Horrible locks make your blood cold. Top Three Haunted Castles

Good old England is famous not only for its queen, traditional oatmeal in the morning and five-hour tea. The local air is saturated with frequent fogs, English splint and a mystical atmosphere emanating from its numerous castles and fortresses, which, by the way, attract not only psychics, but also numerous crowds of idle tourists.

Undoubtedly popular among tourists is Chillingham Castle, located in the county of Northumberland, on the southern borders with Scotland. The castle was built in the 12th century as a defensive fortification with a single tower, and eventually rebuilt into a secular castle with a ballroom, a library and a torture room. Over the centuries, it has been visited more than once by the kings of England, but not this circumstance causes great curiosity among tourists.

The fame of the castle brought its inhabitants, and did not find the strength to part with its lovely walls. The most famous among them and, to some extent, the universal favorite is the Blue Boy (sometimes a radiant boy). His ghost has chosen the Rose Room and appears as a blue glow or as a boy dressed naturally in blue robes. It announces the appearance of frightened tourists with a heartbreaking cry and exhausting screams of a frightened child. The blue boy is not particularly shy, but has never been photographed or filmed. Who wants to spend the night in the Rose Room? Jokes with jokes, and during the restoration of the castle, the decayed remains of a man and ... a child were found walled up in a crypt. The scratches found in the crypt suggest that the prisoners were buried alive.

Another inhabitant of the castle Lady Mary Berkeley is doomed to forever wander around the castle, in search of her unfaithful husband. According to legend, her husband cheated on her with her sister and subsequently went to her, leaving Lady Mary to spend a century alone. And even after her death, the unfortunate woman did not find peace, now and then, coming down from her portrait, and looking into the faces of tourists in the hope of seeing familiar features.

In Chillingham, along with a luxurious garden, laid out in front of the castle and a rich library, you can visit the torture room, once equipped with the latest word of the torture case. According to some historians, about 7,500 Scots were tortured and killed in these dungeons during a couple of years when the cruel tormentor John Sage was the master of the castle. One of the last victims of John Sage was his mistress Elizabeth Charlton, whom he happily strangled. The cruelty of this man, in the end, angered even the king and on his orders, the owner of the castle was executed within its walls, but apparently, Sage had not only a bad temper, but also a terrible stubbornness that even death did not force him to leave the castle.

Chillingham is almost 900 years old, but he still looks very representative and a little gloomy. In front of its facade there is a beautiful garden and the first who will meet you on arrival at the castle is a herd of cute cows of a rare breed "Chilingham Cuttle", for many centuries conscientiously guarding the territory of the castle and maintaining the balance of good and evil.

Chillingham is open to tourists all year round, all days of the week except Saturday. Interestingly, the current owners of the castle rent out some rooms. I wonder if there are many?

If there is a castle that looks more impregnable than Chillingham, it is Edinburgh Castle, located in the capital of Scotland. The Heart of Scotland and the Key to the Country, and the Castle of the Virgins it was called until the 16th century. All thanks to a complex history soaked in blood and mysticism.

The castle was built in the early Middle Ages, but traces of human settlements here date back to long before our era. Its location on the crater of a dormant volcano is unique. Perhaps this circumstance determined the belligerent and powerful energy around these lands. The castle was built solely as a defensive fortification and was never used for other purposes. There is a belief that the one who has the castle belongs to him the power over the whole country. Perhaps that is why the castle is only now available for tourists, and before that time belonged to the Ministry of Defense. The territory of the castle is huge, it is rather a small medieval town with its Chapel of St. Margaret, by the way, recognized as the oldest building in the city and prison cells. To approach the castle, be sure to walk along the Royal Mile Street, which is also an iconic landmark of the United Kingdom. The tour can take a whole day, and undoubtedly the impressions of it will last a lifetime.

By the way, in the 18th century, the architecture of the castle underwent grandiose changes, and it acquired its current appearance, inside it a huge number of rich collections, restored rooms, a dense network of underground catacombs and its lonely inhabitant - the ghost of a piper, apparently, during his lifetime went into the dungeons in search of an exit. What happened to him in the underground labyrinth, no one knows, one can only say that nothing can confuse a purposeful person, not even his own death.

A piper spends eternity with the ghost of a decapitated drummer, who has not lost his patriotic spirit after his death and is known for loudly emitting a drum roll as soon as he feels that the enemy is approaching the walls of the fortification.

Edinburgh Castle is considered the record holder in England for paranormal phenomena and clusters of ghosts. It is not surprising, because such a long and bloody history could not but accumulate wild energy. And in general, with the onset of darkness, strange noises and gloomy shadows are heard on the walls of the castle. This phenomenon was investigated in 2001, the fact of anomalies was confirmed, but, of course, not explained.

Irish castle Lip, located in the county of Offali, now and then tops the list of the most mysterious and creepy attractions, and there is a good reason. Lip, unfortunately, is not known for the valiant battles of honest soldiers for the independence of their land, but for the atrocities and cruel traditions of the owners of the castle on the way to power. The historic castle was built in the second half of the 15th century by the O’Bannon family. But since the O’Bannons were only vassals, the legal owners of the castle were their lords of the O’Carroll clan.

It is noteworthy that the castle was built on a ritual site, perhaps this doomed the castle to such a dark history. From the chronicle of the castle, it is clear that there was an eternal quarrel between the O’Carrolls, but the apogee and point of no return was the fratricide committed on the altar during the service of the family mass. This happened after the death of the great Mulroney O’Carroll, who heads the clan. After this, of course, the struggle for power within the family began, the main contenders and competitors were the two brothers warrior Teide and priest Taddeus. We already know the outcome of the struggle, Teide stabbed his brother with a sword in front of the whole family. The reason for this was that mass was started by his brother in his absence, which allegedly caused an inexcusable insult to Teide.

After this tragic story, the castle was considered cursed, and the chapel where it happened was called the Blood Chapel. Since then, the restless soul of Thaddeus has been the inhabitants of the castle. But the spirit of a priest in a bloody cloth is not the most terrible thing to encounter here. In a cursed place, a whole abyss of restless souls tortured by the owners of the castle, the most terrible phenomenon is the ghost of “It”. Eyewitnesses describe it as a sheep with a human face and dark nests instead of eyes. Not funny, is it? The appearance of it is preceded by a terrible rotten smell of decaying corpses.

The O’Carroll family had many glorious traditions. They were especially welcoming and liked to give dinner parties with a secret at the end of the meal. They invited conflicting families to visit under the guise of reconciliation, and in the end staged a massacre, unsuspecting guests.

And if the people they disliked were out of their reach, they hired murderers when they came to pay for their labors, the mercenaries were waiting for a terrible dungeon, the bottom of which was covered with sharp stakes around the perimeter. By the way, during the restoration, four carts with human bones were taken from there, which was a confirmation of the nightmarish reputation of the castle.

In 1922, the castle was badly destroyed by the republican soldiers, but now for him there were owners who are intensively engaged in its restoration and from time to time let tourists thirsty for spectacles, stroll through the very underground dungeons and sinister living rooms, where once there were glorious feasts with an invariable bloody ending.

Text by Diana Yusupova

Photo: octour.ru, allcastle.ru, chydesa-mira.ru