Human Sacrifice at The HELL FIRE Club
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Rumors of human sacrifice pervaded much of the talk about the Hellfire Club. First, there was the Dilettante Club, then the Divan Club, and finally, the Hellfire Club.

or formed by sir francis dashwood dashwood came from a wealthy merchant family in london and he apparently became the only chancellor of the exchequer to admit that he'd delivered his economic speech in the houses of parliament while drunk

He founded the Societe Dilettanti in 1734 with friends when they returned from their European Grand Tour. Membership to this club was actually quite simple. Those who wished to become members had simply to present themselves in a state of inebriation, prove that they had travelled to Italy and that they liked to drink a lot.

However, there was a serious side to the club. Its goal was to fund archaeological expeditions to Italy and it was a supporter of Italian arts including the operas and it had the intention of founding an academy for Italian culture.

Sir Francis Dashwood's second club was the Divan Club, founded in 1744 by the Earl of Sandwich, attended for those who had travelled to the Ottoman Empire and their experiences of this exotic region.

Both clubs lasted only a short while, and we now come to the most notorious of his formations. In 1752, Dashwood formed the Hellfire Club. To be accurate, though, this had already been founded earlier in London, in 1719, by another wealthy politician, the Duke of Wharton.

but then it lapsed and was revived by dashwood wharton's hell-fire club was a satirical gentlemen's club founded in order to poke fun at religious figures wharton was known as a drunkard a rioter an infidel and a rake

He reveled in womanising, gambling, drunkenness and debauchery, it was said. The president of the club was apparently the devil himself. The club met on Sundays in locations across London and its members, both men and women, had to dress as characters from the Bible to be allowed admittance. Activities at their meetings included mock religious ceremonies,

The Greyhound Tavern in London was one of the meeting places they used, but because women were not allowed to be seen in taverns in those days, meetings were also held at members' homes and at Wharton's Riding Club. The identity of members is largely unknown, though they were generally elites from the aristocracy.

it was rumoured they enjoyed banquets including holy ghost pie breast of venus and the devil's loin accompanied by hell-fire punch the club disbanded in seventeen twenty one quite possibly not from choice after king george i under the influence of wharton's political enemies put forward a bill in parliament against horrid improprieties

aimed directly at the members of the hellfire club while wharton lost his political position and the club officially closed it's believed the club never really died and in seventeen forty nine dashwood revived it although the hellfire club was also called other names including knights of west wickham and the monks of medmenham

Sir Dashwood had a large family estate in West Wycombe, on the outskirts of London. This was the initial setting for the club's activities, although he quickly moved their base to Medmanham Abbey. At first, Dashwood rented the Abbey, then he purchased it and rebuilt the Abbey into a Gothic style.

the hell-fire club's motto was feseque tu voudras which translates as do what thou wilt at some point the club then moved its activities out of the abbey and into a mysterious network of tunnels and caverns in west wickham hill

the underground tunnels were decorated with mythological themes and section and phallic symbols meetings occurred twice a month members addressed each other as brothers and the leader which regularly changed would be addressed as abbot during their meetings members are said to have worn ritual style clothing comprising of white trousers white jacket and cap

with the abbot wearing a red outfit of the same style women were frequent visitors and the general belief was that they were prostitutes although they were referred to as nuns their purpose it was said was to play a central role in hedonistic orgies it was believed the prostitutes were transported from london to the caves by barges on the river thames the arrival of the monks was more dramatic

they would arrive at night from london carrying flaming torches aboard gondolas dressed in white robes with hoods up the club gained a scandalous reputation with accusations that they were conducting black masses over the naked bodies of the prostitutes but also of high society ladies including lady mary montagu wortley a mistress of wharton on one particularly lively evening there was a prank with a baboon

the governor of bengal sir henry van systaert had brought his pet baboon to the caves and fellow club member john wilkes the member of parliament for aylesbury came up with the idea of dressing the baboon in the character of the devil and putting it in a box to await the arrival of the lord of the admiralty lord sandwich when lord sandwich arrived he was greeted by the sight of the devil jumping out of the box at him

and the baboon leapt on to his back at this lord sandwich screamed out bear me thou knowest i am not half as wicked as i pretend take somebody else they're all worse than i am i never knew that you'd really come or i'd never have invoked thee which would seem to suggest that they were all engaged in rituals to summon the dark side lord sandwich fled through the tunnels with the baboon still hanging on to his back

The most infamous accusations made over the span of centuries is that the Hellfire Club, which sprung up over several locations, including Ireland, were involved in dreadful rituals, which even included human sacrifice. While solid evidence of this is obviously lacking, given the highly secretive nature of their membership and meetings, perhaps this is no surprise, and the questions linger.

most members were never revealed in the aylesbury caves a quarter of a mile-long tunnel led to a cavern three hundred feet beneath the ground called the inner temple and it was the place only the inner sanctum of the hell-fire club was allowed other caverns were named the banqueting hall white's head cave the triangle

