Luring weary travelers to get on their back, the dark night horse Zawudschawu, is said to prowl the swampy moors of Gruyère Moors.
In the shadowy heart of Switzerland’s Gruyère region, where dense mist clings to the rolling moors and ancient forests murmur with forgotten names, an unsettling legend endures — that of the Night Horse Zawudschawu.
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There are many monsters said to roam the valleys and mountains. In the town, Sitten in Wallis, there is a three-legged steel seen prancing through the streets in the moonlight. Whispered from generation to generation, the tale speaks of a phantom steed with a coat as black as midnight and a wild, pale mane that shines like frost in the moonlight.
A haunting view of Gruyère Moors and Castle Gruyere, shrouded in mist, home to the legend of the Night Horse Zawudschawu.
Zawudschawu of Gruyère Moors
Zawudschawu is no ordinary apparition. It roams the lonely paths and marshy edges of the Saane River, appearing when fog blankets the land and the air hangs heavy with silence, grazing in the night. Sometimes the horse is described as dark, sometimes with a coat like iridescent milk-white and his wild mane as white as the snow.
It chooses its victims carefully: the weary, the lost, and most often, the elderly traveler making their slow, solitary way home beneath the cover of darkness.
The creature’s trick is subtle. It approaches without sound, its hooves barely disturbing the ground, before kneeling with an eerie grace as if offering mercy — an inviting escape from the cold and treacherous moors. Many, believing the spectral horse to be a gift of fortune, have mounted its back, feeling an odd, unnatural warmth radiating from its body in the chill of the night.
But Zawudschawu is a deceiver.
In one of the most infamous tellings, a drunken man crossing the moors late at night found himself face-to-face with the spectral steed. Grateful for the chance to avoid the long, cold walk home, he climbed onto its back. The horse carried him smoothly through the mist, every stride eerily silent, its breath visible like smoke. Just as the lights of his village flickered in the distance, the creature’s demeanor shifted. Without warning, it veered off the path, galloping straight for the black, rushing waters of the Saane. The last thing the man saw was the glint of malevolent amusement in the creature’s eyes before he was hurled into the freezing depths. And the last thing he heard — an inhuman, mocking laughter, fading into the mist.
Lake Of Gruyère: A serene view of the Lake Of Gruyère surrounded by autumn foliage, evoking the mysterious atmosphere of the Gruyère Moors where the night horse drowns his victims.
The Old Tale of Zawudschawu in Modern Switzerland
Is the Zawudschawu always dangerous? There are plenty of stories about the horse having brought weary and tired people back home as well.
To this day, elders in the Gruyère countryside warn against night travel across the moors. They speak of Zawudschawu’s lingering presence, of hoofprints found in morning frost where no horse should be, and of chilling laughter carried on the wind. Some believe the horse was once a cursed soul, others say it’s a forest spirit soured by centuries of human trespass.
Whatever the truth, on foggy nights in Gruyère, wise folk stay close to hearth and home — lest the Night Horse Zawudschawu find them in the dark.
Now, the former barracks has turned into the National Museum of Ireland. If we are to believe the rumours, the ghosts of war from the former Collins Barracks are said to still linger.
In the old farm for the rich and the powerful in the northern parts of Norway, Løp Gård is said to hold many of their former inhabitants, even in their death.
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After tragedy struck Birthe Svendsdatter, she threw herself from the window and ended up with a limp and a brain injury. Called Halte-Birthe because of her limp, she is said to haunt Fossesholm Manor to this day.
Feeling like a sudden and invisible burden, the life force of wary travellers were long subjected to the terror of the Aufhocker. A creature between the vampire, werewolf and goblin spirits, the legend of the empty road were long haunted by something heavy.
A maid who once worked at the hotel allegedly took her own life at the old Visnes Hotel, deep in the Norwegian fjords. Now it is said she is lingering in the afterlife in the old rooms she once worked in.
An ancient ghost coming from the depths of graves across the nordic countries, the Haugbúi Draugr could be both dangerous and even deadly. Not merely a specter, but the rotten flesh of the dead, the ghosts are remembered as The Walking Dead of the North.
In the dark Hendrick Street in Dublin, there once were two houses said to be some of the most haunted ones in town. Occupied by at least six ghosts, some say they still linger in their old street.
In the pre civil war Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, the mausoleum of W.W Pool is said to be the grave of The Richmond Vampire. A more recent urban legend is now also connected with The Church Hill Tunnel collapse.
In the rural and more superstitious parts of Romania, the fear of the undead is not necessarily something of the past. Although mostly done in secret and as a family business, the hunt for vampires or strigois, still happens. Something the family of Petre Toma experienced when he was accused of haunting extended family after death.
In the shadowed villages of southern Romania, ancient beliefs about the restless dead linger alongside the hum of modern life. For while the medieval terror of the strigoi, vampires and morois may seem a distant superstition to outsiders, in certain corners of Dolj County, these spectral fears still pulse through the bloodlines of families whose lives are shaped by old-world rites. And if we are to believe some of the comments of the locals, it’s not necessarily that rarely it happens, it’s just not every case that makes it to the newspapers.
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In the tiny village Marotinu de Sus where around 700 people live scattered around in the countryside, locals gather in the village’s only store and bar for a chat, often drinking hard. If you ask them, they will say they have at least one vampire story in their families and that they have been thought to hunt down and kill vampires, or the strigoi since they were children. One of the most notorious modern vampire cases in Europe occurred not in some fog-drenched, Gothic past, but in February of 2004.
A Haunting in Marotinu de Sus
One dark night that December the year before, Petre Toma, a 76 year old villager had driven in a carriage pulled by his horse through the village southwest in the country close to the Bulgarian border. He was drunk and fell off the carriage, scaring the horse that stomped him dead. He was buried in the local cemetery and his family started their morning process. But it would not be in peace.
In death, it seemed, he had not severed his connection to the mortal world and became a moroi, an undead.
Moroi and Strigoi: Strigoi in Romanian mythology are troubled spirits that are said to have risen from the grave. Moroi are often associated with other figures in Romanian folklore, such as strigoi (another type of vampire). In some versions, a moroi is a phantom of a dead person which leaves the grave to draw energy from the living. They are also sometimes referred to in modern stories as the living offspring of two strigoi.
His own sister, Flora Marinescu, started to complain that her daughter-in-law had fallen ill and that it was Petre who was to blame. It was also said that their son and grand daughter became ill. The woman reported terrifying nocturnal visitations: a pale, spectral figure appearing in her room, its face unmistakably that of her deceased uncle.
According to Toma’s neighbour, Mircea Mitrica, she had been shouting: ‘He’s on top of me! He’s eating me! He’s killing me!’ She couldn’t walk and complained about feeling drained, as if something had taken her blood. In Romanian folklore, such occurrences were seen as ominous signs of a strigoi. Fearing this ancient evil had once again returned, Petre’s brother in law and husband to Flora, Gheorghe Marinescu, took decisive — and deeply traditional — action.
The Ritual of the Dead
They could have called for the local Orthodox priest to perform an exorcism, but he would have needed a permit, and they feared it would take too much time. After a couple of nights discussing and drinking, they decided to act themselves. After all, they all knew how to rid themselves of the strigoi according to the old ways.
The first time Gheorghe Marinescu tried to do the ritual, he ended up drinking too much liquid courage and couldn’t use the shovel. But in his mind, it needed to be done. Marinescu gathered a small group of family members, friends and neighbours and tried again. Also in attendance was his neighbour, Mircea Mitrica.
And after steadying their nerves with alcohol, the party made their way to the cemetery under the cover of darkness. They exhumed the body of Petre Toma to look for evidence of him being one of the undead. According to those present, they claimed that the man had what looked like fresh blood around his mouth, for them, clear signs of vampirism.
After confirming their suspicions, they split his ribcage with a pitchfork to remove his heart and staked through the rest of his body for good measure. In some sources they say they sprinkled garlic over it, but this part is rarely mentioned from the sources of those actually in attendance. Many tall tales were added over the years of this mission. The neighbour, Mitrica, claimed that the heart was still pumping when they pulled it out from his chest and that the face of his former neighbour was red and his beard had grown.
The group put his heart in a plastic bag and put the body back in the grave. According to some sources, they didn’t put it back with care, and left it in a state of filth, earth and decay. They went to a nearby crossroad to start the ritual, where the world of the living and dead meet.
According to Gheorghe Marinescu, his heart squeaked and tried to jump away when it was burned on the bonfire, also something that happens to a strigoi heart according to legend. This was all to perform an age-old vampire ritual believed to protect the living from the vengeful dead.
According to custom, the heart of a strigoi must be burned. Its ashes are then mixed into water and drunk by those afflicted by the revenant’s haunting, believed to break the malevolent bond between the strigoi and its victims.
This is what they did when they went home and lit a second bonfire to make the mixture. They gave the tincture to the sick woman to drink. A local named Anisoara Constantin who lived there at the time commented in an article:‘Well, the sick woman got better again, so they must have done something right,’
According to the party, they all went back to see the woman afflicted with the illness they tried to cure the very next day. She was better and could walk and talk without any pain and invited them all to her house to eat, drink and celebrate her recovery.
The ritual, grisly as it may sound to outsiders, has ancient roots in Eastern European lore. The strigoi were thought to rise from the grave to drain the life force of their relatives, and unless dealt with through fire or staking, would slowly devastate entire families.
Modern Consequences for Ancient Beliefs
The following day, news of the nocturnal disinterment and ritual reached Dolj County police when his daughter complained about the disturbance and desecration of her father’s grave and corpse.
The six who attended the ritual were arrested and charged with “disturbing the peace of the dead.” Despite their protestations that they had only acted in defense of their loved ones, they were each sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and ordered to pay damages to the family of the deceased.
In the end, they did not end up serving their sentence and had to pay a total of 900 Euro in damages to the family. The case drew widespread media attention, becoming a sensation in Romania and abroad, with international headlines decrying it as evidence of vampire hysteria persisting in 21st-century Europe.
A Legacy of Fear and Precaution
The case left a lingering mark on the region, but if we are to believe the comments of some of the locals, it seems that this case didn’t happen in isolation.
‘No one is bothered who did it, it’s their own business. This ritual often takes place, but in secret, within the family. The problem comes when the police get involved.’says 80-year-old Tudor Stoica in an article.
