The Stranger at Loftus Hall
A dropped playing card reveals something wrong with a guest at Loftus Hall. The familiar devil story leaves behind a second haunting: Anne Tottenham’s supposed restless presence.
The account
Loftus Hall’s familiar story turns on a look beneath a card table. A stranger has been welcomed into the Tottenham household during bad weather. Anne Tottenham drops a card, bends to retrieve it and, in the legend, sees cloven hooves where his feet should be. The visitor escapes through the roof. Anne’s story then becomes the quieter, sadder half of the haunting: the tale says she never recovered from the encounter, died after confinement in the tapestry room, and was later seen wandering the house. The roof’s supposedly unrepairable opening keeps the stranger’s exit inside the story long after he has gone.
Following the trail
Ireland’s mapping and property-records authority, Tailte Éireann, explicitly introduces this as legend. It separately presents actual property documents, including a 1736 transaction, and describes nineteenth-century refurbishment. Those records establish the estate’s history, not the card game or Anne’s apparition.
Why it stays with us
The tale makes hospitality frightening through one hidden detail. Its second life, as a story about the person left behind, is what turns a spectacular devil appearance into a lingering house haunting.