It has been said that the castle is haunted by the Wizard Earl on his white charger although visitors ought to hope that if they do see a ghost it is that of Lord Walter on his bicycle...

A young lad was killed after being discovered in the bedroom of the owner's daughter. He still walks around the building looking for his former girlfriend....

Monkey Carvings

The carved bracket to the chimney of the haunted wingOn the bracket which supports the projecting chimney, high up towards the top of the Haunted Tower, is a rough but vigorous carving of a monkey. This is shown, facing outwards, with arms and legs held aloft and the paws turned inwards as if gripping the stonework. Round the neck is a collar from which hangs a chain passing inwards, as if tethering the monkey to the wall.

The monkey is the crest of both branches of the family (Kildare and Desmond) and also features in the supporters to the Cost of Arms. This derives from a romantic tale. About the middle of the 13th century when John Fitzthomas Fitzgerald (afterwards first Earl of Kildare) then an infant was in the Castle of Woodstock near Athy, there was an alarm of fire. All the household rushed out in panic and the child was forgotten. When he was searched for his room was found in ruins.

Then suddenly from a tower they heard and saw the pet monkey, which was usually kept chained, jibbering through the lancet windows with the infant in his arms. The future Earl was saved, and late in gratitude adopted a monkey for his crest and Supporters. Some of his descendants also added to the motto and Latin phrase "Non immemor beneficcii" "Not forgetful of the benefit".

Precisely the same story is also told about the Desmond branch. In 1261, Thomas Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, an infant of nine months, lost both father and grandfather in a major defeat at Callan at the hands of the McCarthys. He was sent at Tralee in great peril and the same rescue was made by a similar baboon or ape. This Thomas was in consequence nicknamed Thomas "an Appagh", or "na Appagh", Thomas the Ape, or Thomas of the Apes.

When Dean Swift was writing Gulliver's Travels he had quarrelled with the then Earl of Kildare and desiring to vex, introduced a comparable story by which Gulliver is carried off and forcibly fed by an ape of Brobdingnag.