The inner temple was accessed by crossing a faux river, Styx, representing the mythological Greek river that forms the boundary between Earth and the underworld. English art historian and man of letters, Horace Walpole, wrote of the Hellfire Club that its practice was rigorously pagan. Bacchus and Venus were the deities to whom they publicly sacrificed.

but there was another branch of the hell fire club in dublin island one infamous member was lord henry barry like the other members of the club he was a heavy drinker and a lover of debauchery but he had the added danger of being an aficionado of violence which apparently came rather unpredictably it was said that his pistol was engraved with notches representing the number of people he had killed in duels

on one occasion he killed a sedan-carrier he set fire to the sheets the wretch lay in who then expired in the most excruciating torture barry's second known murder resulted in his arrest and trial after he fatally wounded a man called loughlin murphy the jury heard how on the ninth of august seventeen thirty eight barry along with a group of pals had been drinking for several hours in the tavern of patrick corrigan on seeing murphy in the tavern barry invited him to join the group

and after more hours had passed and several of the group left only barry and murphy remained along with the mr humphreys humphreys and barry became engaged in a continued quarrel though barry was extremely intoxicated he drew his sword on occasion though appeared too drunk to attack humphreys with it at some point an enraged barry stood up and barrelled through the tavern colliding with murphy

he shoved murphy and threatened to run his sword through the next person who spoke ill-advisedly murphy expressed that he wished barry no harm at which point barry did run his sword straight through murphy murphy was terribly injured although he managed to live for a few weeks until an infection in his wound killed him the jury found barry guilty of wilful murder and he was sentenced to be executed

however no doubt because of his position of power in society barry was duly granted a royal pardon he did however leave ireland finding that many of his friends and acquaintances had turned against him though the hellfire club sometimes met in the heart of dublin city they also had a more remote site at which their secret meetings took place the building itself was sat at the top of montpelier hill south-west of dublin it now lies in ruins

it was built on the site of a stone age tomb dating back to b c in the seventeen hundreds it was built by the speaker of the house of parliament william connolly to be used as a shooting lodge some time later when a storm destroyed the roof many locals said it was caused by the aggrieved spirits of the current tomb underneath

after connolly's death the lodge was leased out by his widow in seventeen thirty five to richard parsons who then founded the hell-fire club there it was said that he was a practitioner of black magic as president he was said to dress as the king of hell and he took to wearing a costume of horns and wings

frequented by rich young aristocrats its reputation grew as an iniquitous den of drinking gambling and devil-worship members would always set a place at the table for the devil should he choose to turn up and perhaps he did for one night a mysterious stranger arrived and a card game began the game went on for hours until a player dropped a card on the floor as he bent under the table to pick it up

he saw the cloven hoofs of the stranger sitting opposite him in another tale a curious local farm-hand couldn't resist the temptation of climbing up the hill to the club-house one night and upon pressing his face up against one of the windows he peeked inside he wanted to know what really went on however he was quickly discovered by the members of the club and he was hauled inside

he was found the next day wandering aimlessly on the hillside and he never did recover his senses he remained forever mute the members of the hell fire club were once described by gulliver travels author jonathan swift as a brace of monsters

there's also the terrible event that occurred in seventeen seventy one when members of the club allegedly kidnapped a local farmer's daughter and murdered her in a dreadful orgy then roasted her body for their banquet on the orders it was said of thomas buck whalley another member

buck sheely was involved in an awful incident in the heart of dublin at daly's club on college green buck was engaged in a game of cards when he was caught cheating a trial was held by his fellow club members who found him guilty and declared that his crime was punishable by death at this they grabbed hold of him and threw him from the third-floor window

he was impaled on the railings below and died other reputed activities at the club on montpelier hill included the frequent burning alive of black cats in magic rituals and the murder of a dwarf many years after the sight ceased being used the skeleton of the dwarf was unearthed under the floor it had been buried with the statue of a demon

though the premises now lie as a ruin visitors to it often mention a sense of dread creeping upon them as they enter the relic almost as if some ancient power had been harnessed and trapped within the walls of the building one visitor domnil o'hegan writes as a young teenager i was there with three other friends

to this day i remember the feeling that there was death in the ground almost like an odour that's the only way i can explain it like someone or something had died there and there was still a sense of it all these years later you could ignore it but if there was a lull in conversation it returned to the forefront of your mind and felt so oppressive

at the bottom of the hill stands killackee house in the sixties a mrs o'brien bought it and turned it into tea-rooms however mrs o'brien soon noticed that something was very wrong there mrs o'brien spent the first few nights there alone on several of the nights she was woken by the sounds of her dog howling as if she said they were frightened out of their skins

