In a former foundry village at Bærums Verk in Norway, they have experienced strange hauntings since the the founder of the place died there. Phones calls in the dead of the night and ghostly figures have been spotted for a long time.
Norway is perhaps remembered as two things. Either as the savage Vikings, plundering Europe and beyond, or they are perhaps remembered as this rich oil country of today. Most often, perhaps not remembered at all, were it sits at the edge of the world. But few people know of the dark times in between.
It was only in the 50’s and 60’s that the country grew in wealth, and before that, it was one of Europe poorest countries. So centuries with coldness, starvation and ghosts. The folk lore is still thriving and the ghosts of the past, lurking around the corners, in between the walls, and inside the houses and homes.
On a very un-scary place like Bærums Verk, a village east in Norway, the quaint streets and not the most busy city life in Oslo not far from it, we find one of the country’s most haunted place along the river and mountains were it is built. Between the old wooden walls of the ancient houses creeks the history from the many lives that walked through this place since it was first built in the 1600s when it was found iron ore there.
The ghostly tales of the Bærums Verk are many and it’s supposedly haunted by more than one ghost. According to the stories, dogs refuse to go into certain rooms in the old buildings. There are steps and doors creaking when no one is using them. Doors that never wants to open, even when you have the key.
Read More: All our ghost stories about Haunted Towns from around the world.
The Times Were Changing
Norway is perhaps not very known for their factory and mining, but at the birth of the industrial revolution, the tall mountains were hacked into and the gushing waterfalls harvested to use as energy. The grouping of people changes from being a small farming country to taking its first steps into the modern world.
Going from being a country spread out on small farms and along the coast, they grouped together inland to work the land, hack into the mountains and train the water to make their bidding.
Read More: More ghost stories from Norway
Some of these communities from the start of the industrial revolution are alive and thriving today, like at Bærums Verk were people still live and work, long after the iron foundry the settlement was founded on closed. And so does the ghosts of the past as well if we are to believe the rumors.
So who is the one said to haunt the entire place? One of the supposed ghosts said to still roam the place has been there from the very beginning.
The legend wants to tell of the former owner of Bærums Verk, Conrad Clausen haunts the street called Verksgata. At least he is one of the ghosts, and according to the workers and people living there, there are a lot of them.
But back to Conrad. He was only a young guy when the whole place fell on his shoulders. He took over the iron foundry in 1773 at 18 years old. In those time, small villages for the workers was often built around foundry like what happened at Bærums Verk, a lot of the little villages still standing to this day.
Clausen gave all of his life and his energy to the place were he lived and worked. Even if his life was going to be a very short one. Only at the age of 31 he died in his bedroom. The same bedroom now operating as a meeting room for people working there today, now that the foundry is turned into a shopping mall.
Ghosts on the Phones at Bærums Verk
Typical, isn’t it? A young man dies too soon, steps in the night, creaking of the doors and sceptical dogs to watch over his life work. But perhaps the strangest with the haunting must be the phones acting up at Bærums Verk.
It is the middle of the night, a very dark and desolate nordic night. No one is at work at Bærums Verk yet, no one is there to answer the phones. No one is up to make a call to them. But still, the phones are ringing. The people employed in the offices of the shopping mall, where Clausen lived, claims that phones calls constantly during the night. To the same time, quarter past twelve or quarter past one. Depending if it is summer- or winter saving time.
It’s rumored that if you try to take the ghostly phone call it will only answer with a strange beeping sound. Straight after the phone in the room next to will start calling. And then in the room next again. That is how it continues through the whole building during the nights.
Read also: Another place that are haunted by phones ringing is: The Haunted Babenhausen Kaserne
Why haven’t the people working at Bærums Verk just called the telephone company to have it fixed? Answer is, they have, several times but no one seems to be able to figure it out. Who is making the calls and how is it possible to not trace them? The leader of the shopping mall, Gry Skådinn told the local newspaper that it was exactly what the workers at the mall tried to and they have tried to get to the bottom of this mystery for ages.
“When we get into work in the morning, the whole switchboard is blinking away.”
But when the telephone company comes to fix the whole thing and explain it all, only more questions rose.
“Before I started here, we found that the phone signals came from the lunch rooms. That was back in the day the bedroom of Conrad Clausen, and were he died,” Skådinn says as if that is the final answer to this mystery and the only explanation.
The Woman in Green at the Tavern
The ghost of Conrad Carlsen is not the only reported ghost, haunting this settlement of iron workers. On the oldest tavern in the country found at Bærums Verk, there are also been reported many cases of unusual happenings. Bærums verk has become somewhat of a cultural place to preserve olden times that used to be. That is what the people planned for at least when working at the tavern as they served recipes based on old ones and classical Norwegian food.
Perhaps this nostalgic sentiment and keeping the place frozen in time is contributing keeping the ghosts alive here. The buildings at Bærums Verk are protected and will remain as part of the cultural heritage, the smell of the food coming from the tavern, perhaps similar the one the ghosts used to eat when they themselves were alive. In any case, the strange occurrences, like the with the phones to the malls is happening all over the settlement.
So many instances of these strange occurrences have happened in fact that several journalists, ghost tourists, paranormal investigators, mediums and the ghost hunter tv-show in Norway stopped by at Bærums Verk to get a glimpse of it. Most comes back with claims they did.
At the old tavern for instance at Bærums Verk, the staff as well as the owners have had trouble dealing with a green clothed woman, a very loaded imagery in Norwegian culture that keep popping up in folklore and fairy-tales.
“It’s just not practical working in the oldest tavern when a ghost in green clothes just walks around,” the owner, Ulla Laycock told the local newspaper.
Laycock and her husband found a way for this impractical haunting work for their advantage though, as they published their book on the persistent hauntings of the place.
The local history team have identified the woman in green as a woman called Anna Paulsdatter Vogt Krefting that died in 1766 after running the foundry for more than 50 years. Perhaps she as well put too much energy into the place to let it go after her death.
According to the legend about the ghost of the woman in green though, the people working in the tavern claim that the ghost of Anna Krefting still walks among the guests of the tavern as it fits with her period clothes she’s been observed in.
Living With the Ghosts
“There is a lot in the walls in this place, and it is important to take care of,” the writer of the book, Caroline Paulsberg says about the supposed haunting at Bærums Verk.
It is however interesting how the locals and workers feel about living in the country’s most haunted place, or rather, haunted village. On their own facebook group, they claim that, yes, it is haunted, but they would like to keep them around at Bærums Verk as if they ear a sense of pride of the ghosts still lingering in the small and old buildings. Here, everything is going to be preserved, even the ghosts.
Most of people around haunted places would perhaps not feel the same way at those at Bærums Verk. But according to them, the ghosts are only nice, and they have the same right to be their as the living, having once themselves lived and worked there.
More like this
Newest Posts
- The Cursed Forest and Poltergeist of Finnskogen at Välgunaho
- Alukah: The Vampire of Ancient Text and Folklore
- The Haunted National Museum of Ireland: Ghosts of Collins Barracks
- The Ghosts of Løp Gård North of the Veil
- Darkey Kelly: The Green Lady of the Liberties
- The Limping Ghost of Fossesholm
- The Aufhocker: The Heavy Vampiric Spirit of Germany
- Davy Byrne’s Pub: The Ghost of James Joyce Still Raising a Glass
- The Tragic Ghost of the Maid Haunting Visnes Hotel
- The Black Church: Where the Devil Waits in Dublin
- The Nordic Grave Dwelling Haugbúi Draugr (ᛏᚱᛅᚢᚴᛦ)
- The Haunting of Hendrick Street: Dublin’s Most Cursed Corner