In the nearby village of Amărăştii de Sus, local custom adapted to meet the lingering fear. Now, as a preventive measure, it’s reported that villagers drive a fire-hardened stake through the heart or belly of the recently deceased, especially those thought to have harbored grudges or strange tendencies in life. In the village where Peter Toma was exhumed, they also do something similar with knitting needles or other sharp objects.
Such rites, though rarely reaching world wide headlines, serve as chilling reminders of how the old beliefs still hold power in places where death is regarded with a wary eye and where the border between the living and the dead remains perilously thin. And most likely, this was not the last Strigoi hunt at all.
As his sister and wife of the man accused of disturbing his grave, Flora Marinescu said: “What did we do? If they’re right, he was already dead. If we’re right, we killed a vampire and saved three lives. … Is that so wrong?”
Now, the former barracks has turned into the National Museum of Ireland. If we are to believe the rumours, the ghosts of war from the former Collins Barracks are said to still linger.
In the old farm for the rich and the powerful in the northern parts of Norway, Løp Gård is said to hold many of their former inhabitants, even in their death.
Was she a Witch or Serial Killer with connection to the Hellfire Club that her legends paint her to be? What was the true story behind Darkey Kelley, said to haunt Dublin as the Green Lady of the Liberties.
After tragedy struck Birthe Svendsdatter, she threw herself from the window and ended up with a limp and a brain injury. Called Halte-Birthe because of her limp, she is said to haunt Fossesholm Manor to this day.
Feeling like a sudden and invisible burden, the life force of wary travellers were long subjected to the terror of the Aufhocker. A creature between the vampire, werewolf and goblin spirits, the legend of the empty road were long haunted by something heavy.
A maid who once worked at the hotel allegedly took her own life at the old Visnes Hotel, deep in the Norwegian fjords. Now it is said she is lingering in the afterlife in the old rooms she once worked in.
An ancient ghost coming from the depths of graves across the nordic countries, the Haugbúi Draugr could be both dangerous and even deadly. Not merely a specter, but the rotten flesh of the dead, the ghosts are remembered as The Walking Dead of the North.
In the dark Hendrick Street in Dublin, there once were two houses said to be some of the most haunted ones in town. Occupied by at least six ghosts, some say they still linger in their old street.
In the pre civil war Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, the mausoleum of W.W Pool is said to be the grave of The Richmond Vampire. A more recent urban legend is now also connected with The Church Hill Tunnel collapse.
In the unassuming looking office building Pacific Isle Mortgage, workers have been complaining about a ghost disturbing their work. Running around the hallways and pranking the employees, the ghosts are said to be of the mischievous sort.
In Pearl City, Hawaii, along the busy stretch of Kamehameha Highway, sits the unassuming office building of Pacific Isle Mortgage. Little do people just pass through that this building is one of the most haunted buildings on Oahu island.
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At first glance, this two-story structure at 379 Kamehameha Highway, Suite B, appears to be just another typical business location, where the daily grind of paperwork and phone calls fills the air. However, those who have spent time within its walls know that something far more unsettling lies beneath the surface.
For years, employees working in this building have reported strange and eerie occurrences that defy explanation. It all began innocuously enough—lights flickering, a door inexplicably swinging shut on its own—but the activity soon escalated, leaving those who work here in a constant state of unease.
One of the most unnerving experiences happened to a woman who was working late one evening. As she sat at her desk, diligently reviewing documents, she felt a strange sensation. At first, it was just a light touch, as if a gentle breeze had brushed past her. But then, she distinctly felt someone playing with her hair, gently tugging at the strands as though a playful child were standing behind her. Heart pounding, she spun around in her chair, only to find the room empty, her hair swaying slightly from the invisible touch.
Echoes of Laughter
The building’s spectral inhabitants are not always so subtle. On more than one occasion, the faint sound of children laughing has echoed through the hallways, a chilling contrast to the otherwise quiet and professional atmosphere. Workers have reported hearing the patter of small footsteps running down the corridors, accompanied by gleeful giggles, yet no children are ever seen. These phantom children seem to delight in playing unseen games, their presence felt but never fully understood.
In one particularly unsettling incident, an employee arrived early to work, only to hear the unmistakable sound of children’s laughter emanating from the second floor. Convinced that she was the first to arrive, she cautiously ascended the stairs, her heart racing with each step. But when she reached the top, the laughter abruptly stopped, leaving behind an eerie silence. The office was as it should be—empty and still, save for the lingering sense that she was not alone.
A Building with a Past?
What could be the source of these paranormal disturbances? Some speculate that the building may have been constructed on land with a history, perhaps the site of a forgotten tragedy or a place where spirits were left restless. There really isn’t much to go on regarding the building’s history. The place itself was built in 1970.
Could it be that where the Pacific Isle Mortgage now stands, used to be a sacred heiau from ancient times? Others believe that the spirits may be tied to the objects or people that have passed through the office over the years, their energies lingering long after they have moved on.
Despite the unnerving experiences, the employees of Pacific Isle Mortgage continue their work, albeit with a heightened awareness of the building’s haunted nature. The playful, and sometimes mischievous, spirits have become an unsettling part of the office’s daily life—a reminder that even in the most mundane places, the supernatural may be closer than we think.
So, the next time you pass by 379 Kamehameha Highway, take a moment to consider the unseen occupants who share this space with the living. Perhaps, if you listen closely, you might even hear the distant echoes of laughter, a reminder that the spirits at Pacific Isle Mortgage are always near, watching and waiting.
Now, the former barracks has turned into the National Museum of Ireland. If we are to believe the rumours, the ghosts of war from the former Collins Barracks are said to still linger.
In the old farm for the rich and the powerful in the northern parts of Norway, Løp Gård is said to hold many of their former inhabitants, even in their death.
Was she a Witch or Serial Killer with connection to the Hellfire Club that her legends paint her to be? What was the true story behind Darkey Kelley, said to haunt Dublin as the Green Lady of the Liberties.
After tragedy struck Birthe Svendsdatter, she threw herself from the window and ended up with a limp and a brain injury. Called Halte-Birthe because of her limp, she is said to haunt Fossesholm Manor to this day.
Feeling like a sudden and invisible burden, the life force of wary travellers were long subjected to the terror of the Aufhocker. A creature between the vampire, werewolf and goblin spirits, the legend of the empty road were long haunted by something heavy.
A maid who once worked at the hotel allegedly took her own life at the old Visnes Hotel, deep in the Norwegian fjords. Now it is said she is lingering in the afterlife in the old rooms she once worked in.
An ancient ghost coming from the depths of graves across the nordic countries, the Haugbúi Draugr could be both dangerous and even deadly. Not merely a specter, but the rotten flesh of the dead, the ghosts are remembered as The Walking Dead of the North.
In the dark Hendrick Street in Dublin, there once were two houses said to be some of the most haunted ones in town. Occupied by at least six ghosts, some say they still linger in their old street.
In the pre civil war Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, the mausoleum of W.W Pool is said to be the grave of The Richmond Vampire. A more recent urban legend is now also connected with The Church Hill Tunnel collapse.
Said to suck the life out of her siblings, the young girl, Nancy Young was believed to be a vampire after she died of consumption in Foster, Rhode Island. To stop the curse of the undead, the family exhumed her body to put it on fire.
When people think of America’s “vampire panics,” their minds often drift to the misty graveyards of rural New England — where names like Mercy Brown and Sarah Tillinghast have secured their place in eerie folklore. But lurking in the shadows of this unsettling chapter of history is a lesser-known, yet equally tragic figure: Nancy Young Foster of Rhode Island.
Though her story didn’t make international headlines like Mercy Brown’s, it’s a haunting reminder of the desperate lengths 19th-century families went to when death came knocking — and refused to leave.
Rhode Island: Along the rocky shores of Rhode Island State, a lot of vampire legends took form, driving people to exhume their dead and beloved from their graves to rid themselves of the curse of the undead they believed sucked the life out of their family.
Consumption and a Curse in Foster, Rhode Island
In the 1800s, consumption, now known as tuberculosis, was ravaging families across New England. In an age before germ theory was understood, when one family member after another fell ill with the same wasting sickness, superstition often filled the void left by medical ignorance. In some rural communities, it was believed that a deceased loved one, buried in the local cemetery, was feeding on the life force of the living from beyond the grave.
She was the oldest daughter of Levi and Anna Young, living together on their farm straddling between Rhode Island and Connecticut, just a few miles from where Sarah Tillinghast farm in Exeter was. She was managing the accounting on their land filled with her siblings and an inherited slave called Elija. They had arrived on the farm in 1806 and produced corn and other produce.
Read More: Check out the story about Sarah Tillinghast that share a very similar story
Nancy, a young woman likely in her late teens or early twenties, reportedly succumbed to tuberculosis on the sixth of April, 1827 and buried her in the newly walled off burial ground close to the farm. She was one of the first in her family to be buried in this lot, but soon the number of grave would grow.
After her death, other members of her family began to exhibit the same harrowing symptoms and now it consumed Nancy’s sister, Almira— persistent coughs, bloodied handkerchiefs, sunken eyes, and a ghostly pallor. Fear took hold as she was slowly withering away from something they didn’t know the cause of.
One day, Levi found his daughter in her room, claiming to feel better. She told him about her seeing Nancy in her dreams at night, telling her they soon would be together. Something about this vision made Levi so concerned he went to the elders for advice. They came to the conclusion that it had to be Nancy, returning from her grave in the night to feed the life out of her sister.
According to many legends, it is said that Nancy came back to haunt more than one of her seven siblings, sucking their blood every night she climbed out of her grave. But it seems like Almira was the only one actually sick in this timeframe and not all of them died of consumption before they took drastic measures to stop the disease from spreading.
A Grim Exhumation
Though details of the exact year and names of those involved have grown hazy with time, local lore holds that Nancy’s body was exhumed by her desperate family and neighbors. Convinced that she was the source of their suffering — a vampire preying on them from the grave — they undertook a grisly ritual to sever the connection.
Leading them was Levi and Nathan Lennox, often called Doc according to some of the online sources. Although appearing in more than one online retelling, there really isn’t much documentation to fact check his existence and is probably just an added detail for the legend. He was, according to the stories, not a doctor, but the locals trusted him knowing about strange things and superstitions, like what to do with an undead.
