Is the Shelbourne Hotel haunted? Spooked staff claim ghost of mischievous girl roams luxury room
Updated
ByNick Bramhill
Hotel guests complained so much about sensing an other-worldly presence in the room, that one staff member was ordered to sleep in it.
Spooked staff at one of Ireland’s most famous hotels have revealed that one of their luxury rooms is haunted by the ghost of a mischievous girl.
Management at the five-star Shelbourne hotel in Dublin city centre have admitted that on a number of occasions terrified guests have ran out of the eerie room screaming in panic.
At one stage over a six-month period between two and three hotel guests a week were reporting apparent paranormal activity, including sink, bath taps and showers turning on by themselves.
Hotel guests complained so much about sensing an other-worldly presence in the room, that one staff member was ordered to sleep in the room to verify if claims that it was haunted were true.
After witnessing taps once again turning on by themselves, the shaken staff member who had been sent to stay in the room was described by a work colleague as emerging “as white as a sheet”.
Claims of poltergeist activity at the palatial hotel are investigated in tomorrow's episode of ‘The Shelbourne’, RTE’s fly-on-the-wall documentary series, in which cameras are given behind-the-scenes access to staff as they go about their daily business.
The programme, which was filmed in the run-up to last Halloween, identifies claims that the hotel room’s ghost is Mary Masters, a seven-year-old girl who died of cholera in 1791.
An old picture of the Shelbourne Hotel
Two years ago the well-known hotel hit the headlines stateside, when Hollywood actress Lily Collins told millions of TV viewers in the US that she believed she had been haunted by the same spirit during her stay at The Shelbourne.
Collins, the daughter of musician Phil Collins, had been staying at the stylish Stephen’s Green hotel, filming the movie ‘The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones’, when she sensed the presence of the giggling ghost.
But the American actress’s chilling experience was not a one-off and has been shared by many other guests, the programme reveals.
In the programme, Patrick Nash, a supervisor at the hotel, says: “There was a young child, her name was Mary Masters, and she died of cholera in the hotel. Ever since then countless people all through the years have seen the ghost or experienced something that they can’t explain.
“There was one time here, maybe for a period of about six months, that it would be like two or three times a week in this one specific room that everyone in it would phone down and say that the taps had turned on, the bath was filling and the shower had come on. People would be running and screaming out of the room.
Library of Congress
Shelbourne Hotel, Co Dublin - circa 1890
“So what we actually had to do was send up a staff member to sleep in the room to see if it was true. He went up and he came out as white as a sheet after the taps came on whilst he was in there.”
Another staff member, identified by his first name, ‘Marcin’, admits to the cameras that he frequently senses other-worldly presences and unexplained ghostly figures, particularly when wandering down the 265-room hotel’s long corridors late at night.
He adds: “I’ve seen shadows and stuff like that, but that’s nothing.
"A guest in one room [experienced the ghost of] a young girl in the bedroom who was opening and closing the wardrobe door. So that is spooky.”
However, it appears The Shelbourne’s uninvited guests have been good for business.
Reflecting on Lily Collin’s well-publicised experience, general manager Stephen Hanley adds: “She declared to all and sundry, to an audience of 30-odd million, that there was a ghost that shared The Shelbourne.
But the hotel’s business didn’t fall off the cliff by any stretch of the imagination. It actually went the opposite way.”
The Shelbourne is on at 8.30pm tomorrow on RTE One.
