Mountjoy Prison opened in 1850 on the North Circular Road, modelled on Pentonville in London and designed as a model Victorian correctional facility. In the 175 years since, it has held ordinary criminals, political prisoners, hunger strikers, and some of the most significant figures in modern Irish history. It remains an operational prison to this day.

Between 1901 and 1954, the Hang Room at the rear of the prison was used for 46 executions. The first was John Toole, hanged on 7th March 1901 for the murder of Lizzie Brennan on Charlemont Street. The last was Michael Manning, executed on 20th April 1954 for the murder of a nurse. Annie Walsh, hanged in 1925, was the only woman among them.

Between those two dates came the executions that left the deepest mark on Irish national memory. Kevin Barry, an eighteen-year-old medical student and IRA volunteer, was hanged on 1st November 1920 – the first republican execution since the leaders of the 1916 Rising. He was followed by nine others, collectively known as the Forgotten Ten, executed during the War of Independence and buried in unmarked graves in the prison yard. They remained there for eighty years. In October 2001, their remains were exhumed and given full state funerals, with burial in Glasnevin Cemetery. The Irish Times journalist who was allowed access to the Hang Room described it as the most chilling room they had ever stood in. The execution chamber remains intact, tucked at the back of a prison wing – the original ropes still in a wooden crate, the leather bindings cracked with age, a plaster death mask of hangman Albert Pierrepoint on the wall.

Given all of this, Mountjoy is precisely the kind of place where you would expect a paranormal record. What actually exists, however, is frustratingly thin. Because Mountjoy is still an operational prison, no formal investigation has ever taken place inside its walls, and staff do not speak publicly about their experiences. What circulates are the kinds of accounts that tend to gather around places of intense suffering – fleeting figures seen near the perimeter, the sensation of being watched from the outer walls, unexplained sounds at night, cold spots along the boundary. These are informal, unverified, passed on in conversation rather than documented.

The Hang Room has never been investigated. The yard where ten men lay in unmarked graves for eighty years has never been assessed. Whatever may be present at Mountjoy, it remains behind closed doors.