As was customary in such cases, her heart was likely removed and burned, either at the gravesite or in a nearby blacksmith’s forge, a common element in these folk cures. It was believed that by destroying the heart, the vampire’s hold over the family would be broken, and the sickness would be halted. In some versions of the story, they burned the whole body, scattering the ashes.
What happened to the remains they burned though? As custom often stated, it was common to either mix the ashes into a tonic given to the sick to drink. Some sources claim that the fumes of the smoke coming from her remains were inhaled by the family to cure themselves from the family curse of the vampiric infliction.
The details and confirmation to the details surrounding her exhumation and what happened to her remains are still up for debate.
An Obscure, Enduring Legend
Unlike the Mercy Brown case, Nancy Young Foster’s story wasn’t splashed across the newspapers of New England or abroad. Instead, it lingered quietly in local oral history, passed down in hushed tones and fireside tales.
There are some written accounts of it, one from a newspaper in 1936, from the Pawtuxet Valley Gleaner in 1892 and most of what we know today is from the works of Michael E. Bell who researched the many cases of exhumation based on the vampire legends, written down in his work Food For the Dead: On the Trail of New England’s Vampires.
Now, the legend has taken hold in many variations, and some versions of the legend claim that nothing was done to Nancy, there was no ritual, no staking of the body or burning of the organs. Some say that she is still out there.
But what of Nancy’s siblings? Almira died of tuberculosis the 19th of August in 1828, only 17 year old. Their brother Olney died a couple of years later when he was 29, of what, it doesn’t really say, but it’s likely it was from consumption as well. Many of the Young siblings died young. Huldah died when she was 23 in 1836, Caleb died in 1843 when he was 26 and Hiram in 1854 when he was 35. Two other brothers lived to be older but also succumbed. Only their youngest daughter, Sarah seemed to be the one to escape the illness and lived to an older age.
The Vampire Legacy of Rhode Island
Today, her name surfaces mostly in the footnotes of vampire lore enthusiasts and paranormal historians, but in her time, Nancy’s fate was another somber reminder of how death and superstition wove themselves into the everyday lives of New Englanders.
Foster: The Swamp Meadow Bridge in Foster, Rhode Island. // Source: Basheer Tome/ Wikimedia
Her gravestone is still on her family plot, tipped after all these years and all this ruckus surrounding her burial.
If you ever find yourself wandering the old burial grounds of Foster, Rhode Island, take a moment to listen. In the heavy silence of dusk, with the chill of fog threading through the trees, you might just feel the lingering sorrow of a girl accused of preying on her own blood, buried twice — once in earth, and again beneath the weight of forgotten superstition.
Now, the former barracks has turned into the National Museum of Ireland. If we are to believe the rumours, the ghosts of war from the former Collins Barracks are said to still linger.
In the old farm for the rich and the powerful in the northern parts of Norway, Løp Gård is said to hold many of their former inhabitants, even in their death.
Was she a Witch or Serial Killer with connection to the Hellfire Club that her legends paint her to be? What was the true story behind Darkey Kelley, said to haunt Dublin as the Green Lady of the Liberties.
After tragedy struck Birthe Svendsdatter, she threw herself from the window and ended up with a limp and a brain injury. Called Halte-Birthe because of her limp, she is said to haunt Fossesholm Manor to this day.
Feeling like a sudden and invisible burden, the life force of wary travellers were long subjected to the terror of the Aufhocker. A creature between the vampire, werewolf and goblin spirits, the legend of the empty road were long haunted by something heavy.
A maid who once worked at the hotel allegedly took her own life at the old Visnes Hotel, deep in the Norwegian fjords. Now it is said she is lingering in the afterlife in the old rooms she once worked in.
An ancient ghost coming from the depths of graves across the nordic countries, the Haugbúi Draugr could be both dangerous and even deadly. Not merely a specter, but the rotten flesh of the dead, the ghosts are remembered as The Walking Dead of the North.
In the dark Hendrick Street in Dublin, there once were two houses said to be some of the most haunted ones in town. Occupied by at least six ghosts, some say they still linger in their old street.
In the pre civil war Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, the mausoleum of W.W Pool is said to be the grave of The Richmond Vampire. A more recent urban legend is now also connected with The Church Hill Tunnel collapse.
The Calcasieu Courthouse in Louisiana is said to be haunted by Toni Jo Henry, a notorious figure in local history who was executed there in 1942. Visitors often report unexplained occurrences like strange sounds as well as the smell of burning hair from the way she died.
The Calcasieu Courthouse in Lake Charles, Louisiana, is steeped in history since it was built in 1912. And the old Parish Court House on 1000 Ryan street is also believed to be haunted by the lingering spirit of its most infamous prisoner, Toni Jo Henry. She was the first, and for now, the only female executed by the electric chair in the state.
The Haunted Courthouse: Calcasieu Parish Courthouse in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places. // Source. It is said that the court building is haunted by the murderer, Toni Jo who were put to death by the electric chair: Wikimedia
The Life and Crimes of Toni Jo
In the early 1940s, Toni Jo, a former sex worker, gained national notoriety for her cold-blooded murder of a man named Joseph P. Calloway.
Her real name was Annie Beatrice McQuiston, and she had lived a rough life. After her mother died early on from tuberculosis, she ended up as a prostitute. She started out working in a factory, but after her foreman knew about her mother, fearing her to contaminate other workers,he fired her. When she told her father about what happened, he beat her up and she ended up leaving home in search of a new life.
She fell in love with a man named Claude Henry, or simply Cowboy when she was working in a brothel, and it is said she got clean and wanted a new life in California. He, on the other hand, was a fugitive after killing a cop, awaiting 50 years in jail. She married him, but he was arrested soon after.
Toni Jo wanted to get him out of the Texas jail he was serving time. She teamed up with a homeless man named Arkie and brutally tortured and killed a car salesman named Joseph Calloway who picked them up along the road in Jennings, Louisiana.
They dumped the body in a ditch and went straight to a dive bar the same night. Drunk at a bar they bragged about it and the other people present reported them to the cops at once.
Her charm and beauty couldn’t save her, as it took three grueling trials before a jury finally convicted her of the heinous crime three times. On November 28, 1942, Toni Jo made history as the first and only woman in Louisiana to be executed in the electric chair. And the place it happened was in The Calcasieu Courthouse.
She said in an interview right before her execution to the the American Press’ Eliot Chaze:
“The victim does not return to haunt me. I never think of him. I’ve known all along it would be my life for his. I believe mine is worth as much to me as his was to him. I wonder, though, sometimes, why it’s legal now for another fellow to kill me.”
Outside, thousands of people had gathered. Some to see justice be done as the court had ordered, some supported her, thinking that killing her as well was no justice at all.
The Haunting of Toni Jo
Since her execution, tales of Toni Jo’s restless spirit have permeated the The Calcasieu Courthouse where the execution took place. Employees and visitors alike have reported feeling an unsettling presence, particularly in the areas where she spent her final days. Some have even claimed to smell the distinct and eerie scent of her perfume or even of burning hair, a grim reminder of her tragic end. There are also stories about hearing the sounds of her footsteps or even her dying screams.
The ghost of Toni Jo Henry is said to be mischievous, often disrupting the daily routines of The Calcasieu Courthouse staff. Locked doors that were previously open, office equipment that malfunctions without explanation, and lights that flicker ominously are just a few of the strange occurrences attributed to her. Some workers have even reported hearing soft whispers and feeling an icy chill when passing through certain hallways.
Perhaps some have even seen her as she looked in her final moment in a simple white dress holding a white ivory crucifix. Her long black hair she got much attention for, cut off.
Face of a Killer: The case got a lot of attention by the media. Both for her terrible crime as well for her good looks. Here is a photo of Toni Jo Henry being held for press photographers by Sheriff Henry W. Reid on February 21, 1940. // Source
Toni Jo’s spirit seems determined to leave her mark on the place where she met her fate, making the Calcasieu Courthouse a focal point for ghost hunters and paranormal enthusiasts. The haunted legend of Toni Jo Henry continues to captivate and terrify those who walk the halls of the courthouse, ensuring that her story—and her presence—remain an indelible part of Lake Charles’ dark history.
Long after the vampire manic swept through New England, a grave of a young girl with a curious epitaph became accused of being the grave of a vampire. Now it is said that Nellie Vaughn is haunting her grave now removed because of vandalism, trying to clear her name.
Deep in the woods of West Greenwich, Rhode Island, where the wind moves with a whisper and moss grows thick on broken stones, was a grave marked with one of the eeriest epitaphs in New England:
“I Am Waiting and Watching For You.”
That chilling inscription, paired with the tragic story of a 19-year-old girl named Nellie Vaughn, has birthed decades of eerie folklore, ghost stories, and whispered warnings. But the truth? It’s not about a bloodthirsty vampire rising from her grave—it’s about a girl caught in the shadow of another legend, and a ghost story that may say more about us than about her.
A Girl in a Grave, a Town with a Legacy
Nellie Louisa Vaughn, also spelled Nellie Louisa Vaughan, died in 1889, just 19 years old, and was laid to rest in the Plain Meeting House Cemetery in West Greenwich. At a glance, her story seems tailor-made for gothic folklore: a young woman, tragically taken in the prime of her life, buried beneath a cryptic and spine-tingling epitaph.
But her death was not accompanied by accusations of vampirism. Decades after her death, there were rumors that no plants would grow on her grave and that the grave itself was looking to sink into the ground. Was something crawling in and out? Was it perhaps something supernatural about her death and her grave?
By the 1970s, she was a well known local legend, her grave vandalised and her story made the newspapers.
The Vampire Panic of New England
To understand how this happened, we have to rewind just a few years and drive a few miles east to Exeter, where a young woman named Mercy Brown died of tuberculosis in 1892—just three years after Nellie. Mercy’s family had already lost several members to the same wasting illness. When her brother Edwin began to fall ill, the townspeople demanded action. They exhumed Mercy’s body and found it, preserved in cold storage, with “fresh” blood in the heart.
The solution? They removed the heart and liver, burned them, and fed the ashes to Edwin in a desperate effort to save him. It didn’t work—but the story exploded. It was reported in newspapers across the country and even overseas. Some say Bram Stoker himself read about it while writing Dracula.
That gruesome tale became the definitive American vampire legend. But what does it have to do with Nellie?
The True Vampire Lore: Gravestone of Mercy L. Brown, a key figure in Rhode Island’s vampire legend, who died on January 17, 1892, at the age of 19.
