Ballygally Castle was built in 1625 by the Scottish settler James Shaw on land rented from Randal MacDonnell, Earl of Antrim. It survived an attack in the 1641 rising, passed out of the Shaw family in 1799, and became a hotel in the early 1950s under the textile millionaire Cyril Lord. Wikipedia calls it reputed to be one of the most haunted places in Ulster.
The best known ghost is Lady Isabella Shaw. By the hotel's account, she fell out of favour with her husband after giving birth to a daughter, and he took the baby away and shut her in a small turret room at the top of the castle. Starving and tormented by the baby's cries, she tried to escape through a window and fell to her death on the rocks. Another version has Lord Shaw suspecting the child was not his and having Isabella thrown from the tower. Her name does not appear in historical records.
Guests and staff report her knocking on doors in the corridors at night, still searching for her child. The turret is now known as the Ghost Room. A guest wrote that her eighteen-month-old child became hysterical with terror on entering the turret and could not be calmed, so that four adults left the room quickly. Haunted Rooms describes her as friendly and notes reports of unexplained noises and a green mist.
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