The silent watchers

As silent witnesses to passions and intrigues through the generations, some buildings seem to give shelter to the shadows of their own past. Along corridors and bulwarks in ancient windswept castles, among the mysterious shadows in obscure country-houses, it seems like the old sins and injustices never dies but still lives like billowing haze among the old stones that saw them being born.

There are ancient legends about haunted houses. But are ghosts real or are they simply human inventions we have created for certain places because they frighten us? There are scientists who said that there really are some houses that is haunted, but the ghosts are only shadow-like projections of especially strong emotions and happenings in the past. The physicist Sir Oliver Lodge had a theory which he published in 1908 that hauntings were "a spirit materalization of a tragedy a long time ago". Lodge and others thought that strong emotions in some way could print themselves in the surroundings and that people with enough sensitivity who lived in later generations, could percieve.

Therefore it might not be that surprising that stories about strong emotions seem to permeate the legends about hauntings. Like the examples that follows shows that ghosts according to the tradition as threatening presages to catastrophes or as reflections of people whose passions in life affected them in such way that they can't keep calm or silent in death: people with evil lusts or remorses - or people who demands justice or can't get peace from their pangs of love.

A queen's servant | Stirling Castle
Above the river Forth on the eighty meter high basaltcliff is the Stirling Castle built. It was thought to be the most powerful fort in Scotland. Because of its strategic position the poet Alexander Smith called it "the enormous brooch which keeps the Highlands and the Lowlands together". The stonebuilding, which stands there even today, was built during the 1400's and replaced a fort built of wood which was watching over the plain since about three hundred years. Stirling was a loved place by royals and its windows gave a wide view over the area where important battles was fought during the Scots independence wars against England during the Middle Ages. The girlqueen Mary Stuart was crowned in the chapell year 1543 and she lived from time to time at Stirling Castle when she was grown up.

Bordes of ghosts is said to be wandering in the dark halls in the castle, and there are many stories about them. One is about the Green Lady, who, until our days, has shown herself to the people who has been living there frequently. Some say that she was a servant for queen Mary and that she saved the life of her mistress. The story goes that the girl got a foreboding that the queen was in danger and hastened to her bedroom.

There she found the draperies around the bed in flames around the sleeping queen. But the young girl saved her. After the event the queen remembered that she once had been told the future and that a fire at Stirling Castle should threaten her life.

Through the centuries, it is told, that the Green Lady's manifestations is forebidding fires and other hazards. The last time someone reported something like that was when a military chief told that he had seen her. The troops were at the castle and the cook were stiring in a soupcauldron, when he felt that someone was watching him. He turned around and saw the floating creature of a woman dressed in green. A catastroph never occured, but the chief fainted.

A devilish servant | Hermitage Castle
Built of sandstone, clumsy and solid, is the ruin of Hermitage Castle seen on the barren scottish moor near the border to England. According to the legend the castle is said to got its name after a religious hermit, who started to build a chapell on the site on the 1170's. The castle itself was ready somtime during the 1200's by Nicholas de Soulis, head of a nobel Norman family. It was Nicholas' son William, who brought disgrace - and some say hauntings - to Hermitage Castle.

According to old legends from the border districts William was fascinated by black magic. His apprenticeship with the enchanter Michael Scot made him a horrible monster, and it was said that he murdered kidnapped children in the cellars of the castle and used their blood for his rituals where the fanged demon Robin Redcap was invoked. As a thank you for the young victims' blood Redcap guaranteed de Soulis that he wouldn't be hurt neither by steel or rope. In that way he was protected from that time's usual manner of death. William thus thought himself unvolnurable and terrorized the surroundings with his child-murders and other horrible things.

The story goes that de Soulis was captured after an attempt to take the Scottish crown from King Robert de Bruce, and he is said to have died in the captivity. But the legends tells us something else. It is said that the inhabitants finally took revenge on de Soulis by going over and over to King Robert and complaint. The King got troubled by their never ending complaints and said: "Hang him, boil him. Do whatever you want with him, but let me hear nothing of him here after." The people listened, catched de Soulis, wrapped him in a sheet and boiled him in a big cauldron.

It is said that William de Soulis' ghost was deemed to every seventh year return to the cellar on Hermitage Castle and meet Robin Redcap, who ownes his soul. At these times you can hear terrified screams and horrified laughs.

A child's blood on her hands | Bisham Abbey
About 80 kilometers west of London by the River Thames you will find Bisham Abbey, which is said to be the house in Berkshire where the most hauntings occure. Originally the convent was a home for the Knight Templars on the 1200's, a sect with interest for the mysterious. During the centuries other owners have expanded and made it more beautiful.

