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The Legend of D’Souza Chawl

A chawl which is a Marathi word: चाळ) is a type of residential building found in western India. Usually low quality housing and chawls are generally associated with poverty or perhaps now with the burgeoning middle-class communities. The first chawls were constructed in the early 1700s, as housing for industrial workers, especially around the textile mills.

**Indian Chawls:** This type of housing is known around Mumbai as a chawl, known for their simple community based structures around the textile mills and throughout the city. // Source: Adam Cohn/Flickr

D’Souza Chawl has a long and storied history dating back to colonial times in the now wealthiest city in India. Built in the early 1900s, the chawl was originally home to migrant workers in the mills and the likes in Mumbai. With its seemingly unremarkable three-storied building housings, you wouldn’t necessarily believe this also houses one of the more well known paranormal spots as well.

Haunting Experiences of Residents and Visitors

Over the years, the community grew, and many more families moved in. However, over time, the chawl began to develop a reputation for being a hub of supernatural activity. The residents of D’Souza Chawl have reported experiencing a range of strange and unexplained occurrences over the years.

Visitors to the area as well as the residents have also reported feeling a sense of unease or discomfort when visiting the neighborhood. Some of the most common experiences reported include hearing footsteps in empty hallways, seeing apparitions, and feeling a sudden drop in temperature. Many people have also reported feeling as though they are being watched or followed when walking through the chawl. But who is haunting this neighborhood?

The Haunted Well at D’Souza Chawl

Once, the community living in D’Souza Chawl dug up a well in the Chawl as the residents were lacking water resources when they found underground water in the center of the Chawl. The well was not secured though with no boundaries to it, making it dangerous,

According to the ghost story told in the neighborhood, a woman living in D’Souza Chawl went by herself to get water in the well. She was thirsty in the dark night and fell into its depths. She cried for help the whole night as she tried to get out from the dark and cold well, but ended up drowning before anyone even noticed she was gone.

Read Also: Banchō Sarayashiki — the Ghost of Okiku who also was drowned in a well.

The next day the drowned lady was found and the well was sealed to prevent further tragic accidents. The locals didn’t want to use the well after this either, and they tried to move on from the event.

Although her family are said to have left the chawl quickly after, her spirit lingered. Today, people still hear the lady’s scream close to the well and think that her spirit is now haunting the residential area. There are also people reporting about seeing a woman’s figure that just disappears into thin air.

Although people claim her spirit is harmless and that she has never harmed anyone, people are advised to stay away at night.

The Ghost of the Guard

When the incident with the well in D’Souza Chawl is said to have happened though is uncertain. Also who she was, and where her family went. The details are hazy, but not as hazy as the other ghost lingering.

It is also said that a guard is haunting the Chawl at night. People spot him near one of the trees where he appears at night to guard the area. He as well as the woman supposed to be haunting the D’Souza Chawl, remain nameless for the rest of eternity.

Is D’Souza Chawl Really Haunted?

While many people have reported experiencing strange occurrences in the area, there is no concrete evidence to suggest that these experiences are the result of supernatural activity.

However, it is clear that the stories surrounding D’Souza Chawl have captured the imaginations of many, and have become a well known story in Mumbai, as well as India. Whether or not the chawl is truly haunted remains a mystery, but there is no denying that it is a fascinating and intriguing place to explore.

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References:

D’Souza Chawl, the Most Haunted Place in Mumbai – HubPages

D’Souza chawl – Most Haunted Place in Mumbai

India’s Most Haunted: D’Souza Chawl in Mahim | India.com

Chawl – Wikipedia What is the mystery of D’Souza Chawl in Mumbai? – Quora

The Maid Elise and Tordenskiold the National Hero

The Grey Lady of Stavern was supposedly a maid named Elise fell in love with the sea hero Peter Wessel (1690-1720), he is better known in Scandinavian circles as Tordenskiold, a very well known figure in Norwegian history, although the myths about him sometimes overshadowed the truth.

**Tordenskiold**: A Norwegian war hero at sea, it is believed that the ghost is calling out his name after he left the Grey Lady of Stavern.

A true patriot and a war hero that fought many battles for Denmark-Norway against Sweden. Tordenskiold is even mentioned in the national anthem they still sing today and his monument is standing in Stavern. However this is not the whole story as he was grealy showed in a much better light than reality. For one, he had economic interests in the slave trade and worked on a slave ship when he was a teenager. He was also a notorious womanizer that left many women in a deep predicament.