in the mornings she would find things broken throughout the house yet no evidence that any one had broken in workers who had been contracted by mrs o'brien to carry out renovations before opening for customers refused to lodge in the house after witnessing a number of strange incidents including a door that would not stay closed despite being locked with a heavy bolt

one night a worker watched in horror as the door began opening and through it came a large black cat as big as a great dog an artist called tom mccassey who had been commissioned by mrs o'brien to design paintings in the house was painting in the hallway one day when he saw a similar enormous giant black cat with red eyes he later swore the cat spoke to him saying you cannot see me

then a hunched man about three feet tall appeared in the doorway mccassey said he began to back away as the man shifted into a cat the experience clearly affected him for he went on to paint a portrait of a cat with a human face mrs o'brien no longer lives there she sold the building the hell-fire club at the top of the hill remains a ruin but how many more bodies might be found if the hill was dug up

and where did the club relocate to as for the ellsbury caves former art writer at the financial times anthony hayden guest says that the secretary of the club saw to it that nothing would be disclosed he said whatever paul whitehead knew he was determined to keep it secret a week before his death in seventeen seventy four a messenger arrived at his house and delivered an important letter

then three days before his death he summoned the servants of his home and ordered a great bonfire to be built in the back garden it burnt as a conflagration for the next seventy-six hours as books and papers were piled on to it day and night he is reputed to have said neither history nor my critics shall judge me once his paper were ashes he took to his bed and within six hours was dead

given the synchronicity of his demise it is likely that whitehead committed suicide by taking opium or arsenic his will stipulated that his heart was to be given to sir francis dashwood and placed in an urn his wish was duly carried out and the satirical procession of the bucked militia did deliver both the urn and poor whitehead's heart to the mausoleum of sir francis dashwood

the site of the hell fire club in ireland was originally built in the seventeen hundreds and it was thought to be an ancient and sacred druid site but when the hell fire club decided they wanted to use the location a large house was built over the ancient stones there there are reports of huge black dogs that appear from over the horizon as people are walking their dogs on the mountain the dogs are larger than any known species

and they seemed to appear at will making the dogs whimper and run off and leaving their owners paralysed with fear at the sight of the huge apparitions curiously while researching this story i found an interesting youtube comment which said i've just been listening to my radio scanner in south leeds i've picked up a hotel near by which i cannot locate on google

i have just heard them talking about v i p s and a hell-fire club they were talking about sending staff to the games room i was only scanning around to listen to fireworks displays to-night so perhaps the hell-fire club is alive and well

in czechoslovakia on a cliff in northern bohemia is a castle it lies in a densely forested and almost impenetrable hillside and it is here that visitors have experienced some terrifying things back in the ninth century it was a wooden fort and legend has it that at the time there was a hole at the cliff-top which led down to a hole so deep

that unknown creatures lurked within it the judge presiding over the district was so curious to find out what really was down in that deep hole that he offered any prisoner who was willing to scale down to the bottom of the hole a free pardon on his sentence and he would be set free the first prisoner to volunteer to go down into the deep dark hole was hoisted slowly down by rope

but when he got down as far as the rope would take him all they heard from above was the most blood-curdling scream coming from inside the hole and they rushed to pull him back up when the prisoner was brought back up to the surface his face was frozen in shock and he was unable to speak he never could speak again and the mystery of what he had seen down there stayed with him

but in the few minutes that he had been in the hole he seemed to have unnaturally aged when other prisoners were sent down after him they all came back in the same condition mute and unable to recover from the shock of whatever it was they had seen down there in the dark eventually the hole would be sealed over because it was believed to be a hole that led directly to hell itself and the only solution they had was to close it off

a chapel was built over the top of it with religious paintings inside the church of demons and winged creatures being slayed

but even stranger is how a castle was then built on that site in the 13th century this replaced the original wooden fort and it was transformed into a stone castle but the design was very unusual in that where the defenses of the castle would traditionally be built facing outward at this particular castle the defenses were built facing inwards

as though the enemy was not outside of the castle but inside it was as though the castle had been built to ward off something inside the castle during the second world war the nazis took occupation of the castle which was curious because it was miles from anywhere and of no strategic help to them

Scholars who later studied the Nazis' fascination with the occult pondered whether the castle had been occupied by them, to try to harness the powers of whatever creatures lurked within the castle, or perhaps they had wanted access to the portal, the hole where the creatures seemed to live that had been sealed off.

the castle had also once been the home of an occultist in the seventeenth century and perhaps he had left some of his magical workings there and the nazi party had gone searching for them the castle is now open to visitors but inside the chapel there have been reports of sightings of fleeting winged entities and the sound of strange voices coming from under the floor of the chapel

one witness a lady called zina rasaleo was staying in the hunting lodge there when she and her husband heard a thumping noise behind them when they turned around they came face to face with two dark figures whose features were indistinguishable yet horrifying zina also swears that she heard one of the figures whisper its intent to kill children

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