An online magazine about the paranormal, haunted and macabre. We collect the ghost stories from all around the world as well as review horror and gothic media.
Haunting Jone’s Road in Dublin, a headless horseman is said to roam after his life turned dark after scheming peers. And the former Dublin Sheriff, Buck Jones has become one of Ireland’s most well known headless horseman ghosts.
Haunting Jone’s Road in Dublin, a headless horseman is said to roam after his life turned dark after scheming peers. And the former Dublin Sheriff, Buck Jones has become one of Ireland’s most well known headless horseman ghosts.
If you take a walk up Jones’s Road in Drumcondra, Dublin after midnight, when the crowds are gone and the hum of the city fades into a low, uneasy silence, you might feel the ground tremble beneath your feet. A faint, rhythmic thudding like the distant echo of ghostly hooves.
Read More: Check out all ghost stories from Ireland
Dubliners know that sound well. They say it belongs not to any living horse, but to a ghostly rider who has haunted the area for centuries: the headless ghost of Buck Jones.
The Fall of a Dublin Sheriff
Frederick E. Jones, or Buck Jones as he was mostly known as, was once a man of considerable standing in the city. As Dublin City Sheriff, he held influence, wealth, and status, living comfortably in the grand Clonliffe House north of Dublin city. The house is also known as The Red House on Clonliffe Road today.
Red House: His former home on Clonliffe Road. // Source
He was considered one of the most handsome men and well mannered with an interest for culture and theater. But his success was undermined by a dark addiction. Gambling became both his pleasure and his ruin. Night after night, Jones would wager more than he could afford, chasing luck that never turned in his favor. Eventually, his debts caught up with him, stripping away everything he owned.
Disgraced and destitute, the once-proud sheriff was imprisoned in a debtors’ jail after his theater failed. After serving time, he ended his days in a small cabin provided by his last remaining friends. It was there, among the stench and sorrow, that Buck Jones met his miserable end in 1834. Some say he died cursing the men who had ruined him, swearing that his spirit would not rest until he had exacted revenge.
The Headless Horseman of Jones’s Road
Not long after Jones’s burial, the first sightings began and continued into the 1900s. A phantom horseman, a well known ghost motif in Irish ghost lore. They say that on certain nights, when the wind rolls in off the Liffey and fog thickens over the streets, the air along Jones’s Road grows unnaturally cold. The lamps flicker, the silence deepens, and then the hooves. Fast, furious, and unrelenting.
He is headless and cloaked in shadow, galloping atop a great white steed along Jones’s Road near Croke Park that is named after him. Witnesses described how the rider held his severed head beneath one arm, though others claimed the head was nowhere to be seen at all.
Some say Buck Jones rides still, searching for the men who betrayed him. Others believe he is bound to the road that bears his name, cursed to wander for eternity as penance for his own sins. Whatever the truth, few Dubliners care to test the legend.
Thought to come back from beyond the grave, the restless spirit known as Hortdan in Turkey walks the line between being a tragic ghost and a bloodthirsty vampire.
In the Alpine foothills in Bavaria, strange boulders mark the landscape. Many legends linger over these mysterious stones, some claiming it was the Devil himself who placed it there.
Said to be cursed forever after mistreating his prisoners, the jailer in Bern’s former prison tower, Käfitier is said to be haunted by the ghost of a monstrous calf.
For decades, parents have told their children to be home before dark in Lafayette, Colorado. The reason being that local lore tells of a vampire rising from his grave in the cemetery. But who exactly was the man behind the story, buried under the tombstone?
Buried in the same place as the Danish kings and queens, a legend about one of the smaller graves haunts the Roskilde Cathedral. It is said that a horse was buried here before any people, and it haunts the graveyard as the three legged helhest, an omen of death.
As a place of dubious drug testing and the place where most lobotomies were done, the Lier Hospital and former asylum was left with a haunted rumor lingering in the decaying walls. Although most of the buildings are now torn down, it is still remembered as one of Norway’s most haunted places.
The Danish ghostly horse spirit Helhest is said to roam around St. Canute’s Cathedral in Odense, Denmark. It is believed seeing the three legged horse is an omen of imminent death.
According to old legends and Danish folklore, there are stories of three legged horses haunting the churches and graveyards in the country. in Saint Olaf’s Church, the spirit of the helhest is said to be the omen of death.
Could it be that the oldest church in Oslo also has the oldest haunting? From legends about a dragon’s den underneath the structure and the ghostly silhouette haunting, the Gamle Aker Church perhaps has more activity than what meets the naked eye.
During a time when Bulgaria was under the Ottoman Empire, there was talk about a vampire haunting the streets of Veliko Tarnovo. The rumours got so bad, that the Islamic rulers had to turn to pagan belief to rid themselves of the bloodthirsty creatures.
In the windswept landscape of Norway’s west coast lies the Utstein Monastery, a site steeped in history and haunting tales. Known as Norway’s best-preserved medieval monastery, its ancient stone walls and iconic Gothic windows whisper stories of faith, love, and loss as well as the ghost of a Lady in White.
Moon Mausoleum
