Closer to North Korea than to Seoul, the Yeonpyeong Island has experienced many times the horrors of the war, even in the later years. Legends of the island being hunted are spreading through the locals and visitors alike of the people that have lost their life to it.
Korea has seen warfare throughout its time and the last one, The Korean War is technically not even over yet since it started in 1950 between the two Korean countries that started in a civil war and ended up as two fighting nations.
Near the border of the two Koreas, north and south, on the 38th parallel, there is an island called Yeonpyeong Island that is to this day disputed between the two parties. Although claimed by both, it is considered as part of and inhabited by South Koreans, but the island itself is so close to the North Korean border that you can almost see it. This has made the island exposed for North Korean retaliation and its bombs.
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Only a two hour ferry ride from Incheon, Seoul where the ongoing Korean war can seem like a strange fever dream, you can experience how close some of the residents of the island are to the war and how it still affects the people living there. And also catch a glimpse of the ghosts of those who succumbed to it as well?
The Bombardment of Yeonpyeong Island
This island has also taken its share of bombings, and military attacks since the war started in 1950. The last big attack happened on November 23th in 2010 and led to the islanders having to flee their home island temporarily and got a lot of international attention as the world condemned the action of North Korea.
The North Korean military bombarded the island where the disputed land was guarded by South Korean forces, ending up hitting civilians as well as military people, killing 4 and injuring 19 people. This incident is one of the things that are said to have escalated the tension on the Korean Peninsula in the later years.
After this, many chose to never return and would rather stay on the South Korean mainland after the attacks for a long time, creating a sort of ghost town feeling to the once bustling fishing community. And although by now most have returned, there are still those who never looked back to their original home.
The Hauntings of Yeonpyeong Island
The island is believed to be a place of spirits of both lost and vengeful ones according to the locals that are haunting the island.
The island tops many of the lists of articles like: Most Haunted in Korea and the likes. Although this claim is mostly found on websites in English, not so much on the Korean ones.
After terrible tragedies, stories of ghosts often linger hauntingly at the same place. This is the case of Jeju Island, a place that experienced a horrible massacre the place is still recovering from.
In Korea, the self-governing Jeju island is probably most known to be a great vacation place with its beautiful coastline and lush green scenery. It also houses the biggest mountain in South Korea, Hallasan.
But the light and lush place has its dark and horrible past. The Jeju massacre from 1948 to 1949, is one of the horrible memories the island holds when in an anti communist campaign the Korean army massacred a tenth of the Islands population.
The Jeju Uprising
The Korean peninsula was in an uproar during the Korean war and loyalty to the different regimes were in black and white. The Jeju Uprising was also later known as April 3. Incident (제주 4·3 사건)
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A separatist movement of the communists broke out on the island and the South Korean army struck hard on it right before the outbreak of the Korean War. The government ordered a massacre and although not a definite number has been provided the massacre itself resulted in around 30 000 people dying. That is around 10 % of the Jeju population that were slaughtered in fear of them being for the communists.
However, the guilt by association sentiment was strong in the Korean army and both innocent and children were killed and harmed during this massacre. And in the aftermath of the massacre several people died by their wounds, starvation or exposure seeing that entire villages were burned to the ground.
The Haunting Aftermath of the Jeju Massacre
After this horrible tragedy, the islanders claim that the place is haunted by the people that were massacred as they never got peace, justice or even recovered the bodies in some cases.
Go Wan-soon was one of the survivors of the massacre at just nine years old. Even she remembers the stories of ghosts that the survivors allegedly encountered after the massacre:
“People said they saw a white skirt, a white top – there were ghosts,” she said. “I could not go to some places, I was so scared.” She told Asian Times in 2018.
Caves and popular hiking spots are said to be places where the ghosts still roam those who were killed.
Jeju Uprising: Jeju citizens awaiting execution in May 1948.//Source.
Why especially are these places claimed to be haunted? Perhaps the mass grave next to Jeju’s airport can hold the answer as 388 bodies were uncovered in this grave far from everything else as recent as in 2008.
Secluded places where mass graves of the killed people sometimes come to light even in the later years, showing just how raw and huge the collective trauma of the massacre still are to the locals.