Mistaken Identity—or Manufactured Mystery?
Fast-forward to the mid-to-late 20th century. A curious thing began to happen: Nellie Vaughn’s grave started attracting attention. Visitors began whispering that she, not Mercy, was Rhode Island’s real vampire. Her grave was vandalized. Her name was spoken on ghost tours. Paranormal thrill-seekers claimed to feel her presence, hear phantom whispers, or see flickers of movement in the trees near her resting place.
Some say that she was buried alive, that she got a stake through her heart and that she was one of the undead from the New England Vampire Epidemic.
But here’s the kicker: there is no historical evidence that Nellie was ever considered a vampire by her contemporaries.
Folklorist Michael Bell, author of Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England’s Vampires investigated what really was going on with the lore. Bell has spent decades researching the vampire panic and says Nellie Vaughn’s legend is pure folkloric conflation—a mash-up of Mercy Brown’s well-documented case, Nellie’s proximity in age and location, and the spine-chilling line carved on her gravestone.
There is a story about a teacher at the local high school in Coventry that told about the Mercy Brown legend in the 1960s. But saying nothing about the specific name or grave, the students stumbled across Nellies’ and said it was this. There have been numerous attempts to track down the teacher, but they have been unsuccessful.
From Human Tragedy to Urban Legend
Nellie Vaughn was a real person, not a creature of the night. She died young, likely of pneumonia or a similar illness on 31 March in 1889—tragic, but not supernatural. She was first buried on her family farm, but in October that year, her mother was given permission to move her remains to the public cemetery.
There is not really much to indicate that her family or anyone believed her to be a vampire in that time, and the legends came after. The earliest documentations for the legend are the newspaper articles from the 70s.
The vandalism of her grave, the repeated breaking of her headstone, and the ghost-hunting theatrics are the unfortunate side effects of myth overtaking memory. In the end they had to remove her tombstone to protect it from the vandals and now, she is hidden in an unmarked grave.
Her story, like many ghost tales, is less about the dead and more about the living: our obsession with mystery, our fear of death, and our irresistible urge to turn sorrow into spectacle.
The Ghost of Nellie Vaughn
After the vampire legends started to stop, the ghost legends took over. People have now reported about hearing her voice close to her gravesite close to the large crypt, saying: I am perfectly pleasant.
There has also been said that a woman wearing Victorian clothes has been seen but vanishes. In most stories she is said to say either, I am perfectly pleasant or I am happy.
Ghost tours mention her name. Paranormal groups claim her spirit haunts the woods. Some say that she came back as a ghost in order to clear her name. Or are we still just profiting on the tombstone of a girl that happened to die during a Vampiric Mass Hysteria?
Nellie Vaughn deserves better than the chains of folklore forged around her grave. She was not exhumed. She was not accused. She was not a vampire. But her story reveals something powerful: how easily we can reanimate the past, and how quickly history can become horror.
Because of the vandalism she suffered, the graveyard had to remove her tombstone in the 90s. Now the grass is growing freely and there is no problem with it sinking into the ground. When the people wandering over it stopped, so did the signs of the legend.
Now, the former barracks has turned into the National Museum of Ireland. If we are to believe the rumours, the ghosts of war from the former Collins Barracks are said to still linger.
In the old farm for the rich and the powerful in the northern parts of Norway, Løp Gård is said to hold many of their former inhabitants, even in their death.
Was she a Witch or Serial Killer with connection to the Hellfire Club that her legends paint her to be? What was the true story behind Darkey Kelley, said to haunt Dublin as the Green Lady of the Liberties.
After tragedy struck Birthe Svendsdatter, she threw herself from the window and ended up with a limp and a brain injury. Called Halte-Birthe because of her limp, she is said to haunt Fossesholm Manor to this day.
Feeling like a sudden and invisible burden, the life force of wary travellers were long subjected to the terror of the Aufhocker. A creature between the vampire, werewolf and goblin spirits, the legend of the empty road were long haunted by something heavy.
A maid who once worked at the hotel allegedly took her own life at the old Visnes Hotel, deep in the Norwegian fjords. Now it is said she is lingering in the afterlife in the old rooms she once worked in.
An ancient ghost coming from the depths of graves across the nordic countries, the Haugbúi Draugr could be both dangerous and even deadly. Not merely a specter, but the rotten flesh of the dead, the ghosts are remembered as The Walking Dead of the North.
In the dark Hendrick Street in Dublin, there once were two houses said to be some of the most haunted ones in town. Occupied by at least six ghosts, some say they still linger in their old street.
In the pre civil war Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, the mausoleum of W.W Pool is said to be the grave of The Richmond Vampire. A more recent urban legend is now also connected with The Church Hill Tunnel collapse.
Pale and with blood shot eyes, a group of mysterious women set their foot on Louisiana ground for the first time. Shipped from France, they were the promised girls for the colonial men to be their wives. Who were the Casket Girls? Just innocent women far away from home, or blood thirsty vampires?
In a city saturated with ghost stories, voodoo queens, and haunted mansions, few legends hold as eerie a grip on New Orleans folklore as that of Les Filles à la Cassette — the Casket Girls. Even today, the colonial mail order brides of Louisiana suffer from inaccurate memories and dark legends and it is difficult to separate fact from fiction..
Their tale, with its whiff of vampirism, colonial intrigue, and the restless dead, is as much a part of the French Quarter’s haunted past as the foggy alleys and crumbling tombs of St. Louis Cemetery. And like all great New Orleans ghost stories, it begins with a boat ride and ends with a coffin.
The Casket Girls: The Les Filles à la Cassette as they were originally called, were a group of women shipped to the colonies in order to marry and grow the colony of New France. They got their name from their little trunks they carried all their belonging in. Years later, the supernatural rumors surrounding these women, doesn’t seem to be letting go.
Daughters of the King or the Women Without a Future
The Casket Girls were a group of mail order brides sent from the old country to New France to populate the colonies, severely lacking European females. It was not the first time the country had sent a shipment of women for this purpose. In the early 18th century, when New Orleans was a young, swampy French colony teeming with soldiers, fortune-seekers, and rogues, women were in short supply. In a move both practical and ominous, the French government arranged for young, virtuous women from convents and orphanages to be shipped to Louisiana to marry settlers and help “civilize” the rough colony.
It was not only to get the men a wife, but a white and European wife, because, as Commissary Jean-Baptiste Dubois Duclos said: “[i]f no French women come to Louisiana, the colony would become a colony of mulastres” (people of mixed race).
The Governor of Louisiana hoped for something like the Filles du Roi of Quebec in New France and Jamestown, that had young gentlewomen volunteering to go to colonies to marry the men in exchange for a dowry by the king. These were seen as proper brides and a welcome addition to creating a new world in the colonies. At first at least, and they too would later be remembered as prostitutes by many. Although much needed, the much needed brides are remembered through a thin veil of misogyny and sexism.
The Pelican Girls Comes to Louisiana
When the southern part of North America started to form as a colony, they needed brides for the frontier men here as well. The first shipments to the French colony in Biloxi in Mississippi on the Pelican in 1704. This was the capital of the French owned North America called La Louisiane. Coming on a boat known as Pelican, the woman was later known as: The Pelican Girls. The women there had been chosen for their virtue and piety.
The King’s Daughters: The Arrival of the French Girls at Quebec, 1667.This is the type of group they were hoping to get with The Casket Girls.
Their voyage over the Atlantic held them chained together in the ship’s hold and some never made it across and died of yellow fever. After six months at sea where they stopped at Havana for supplies, twenty three women with their nun chaperones arrived. The women were accompanied by three gray nuns called soeurs grises from the charity hospital La Salpêtrière in Paris.
The women, seeing the harsh conditions and lack of comfort felt tricked and tried to leave. Dirty shacks as houses, deer skin over the windows as curtains and men that were never home. Many of them returned to France, some were denied and forced to marry. In the end, no one wanted to come to Louisiana. They rebelled and refused to cooperate in what was known as the Petticoat Rebellion.
Comfort Women: Engraved by Pierre Dupin ( 1690-1751 ) after Antoine Watteau, this Departure for the Islands represents the deportation of the “comfort women” to America, to whom the legend ironically invites in these terms: “Come on, we must leave without being asked, Darlings,…”
After the women started to demand a decent living, the French men changed their perspective on them, thinking the women difficult because of their demands. They thought about sending a different set of women. For the next shipments to the colonies, the government went to darker places to pick out the brides.
A Strange Cargo from France
Then there was the Casket Girls, and there is little documentation that they ever did exist, at least as to how they are remembered in legend.
258 women were shipped from France to Louisiana between 1719 to 1721. 80 of them came over on La Baleine in 1721 to Mobile bay in Alabama. 29 of them were orphanages, 35 were from poor houses and 194 were convicted criminals from La Force prison. French officials called them “women without futures.” Some of the womens families had even sent them there themselves to be rid of them.
Cassette: 17th century chest, similar to what the Casket Girls must have been carrying. // Source: Courtesy of the Canadian Museum of History.
These young women, the youngest a 12 year old former sex worker in Paris, arrived from France carrying small rectangles that were rather coffin-shaped luggage trunks called cassettes, meant to hold their modest belongings — linens, and clothes, caps, chemise, stockings. Over time, the word cassette became casquette and was translated from French to casket.
Mail order Brides: In 1713 a group of 12 women arrived. They were described as ugly and poor with no linen, clothes or beauty vallet The Casket Girls. Rumours circulated that the captain had raped all of them during their voyage. Only three of them married, and that the future mail order bride should be more beautiful than pretty. Image depicting Women coming to Quebec in 1667, in order to be married to the French Canadian farmers. Jean Talon, intendant of New France, and François de Montmorency-Laval, bishop of Quebec, are waiting for the arrival of the women.
To the lonely, desperate colonists, these girls seemed heaven-sent at first, but then, fear and suspicion crept up on them. As the shipment started to give them other than the “virtuous” like the Pelican Girls, the treatment of them also worsened. To the officials in Louisiana, they were appalled by the backstory of the women they had been sent.
Many complained about their behavior and some men even refused to marry them, although most of The Casket Girls were married within six months of stepping off the ships. Some of the women were also forced to marry. To the more superstitious locals, they seemed to bring with them something… unnatural.
