The Black Cat of Killakee and the Stewards House Haunting

The Stewards House stands at the foot of Montpelier Hill, beside the Hellfire Club car park on Killakee Road. The Conolly family built it around 1765 as a hunting lodge. Later it was a dower house, then home to the agent of the Killakee Estate. In 1968 Margaret and Nicholas O'Brien, a retired Garda superintendent, bought it to make an arts centre. Their friend, the Dublin artist Tom McAssey, helped with the work.

Tradesmen soon refused to stay. They spoke of a freezing atmosphere, and of "a door that would not remain closed, even with an eight inch bolt in place."

Then came the night. The workmen had locked up, but one noticed the heavy front door standing open. Outside stood an indistinct dark figure, and McAssey took it for a prank. "It won't work, I can see you, so get in," he called. A low voice answered, "You cannot see me, leave the door open."

He turned. Both workmen stood behind him, well away from the door, and then they ran. When McAssey looked again, a black cat "as large as a 'Dalmatian dog'" with amber eyes was "sitting in vestibule," its ears "flattened in attack-mode." He fled by the back door and never saw it again. Later, he painted it.

Other tellings differ. In one, the eyes glow red. In another, a carpenter saw the door open to admit "an enormous black cat," "as big as an Alsatian," which stared at him and vanished. The artist later saw it crouched in the hall, "its red flecked amber eyes fixed on him." With a friend, he also saw "a small crippled man, 3 feet tall standing at the door of the hall," and as they backed away, the figure became a cat.

Margaret O'Brien first put it down to imagination. By one account, she then saw the cat herself, glaring at her from the hallway flagstones. The Irish Independent reported on 29 April 1970 that after two nights alone she was "terrified by noises each night." Her dogs gave "a weird howling, as if they were scared out of their skins." She found extensive damage, and no sign of a break-in.

Others reported nuns, ringing bells, doors opening by themselves and black clouds indoors. The artist Val McGann chased the cat again and again. It was "smarter and faster" than he was.

A priest exorcised the house at Margaret O'Brien's request, and it brought "some respite." Then, in October 1969, actors held a séance. In a 1970 RTÉ documentary, the clairvoyant Sheila St Clair is said to have reached the spirits through automatic writing. Around 1970 or 1971 a small skeleton turned up, perhaps a child, perhaps "the dwarf alleged to have been sacrificed" by the Hell Fire Club. A second exorcism followed, the remains were buried, and some say the haunting ended there.

Locals were sceptical. One later account dismissed the séance and exorcism tales as "modern, unsubstantiated rumors," and called the cat "completely harmless." Another sceptic suggests a large stray, made bigger by darkness and drunk witnesses. No formal hoax finding exists.

Folklore offers two origins. The cat is the one a priest exorcised at the Hellfire Club, or one "doused in whiskey and set alight" by club members. McAssey's painting hung in the house for years. Today the house is a private home. The story lives on in books by Frank Smyth, Daniel Cohen and Dave Walsh, and in a Ghost Adventures episode pairing Montpelier Hill with Leap Castle.