Elise on the other hand was only eighteen years old when she met Tordenskiold and fell for his charm. When people started calling her Elise is unclear though, as there is no last name and there are many variations to the legend. In some version of the story she was already engaged with a lieutenant named Heber, making her relationship with Tordenskiold even more dramatic.

As the story of the Grey Lady of Stavern goes, he seduced the young maid and brought her to room 216 on the coastal hotel, now called Hotel Wassilioff, or at least whatever establishment there was there at the time in the early 1700s.

Tordenskiold didn’t really come from Stavern, but lived there for a period when he worked for the navy. They were stationed in a commander’s building that are still standing today, and the ships used in the sea battles often passed by the Stavern and the fortress there was an important base.

Their romance was however short lived and superficial. When Elise became pregnant, he abandoned her in Stavern and sailed his way to glory. He died however shortly after, only 30 years old in a duel.

The Well at Citadell Island

As said, the Hotel Wassilioff didn’t open until 1844, long after this story takes place, and the narrative that they spent any time there is slim, as what the building was used to before that is unclear. But the original legend about the Grey Lady of Stavern doesn’t even mention the hotel, but it does mention the fortress on the small island just outside of the city.

Read Also: Does the concept of haunted islands seem intriguing to you? Read our ghost stories set on Haunted Islands from all over the world.

Right across the harbour of Stavern city there is a military fort built to protect from the Swedes during the Scanian War. You can see it from the windows of Hotel Wassilioff. It leads over to the small island, connected to the mainland. Today it’s only a tourist attraction, as well as Elise’s final resting place.

**Citadell Island:** The place Elise is said to have gone to drown herself and haunts, roaming the old fortress.//Photo credit: Jørn Tore Røed / visitvestfold.com/flickr

According to the legend, Elise was desperate, despaired and abandoned and went out to this island. Full of grief and with no hope she was driven to suicide and drowned herself out on Citadell island in a well there and rose from the dead as Grey Lady of Stavern.

Elise probably did what she did to escape the place she was trapped in. But perhaps she didn’t intend to be roaming along the fortress and in the hotel corridors, looking for the man leaving her for the rest of eternity.

Read Also: Banchō Sarayashiki — the Ghost of Okiku who also was drowned in a well.

Whether this was true is unclear, but the drowning in the well is also connected to Heber, who had many tragic legends around himself, even outside the legend of Grey Lady of Stavern. One was that he killed his fiance because he suspected a relationship with Tordenskiold another about his widow who drowned herself in the well because she had too many kids and no pension on October 11th in 1746.

The Grey Lady of Stavern at the Haunted Hotel

Back to Hotel Wassilioff, the place most people claim to have seen the Grey Lady of Stavern, even though the historic reasoning for this is weak. How do they know that it is the Grey Lady of Stavern haunting the rooms and corridors of the hotel?

Guests at the hotel can wake up to nightly callings from the maid, screaming the name of the lover who left her in a situation so dire she couldn’t live with it. As mention, it is especially outside or inside the room 216 her desperate wailing has been heard.

In addition to the nightly terror of a woman screaming there are reports of something moving over the floor inside of the room, like there is furniture that being moved around even if there is no one checked into it.

When the hotel management were asked about the alleged haunting, they confirmed that there was something going on and had this to say about it:

“One guest asked in the end to be given another room, that is how creepy it was with all the sounds,” hotel management tells to a national newspaper when they interviewed about the legend of the Grey Lady of Stavern.

The Woman in Grey in the Realm of Fables

The legend of the Grey Lady of Stavern has today many variants and it is difficult to differentiate the original legend from the many plays and writings about it. Perhaps the best known version of it from a summer play Klar til å Vende (Ready to Turn) by Herman Wildenvey from 1938. He explained the ghost haunting the place like this:

“She still lives in the realms of fables, sometimes seen by the naked eye here, a woman clad in grey.”

Read Also: There are many stories about ghost dressed in grey. Some of the ghost stories featuring these Ladies in Grey are: Hvítárnes — The Haunted Hut on Iceland, Janet Douglas in Edinburgh Castle Ghosts and Legends or the Lady in Grey at The Haunted Vicarage — Sweden’s most ghostly crowded house.

If her name really was Elise, if she really were jilted by the war hero or drowned herself, the ghost story about the Grey Lady of Stavern continues to cast a shadow on the bright summer nights. Gliding along the fortress on the island, calling out and looking for the one who tricked her, tourist thinking they will enjoy the blue sea can observe Grey Lady of Stavern as a slim grey figure that never found rest. A weeping woman in a grey dress.