The Casket Girls have later in legends been described as looking more dead than alive when they stepped off the boat. Pale from the lack of sunlight and emancipated after the long months at sea. In the harsh sun, their skin burned quickly and blistered.
The Vampire Rumors Take Root
Soon after the arrival of the Casket Girls, strange happenings reportedly plagued the colony. Having been picked out from prisons, there was certainly an uptick in crime and prostitution from the little female population.
Illness swept through the settlements, livestock died under mysterious circumstances, and tales of bloodless corpses began to make the rounds. Was it the humid and harsh environment of Louisiana, or something darker? Legend spoke of bodies found with their throat ripped open and drained of blood.
The Vampires at the Old Ursuline Convent
The most persistent version of the story of The Casket Girls claims that the cassettes were taken to the Ursuline Convent in the French Quarter of New Orleans, still an outpost of the colony. The building is still on Chartres Street and is the oldest in the Mississippi Valley. On the first floor, there was an orphanage with classrooms and an infirmary, and the nuns lived on the second floor. On the third floor there was an attic and a couple of living quarters for those in need.
Ursuline Nuns: Sister Marie-de-Jesus, “Arrival of the Ursulines and the Sisters of Charity in New France,” Painted in 1928. Photo from the Virtual Museum of Canada.This nun order was the first nun order to set their foot and work on the New France colony.
The Ursuline Order came from Rouen in France, to the marshy frontier of New Orleans, or Nouvelle Orleans as it was then. They were said to chaperone a shipment of The Casket Girls when they arrived, but the order has denied their involvement with the mail order brides.
In 1728, a group of Casket Girls arrived from France. They were taken to the convent for safekeeping until they could find suitable husbands to them, but soon, rumors started to form. Strange sounds were heard at night — rustlings, scratching, and sighs that no mortal throat could make.
The Sealed Attic Mystery
Perhaps the creepiest element of the legend involves the convent’s attic The Casket Girls were said to have been placed in. Some of the nuns were suspicious of the casket-like trunks they traveled in (here the lore has enlarged the trunks). Their suspicion grew when the strange deaths kept happening around the convent. When the nun checked them, the coffins were empty. Some say that the Casket Girls smuggled the vampires to the crescent city of New Orleans in the trunks or that they themselves were the vampires, sleeping in their coffins when the sun was out.
Local lore insists that after unnerving occurrences and when the nuns discovered that the brides were actually vampires, the nuns moved the cassettes — and possibly something else — to the third-floor attic and sealed the shutters tight with silver nails blessed by the Pope himself to keep them trapped. 800 of these nails to be exact. How the Pope heard about this and sent them from the Vatican is never mentioned though.
More Than Vampires Haunting the Convent: In addition to stories about the Casket Girls, there are also stories about ghosts of soldiers from the War of 1812 haunting the former convent as it was used as a hospital then. Ghost children from the time as an orphanage are heard laughing and playing in the garden. Later, bones from children were dug up on the property. // Source
To this day, it’s said the shutters on the attic’s windows remain closed and secured, even through the fiercest hurricanes. Some claim that attempts to open them have been met with bad luck, death, or worse. Occasionally claim to see pale faces or flickering figures at the darkened windows, said to be the spirit of The Casket Girls or perhaps the starved vampires they turned out to be.
And when tourists pass by the convent at night, many report a lingering sense of being watched — or of catching fleeting movement from the sealed windows above or hearing their footsteps from the third floor, following them through the building.
The Undead Legacy of the Casket Girls
In the legends, the caskets are often told to fit the girls themselves, being shipped in lockdown. In truth, these trunks they were named after were small so that the women could carry them themselves. The legend of the Ursuline Convent mostly talks about them arriving in 1728, however, historical records claim that only Ursuline nuns came over to New Orleans that year and that the Casket Girls came as mentioned earlier. New Orleans wasn’t founded as a city until 1718-1721. Some even argue that there were no Casket Girls in New Orleans at all.
In addition, the convent building we see today wasn’t even finished until 1752-1753. So where did the legends come from? Is it simply something made up in the 20th century after the meaning of the words transformed over time? There are, after all, no sources found for the casket girls being vampires until then.
Some speculate that them being vampires, were something that came from the Anne Rice novels about vampires in New Orleans.
But the legend is far from dead. There is also a persistent rumor that a group of ghost hunters did some investigation to the legend in the 70s. They turned up dead the next morning, and all the footage they got from their investigation was destroyed and the evidence for the lingering casket girls having anything to do with it, erased.
New Orleans, a city forever teetering between life and death, has a knack for breathing unholy life into its own legends. Whether born from coincidence, homesick imaginations, or darker forces, the tale of the Casket Girls has never truly been laid to rest.
Now, the former barracks has turned into the National Museum of Ireland. If we are to believe the rumours, the ghosts of war from the former Collins Barracks are said to still linger.
In the old farm for the rich and the powerful in the northern parts of Norway, Løp Gård is said to hold many of their former inhabitants, even in their death.
Was she a Witch or Serial Killer with connection to the Hellfire Club that her legends paint her to be? What was the true story behind Darkey Kelley, said to haunt Dublin as the Green Lady of the Liberties.
After tragedy struck Birthe Svendsdatter, she threw herself from the window and ended up with a limp and a brain injury. Called Halte-Birthe because of her limp, she is said to haunt Fossesholm Manor to this day.
Feeling like a sudden and invisible burden, the life force of wary travellers were long subjected to the terror of the Aufhocker. A creature between the vampire, werewolf and goblin spirits, the legend of the empty road were long haunted by something heavy.
A maid who once worked at the hotel allegedly took her own life at the old Visnes Hotel, deep in the Norwegian fjords. Now it is said she is lingering in the afterlife in the old rooms she once worked in.
An ancient ghost coming from the depths of graves across the nordic countries, the Haugbúi Draugr could be both dangerous and even deadly. Not merely a specter, but the rotten flesh of the dead, the ghosts are remembered as The Walking Dead of the North.
In the dark Hendrick Street in Dublin, there once were two houses said to be some of the most haunted ones in town. Occupied by at least six ghosts, some say they still linger in their old street.
In the pre civil war Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, the mausoleum of W.W Pool is said to be the grave of The Richmond Vampire. A more recent urban legend is now also connected with The Church Hill Tunnel collapse.
For years, the old Joller House that used to be in Stans was plagued by a poltergeist-like haunting that drove an entire family out of the city? What really happened within the walls where the knocking and scratching of the walls seemed to come from the other side?
Tucked away in the Swiss town of Stans, in the canton of Nidwalden, once stood an ordinary-looking residence with an extraordinary, and deeply unsettling, secret. Known today as the Joller House poltergeist, this case remains one of Switzerland’s earliest documented hauntings and one of its most mysterious ones.
Read More: Check out all ghost stories from Switzerland
For a brief, terrifying period in the mid-19th century, the Joller House was the scene of violent, unexplained phenomena that left an entire community shaken and drove an entire family out. What happened in this house said to be haunted by a poltergeist?
The Haunted Joller House: Although it was torn down in 2010, the ghost story of the Joller House still linger in Stans. // Source: Nidwalden State Archives, StANW OD 1-9/4
The Joller Family Backstory
The central figure in this grim account was Melchior Joller (1818-1865), a seemingly respected lawyer and Nidwalden official and state archivist, known for his rationality and standing in the local government pushing for a liberal politic. He was a son of Jokob Joller, a farmer and Catholic churchwarden.
Melchior Joller in his younger years.
Although he is remembered as a stand up person in society, he wasn’t the most successful. He had served a single three-year term as a backbencher in the National Suisse and had run for office in Nidwalden, but was never elected. His liberal newspaper got him in trouble with the Catholic clergy. He also wrote a pamphlet Darstellung selbsterlebter mystischer Erscheinungen (Narrative of personally experienced strange phenomena) where he detailed strange things happening in his house.
In November 1842, he married Karoline Wenz and they had seven children together. The house in question was Joller’s childhood home, built by his grandmother, and he had lived there all of his life except for his years at university, and co-owned it with a sister or sisters. In 1845, he took over the house and farm that his grandmother had built. And his grandmother was no other than Veronika Gut.
Veronika Gut and her Lasting Presence in Stans
Melchior Joller has been remembered for the ghost story happening in his home, but his grandmother was remembered for her life. She was born in 1757 in Stans and was a fierce supporter for the Nidwalden resistance and Swiss cause against the French Helvetic Republic. In 1798 she was already a widow with six children, living on a farm in Spichermatt in Stans. When the conflict escalated to an invasion, she donated 600 guilders to the war chest.
Veronika Gut: Remembered as a powerful woman. Here from Landschaftstheater Ballenberg: Veronika Gut – Uprising in Nidwalden, an open-air theater from 2017.
After the invasion she was arrested and tried as a rebel and fined. She was also sentenced to stand in front of the local church every Sunday with a note saying: “Liar and Disturber of Peace.” She was ordered to wear a black cape for a year, a humiliating thing as respectable women wore white. But she wore it with so much pride that she was told to remove it.
The previous house had been burned down when the French invaded in September 1798. Her 17 year old son, Leonz Joller died in battle as well. In her new house in Nägeligasse in Stans, she established a patriotic party in 1813 after Napoleon lost and held secret meetings in the evenings. Although she remarried to Melchior Odermatt, she was always known by her maiden name.
The Style of House: Photo taken by Jakob Hunziker traveled extensively in Switzerland between 1883 and 1895. This house, looking very similar to the Joller house was in Wolfenschiessen.
Her life was filled with opinions, personal tragedies and political resistance. According to some rumors, it was also said that her spirit lingered in the house she built, and that she would come back in her afterlife with as much force that she had when alive.
The Haunting Starts in the Joller House
In 1860, Joller then 42, his wife, and their children lived in a seemingly pleasant home in Stans he had inherited from his parents, close to Lake Lucerne, unaware of the terror that would soon unfold. They had four sons, Robert (1843), Eduard (1851), Oskar (1853) and Alfred (1858) and their three daughters Emaline (1845), Melanie (1848) and Henrika (1850).
Family Photo: The Joller Family who lived in the Joller House and claimed they were plagued by a poltergeist for years.
They also lived with their servants who according to Joller, were the first to notice strange things happening in the Joller House. Sleeping on the third floor in the attic, she started to hear a knocking on her bed head during the night in fall in 1860. She told Joller about it, thinking it meant someone in the house was about to die.
