Combining Spooky with the Great Outdoors

My friends and I were trying to come up with good ideas for filling in the October evenings leading up to Halloween. Dublin is funny in that, it seems to be freezing all summer and then suddenly in September/October, basically leading up to Halloween, we experience our version of summer. Actually I’m going to put “summer” in inverted commas here because most people from most countries would not call what we experience “summer” but it’s as close as we ever get! Anyway with all the beautiful evenings we had been having in the lead up to Halloween we decided that we wanted to look at spooky outdoor tours in Dublin. The Hellfire Club tour fit our description perfectly. In fact if one were to look at all the spooky outdoor tours in Dublin, I think you’d find this one the most perfect, perhaps even in the world! It involves bussing out to the Dublin mountains which are just south of the city of Dublin. Once you get to the bottom of the Hellfire Club’s mountain, you’re dropped off to trek up the hill (and I guess I should specify that this is a “mountain” in the same way that Ireland experiences “summer”, for anyone from pretty much anywhere else in the world this is a very gently hill”. So you trek up the very gentle hill, which might sound like a walk in the park, except the hill is covered with thick forest, so you trek up the gentle hill through the thick, pitch black forest, with all the creepy forest noises making you freak out before you’ve even reached the Hellfire Club itself! It feels very Blair Witchy hiking through the dark forest with the rest of the group. Everyone is almost relieved to get to the Hellfire Club itself because the atmosphere in those woods is very scary! It doesn’t help that the Dublin Mountains forests are also known as being Ireland’s most prolific body dumping ground! So for spooky outdoor tours in Dublin, this really fits the bill, you get the tour of the Hellfire Club itself, along with an amazing walk for a warm “summer’s” evening through what must be the creepiest forest in Europe!

Poem about the Dublin Hellfire Club

I received this poem to my email address recentlyfrom a user called Colfaz. That structure inspires a lot of creativity from people:

I wrote this poem about the Hell Fire Club when I was up there recently. Just thought Id share it with you and feel free to use it on the site!

The hell fire club

The men who bastardised the passage tomb were doomed.                                                                     The men wear skeletal jump suits and top hats                                                                                                 Carry canes and their bones glow in the dark                                                                                              Long scarves fall off them and trail along the cobbled leaving                                                                 Psychedelic neon symbols painted across the debris                                                                                    Of the abandoned hunting lodge.                                                                                                                     The women flaunt fangs                                                                                                                                      Wear tassels and capes, burlesque style dresses with                                                                                Thin straps that scrape their shoulder blades                                                                                              Until sores appear.                                                                                                                                          Light transparent gloves disguise                                                                                                                       Seductive hand movements and                                                                                                                      Involuntary spasms.                                                                                                                                              Not resisting the music                                                                                                                                                                          Swaying the Hellfire Club provides appropriateness. The DJ controls the ceremony.Perched on the alter before the great doors of the evil estate.Resting a silver chalice on disintegrating foliage jagged blade against the neck of a stiff goat. The faint applause can be heard in the distance and the Music begins again.The blood nourishes the children that Carry the curse. Mimicking the mayhem.

The Hellfire Club

The Dublin Hellfire Club was originally founded in a tavern called the Eagle Tavern in Dublin City Centre.

It was started up as a little society for the wealthiest young men of this city. These young men had so much money, they didn't need to work. When you don't need to work that means you've got lots and lots of time on your hands. Time, which you need to fill doing "interesting social activities". And so the Hellfire Club was born as a little society for "interesting social activities".

The young lads started out with the great trilogy of social evils of the day. The first one was prostitution, next came gambling and lastly....drinking too much alcohol! Three things which we probably wouldn't worry about too much in the 21st century Western World...of course.

We're back in the 17th century here. There was quite an important movement happening in Europe. We were going through the Enlightenment of course! This was manifesting itself in Britain and Ireland as a rejection of religion, reason was instead being held up as the standard for all legitimacy. There was a problem growing in society at this point. This problem reached such epic proportions over on the other side of the Irish Sea, in England, that in 1721 a Royal Edict was passed condemning "Young People who meet together in the most impious and blasphemous manner...and corrupt the minds and morals of one another". Blasphemy! Once again probably not something that we in the 21st century Western world would worry about too much, even for the very devout amongst us, these days religion tends to be a private matter and most feel deeply enough about their beliefs or non-belief that it doesn't really matter what anybody else thinks! Most liberal democracies are of course getting rid of their blasphemy laws. In Ireland however, things are a little bit different. Prior to 2009, Blasphemy in this country had been a common law offence. We did not have any blasphemy legislation, no statute covered blasphemy, but because Blasphemy is prohibited by the constitution it was decided that this lack of statute needed to be remedied. In 2009 Parliament decided to act, these days we have a new offence of "publication or utterance of blasphemous matter". It is very unusual to have separate blasphemy crimes in the Western World, and in Ireland any hate crimes which might involve religious hatred would have already been covered by the Incitement to Hatred Act 1989.
Having said all this, blasphemy is definitely not something that people in 21st century Ireland worry about too much! Nobody has been prosecuted under the new legislation and I am sure that if somebody was there would be a deafening public outcry about the matter.

And it turns out the young lads of the Hellfire Club were getting bored of their four great social outrages. They wanted to start doing things which, even we in the 21st century West would find outrageous definitely, in fact sick-making might be a better way of describing it. Unfortunately for the lads, they founded the Hellfire Club in the Eagle Tavern, which is said to have stood in one of two places. Some say it was on Castle Street, right next to Dublin Castle, others say it was on Eustace Street, right in the heart of Temple Bar. Whichever the case, that means the Club was founded right in the middle of the city centre. Not the sort of place you can start doing really nasty, conspicuous things and get away with it.

Now what would you do if you were a group of young lads, it was the 1700s and you had lots and lots of cash. The young boys decided to put some spare cash together and buy themselves a hunting lodge, out in the middle of nowhere at the top of one of the Dublin Mountains. Now it's a story for another day, but let me just whet your appetite: murder, human sacrifice, animal sacrifice, black masses and other pretty nasty, occult, satanic happenings were definitely not out of place at the top of the Dublin mountains thanks to the overprivileged, legally untouchable men of the Dublin Hellfire Club.