Hidden Dublin – Hellfire Club Walk

A big thankyou to Unilocal and the guys at Hidden Dublin Walking Tours for their Hidden Dublin Hellfire Tour!
I’d been wanting to do this particular tour for ages so was delighted when it came up as part of the Unilocal «Festival of Firsts» Not quite sure what we were thinking heading up the Dublin Mountains on one of stormiest weeks of the year but wrapped up to within an inch of my life we headed off from The Brazen Head (another first for me in Dublin’s oldest pub) which is a very cool spot too!
The guys from Hidden Walks kept the stories going setting the scene the entire time from the Brazen Head up to the foot of the mountains. Such great views over Dublin on the mini hike up to the Hirefire Club. I could probably have have done with a torch but walking in the dark kinda adds to the effect!
Loved the spookiness of the stories once inside the club & the stormy evening added more to the Haunted evening! Wish I got to do this at Halloween!
Top marks though, a great way to spend an evening. Hot Ports required all around afterwards!!!

Oh it was cold. So cold that my finger tips were numb, and my nose echoed Rudolf’s. The wind howled through the ‘clubhouse’ making a screeching, chilling sound, and the ‘dungeon’ room provided the only respite from the sleet.
But here’s the thing. That all added to the atmosphere. The Hellfire Club is a place solely dedicated to — as my Dad would say — ‘shady goings on.‘
You will need to do the tour to find out the gory details, but do the tour you should. Unexpectadely, the tour also takes in a bit of a history lesson, from when it was built around 1700, to the current day. The guide talks about it’s association with Satanism, the supernatural and the occult, as well as the political tone of the time.
Our driver was actually one of the ones who witnessed, many years ago, some haunting activities up here. To hear his account, first hand, really brought it all home.
The tour is eerie, exhilarating, spooky, at times funny, and always entertaining. It will give you a new view on Dublin, both literally and figuratively.

I was lucky enough to score a seat on the Festival of Firsts trip to the Hellfire Club.
It was cold, it was sleety and it was spooooooky!
The guide was really informative from the moment we set off in the bus right until we were dropped off at the end.
Good fun, atmospheric, but freeezing.
Wrap up warm, then add another layer.
And bring a flask.

Despite the sleet and the relentless wind this was a great tour! I had been to the Hellfire Club during the day — but this was a completely different experience. The tour guide set the scene well with his stories, a mixture of modern and historical facts and folklore. The guide began from where we had set off at the Brazen Head, including stories about Dublin’s most haunted church, and Dublin’s dens of inequity.
I would recommend this tour as it is informative, scary and fun. A word of warning would be to wrap up well and bring a flask!

We booked a corporate trip to the Hellfire Club last week, a pretty large group of us. The guide whilst fairly knowlegable had a bad attitude. There was a lot of bitching about other groups she had worked with previously and I found this really off putting. We had also arranged for a different drop off at the end of the tour than usual but apparently neither the guide not the driver were told about this by their employer. We only realised when we had already passed our designated drop off point, and were met with alot of resistance from both the guide and the driver regarding bringing us back to the agreed location. It took a phone call from their boss before the driver agreed to drop us back to near our agreed drop off location. There was never any apology from either the guide or the driver for the mistake, just a frosty atmosphere until we got off the bus.
All in all I wouldn’t recommend this company for a tour again.

Unexpectedly spooky and fun, this is a great tour! Our tour leader was a sexy-​voiced Australian woman called Anna who is an absolutely gifted storyteller and made the experience everything it was. We all climbed aboard the coach near St Audoen’s and as soon as we started off, the stories began. Historical facts and mythological fictions combined to create a properly scary ambiance which was heightened by the dark and the wild wind blowing through the trees as we disembarked at the car park at the foot of Montpelier Hill.
The climb up the hill, lit moodily by the background glow of the city plus some flashlights, is not as hard as I thought it would be. For those of us who are cardiovascularly challenged, a second guide brought up the rear end so nobody felt rushed or was left behind. On the way, there were a few chances to catch our breath as Anna told us stories about the horrors, tortures and hauntings around the hill. Once we reached the ruins of the Hellfire Club, we got a series of stories about each room. Anna paints a great picture of what it was like in its heyday, and tells some really disturbing stories about the experiences of recent visitors, including herself although she confessed to being psychically ungifted, probably a blessing given that she has been visiting the building several times a week for three or four years now!
This is a quality tour, well worth the money, and I came away feeling that I had spent some quality time in the ruins of this place. Highly recommended for history buffs, ghost fans and anyone fond of a good old yarn. Great views of the city are to be had from the top of the hill and on the climb up too.

I’m a huge fan of Halloween, Samhain, El Dia de los Muertes, and assorted other festivals marking the thinning of the veils between the worlds of the spirits and the living that occurs around the end of October. And I’m always looking for new and different ways to experience the season of ghosts, ghoulies and goblins, which the Hidden Dublin Hellfire Excursion provides in spades!
The guide did a great job setting the scene as we rode the coach up into the Dublin hills, and was more knowledgable and engaging than hokey or forced. Stories of the despicable deeds that happened in the neighborhoods we drove through helped get us all in the mood, and the walk up the moutain through the mist-​filled woods was the perfect Halloween setting.
Being guided through the ruins of the Club by flashlight was a great way to get shivers running up one’s spine, and the description of the kind of things the member got up to, from playing cards with the Devil to rolling a flaming barrel filled with with booze and a hapless prostitute down the hill kept the hairs on the back of my neck on full alert.
Yes, people died here… YES, people were killed here… YES, a member of our tour fainted in the small room where the psychic vibes are said to be at their strongest…
Bottom Line: YES, you should go! Look out for the cloven hoof-​footed gentleman who just wants to place a small, friendly wager on a poker hand…