I took as many photos as I was able during the tour, but the lighting for this experience is intentionally very dark – I’ve tried to salvage them as best I could but sorry for the poor quality!

Context!

My main reason for visiting Dublin in the first place was discovering the National Leprechaun Museum on Google Maps. A museum? Dedicated to leprechauns? I was curious as to what such a place would actually entail. My interest raised even MORE when, checking their website, a separate “Dark Lands” tour had been announced. Strictly for adults only, this after hours tour would focus on the cruder side of Irish folklore.

Well now I had to see it. I bought my ticket weeks in advance to ENSURE I had a spot for the 8pm tour on Thursday.

I should also note that during the day, the Leprechaun Museum runs family-friendly tours. I’d have done both tours as that would have been an interesting comparison but I’m a cheapskate sorry 😅

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What it’s like

The National Leprechaun Museum is appropriately located in the heart of Dublin – it’s only a few minutes walk from the city centre, but if you’re mobility impaired or just lazy you can just get the tram.

You’ll need to pre-book your ticket, but providing you’ve done this you can just walk up to the counter and they’ll let you in.

At this point things got strange. We were asked to wait in the main lobby, which was unremarkable except for this lighting.

To be clear, the National Leprechaun Museum is normally an attraction for small children, so the décor will reflect that. The DarkLand tours are only held for a few evenings every summer – not really worth changing everything round, but I think changing the lighting for every room is a good way to help make things more sinister.

We collectively mill around here waiting for the formal tour to start. Side note – the leprechaun paraphernalia on display here are the only traditional “exhibits” in the museum. The lighting makes them even more terrifying than normal.

Eventually the guide appeared – ours was a cute guy with curly hair – who excitedly introduced himself and gave a quick pitch on what the tour would entail. At this point we are ‘murdered’ (it makes sense in context) and are ushered down a very disorientating tunnel into the museum itself.

We arrive in a room filled with oversized furniture – at this point you’re given a bit of time to take ridiculous photos. Unfortunately the dark lighting makes it tricky to take decent photographs but it’s still fun to clamber onto a massive armchair and pretend you’re Warwick Davis.

The guide left us alone for this bit. I suppose it’s hard to make a giant sofa seem frightening.

After a while our guide reappeared and ushered us down a passageway, into a circular room with a projection of Ireland. At this point the meat of the Dark Lands tour begins – spooky leprechaun stories.

Actually only one of the stories our guide told was about the Irish mascot itself. However they’re all genuine Irish folklore tales, some dating to pre-Christian times. And some of them are genuinely vile. I’d expected retellings of the original Brothers Grimm stories – which are famously much less sanitised than the Disney adaptations – but these original Celtic stories are much more graphic and ridiculous. Apparently the druids had some wild fetishes.

Essentially the format of the rest of the tour is like this – you’ll be moved to a room with spooky lighting, your guide will tell another story with sex and/or violence from ancient Ireland, and then you’ll all move somewhere else. The ‘settings’ range from spooky forests, a medieval cottage and a Leprechaun treasury. Audience participation was mercifully kept to a minimum – our guide was happy just to talk us through his own retellings of Irish folklore.

It gets quite difficult to write about the DarkLand tour from this point onwards because I’d just be summarising Irish folk tales and I don’t want to spoil them. They’re relatively short – I think the longest tale was only about ten minutes – which helps keep things fresh. They range wildly in tone from comedic to tragic to just plain spooky. It seemed like the sort of tour where guides had some freedom to interpret the tales however they wished – our guide definitely seemed to be having fun with them.

To give you a rough idea of what the storytelling is like, I sneakily took a little snippet which you can experience below:

The tour takes about an hour to complete – after the end you’re free to pursue the gift shop before heading back out into a (in my case very rainy) Dublin.

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Final thoughts

For a museum that’s most interesting simply because it exists at all, I was pretty impressed with the earnestness of the DarkLand tour. What could have been a cynical cash grab is actually a really unique look into Irish folklore as it was originally written. I was a little worried that the experience would essentially be the same as the daytime tour, just with added dick jokes – but I came out of it with a genuine interest to learn more. The gift shop has a nice selection of Irish mythology books – I picked up this one as a souvenir and I’m really excited to get stuck into. The guide even took the time to personally recommend me one of his favourite stories.

This was definitely one of those experiences that I wanted to go on for longer! At 18 euros it’s a little pricey, but I do think it’s worth the money, especially as the groups are quite small (mine only had about fifteen people). The guides are genuinely enthusiastic about their heritage and I found myself learning a lot about the darker parts of Ireland’s ancient culture.

The National Leprechaun Museum’s DarkLand tour is currently running for the summer only, twice in the evening on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I’d seriously recommend it as an offbeat way to spend your time in Ireland’s capital.

Final rating: Five four-leafed clovers out of five

🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀

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Helpful Tips

• As far as I can tell you must book tickets online ahead of time, so don’t just turn up on the day without them. Make sure you book the right tour
• The tour is 18+ for a reason – some of the stories are sexually explicit!
• As mentioned earlier the entire tour is done in low light. It’s hard to see where you’re going sometimes.

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