During the reign of Elizabeth I it was owned by the Hoby family. This family consisted of noble diplomats and scientists. Lady Elizabeth Hoby were a very cultivated and intelligent woman and was a close friend of the queen. According to the legend she was also a child-murder.

Lady Hoby had six children, and the youngest son, William, is said to have been an idiot and couldn't learn a thing. He did his ambitious mother so furious with his scribbly exersice-book that she finally whipped him to death. Different variations of the story says that Lady Hoby either locked the boy in a closet as a punishment or tied him up to a chair and gave him orders to do his homework better. Then she went to see the queen and when she came back after several days, she found him dead.

It may be that all the versions av this horrible story is made up. There aren't any notes about William's birth, but when the house was remodeled in 1840 the workers found some exersice-books under the floor and one of them was just written with scrawls and ink-blots.

If Elizabeth Hoby killed her son he lived a long time with her guilt. Some sources say she died in the age of eighty one, according to others she was more than ninety. And maybe didn't she find peace. Among the ghosts who is said to wander around in Bisham Abbey there are also the sad Lady Hoby. In front of her is there a bowl floating in the air, with invisible water in which she dips her hands and like a ghostly version of Lady Macbeth she is trying to wash away the blood on her hands.

A white-dressed baroness seeks revenge | Fort Wolfsegg, Bavaria
Like a majestic ruin is the fort Wolfsegg rising by the river Donau in Bavaria. It never fell into enemys hands during its almost one thousand years of existence. But while its walls stood strong against sieges and outer enemies horrible things was happening within. It is said that you still can see the ghost of a woman that died there several hundreds years ago.

The fort was built year 1028 and belonged to one warlike Bavarian noble family after the other. Most of them involved in that time's feuds. A legend from the Renaissance is about one of these aristocratic families, Laabers von Wolfsegg. The legend tells us about a tripoli murder which is said to have occurded in the 1300´s. A baron Laaber married a beautiful woman, who became a victim of a infamous plot.

The baron's greedy relatives wanted to take over the valuable property and succeeded to put the bride in a compromising situation with a man who wasn't her husband. The baron then found out that his wife had a secret rendezvous.

He came to the castle and found what he belived a secret meeting and murdered his wife and the one he thought were her lover. Then he himself got murdered by his relatives, who said they had done it to make sure that justice was done.

Maybe the relatives inherited a curse together with the property. Because they say that the murdered baroness still roams the corridors and stairs on Wolfsegg dressed in bright white clothes. People that have been living in the castle have been reported that they have seen luminous figures and also heard footsteps where there haven't been any living person. And they have felt unnatural cold winds.

Sceptics say that the bright creatures they have seen at Wolfsegg simply are imagination or gas discharging from the batfilld dripstone caves under the castle. But others think that the White Lady returned to the place where she had been fooled. She wants her name to be redressed and seeks revenge on those who had tricked her husband.

A story about love and revenge | Baldoon Castle
Ornamented gatepoles stands in guard in front of the ruins of Baldoon Castle which are dressed in Virginia creeper. It is located in a deserted part of the scottish Lowlands about 130 kilometers south of Glasgow. In the middle of the 1600's were Baldoon the scene for a tragic story, which later immortalized by Sir Walter Scott in his novel The Bride of Lammermoor.

In real life it was about Sir James Dalrymples family. He, himself, were an eminent lawyer and statesman. The eldest daughter were the beautiful Janet Dalrymple, who, before she had grown up, had given her faith and all to a poor young nobleman, Lord Rutherford. Janet's parents, especially the mother, were against the alliance, and the girl couldn't stand against her mothers iron will so she broke her promise to the man she loved and agreed to marry the man her parents had seeked out. This man's name was David Dunbar and was nephew to Rutherford and heir to Baldoon. Sadly resignated did Janet become Mrs Dunbar on August 24th 1669.

There are different versions about what happend on Janet's weddingnight, but the most famous is this one: The wedding was big and with a dinner on Baldoon. During the ball the newly-weds went to their bedroom, as the custom says. Shortly thereafter screams were heard from the bride's chamber. The door was broken down and found Dunbar laying just by the treshold with the blood streaming from several stab wounds.

His bride stood huddled in a corner of the room with her husband's blood on her dress. She was murmuring to herself and seemed to be insane. The only words they could hear was "Here you have your beautiful groom". Dunbar survived, but Janet died within a month. It is said that her blood dripping figure still is haunting Baldroon. Maybe it does so as a peace-offering, maybe its looking for its lost love.