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Ireland becomes the haunting new backdrop for Netflix’s Wednesday

Matt Charlton - 7 August 2025

Image: Jonathan Hession/Netflix

 

There are some solid Irish exports: a pint of the black stuff, Father Ted, Sharon Horgan, whiskey and U2. But the one that has seeped into the international consciousness more than any other may not be the one you’d assume.

 

The Irish invented Halloween, you see. When the Potato Famine in the mid-19th century triggered a huge wave of emigration to the USA, the people took the idea with them, and embellished it. Halloween is derived from the ancient festival of Samhain, a point in the year when the Celts believed that the veil between the realms of the living and the dead was at its thinnest and that spirits would roam the Earth.

 

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Now, it’s Ireland’s bonfire night, when the streets are filled with costumes and revellers. And why am I writing about this in August? Because these surroundings, stacked to the gills with spirits of both kinds, proved a major pull for the makers of the spooky drama series Wednesday.

 

Image: Alamy

 

Relocating from Romania to County Wicklow for season two, the production took advantage of the ghostly nooks and crannies, and I have come here – in Halloween week – to see if the spirit takes me, too.

 

I’m staying at the Grafton (thegrafton.ie), which is within walking distance of Dublin’s world-renowned university, ancient libraries, buzzy restaurants, coffee shops, pubs – and spooks. My first question, wherever I go on this trip, is whether the place has a ghost, and of course everyone is ready with a story. At the Guinness Storehouse – the most popular tourist spot in Dublin with its immersive museum and panoramic top-floor bar serving perfect pints – my guide tells me that in the Open Gate brewery, they have to say thank you to the ghosts, “otherwise they cause mischief”. In Marsh’s Library – unchanged since its founding in 1707 – it’s said that the spirit of an archbishop searches for his wayward niece.

 

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On my tour of Trinity College, with alumni including Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker and, more recently, Sally Rooney, my guide casually mentions that a junior dean was murdered by four students in 1734, his ghost now stalking the halls. The students were acquitted, two going on to sit in the Irish Parliament. (Thankfully, nowadays a politician with a criminal record is unthinkable.)

 

As we know all too well, Ireland is a country founded on blood and struggle, and though my two visits outside the city walls retain a ghostly air, they also have elements of melancholy and genuine torment. After a short bus ride out of town (have the exact €2 change or a Leap Visitor’s Card), I arrive at the high walls of Glasnevin Cemetery. You can have a pre-cemetery pint of the red stuff – yes, I was sternly informed at the Guinness Storehouse that (as per Father Ted’s famous black socks) it’s really very very very very dark red – in the Gravediggers pub, which also featured in an episode of Bad Sisters. “The Irish love a good funeral,” our guide Shane tells us on our 90-minute tour. Filled with the great and the good of Irish history – clergy, gentry, revolutionaries – it turns out the walls are so high because Trinity medical students in the 1800s needed fresh corpses and grave-robbing became a serious problem.

 

Anyone found guilty of such a crime (or, of course, of being a republican) may have found themselves in the ghoulish Wicklow Gaol. I visit on a day trip from Dublin, stopping at the beautiful, atmospheric Glendalough Valley, located in the Wicklow Mountains National Park, with its church ruins and decorative crosses of the ancient monastic settlement. The gaol tells the story of two centuries of turbulent history, up until its closure in 1924, and is supposedly one of the most haunted places in Ireland. I’m a cynical hack, but even I had to rapidly exit one cell. (I won’t tell you which – I don’t want to ruin the surprise.)

 

On the way back to the city, you could pop into Big Mike’s at Blackrock, which is a Wednesday cast hang-out. But back in Dublin I indulge in a similarly friendly and hearty meal at Hugo’s (hugos.ie), where the owner tells me she has security footage of their chandelier destroying itself, and of a framed photo gliding across a table. With all these ghost stories, it would be rude not to finish with the Ghost Bus Tour (say it fast… see what they did there?), with its tales of graverobbers, martyrs and restless souls. This restless soul has to move on, but while the gothic dramatic gloom of a beautiful country soaked in tragedy is perfect for Tim Burton’s Wednesday, for visitors it’s also a place of warmth, hospitality, a love of storytelling and a wicked sense of humour.

 

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