Vanta M. Black has written a fascinating and terrifying new book called Oubliette — A Forgotten Little Place that is based on the true story of a castle in Ireland.
Oubliettes are dungeons that can only be accessed from above. When the real oubliette at Leap Castle in Ireland was emptied out in the 1920’s they found more than 150 dead bodies. Black, who has previously written about esoteric topics, was inspired as she imagined the forgotten lives of those who had been found in the oubliette. Was there a creature haunting Leap Castle?
There are many accounts of an “elemental” spirit at Leap Castle. One of the most renowned is Mildred Darby’s. Her family once owned Leap, and there she dabbled in the occult. Some say her meddling provoked the entity to appear. Her description of it states:
The thing was about the size of a sheep, thin, gaunt and shadowy in parts. Its face was human, or to be more accurate, inhuman, in its vileness, with large holes of blackness for eyes, loose slobbery lips, and a thick saliva-dripping jaw, sloping back suddenly into its neck!
The horror-thriller is set at a castle in the Loire Valley of France, and focuses on several different time periods, from the French Revolution, to the Reformation, the Black Death, the era of the Roman Empire, the time of the Pagans, and the rise of the Knights Templar. There’s also a modern storyline about two sisters hired to renovate the château.
Black spent ten years writing and researching to attempt to create an authentic representation of the time periods. Learn more about the book here.
