More places in Italy you might not want to visit this Halloween
There are lots of eerie places in Italy: the catacombs in Palermo with its creepy mummified children, virgins and a few elderly people suspended from the walls. Then there’s the Capuchin Crypt in Rome with the bones of 4,000 monks on display.
But those are mere child’s play compared to Italy’s supposedly haunted and appropriately gloomy medieval castles.
Here are a few eerie stories to help breed some terrifying nightmares.
Crecchio Castle (Castello di Crecchio in the photo) in Abruzzo was built in the 11th century. According to many accounts heavy footsteps can be heard on the top floor, as a beautiful woman, probably wearing big boots, walks through the castle’s rooms.
The woman with the heavy footsteps is supposedly the mistress of Baron De Riseis, who lived in the castle in the 19th century.
I was in the castle one evening during a local festival, but all I could hear were the noises of real people on the streets. Some passages and corridors did look quite spooky in the flickering lights.
The legend of Azzurrina has been known in the area near Rimini for many centuries.
In the 14th century there was Guendolina, a girl-albino with snow-white hair in the Montebello castle (castello di Montebello). Her parents were worried about the popular superstitions according to which albino-people were somewhat demonic.
The father didn’t allow the girl to leave the castle and the mother coloured Guendolina’s hair dark but it always looked as blue as her eyes, so she was nicknamed Azzurrina (“azzurro” means “blue”).
One day, on summer solstice, while playing in the basement of the castle, blue haired Guendolina disappeared. Some said her the father killed her but her body was never found.
Now, apparently, every five years on June 21, people hear a strange sound in the castle: the sound of a girl crying, shouting for help and calling “mamma”.
You can hear the recordings of the Center of Para-psychological Studies in Bologna here (fast-forward to 6:50).
Or visit the castle during one of their late night tours. Wooooooo!
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