The Parochial House in Ballynacarrigy is believed to date to around 1850. In the autumn of 2025, it was purchased by two friends of mine, who are now carefully breathing life back into a property that had stood empty and neglected for close to twenty years.

Just behind the main house sits a second building, now in ruin, and it is widely believed that this may have been an earlier dwelling on the site.

Chris and Gráinne previously ran a well-known organic farm a short distance away, and have since relocated their operation to these grounds. Once the house is fully restored, they plan to make it their home while continuing to farm the surrounding fourteen acres, which include a wooded area. There are also plans to restore the older structure and, in time, offer it as guest accommodation.

So why is it featured here?

Locally, there have long been rumours that a former priest still lingers within the house. When the building was previously used as a base for a Community Employment scheme, it was said that some workers avoided certain areas altogether.

A recent visitor claimed to sense more than a dozen presences around the property – nothing malevolent, but rather curious, watchful… as if drawn to the renewed activity after years of silence. Perhaps, in that sense, they are not so different from ourselves.

Even the family dog appears unsettled. Normally sociable and drawn to company, she has taken to spending time alone in one particular upstairs room – behaviour that the owners find difficult to explain.

Within the grounds, I am told, there are also the remains of what may have been an old altar.

The land surrounding the Parochial House is steeped in deep and layered history. This area was once home to Kilbixy, a medieval Norman borough that flourished for a time before suffering repeated attacks and eventual abandonment by the 15th century. Its remnants are still believed to lie beneath the surrounding fields.

Nearby stands Tristernagh Abbey, founded in 1190 as a house of Augustinian canons, with historical references to a leper hospital on the site. The abbey was suppressed in 1536 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII, and its graveyard was controversially cleared in 1783—an act which local tradition has long associated with misfortune.

The priests who once lived in the parochial house are buried a short distance away in Templecross churchyard. A narrow lane connects the two – known locally as Bóithrín na Marbh, the “little road of the dead” – leading onward toward a townland called Gallowstown.

It is, in every sense, a landscape where the past feels close… and where it does not always rest easily.

Despite the stories, no one has yet been able to say with certainty who – or what—might be responsible for the reported activity. The current owners would genuinely welcome any information from those who may know more about the history of the house or its former occupants.