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In the grounds of Kilmainham Hospital you’ll find Bully’s Acre – one of Dublin’s oldest cemeteries and definitely the one with the creepiest reputation. This cemetery has been disused since the cholera epidemic of 1832, which killed thousands of Dubliners. Since the cemetery was common ground where burial services could be performed for free, the earth is saturated with the bones of people from all walks of society. Peasants and nobles were laid to rest among knights and monks in this slightly unsettling location.
The Irish High King Brian Boru is even said to have camped on this spot when facing the King of Leinster and his Viking mercenaries in the Battle of Clontarf on Good Friday in 1014. The battle resulted in a victory for the High King’s army although Brian Boru himself lost his life when a group of fleeing Norsemen stumbled upon his tent and killed him.
Throughout the 18th and 19th Centuries Bully’s Acre also became known as the haunt of the body snatchers who were also referred to as the ‘sack-‘em-up men’. These unruly souls occupied themselves by digging up corpses and making a tidy profit by selling off the cadavers to surgeons in Dublin and England.
If while you’re walking through Bully’s Acre you happen to hear a wistful moan, it will probably be an errant gust of wind blowing through the trees. Then again, it just might be the melancholy cry of a soul that’s lost its body or perhaps even that of Brian Boru himself.
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