In honor of Halloween, we decided to take a trip around the world to visit the most famous haunted castles. Many of them are shrouded in a sinister halo, and once served as places of torture and witch hunting.
10. Leap Castle, Ireland
One of the scariest haunted castles was built in the 15th century on the ritual site of the ancient Celts. It belonged to the O’ Carroll clan, which became famous for its cunning and cruelty.
"Friendly" O’ Carrolls often invited their enemies to a conciliatory feast, and then killed them during a feast or during sleep. And one of the members of the clan thrust a sword into his brother - a priest - when he served mass in the chapel of the castle. Now this room is called the "Bloody Chapel", and they say that the priest often visits it at night.
O’Carrolls were no better off their allies — mercenary warriors from the O’Neill and McMahon clans. A secret door was installed in the corner of the banquet hall, leading to a room whose floor was strewn with stakes. Guess for yourself what kind of pay the mercenaries received.
Now their spirits sometimes appear in prison, and they are accompanied by a terrible creature, called the Elemental. Eyewitnesses who saw him claim that this is a creature the size of a sheep, with a human face and black dips instead of eyes. When it appears, the air is filled with the stench of rotting corpses and sulfur.
9. Tower of London, UK
The famous haunted castle is known for its bloody history. Henry VIII ordered the execution of his two wives here, Anna Boleyn and Catherine Howard. By the way, the ghost of Anna Boleyn is the only one who received an “official registration” and permission to live in the Tower. He was a multitude of people, some of whom were hospitalized with a hallucination diagnosis. Sometimes Anna’s head was on her shoulders, and sometimes she prefers to walk the ghost headless.
Two other famous tower ghosts are the young princes, Richard and Edward V, who were imprisoned after the death of their father, King Edward IV. They disappeared shortly afterwards in 1483, and their remains were not discovered until 1647.
8. Fraser Castle, Scotland
This place is known for its wonderful architecture, beautiful gardens and ... terrible murder.
According to local legend, once a beautiful princess stopped at Fraser Castle. Instead of turning around all night because of a pea or meeting a beautiful lord, the girl was brutally killed in a dream. Then her body was dragged down a stone staircase and left in the forest.
The inhabitants of the castle tried in vain to wash the blood of the unfortunate princess from the stairs, but could not. Therefore, they covered the stone staircase with wooden panels, which have survived to this day.
Some say that in Fraser you can still hear the scream of the princess when she visits the castle halls.
7. Mikhailovsky Castle, Russia
Although Russia is inferior to Europe in the number of haunted castles, we also have something to please fans of mysticism. For example, Mikhailovsky Castle, in which not some seedy relative of Casper lives, but the most that is the ghost of the Emperor of All-Russian Paul I.
In 1801, “Russian Hamlet” was strangled by the conspirators in his bedchamber, although the official cause of death was an apoplexy blow. Since then, according to rumors, the ghost of Paul sometimes appears at midnight in the corridors of Mikhailovsky Castle, holding a candle in his hands.
6. Dragsholm Castle, Denmark
Built at the end of the 12th century, Dragsholm Castle was once a prison for Danish nobility and clergy.
Today it is a famous hotel and one of the centers of mystical tourism. Three ghosts live in it at once: the Gray Lady, the White Lady and Earl Botwell.
- Gray lady - This is a kind of ghostly servant. At night, she walks along the corridors of the hotel, checking to see if any of the guests got lost.
- White lady - the ghost of a noble girl who fell in love with a local resident. Her father did not approve of the misalliance and locked the girl in her room. Centuries later, builders discovered its skeleton in a small depression in the walls of an eerie castle.
- Earl Botwell was the third husband of the Queen of Scotland, Mary Stuart, but their marriage provoked the indignation of the Scottish nobility, and the count had to flee to Norway. There he fell into the hands of the relatives of the girl he had once seduced, and by the sentence of the King of Denmark and Norway, he spent the rest of his life in the prison of Dragsholm Castle.
5. Musham Castle, Austria
You may have heard of the Salem Witches trial, which has become one of the most famous witch hunts in history. But the reprisals against witches and sorcerers in the Musham castle was one of the bloodiest.
More than a hundred young women and men were accused of witchcraft and brought to Musham Castle between 1675 and 1690. Many of them were under the age of 21, and their only crime was the lack of guarantors. They were tortured with red-hot iron and killed in a local dungeon.
It is not surprising that now in this terrible haunted castle you can often hear chilling screams, the noise of footsteps and the creaking of doors. And some visitors claimed that they saw a floating white fog.
4. Himeji Castle, Japan
This is one of the best preserved examples of Japanese castle architecture in the whole country.
Presumably, he is also haunted by a ghost named Okiku. According to local legend, Okiku was a young beautiful servant who was accused of stealing a precious plate from a set of 10 items.
Trying to get Okiku to confess to her deed, she was hung upside down, beaten and lowered into the water, time after time, until the unfortunate girl died. Then her body was thrown into the well and closed with a lid.
Since then, the spirit of the unjustly tortured Okiku cries at night and groans at the well, counting in vain for plates.
3. Castle of Good Hope, South Africa
The history of one of the main attractions of Cape Town dates back to 1666, which makes it the oldest colonial building in South Africa.
Originally, the castle was used by the Dutch East India Company as a food station for ships, and then served as a military fortress and prison during the Second Boer War from 1899 to 1902.
Today you can tour many parts of the castle (including horrible torture chambers), but you might want to try yourself as a ghost hunter.
In 1728, Governor Peter van Nordt condemned several deserters who were hanged. One of the convicts, standing in front of the gallows, cursed the governor, and van Nordt died of a heart attack that day. Since then, his ghost often visits the battlements.
Another famous local ghost is a black dog, which rushes at people and disappears right in the air.
2. Chateau de Brissac, France
An elegant estate in the countryside is now a wonderful hotel. However, its charming exterior hides a dark past.
According to ancient history, one of the inhabitants of the castle discovered that his wife was cheating on him with another. To avenge the scolded honor, he imprisoned his wife and her lover, tortured and ultimately killed them both.
Now visitors to the hotel can receive an additional bonus in the form of observations of ghostly figures, chilling touches of the soul and terrible sounds when checking into the room.
1. Bran Castle, Romania
In the picturesque and inaccessible part of the Carpathians, there is Bran Castle, the infamous house of Vlad Tepes (the Colossus), also known as Vlad Dracula.
It was this character that served as the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Gothic horror novel Dracula. And the dominion of Vlad Sazhatel to stake over Transylvania has become a dark and creepy legend.
Historians are not sure whether Vlad really killed people in Bran Castle, but, nevertheless, this place has become one of the most visited haunted castles in the world.
Regardless of whether Vlad Tepes really tortured and killed hundreds of people here, the castle boasts many other frightening features, including a secret passage system that permeates the entire building.
Now the castle has a museum, which exhibited artifacts of previous years - shields, ancient costumes, armor, etc.