Joller told to shut up about these things and forgot about it until another experience a few weeks later. A knocking noise also woke up Karoline and their second daughter, Melanie, who shared a bedroom when Joller was away from home on a business trip. According to them, it was as if the knocking was trying to communicate with them and they became frightened. Then a year passed and they thought nothing of it anymore.
In June 1861, nine year old Oscar was nowhere to be found when they called for supper, and they searched for him, finding him unconscious in a room on the third floor they used to store logs. When he woke up, he claimed to have heard three knocks and went to check it out. A door flung open and a formless white shape entered and he passed out.
The following days, the boys sleeping in the bedroom on the second floor above the living room, started complaining about knocking noises. It seemed to come from the floor above them. When they told their father, he even heard something sounding like scratching on the walls, but thought it had to be a cat or a rat making the sound. In his memoir Joller also adds the detail that he had heard this noise many times before in his study, perhaps for the past two years.
That autumn, a maid said she had seen grey shapes appearing and that someone was coming up the stairs at night, walking right past her and into a living room when she was cleaning shoes on the stairs. She had also several times heard her name being called out by no one. Once she also heard something she described as “profoundly disturbing sobs.”
The maid’s stories angered Joller and Karoline told her to not talk about these things to the children, thinking she was too superstitious. 11 year old Henrika even claimed to have seen a small child shortly after when she was doing schoolwork. This frightened her so much she refused to enter the living room.
Joller decided to fire the housemaid that had claimed to see and hear the strange things that October. In his writings he claims it was because they would be able to manage the household themselves, but who knows. Was he angry about her talking about seeing ghosts to his children? Did he try to get her to quit the job because of financial problems? He instead hired a 13 year old girl to replace her, and for a time, it seemed that this had solved the problem except from the odd scratching on the walls and mysterious knocking sounds here and there throughout the house.
The Haunted Summer at the Joller House
Again it came a winter of silence, but the summer of 1862, the paranormal activity hit full force. On 15 of August, Joller went to Lucerne with his wife and Robert at seven in the morning. They left the house and the rest of the children with the 14 year old Melanie and the 13 year old servant girl.
Henrika started to hear a rapping noise and told Melanie and the servant girl. They went to investigate. Oscar and Edward also came trying to coax the spirit to give them a sign. But the children became afraid and fled the house, sitting outside on the front steps.
When they went back in at lunchtime, hungry and rattled, every single cupboard and door had opened when they were outside. They shut them all, bolting what they could. But as soon as they had closed them, they sprung open, including the bolted ones.
A sound of heavy footsteps were heard and the children fled out the house again. As the servant girl looked behind her, she claimed she saw the shape that looked something like a hung sheet in the corner coming towards her before disappearing when she called out with their food they ate outside under a hazel tree. .
The children reached the barn where some laborers were working. They took turns running back to the house to see what was going on, and according to them, a lot was going on. The sound of moving furniture, a voice saying “even if no one is around”, in a sad and groaning voice. A voice singing to a single-tone string was playing Camille’s prayer in Zampa, from the Ferdinand Herold opera from the upstairs living room.
Frightened, they all gathered under a tree when an old woman passed by and asked if this was where Veronika Gut had lived. The children confirmed, and the woman, claiming she had known her when she was alive started to tell them about the tragic story that happened generations ago.
The Story of the Drowned Girls
Three years after the house had burned down, Veronika had heard a mysterious voice, telling her to flee with her family because the French had invaded again in 1801. The French had not actually invaded, but she decided to run away to Engelberg with her children.
Joller’s father was with them initially, but for some reason, they split up and he went to another place with a guide. At Wolfenschiessen there was a narrow footbridge of the Engelberger Aa river the daughters Agatha, Franziska, Josefa and Anna had to cross. Veronika crossed first, then her eldest daughter of 19 followed, then the rest. The bridge collapsed and although Veronika managed to jump to firm ground, all of her daughters fell into the river and drowned.
According to the old woman, she had been the one ringing the bell in St Joder’s chapel after the tragedy. That night they had seen a man dressed in white, carrying a lamp and coming to the chapel, the sign that the bell was about to toll. But when her brother had gone to check, he hadn’t seen anyone and it wasn’t until the morning that they heard about the terrible news.
The Drowned Girls: Engelberger Aa, near Wolfenschiessen, Switzerland were Veronika Gut’s daughters perished. // Source
The old woman continued on her way, and the children had to get back into the house for their next meal. When the maid was preparing for supper in the kitchen, a light was seen coming down the chimney in the evening. The maid explained the sight as an object of little blue flames, exploding inside of the chimney and dowsing the fire with water. This was the final straw and ran off to the annex where the mother found them crying and frightened to death.
When Joller came back home from Lucerne and heard the stories the frightened children told him, he didn’t believe a single word and the children lost faith in him and decided to not tell him anything else, as they thought that he wouldn’t believe them anyway. This would however change when he experienced the so-called haunting himself. Later he had also heard from a relative in Germany that their whole family had experienced something similar the same day.
Joller Starts to Believe Something is Going on
On August 19, he started to hear the rapping noise of the wall, taunting, almost mimicking the noises he made. This made him promise his family he would investigate the matter. The next day he saw the door between the bedroom and kitchen bend before his eyes as the sound of knocking and banging came back. When he raised the catch on the door, it flung open and he saw a dark and almost shapeless form moving from the door to the chimney and disappeared.
The next day he saw what he described as a force as “powerful as a wooden mallet might make when swung with all the strength of a powerful arm.” The doors were slammed and opened with this force, in the kitchen, bottles and other glassware were ringing as being hit by metal. The sounds coming from different parts of the house made it look like it had to be four, maybe five people. His wife and son claimed to have seen a figure and he himself saw something dark shooting from the door to the side of the chimney before disappearing.
He called on his older sister to ask about if she had ever experienced something similar growing up in the house. She claimed she had never heard anything about it. A priest came by and gave the house a blessing and advised him to not let anyone else know about what was happening there. When the priest left, the whole house started up violently all evening.
The gossip about what happened in the Joller house started to spread to the neighbors, claiming that they too could hear all the ruckus. They stopped outside on the road to listen for the noises. The press started writing about it, and Joller felt they were also attacking his character.
Then, on 23 August Joller, his wife and a servant were all touched on the head in a first-floor bedroom. It was like a hand, and when Joller and Caroline grabbed the hand it felt warm and small, like a child’s. By now they had police guards helping them, as they were starting to fear they might get hurt.
On the 16 of September, Joller saw an apple, jumping around and down the stairs, along the corridor and into the kitchen. When picked up and put on the kitchen table, it jumped off and headed for the corridor. It was thrown out of the window by one of the servants, but flew back to the kitchen table before continuing jumping around the house on its own.
On the 6 of October, five different people claimed to have seen a figure on four different occasions. It was described as a woman, bowing her head with a melancholic air about her. Melanie claimed it was the same figure she had encountered and seen on the 10 September.
A Tragic Aftermath
The strain of the haunting proved too much for Joller. Later that month the final straw was drawn for the Joller family. They packed up and left the Joller House forever and moved to Zurich where they rented. No one really knows what happened that made the family decide that enough was enough.
It is also worth noting that he had to appear in court three times on fraud charges together with Robert and they left a huge debt back in Stans. Some speculate that moving his family to Zurich and then to Rome was a financial move to get away from the debt.
In any case, the stress got to him, and contemporary sources claim that his hair turned white almost overnight in Zurich and had a “a peculiar dreamy look about his eyes” according to paranormal societies across Europe who picked up the case.
According to Joller who sold the Joller House to the Lussi family. The house was closed down until spring in 1863, and as far as he knew, nothing out of the ordinary had happened in the house.
A man named Emilio Servadio contacted Emaline in 1938 and interviewed her about the story, and she said that the poltergeist didn’t follow them to their new home. Her father died in 1865 in Rome where he had been hoping to see the pope, exiled and in poverty after he had been ridiculed by family and friends and lost his positions in Switzerland. He was only 47.
Left to Decay: For decades, the Joller house was left empty, gathering dust and legends before being torn down. // Source: Nidwalden State Archives
Explanations and Theories
As with many poltergeist cases, contemporary explanations struggled to make sense of the phenomena. Some suspected that one of the Joller children might be unconsciously causing the disturbances, a theory common to 19th-century poltergeist lore, which often linked such hauntings to pubescent or emotionally distressed young people.
Joller himself maintained that the disturbances were neither tricks nor delusions. His attempts to logically document and combat the events only added to the eerie credibility of the case.
Another theory about who was behind it all was Robert. He came under suspicion, particularly after he was seen talking to an actor in the street in Lucerne, and so did the servant girl. But things happened when neither was present. And for the motive? His family lost close to everything. For what reason would he have done it?
Another theory is Joller himself, driven by financial problems, started the poltergeist rumor himself to drive the price for the house he was about to lose down. A prank that went too far. The problem with this theory though, would he really have tormented his family and household to this extent? Also, to drive down the house price would also backfire when he had to sell it. Fact was, the family ended up suffering tragically from the whole ordeal.
The Spirit of Veronika Gut
But what about the tragedy of Veronika Gut? Could her spirit have something to do with the haunting as many posed as an explanation? Already having lost her eldest son when he was fighting the French, it was a huge family tragedy. Joller himself gave no notion in his sources that he believed this was the story behind the haunting.
There were however several theories that it was earthbound spirits that wanted attention from the family living in the house, and Veronika was one of the main suspects haunting the Joller House. According to this theory, she was in fact a militant nationalist and Joller’s liberal politics was the cause of her haunting and wanting to bring him on a more righteous path in her opinion.
There is also the theory about the haunting being because of how close in age Joller’s daughters started to be to Veronika’s daughters, and that this is what released the haunting.
This seems to be the holding theory of the family itself as well. When a documentary crew went to Rome to meet Riccardo Joller, Melchior’s great-grandson, he showed a spirit drawing og Veronika they had made.
Then there were the secret manuscripts allegedly existing and explaining the whole thing. An editor from Zurich told about her father and how he had talked with some of the great grandchildren of Joller. Apparently, Nicolao Joller, who was Alfred’s grandson, was in possession of a secret manuscript, detailing the exact reason of why the events of the Joller house had taken place. On the cover of the manuscript it read in the local Roman dialect: “for the family only.” But the actual contents of the manuscript were never published publicly, and there is no actual proof that it even exists.
