PARANORMAL investigators have captured an eerie image of what they believe is the spirit of a child at a window of the former Our Lady’s Hospital in Ennis.
Paranormal Supernatural Investigations Ireland visited the site of the old Ennis Asylum last week where the took hundreds of photographs as well as video footage and voice recordings from outside. Among the images taken is the picture of a window with what they claim is a small child’s face in the bottom right corner.
Richard Morrison, of Paranormal Supernatural Investigations Ireland insists, “I believe that building is very, very active paranormally without a doubt. Places like that are going to hold a lot of negative energy and that stonework is going to contain all that sadness.”
The photograph was initially posted to social media by the group at the weekend without comment on what it could be, other than “a very interesting picture taken by ourselves at Ennis Asylum” and some of the history of the 19th century building.
The post read: “People were admitted to this bleak building just to be out of mind and out of sight. Problems with family inheritance and relationships, you could easily have ended up here. Conditions in the asylum were grim, and hadn’t improved by the 1950s. Many staff lived and raised their families in the hospital, which was a huge employer and purchaser of local produce at a time when economic activity was scarce in the town. Meanwhile, the custodial approach was in practice inside the building’s enormous grey walls, with terrible overcrowding documented with just inches between patients’ beds in a ward of 70. One nurse described it as a vision from hell. The hospital welcomed the advent of Electric Convulsive Therapy, while drug trials also took place there.
“Whilst conditions improved in the latter half of the 20th Century, a report by the Inspector of Mental Hospitals in 1989 still made for dismal reading: “Virtually all patients appeared to be unoccupied during the day; it seemed to us that many patients could have resettled in the community, with varying degrees of support, without too much difficulty” said the inspector, who added that as late as 1986 there were 600 patients in the hospital. He also criticised that the “elderly and mentally handicapped” were still being admitted to the hospital, and raised concerns over continuing overcrowding and a lack of cleanliness in its eight units.”
The image drew a lot of attention online with many people commenting that they could see a person looking out the window. Among those were people from Clare with one describing a “strange feeling of some presence” and another saying they felt they were being watched while there.
Richard, who is joined in the group by Ronan O’Grady, PJ Kavanagh and Anthony Douglas, explains that they carried out a preliminary check for possible spiritual activity after hearing stories and carrying out research into Our Lady’s history.
The investigations were confined to outside of the building as it is privately owned property.
“It’s a vast building and we took lots and lots of pictures. We believe that any residual energy or spirits you will never see 99% of the time with your own eye, they will only show themselves through camera. We analyse all of our footage and if we find something that is unusual looking we will put it up on social media.
“Our golden rule is we never put circles or arrows around thing, we never tell people or imply to them what we believe it is. We just say it is an interesting picture and ask them to have a look themselves.
“In the comments many people were saying the same thing, they see somebody in the corner of the window. I can now say we believe it is the spirit of a child, it looks like they are waiting for someone. We knew that from day one but we didn’t say at the start. But we can safely say now that’s what we believe.”
He insists that the image has not been doctored in any way.
“On social media we had some people saying it’s a cat, we know for a fact it’s not. Then there are people saying it’s a fake, but we are more than happy to provide what we have taken and show it right down to the details. That picture has not been tampered with or altered with whatsover. What you see is what you get.”
Richard tells us that he would love to be able to carry out further investigation inside Our Lady’s, however they would need permission from the owners.
He adds that their investigations are “definitely not what members of the public see on entertainment shows on TV”.
“People assume the work that we do is like Ghostbusters, we don’t like to be called Ghostbusters or that we’re hunting spirits. These were human beings once and they had a life here, all we’re doing is going out and seeing that we can actually prove that there is life after death.”
He concludes, “You just don’t really know what happened within those walls. Even from talking to the average person, they will tell you when they walk past it they get a feeling, like someone raising hairs the back of your neck. We believe there is a lot of activity in there, definitely, but we’ll probably never know what happened in there.”