Dublin: A city that haunts

It's the end of a long weekend trawling the streets of Dublin and sleep comes easily - the only worry is a 5am alarm call booked with The Clarence hotel's reception to ensure we don't miss our flight back to London. Suddenly I wake up, having felt someone lightly rap me on the forehead with their knuckles.

'This,' I think to myself, 'is personal service. Someone's actually come into the room to make sure I'm up.' The alarm clock shows 4.55am as I turn on the bedside light and realise there's actually no-one there. Five minutes later, reception calls.

Dublin is full of such stories: fantastic fables of fairies and ghastly tales of ghosts and ghouls. Sit in a snug in one of the pubs and a local will readily start to recall their own experiences over a pint or two. And while it may be, in part at least, the drink talking, Dublin is rich in heritage and full of wild and wonderful creatures - and, as one wag says, they're just in the D?il, or Irish parliament.

Dracula author Bram Stoker was born here in 1847 and his family crypt is in St Michan's Church in Church Street, which today houses the mummified remains of a dozen bodies. The origins of the story that went on to make Bram famous were firmly rooted in his youth playing in Ballybough Cemetery - it was here that stakes were put through the hearts of suicide victims to ensure they were dead.

Behind the fiction

Not all Dublin's ghost stories went on to make 20th-century literary history though. Take the one that occurred in April 1861 at Portobello Bridge. The bridge, which crosses the Grand Canal at Rathmines, is said to be haunted by the ghost of a lock keeper sacked for being drunk. On the night in question, witnesses claimed to see a light in human form rise from the canal, scaring the horses pulling a carriage across. The carriage careered off the bridge into the water, drowning all passengers.

Tales such as these date from the city's darker days: from the late 18th century onwards, students of the fledgling science of anatomy were so keen for subject matter that bodysnatching became rife. One of the bodysnatchers' favourite haunts was St Kevin's public park, off Long Lane. When it ceased to be a cemetery in the mid-1950s, all the bodies were exhumed and reburied on nearby consecrated ground under a powerhouse, but one of the crypts had a few extra occupants. It seems some of the snatchers were sealed in by mistake while hiding from the authorities. Ghostly landmarks

Just off St Stephen's Green lies the Shelbourne Hotel. One of Dublin's better known residences, it is home to one of the city's more modern ghost stories. In 1965, psychic and white witch Sybil Leek is said to have made contact in room 526 with the ghost of a young cholera victim, Mary Masters, who died in a row of terraced houses around the corner in 1791.

Then, of course, there are the two buildings said to be among the city's most haunted: St Patrick's Cathedral and St Audoen's Church. St Patrick's is haunted by the ghost of Jonathan Swift (who was dean in the 18th century and is buried under the medieval building's floor), while St Audoen's is the kind of place that when visited, especially at night, really sends a shiver down your spine. In the 18th century, the church bordered the area of the city then known as Hell. There are tales from as recently as the late 1980s of nuns coming across the ghosts of lepers.

The Green Lady, Dublin's most famous ghost, apparently haunts the outside of St Audoen's and has been seen by scores of people. She is believed to be the ghost of Darky Kelly, executed for the murder of her unborn child. She was put to death by Simon Luttrell, Sheriff of Dublin and a member of a group of satanists known as the Hellfire Club, who was supposedly the child's father.

Which brings us back to our 'friend' at The Clarence. It may be a true story or it may have been sown by tales on 'the craic' with lashings of Guinness - after all, the hotel management says there have been no more reported sightings. But whatever it is, there's no denying: Dublin is a haunting city.

Most of the above stories are told on the city's two ghost tours: The Dublin Ghost Bus (call 00353 1 873 4222 or visit www.dublinbus.ie) and the Zozimus Experience (00353 1 661 8646, www.zozimus.com).

James flew to Dublin with Ryanair (0870 1 569 569, www.ryanair.com) and stayed at The Clarence (00353 1 407 0800, www.theclarence.ie).

BARE ESSENTIALS

Less than an hour from almost every UK city, Dublin is steeped in history and an ideal place for a weekend away.

Language: English and Gaelic

Currency: £1 = 1.6 euros