The Suspicion of Teenage Daughters
One part of poltergeist’s hauntings, is the presence of teenage girls, in their early prepubescent. We see it from the Veronika case in Spain or the Enfield poltergeist in England from more modern times to the case of the Fox sisters in America starting the spiritual movement.
Exactly why do so many poltergeist stories have young girls in the midst of it? Some point to sexual exploitation or other dysfunctional dynamics within the household that would solve itself when they left Stans and started their independent lives outside of the family home. This theory is that the supposed poltergeist haunting is some sort of cry for help and is about unsolved trauma that the girls twist into a spiritual haunting to cope with their lives.
The fact is that we simply don’t know what really happened those years inside of the Joller house.
Legacy of the Joller Poltergeist
Today, little remains to mark the site where terror once held sway. The Joller House in Stans was demolished on February 23 in 2010 and a high rise shopping center was built in its place opposite the Länderpark.
Demolition of the Joller House: The haunted house on Veronika-Gut-Weg in Stans was demolished on February 23, 2010./Source: Corinne Glanzmann
Whether the product of unresolved grief, repressed secrets, or something far older and more malevolent, the story of the Joller House poltergeist endures as one of Switzerland’s most unsettling ghostly mysteries — a chilling reminder that even in idyllic mountain towns, darkness can take hold.
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In the shadowy annals of vampire lore, where myths and reality intertwine, one woman’s haunting tale stands out— Sarah Ellen Roberts, an unassuming woman from Blackburn, England, who would become immortalized as Dracula’s Bride in the unlikeliest of places: Pisco, Peru.
In the long, eerie catalog of vampire lore — from the misted Carpathians to the cobbled streets of Whitby — few tales are quite as strange, or as oddly international, as that of Sarah Ellen Roberts, a woman born in Blackburn, England in 1872, who died in obscurity yet rose to legend as Dracula’s Bride in Peru.
On June 9 in 1993, her 80th death anniversary was in Pisco, Peru where she is buried. The locals feared she would return for her vengeance. Pregnant women fled the town, hundreds of anti-vampire kits were sold and street vendors were selling t-shirts and keyrings as television and radio broadcasted it all live. They were all fearing and awaiting the return of Dracula’s bride.
The Life and Sinister Reputation of Sarah Ellen Roberts
Not much is historically documented about Sarah Ellen’s early life in Blackburn. She was born Sarah Ellen Gargett and was born March 6 in 1872 in Burnley. She was one of four children of the coachman, William Gargett and Catherine Abbott.
She grew up in Blackburn, England and married John Pryce Roberts in St. John’s Church in 1892, both working as weavers, raising their two sons, Frank and William born in 1892 and 93 on Bolton Road in Blackburn.
Sara Roberts: Before Sarah became a vampire legend, it seems like she lived a normal working class life in England. Here, a weaver working a mechanical loom in Home mill at the end of 19th century.
Seemingly a humble and innocent life, so how in the world did she end up buried in Peru with a reputation of being a vampire?
John had a brother who left to work as a manager at Nab-lane in a weaving mill in Lima, Peru in 1901. He must have been successful as he traveled first class back. John himself went to Peru at least two times in 1912 and 1913. He brought Sarah with him and left their children in England with Sarah’s aunt, Lily Gargett. But Sarah would never return to England the last trip they took.
On the 9th of June in 1913 she died of unknown cause in Pisco, Peru, 200 km south of Lima. Her obituary in the Northern Daily Telegraph simply read:
On the 9th inst., at Pisco, Peru, Sarah Ellen, the beloved wife of John P. Roberts (formerly of 25 Isherwood-street, Blackburn.) In her 42nd year. Deeply regretted.
John Roberts returned to England and ended his day as a weaver, opening a grocer’s shop he ran until his death in October 1925.
The Legends Of Sarah
As mentioned, little is known about her life except the skeleton we can read about through wedding dates in the church register or the census records. but what lingers in local memory is the rumor that she dabbled in the dark arts. Accusations of witchcraft, murder, and even vampirism followed her like a shadow. Folklore claims she was suspected of being one of the undead — a creature cursed to drain the life from others in order to sustain her own. In Victorian England, where superstition clung tight even as the Industrial Revolution steamed ahead, such rumors could be a death sentence.
According to the rumors, Sarah was sentenced to death in East Lancashire after the accusations of her being a witch, vampire and murderer. Legend has it that, in 1913, she was chained, nailed inside a lead-lined coffin, and left to die. And as she died, she vowed to return for revenge.
England, it is said, refused her burial — no hallowed ground would accept the restless corpse of a vampire. Desperate to find his wife a final resting place, John allegedly wandered the globe for four years with her corpse, encountering refusal after refusal from fearful communities in all of Europe as well as Chile and Argentina. A sailor told him to go to Peru as “everyone knows Peru is the land of witches.”. It wasn’t until he reached Pisco, a small port town in Peru, that he found a people willing — or perhaps sufficiently unaware — to allow her burial. There he bought a tomb for five pound and laid his wife to rest.
Thus, Sarah Ellen was laid to rest in Cementerio General de Pisco, far from the foggy moors of England. But death would not be the end of her story
The Night of Dread and Disappointment
As midnight approached on 9th June 1993, nearly one thousand people gathered around Sarah Ellen’s grave. The date of her resurrection had been from Cuban talk show host, Cristina Saralegui on her program, a self proclaimed vampire specialist.
Cristina Show 1992 Intro:Was this how the world was introduced to the legend of Sarah?
Some came out of morbid curiosity, others driven by genuine dread. As mentioned, pregnant women fled the town as they were afraid that her spirit would be reborn as their child.
The crowd included witch doctors and spiritualists, eager to ward off whatever horror might claw its way from the earth.
The grave was doused with holy water and protective rites were performed, sprinkling flower petals as well as blood on her grave, welcoming her back. Local shamans chanted, crosses were brandished, and prayers filled the night air thick with incense and anticipation as people had armed themselves with crucifixes, holy water, stakes and garlic. Midnight struck, and… nothing.
The grave remained undisturbed. No spectral figure emerged. No pallid hand tore through the soil. The townsfolk, some relieved, others a little disappointed, slowly dispersed into the night and the broadcasters packed up their equipment with little to report on.
Local witch doctors claimed victory over evil; skeptics chalked it up to superstition’s last gasp. In 2007, a massive earthquake hit Peru that killed hundreds and destroyed a lot of the city, including the cemetery that her grave was. Her grave was undamaged and people speculated that this was a sign that she really held powers, even in her grave. Even today, some believe the rituals merely postponed the inevitable, and that Sarah Ellen Roberts still waits.
Fact and fiction blur at the edges of Sarah Ellen’s tale. Historical records of her existence are scant, and little in England officially documents the accusations against her. There were also versions of the legend where she was one of the three “brides of Dracula”, together with the sisters Andrea and Erica. They were executed in Blackburn and buried by John Roberts in Mexico and Hungary or Panama, as the legend varies. This thing comes from the Cuban TV personality. The question is: was the tale even a thing in Peru before this broadcast?
According to this variation, she and her sisters had gone to Transylvania and met Dracula himself who had seduced her and made her his lover, biting her and making her a vampire.
Another tale was that she gave birth to a son as soon as she arrived in Peru and died six days later. After this, stories about a pale foreign woman were seen in town as she fed on the blood of animals and young children. This creature was known as the Vampira de Inglaterra.
Yet in Peru, her grave remains real, and her legend persists.
Over the years, her story has appeared in Peruvian newspapers, paranormal documentaries, and folklore anthologies.
Final Thoughts from the Crypt
In the grand pantheon of vampire legends, Sarah Ellen Roberts stands out not for bloody deeds or midnight prowls, but for the sheer, gothic absurdity of her story: an accused vampire from industrial England buried in coastal Peru, with an apocalyptic prophecy attached for good measure.
Historians have several times debunked the story, although tourism still thrives on it. If it was so that she was convicted for witchcraft, there would only be a prison sentence as well as more press like the last woman convicted for witchcraft in the UK made.
What happened when she died? Was it a traveling man with his wife in a coffin, trying to get her back to England that gave rise to the myths? Was it something that happened before she left for South America that gave a lingering impression on those who crossed her path?
Her grandchildren were unaware of the vampire legends that existed about her until 1993 and that the legend had more with a 60% spike in tourism in the Pisco area after the incident. Some believe that she was no vampire at all, but a saint, leaving her flowers on her grave and asking for miracles today.
And while she didn’t rise in 1993, one can’t help but wonder if perhaps — in true vampiric fashion — she’s just biding her time.
Now, the former barracks has turned into the National Museum of Ireland. If we are to believe the rumours, the ghosts of war from the former Collins Barracks are said to still linger.
In the old farm for the rich and the powerful in the northern parts of Norway, Løp Gård is said to hold many of their former inhabitants, even in their death.
Was she a Witch or Serial Killer with connection to the Hellfire Club that her legends paint her to be? What was the true story behind Darkey Kelley, said to haunt Dublin as the Green Lady of the Liberties.
After tragedy struck Birthe Svendsdatter, she threw herself from the window and ended up with a limp and a brain injury. Called Halte-Birthe because of her limp, she is said to haunt Fossesholm Manor to this day.
Feeling like a sudden and invisible burden, the life force of wary travellers were long subjected to the terror of the Aufhocker. A creature between the vampire, werewolf and goblin spirits, the legend of the empty road were long haunted by something heavy.
A maid who once worked at the hotel allegedly took her own life at the old Visnes Hotel, deep in the Norwegian fjords. Now it is said she is lingering in the afterlife in the old rooms she once worked in.
An ancient ghost coming from the depths of graves across the nordic countries, the Haugbúi Draugr could be both dangerous and even deadly. Not merely a specter, but the rotten flesh of the dead, the ghosts are remembered as The Walking Dead of the North.
In the dark Hendrick Street in Dublin, there once were two houses said to be some of the most haunted ones in town. Occupied by at least six ghosts, some say they still linger in their old street.
In the pre civil war Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, the mausoleum of W.W Pool is said to be the grave of The Richmond Vampire. A more recent urban legend is now also connected with The Church Hill Tunnel collapse.
For decades, sightings of a strange humanoid were seen wandering the Swiss forests in Maules. Clad in camouflage and masked by an antique gas mask, the figure now known as Le Loyon or the Ghost of Maule turned into an urban legend.
