The ‘Ghost Room’ At Maynooth University

*Disclaimer: this article is not presented as fact, but a retelling of a common ghost story* 

*Trigger warning: this article contains a discussion of suicide, satanic spirits, blood, razors and gore* 

Introduction 

Within my first week in Maynooth University, I had heard countless rumours of a ‘Ghost Room’: a room in which two or three priests, depending on who you ask, took their own lives. Nobody knew any specifics, but I was determined to figure it out for myself. After lots of research, this is what I believe took place in the ‘Ghost Room’. 

The Beginning of the Deaths and the Rumours 

Sean O’Grady, a young student in St Patrick’s College jumped out his dormitory window and fell to his death on 1 March 1841. As taking your own life was seen as a horrible sin, naturally the seminary did everything within their power to cover up what had happened. Everybody was clueless as to why he had done it, and the seminary tried to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary ever took place in Room 2 in Junior House (now called Rhetoric House). 

Next year, the seminary tried to get people to quickly forget about O’Grady by giving another student that dormitory. This next student, whose name is unknown, dedicated very little time to his studies and even started to miss mass! One day, the president of the seminary was so furious that he decided that he’d had enough of him and went looking for this troublesome student to discipline him. 

When he entered the room, he found the student’s corpse surrounded by a pool of blood, shaving razor in hand. The unremovable stain from his bleeding was still visible until they changed the floorboards. Interestingly his sink was full of water, as if he was had been planning on shaving. 

Paranoia spread throughout the seminary, with students believing the room to be haunted by some kind of satanic spirit. Some students even began to store their shaving razors in near freezing water in the belief that a cold razor touching their skin would wake them up from a demonic trance. The seminary now realized that they could not nip this rumour in the bud and just hoped to wait it out. 18 years later only a select few remembered, and they dared not tell the story about what had happened in Room 2. 

19 years after the first death 

Thomas McGinn arrived in Maynooth from his hometown in Kilmore a week before classes began to take his matriculation exam (an entrance exam). He was the first student to be assigned Room 2 since the last death. He knew that something had happened in that room, but not what. Nobody would speak the name of the previous tenant, and nobody would explain the stain on the floor. During his one week stay in the room, he had bad dreams, difficulty paying attention and a general sense of dread. He was then given a different room, but his time in Room 2 took its toll on him. When he found out about the suicides that took place there, they haunted his mind day and night. 

On a Friday afternoon in April, McGinn decided to visit Room 2 after mass. Upon entering the room, he looked in the mirror and saw a demon looking back at him. Like those before him the demon put him in a trance. As he broke out of the trance, he felt something cold and invisible grab his hand. The demon was trying to cut McGinn’s throat itself. McGinn tried to fight off the demon, but he realised it was impossible. The demon then locked the door, so he exited the room the only way he could. 

McGinn jumped out the window and by some miracle was not killed instantly by the fall. He was found with the only razor in the room in hand by the vice-president of the seminary at the time, Dr McCarthy. McGinn was brought to the infirmary and there he told Dr McCarthy what had happened to him just before he died. He passed away on the 21st of April 1860. 

McCarthy’s attempt to end the ghost story 

McCarthy wanted to put an end to all these stories swiftly, so he decided to spend a night in the room himself. During that night, the students in the dormitories heard banging on the walls and howling from the room. In the morning he left the room muttering incoherently and with his hair having suddenly turned white overnight. Once he regained his senses, he refused to speak a word of what had happened that night. 

On the 23rd of October 1860, upon McCarthy’s demands, the room was converted into an Oratory of St. Joseph, the patron of peaceful death. The window was also sealed off. Since then, there have been no subsequent deaths in that room. 

Epilogue 

The origin of this satanic spirit is unclear. Some people say it was summoned by students the year before O’Grady began, thus explaining the paranoia in the student body. Others say that the act of suicide in a religious place created the satanic spirit. 

Many people have visited the room since, including a paranormal researcher called Hans Holzer and a psychic Sybil Leek. Hans Holzer felt a strong presence around the statue of St. Joseph and Sybil Leek got the impression of a four-legged creature. Other visitors have reported electrical equipment malfunctions, sudden bouts of panic and sights of shadowy figures from the corner of the eye. 

As of right now, it is little more than a legend among students. But despite this and the fact that Room 2 was converted for academic use, the room lays barren. It is located in the dense economics corridor on the third floor of Rhetoric House, suspiciously absent from the map of Rhetoric House. It is unoccupied by any professor and houses no lectures, and to this day there is still one strict rule regarding the room for visitors. 

Under no circumstance are mirrors allowed in Room 2. 

Sources used in research:

https://comeheretome.com/2012/07/20/the-ghost-room-in-maynooth/ 

https://www.cultofweird.com/paranormal/maynooth-ghost-room/ 

https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/06/the-mysterious-ghost-room-of-maynooth/ 

https://www.irishcentral.com/travel/travel-tips/history-maynooth-kildare-seminary-university 

https://husheduphistory.com/post/647775538542493696/in-the-1840s-much-of-ireland-was-looking-to-god 

https://listverse.com/2017/06/20/top-10-haunted-sites-in-ireland/ 

Maynooth College 1795-1995 by Patrick J. Corish