Case file · Haunting
Loftus Hall
A mansion on Ireland's Hook Peninsula where, legend says, the Devil joined a card game and left through the roof.
1766 CE · 52.14, -6.92 · status: legend
The account
The story tells of a stranger who arrived by ship, was seen to have a cloven hoof when a card was dropped, and vanished in a burst of flame; the young woman of the house, Anne Tottenham, then wasted away. The house was rebuilt in the 1870s and is now run as a ghost-tour venue.
The sceptical view
A folk legend of a common European type ('the Devil at the card table'); no contemporary record.