Muckross Abbey Investigation, Killarney

I was very excited when I got the call to go and investigate this beautiful abbey. Now in ruins, the abbey is still well worth a visit - it's free and if you love buildings with a lot of history, then this is the place for you.

Muckross Abbey

Before we entered the abbey, we paid a visit to a little known graveyard on a hill overlooking the abbey and its grounds. The ruined Killegy chapel is a mortuary chapel and stands in the midst of crumbling crypts and modern graves. Even though it was daylight, the eeriness of this pretty site soon became apparent.

Herbert Memorial Cross

The graveyard is dominated by the Herbert Memorial Cross dedicated to a former owner of Muckross House. The last private owner of Muckross House, Arthur Rose Vincent, gave the property to the state to become Ireland's first National Park. He was buried here and various tales are whispered about his burial. Some say he was buried sitting upright on a chair waiting for judgement day. Other stories suggest that he was buried standing up so that he could look out over his former house and grounds, but my favourite story is the one I heard from some fellow paranormal investigators. It is said that he was buried upside down!

Rabbits have been hard at work burrowing all over the graveyard and some of the crypts have broken open revealing their long-dead occupants.

       Mortuary Chapel

Muckross Abbey

At last it was time to enter the abbey. We walked eagerly down the long driveway carrying our gear. The abbey came into view and we knew that we had a big investigation on our hands. The building is impressive both in its size and architecture - but that was not what we had come for!

                                                                                                                                                                                        

We walked all over the building deciding where we would focus our efforts. As darkness fell, we split into two groups. The three of us in my group started our investigation in the area pictured to the left.

We did not observe anything of note in this area. As with all investigations, we recorded a lot of data and that will have to be reviewed before we can sum up the whole night.

We moved into the courtyard area and chose the first of the two dark rooms accessible from here. Although the roof in this area was intact, the upper floors have long since disappeared. We were on the ground floor of what had apparently been the sleeping area.

During the investigation in this area I felt a presence in the room. Something hit my leg but as there were bats flying around, we assumed that this was all it was. The sensor light near the doorway came on a couple of times but as we had not asked for it to happen we could not rule out that it was simply a bat that had triggered it.

While I was out in the courtyard area (pictured above), I got some unexplained K11 hits. I continued to get them in the same area for a few minutes with the K11 going all the way up to red (maximum).

We moved into the dining area but apart from the sensor light coming on again, we didn't have anything of particular note here.

We went back to the sleeping area and tried the spirit box. We got a clear 'Hello' and some other possible mutterings but we could not decipher these and felt we could probably rule them out.

While we were on the ground floor, the other group had been investigating the upper floors. When we radioed them, they said they had just started to get some K11 hits so we made our way up to join them. Unfortunately, the K11 hits seemed to be random so we were not able to document anything of an intelligent nature.


As it was getting late, we decided to call it a night - most of us didn't get home until 4 a.m. - so reluctantly, we packed up our gear.




Despite the relative quietness of the night, I would welcome the chance to carry out another investigation of this beautiful site as I feel that there is a lot more going on there than we have as yet discovered.

If, after going through all the recordings from the night, anything of interest is captured, I will update you with the latest news.