Deep in the dense, brooding woods of the Gruyère region in western and French speaking part of Switzerland lies the village of Maules, a sleepy Swiss hamlet surrounded by pastoral hills and ancient forest with around 350 people.
Read More: Check out all ghost stories from Switzerland
For over a decade, locals and hikers whispered uneasily of something else among the trees: a tall, silent figure in a gas mask known only as Le Loyon. Shrouded in mystery and dread, this eerie entity became one of Switzerland’s most unnerving urban legends, known today as The Ghost of Maules.
The Gruyère District in western Switzerland: known for its rolling green hills, medieval towns, and namesake cheese, also holds a darker, more mysterious side. Its dense forests—often cloaked in mist—are steeped in legends passed down through generations. Here is the landscape of the woods near the Château de Gruyères.
A Forest Stalker in Camouflage
Le Loyon was first reported in the early 2000s where most sources state 2003 as the beginning of it all. But there are those who claim that the sightings of Le Loyon goes back to the late 1990s by residents and ramblers who ventured into the Maules woods near Sâles, in the Canton of Fribourg.
Witnesses described the figure as well over six feet tall, clothed in an olive-green or camouflage military-style boilersuit or gimp suit, draped in a dark cloak, and most disturbingly, wearing an antiquated gas mask that obscured the entire head.
This combination of industrial, military, and being faceless struck terror into those who glimpsed it. The mask, resembling those worn in chemical warfare, gave Le Loyon the unsettling appearance of something not entirely human. It never spoke. It never chased. But it watched.
It was most often spotted along a particular forest path known to locals and most often on Sundays. Reports recounted how the figure would appear in the distance and then vanish into the foliage without a trace when spotted, almost as the Ghost of Maule wanted to remain a secret.
In one of the first reported sightings, a local woman claimed to have seen Le Loyon in June, picking flowers on a clearing close to the trail, startled when it was seen and clutching the bouquet of wild flowers. According to the woman, Le Loyon dropped the flowers and fled. Who was the most frightened?
A Community Gripped by Fear by Le Loyon
Although Le Loyon never displayed aggression, fear spread through the area. Parents told children to stay away from the woods. Hikers changed their routes.
For around two decades, there were at least twelve encounters with Le Loyon. As Marianne Descloux said when she encountered Le Loyon: “It was a rainy Sunday. He had a hood, a dark pilgrim and his gas mask. What can go through his head? I don’t know, but it was impressive and unpleasant. I hope I never run into him again.”
The local authorities were contacted several times, but without concrete evidence of a crime, there was little they could do. Some speculated Le Loyon was simply a hermit with a strange sense of fashion. Some believed the figure was a mentally ill recluse; others insisted it was a supernatural being — perhaps a spirit of war, a forest warden cursed by time, or even a personified trauma from Switzerland’s hidden past.
The Photo That Made It Real
Everything changed in 2013 when a photograph of Le Loyon was captured and published in a regional paper, Le Matin. Taken by an anonymous hiker, the image shows the eerie figure standing alone on a woodland path, facing slightly away from the camera, cloaked and masked exactly as described.
‘I came across him near the marches,’ said the unnamed photographer who tracked it down. ‘I approached him up to a dozen metres away.’ ‘He had a military cape, boots and an army gas mask – an antique type, I think. He measured more than 1.90m. He stared at me then turned its back on me and left in silence.’
The photo quickly went viral giving hard proof to a tale many had dismissed as folklore or just seeing things. The local community was now more afraid than ever. Women and children didn’t want to venture into the woodlands by themselves.
Not long after the photo’s release, another strange discovery was made: Le Loyon’s clothes and gas mask were found neatly folded and left in the forest along with a disturbing note.
The Final Message from The Ghost of Maules
According to Le Matin, the note contained a cryptic and bitter farewell titled: “Death Certificate and Testament of the Ghost of Maules” and was first posted on a local bulletin..
In it, the author expressed anger at being hunted by the media and misunderstood by society, claiming that the forest was once a sanctuary — a place of peace — that had been taken from them by fear and judgment. The message hinted at emotional turmoil and deep loneliness but offered no identity. The way it worded the letter also left someone believe it was a suicide note.
Death certificate and testament of the Phantom of Maules (Translated into English from French)
Dear nickname Patrick du Matin, not only are you a moron but you are above all an assassin.
You murdered a very harmless being, who found, in his walks, a real therapy of happiness, a cerebral resourcing allowing him to face the responsibilities and the vicissitudes of his “normal” life and he had some!
The ghost cannot explain this happiness, but you do not seem to know Sacher-Masoch; you will discover that it takes everything to make a world.
Then you are an assassin of freedoms.
To hear you, we find ourselves in the Middle Ages, at the time of the witches. Why don’t you rise up against the little toads, helmets and hoods, dressed in leather, who backfire on their motorcycles, in these same forests, them in violation!
Do they take the time to meditate in front of the little Oratory, to ask for a better world? I terrorize children, make me laugh! Why are they not terrified by the horrors and the crimes, very real these, that they see on television, in the media?
Who is in charge of setting the Tolerance and Freedom button in this company? These beautiful notions benefit more dealers, pimps, burglars, rapists and hooligans!
Switzerland is small, anything that is not in accordance with the garden gnome must be eradicated. I thought, during these years, while I was always left alone, until you, that these feelings were evolving, you give me the opposite proof, unfortunately.
The Phantom disappears, the risk of a Beast hunt is too great. It will come back to haunt the narrow minds of your kind, for ultimately a ghost never dies.
To the amiable walker or mushroomer who will discover my tinsel: Deliver this letter to Mr. Syndic or Vice-Syndic, or even to a journalist, capable however of discussing Freedom and Tolerance.
Since the clothing and note were found, no further sightings of Le Loyon have been reported. The legend, however, has only grown.
Specter or Sad Soul?
To this day, no one knows for sure who — or what — Le Loyon was. Was it a reclusive individual driven to hide behind a mask for personal or psychological reasons? A mentally ill woman, a gigantic man or perhaps a strange survivalist or someone suffering from a skin condition?
Perhaps it was simply a person enjoying dressing up or playing a prank? A 4chan thread on the board /r9k/ appears to have Le Loyon themself posting. The thread was about an anonymous poster who was contemplating doing scary things in public for fun, which ‘Le Loyon’ posted in talking about what they did, Another poster quickly recognised it looking eerily similar to that of Le Loyon legend. If the poster said the truth, ‘Le Loyon’ would simply be a bored person looking for some fun.
As time progressed and the legend grew, some started to believe that the Ghost of Maule could be something far stranger than a person enjoying dressing up. Was it something closer to a ghost, or guardian of the woods, or some sort of other, specter wrapped in humanity’s forgotten horrors?
Now, the former barracks has turned into the National Museum of Ireland. If we are to believe the rumours, the ghosts of war from the former Collins Barracks are said to still linger.
In the old farm for the rich and the powerful in the northern parts of Norway, Løp Gård is said to hold many of their former inhabitants, even in their death.
Was she a Witch or Serial Killer with connection to the Hellfire Club that her legends paint her to be? What was the true story behind Darkey Kelley, said to haunt Dublin as the Green Lady of the Liberties.
After tragedy struck Birthe Svendsdatter, she threw herself from the window and ended up with a limp and a brain injury. Called Halte-Birthe because of her limp, she is said to haunt Fossesholm Manor to this day.
Feeling like a sudden and invisible burden, the life force of wary travellers were long subjected to the terror of the Aufhocker. A creature between the vampire, werewolf and goblin spirits, the legend of the empty road were long haunted by something heavy.
A maid who once worked at the hotel allegedly took her own life at the old Visnes Hotel, deep in the Norwegian fjords. Now it is said she is lingering in the afterlife in the old rooms she once worked in.
An ancient ghost coming from the depths of graves across the nordic countries, the Haugbúi Draugr could be both dangerous and even deadly. Not merely a specter, but the rotten flesh of the dead, the ghosts are remembered as The Walking Dead of the North.
In the dark Hendrick Street in Dublin, there once were two houses said to be some of the most haunted ones in town. Occupied by at least six ghosts, some say they still linger in their old street.
In the pre civil war Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, the mausoleum of W.W Pool is said to be the grave of The Richmond Vampire. A more recent urban legend is now also connected with The Church Hill Tunnel collapse.
An online magazine about the paranormal, haunted and macabre. We collect the ghost stories from all around the world as well as review horror and gothic media.
Now, the former barracks has turned into the National Museum of Ireland. If we are to believe the rumours, the ghosts of war from the former Collins Barracks are said to still linger.
In the old farm for the rich and the powerful in the northern parts of Norway, Løp Gård is said to hold many of their former inhabitants, even in their death.
Was she a Witch or Serial Killer with connection to the Hellfire Club that her legends paint her to be? What was the true story behind Darkey Kelley, said to haunt Dublin as the Green Lady of the Liberties.
After tragedy struck Birthe Svendsdatter, she threw herself from the window and ended up with a limp and a brain injury. Called Halte-Birthe because of her limp, she is said to haunt Fossesholm Manor to this day.
Feeling like a sudden and invisible burden, the life force of wary travellers were long subjected to the terror of the Aufhocker. A creature between the vampire, werewolf and goblin spirits, the legend of the empty road were long haunted by something heavy.
Said to appear in the mirror of his favorite place for a pint in Dublin, the ghost of James Joyce is rumored to still linger in Davy Byrne’s Pub.
A maid who once worked at the hotel allegedly took her own life at the old Visnes Hotel, deep in the Norwegian fjords. Now it is said she is lingering in the afterlife in the old rooms she once worked in.
A church with the sinister name The Black Church in Dublin has a legend that claims if you follow the ritual, you will be able to summon the devil.
An ancient ghost coming from the depths of graves across the nordic countries, the Haugbúi Draugr could be both dangerous and even deadly. Not merely a specter, but the rotten flesh of the dead, the ghosts are remembered as The Walking Dead of the North.
In the dark Hendrick Street in Dublin, there once were two houses said to be some of the most haunted ones in town. Occupied by at least six ghosts, some say they still linger in their old street.
In the pre civil war Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, the mausoleum of W.W Pool is said to be the grave of The Richmond Vampire. A more recent urban legend is now also connected with The Church Hill Tunnel collapse.
Said to be haunted by headless prisoners who tried to capture Dublin Castle, this storied building has shadows lingering in the corners.
