a stronger presence here – it’s Ireland’s most haunted place,” Pamela says. “I don’t drink, so I know the feeling is real.”

She believes the ghosts include unbaptised babies buried in a plot behind a medieval wall out the back.

“You would get a right chill down the back of your spine out there.”

Gary says: “Those are sad ghosts. I’d rather focus on the happy ones – here inside the pub.”

One visitor who won’t be scared off by ghosts is former Man United boss Alex Ferguson.

“He’s been in loads of times. He’s never said anything about seeing ghosts – but I would say the ghosts would be afraid of him.” laughs Jasper.

The pub has long been a haunt of VIPs from the worlds of sport, music and politics.

These include Eamon DeValera and Michael Collins, Rolling Stone Ron Wood, Ronan Keating, Andrew Lloyd Webber, David Frost, Angela Rippon and Priscilla Presley, who visited in 2007.

The resident ghosts got their 15 minutes of fame when RTE’s Seoige and O’Shea Show sent a psychic to investigate in 2008.

“She said more off-camera than when the camera was running,” says Jasper.

“She felt two presences in the pub – a lady in 19th-century dress who sounds like my great-great-grandmother Mary McCarthy. She said this lady was happy to be here.

“But she said the other spirit, a man, was trapped between two sets of stairs. I recognised the part of the house she was talking about. And the ghost sounds like my Uncle Gus, who was wounded in World War I and couldn’t manage stairs.

“The psychic said she’d try to get him to move on, but she said he was not happy that a woman was talking to him.”

Jasper’s great-aunt Beatty McCarthy, aunt Mary McCarthy and great-great-grandmother Mary McCarthy have even been seen by customers, including a Welsh visitor who later recognised Beatty from an old photo.

Shortly before Beatty died in 1978, the family heard “three loud knocks on the door and the doorbell kept ringing”.

“But there was no-one there,” says Gus’s aunt Mary McCarthy, who has yet to see a ghost in the pub – but had a visit from ‘the other side’ when she lived in Clonmel 35 years ago.

“I saw a shape at the end of the bed. That house was so haunted, it had to be knocked down! No-one wanted to live there.

“But I never feel afraid here. I grew up in this pub and the ghosts are my own family.”

Source