Places like the Saebyeol Oreum Circus are said to be haunted, although perhaps because of its abandoned eeri aura or perhaps because of the massacre itself.
When tragedy and atrocities such as the Jeju massacre happens, the aftermath of it is often explained through paranormal phenomena. The same can be said of the Gyeongsan Abandoned Cobalt Mine massacre from the same time that also suffers from legends of ghosts and hauntings in its later years.
One can wonder if it is the dead or the survivors that are not able to move on from the tragedy.
Treasures hidden in the caves, a restless ghost of a pirate and an endless murder mystery location: The Burgh Island is continuing to serve as a place of mystery to the visitors.
“He thought: Peaceful sound. Peaceful place…. He thought: Best of an island is once you get there—you can’t go any farther … you’ve come to the end of things…. He knew, suddenly, that he didn’t want to leave the island.” — Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None
Burgh Island is today most known through Agatha Christie’s murder mystery novel “And Then There Were None’ and tells the story of a group of people stranded on an island with a murderer in their midst. And considering the story of the Island on the English coast, it is understandable it had to be this place that inspired the crime queen herself.
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It is a tidal island on the coast of South Devon with two of the most famous buildings being the Art Deco Burgh Island Hotel and the pub, the Pilchard Inn. Now it is a cozy place to enjoy the fresh air of the coast, have a few beer and solve the murder mystery evenings the hotel puts on, but it didn’t always use to be a nice getaway place for the bored.
The Pirate Hideout
In the 14th century the coast of Devon was infamous for its piracy. It was great to use as a hideout place as the island is cut off by the tide twice a day and was an easy place to defend against those trying to bring the pirates to justice.
Today the island is known for hosting extravagant guests where the likes of The Beatles, Agatha Christie and Churchill have stayed. The building that stands today was built in 1929, but the history of this inn comes from a much more scandalous and illegal beginning.
Tom Crocker was a famous pirate known to have used the Pilchard Inn Pub as well as the island’s southern caves as a hideout for his smuggling business when the island was known as Burr Island.
The Pirate Ghost
But Crocker’s days as a pirate finally came to an end and he was hanged in the third week of August in 1395, some setting it to the 14th or the 15th of August, but the year however is not confirmed and it could be much later.
This was not the end of his time on the island though. He is said to haunt the Pilchard Inn Pub where he used to spend his time when he was not at sea. Some even say this is the place he died as he was shot. However which year or of what killed him, it is here he makes his appearance on the anniversary of his death.
He has been seen rattling doors and walking all over the island, supposedly to search for his hidden treasures, and who knows, perhaps there really is one about?
On the fortess island outside of Stavern in Norway as well as one of the rooms at the historic Hotel Wassilioff, it is said that the ghost of The Grey Lady of Stavern is haunting, calling the name of her former lover that left her.
“Peter!
……..Peeeeter!”
The wailing screams echoes through the corridors of hotel Wassilioff in Stavern, Norway in the dead of night. But when people peek their head out to look, there is no one there. The same can be heard at the coastal fortress on the Citadell island were a shadowy figure has been spotted. The same echo of a voice calling after the same person. Peter.
Stavern is a quaint and picturesque summer town in east of Norway by the coast. Several make it their vacation place during the summer times with the cute medieval architecture and history and the white beaches. But during the night, the old and not so pretty side of the seaside town start to appear through the cracks.
The Quiet Seaside City: Stavern is a popular summer destination as it is right by the beautiful coast of Eastern Norway. View on Skagerrak from Stavern, Norway//Source: wikimedia
The old seaside city is filled with ghost stories about drowned sailors and lost shipwrecks next to happy summer days by the shore, picking seashells and taking a swim.The most famous ghost story is the tragic tale of the Grey Lady of Stavern or Den Grå Damen in Norwegian.
The haunting allegedly happens at the historic Hotel Wassilioff right by the seaside just around the corner from the stature of Tordenskiold. The hotel today was founded in 1844, around a century after this tragic event is said to have happened. If it used to operate as a hotel before this though, is unclear.
Read More: All of the ghost stories from Haunted Hotels across the world
But who was the Grey Lady of Stavern when she was alive, and who was this Peter, that she keeps calling for, even in the afterlife?
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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