Who ya GHOSTB Gonna call...
Why Dublin’s scare city is No.1 for seasonal spooks
MY girls are Halloween-obsessed.
On a mission to discover the origins of Halloween and why Dublin is the birthplace of Dracula, we test drive The Ghostbus Kids Tour promising to deliver Dublin’s dark history.
Excited, we hop on the Ghostbus which departs from the Dodublin Hop On Hop Off Tour stop 3 (Bus Stop No.271) beside the junction of O’connell Street and Abbey Street.
The lower deck is transformed into a ghoulish wonderland of freaky dolls and spine-chilling witches. My girls declare: “It’s spooky.” The upper deck is both snug and creepy, reimagined with red velvet eerie curtains.
Our tour guide climbs up the stairs dressed in a macabre black robe with a greyish white wig covering his face and head.
He rips off the cape and headpiece, introducing himself as Prospero.
He uses his box of props to enhance the sinister history of our Viking City.
He dramatises the origins of Bram Stoker’s famous book Dracula in a spine-chilling voice.
He begins by holding a painted image of Bram Stoker to the mesmerised bus tour.
In Irish he says: “Say Droch-fhoula, now boys and girls, say Dracula.”
He continues: “Bram Stoker’s playground was not the swings or the slides.
“Bram would go around a local cemetery where they buried all the criminals hundreds of years ago. It was an evil burial ground.
“Before the people were buried the residents were terrified that their evil spirits would rise.
“They would get a wooden stake and drive it through the hearts of the dead evil person, so their spirit could not rise again.
“Perhaps that’s where Bram got his ideas for killing vampires in Dracula.”
We journey towards the Royal College of Physicians on Frederick Street.
Prospero tells us: “This is the place where people used to go to learn medicine many years ago – it’s haunted.”
My kids are both terrified and transfixed. He urges us to look out the window: “The second floor of that building is the dissection room.
“In 1802, there was a notorious professor there by the name of Samuel Clossy, he terrorised the students.”
He asks: “Why did he terrorise them?
“Because he always needed an ample supply of bodies to carve up to learn how the body works and cure people from different ailments.” Prospero’s child-proof account of body snatching has the little audience gripped.
He adds: “But where did he get all his supply of bodies from? “Does anybody hazard a guess?” One kid roars: “Graveyards.” Prospero responds: “A graveyard is right young man, well done.
“Back in those days, there was a notorious grave robber by the name of Crazy Crow Hendricks.
“He would transport musical instruments by day and rob graves by night to get extra money.”
Prospero reaches into his sack of props and takes out a severed prosthetic bloodied hand.
He continues: “Now we’re going to imagine we are all the students in Dr Clossy’s dissection room. Dr Clossy
Residents were terrified that evil spirits would rise
takes a bucket and asks the students, ‘Is anybody here afraid of a little blood?’” In unison the kids roar: “No.” Prospero bellows: “Yes kids, if the student said, ‘No’, Dr Clossy would tell them they’re in the wrong profession.
“He’d put on his spotless white coat to prepare for the operation. “And he would look at his students. “He would grin at their discomfort and they would start to murmur.
“Then the door would open and the murmuring would stop as his associate came in to introduce them to Teddy the torso.”
Prospero grabs a fake bloodied torso from his bag of tricks.
He adds: “Dr Clossy would hang it up on a hook. Some students would vomit with the stench from this freshly dug corpse, others would get sick from the sight of it.
“Some would run from the room screaming in terror.”
He takes a fake knife from his prop bag and says: “He’d take a knife like this and cut through the torso.
“Cutting all the way up, he would pull apart the abdomen and display the innards for all the students to see. “He’d then ask for a volunteer.” He bellows to the bus: “Do we have a volunteer to remove the innards from the abdomen?”
All the kids shoot up their hands and one boy is tasked with pulling out the innards.
There’s a resounding “Oooh gross” from the kids on the bus as the boy extracts the fake internal organs.
The final part of the tour sees the children going on a ghost hunt in Merrion Square, as Prospero runs around after them with his ghost detector device.
The girls inform me ghost hunting was the best bit of the tour.
Next up I take the girls to the Ghosts, Ghouls And Goodie Glover Day: The Irish Origins of Halloween tour at EPIC (The Irish Emigration Museum).
Our tour guide Sean gives the girls their very own EPIC passport to collect stamps as we journey through the exhibition.
We learn the festival of Samhain began more than 2,000 years ago in Ireland.
Sean explains that one ancient ritual involved carving turnips. Pumpkins only became fashionable to carve when Halloween was popularised in the States.
Many believed that October 31 was the day the portal between the real world and the “other world” got hazy.
This meant the Aos Si, the spirits, banshees and pucas, could slip into our world and cause havoc.
In the religion room we discover the relevance of skulls at Halloween. Sean said: “Back in ancient custom times they used to gather the skulls of a defeated enemy. They’d bring it back home to their wife as a present and dip the skull in resin to preserve it.”
We hear how communities would leave a fire burning and make a large feast which explains why we have bonfires today.
The Celts wore masks and costumes to disguise themselves from evil spirits that may be roaming around.
This prompts the girls to ask to go Halloween costume shopping.
We’re back to commerciality but at least we leave the tours feeling a little more cultured – and primed for trick or treating.
For information see Dodublin.ie and Epicchq.com.
Students would vomit at the stench of fresh corpses