Page 6 - COBH EDITION 16TH NOVEMBER DIGITAL EDITION

GHOSTLY GOINGS ON AT SPIKE ISLAND CORK

Do you believe in ghosts? An image taken by a visitor to Spike Island Cork this weekend may
have non-believers reconsidering, as the image taken in an empty cell block shows the clear
shape of a man seeming walking the abandoned halls. The image was taken by visitor Louise
Bunyan on Sunday 28th October in the ‘abandoned jail’ section of the prison, a block which
has held prisoners in the 1840’s, 1920’s and the 1990’s. She was enjoying an after hours
tour of the former island prison and fortress when she went to snap an image of the empty
cell block, but she was surprised to see her cameras facial recognition feature activate. On
zooming into the distance a clear figure emerges in her image at the end of the corridor, dark
but definite. And further brightening of the image by eager enthusiasts reveals the perfectly
distinguishable yet transparent shape of man seemingly carrying something across the hall.

The image has social media users in a flurry speculating as to its origin but its not the first
time for Spike Island staff to encounter such images. The island prison reopened 2 years ago
as a visitor attraction and it has a long and chequered past. Island manager John Crotty com-
mented “the recorded history of the monastery, fortress and social life of the island stretches
back to the 7th century and the stories from each period are often full of Irish charm and
interest. But the famine era prison that existed from 1847 to 1883 was a different matter and
it was called ‘Ireland’s hell’ with good reason. Its numbers swelled to over 2300 making it
the world’s largest prison at the time and the conditions here were atrocious. Over 1300 men
and boys never made it off the island and they lie now in unmarked mass graves, unfortunate
victims of a cruel time. At its worst an inmate a day was dying. A lot of visitors comment on
a feeling of ‘heaviness’ during their visit and we do get images reported to us or sent in that
defy all explanation”.
Research undertaken by UCC and the islands heritage team have uncovered several stories
of ghostly reports including soldiers firing at seeming phantom intruders. Irish naval cadets
stationed on the island in the 1980’s report strange occurrences disturbing their accommoda-
tion, while prison guards from the 1980’s report prisoners used to complain of a ‘black entitiy’
visiting their cells by night, something seemingly captured in a 2016 image by photographer
Shea Wolfe in an empty cell in the same block as the recent image was captured.
The island can be visited for weekends until the end of November.