In a remote area in Iceland, the Daníelspyttur is named after a boy who once took off from work and drowned in the water. Ever since, people have thought it haunted as well as the surrounding area.
Below the farm Gnúpafell in Eyjafjörður is a flat land that reaches down to the bank of the Eyjafjörður River. It is called Gnúpufellsmýri, in which there are in some places small pools or pits, some abysses. One of these pools is called Daníelspyttur and is said to be haunted by a man that once drowned in it. .
Read more: Check out all ghost stories fromIceland
A man was named Daníel and lived by the fjord. He was described as being mentally ill and sometimes had fits of rage, and then he had to be watched. One spring he was working for Ólafur Guðmundsson in Hleiðargarður. One day, a fit of rage came over him, he grabbed a large goad, or some sort of pointed rod, and started running out and down the field.
Ólafur asked Jón Jóhannesson to give chase to Daníel. He saw that there were horses on the islets. It seemed to him likely that Daníel was planning to cross the Eyjafjörður River for some reason. Jón hurried towards the horses. There were only two of them, a good gray horse and a full-grown animal. The other was a mare, who seemed lazy and weak. Jón intended to take the mare, but she turned away badly and tried to both bite and beat him. On the other hand, the horse Snarfari, who stood still and let himself be bridle without resistance, moved.
Daniel had forded the river when Jón Jóhannesson caught up to him. When he saw that he was being pursued, he began to run down the banks. He held the goad on his shoulder. He suddenly turned sideways into the swamp, where there was one of those deep pits. He took off in the air and jumped into the abyss and immediately disappeared under the surface of the water.
When Jón arrived at the bank, Daniel was shooting up at the surface for the first time, but it was too late and he drowned and his body sank and disappeared. Since then it has been called Daníelspyttur and is believed to be haunted as well as the area around Gnúpufell. They say that they sometimes see him here and there, wandering with his spear.
Others who have fallen into the water has also been seen shooting up on the surface as Daniel did, three times before they also drown, almost if something is dragging them down.
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.
Old cities carry old ghost stories, and Bern in Switzerland is no exception. From the old buildings filled with history to the depth of the Aare river, here are some of the most haunted places in Bern.
Centuries after the vampire panic starting with the death of Petar Blagojević, another vampire was said to haunt the Serbian village, Kisiljevo. Who was Ruža Vlajna and what happened to her?
Said to be the mass burial place for the dead Irish Independence rebels from 1798, the Croppie’s Acre in Dublin is said to be haunted by their lingering souls.
Once a green paradise, the legend says the fairies protected the people of Val Gerina valley in the Swiss alps. Driven by greed to impress a woman however, the son meant to continue the tradition and friendship with the fairies, brought it all down.
Haunted by its former Fellows, Trinity College in Dublin is said to be filled with eerie spirits where even the bell tolls after dark when the shadows take over campus.
A true story morphed into a fairytale, the life and death of the French Countess Marie Louise St. Simon-Montleart has become the stuff of legends. Buried in the forest close to Wildegg Castle in Switzerland, it is said she is haunting the castle and the forest, her sanctuary.
Crossing through the Jura Mountains in Switzerland, an urban legend about the ghost of a lady in white is said to have haunted the Belchen Tunnel and was widely known and written about in the 80s. Question is, is she still haunting the tunnel?
After falling to his death trying to escape the debtor’s prison, The Marshalsea Barracks in Dublin, it is said the ghost of Pat Doyle is haunting the remaining walls of the ruins.
How long can a ghost linger? Some Icelandic ghost stories claim it is for 120 years. But if we are to believe the legend of Hvítárvellir-Skotta, she has been haunting a particular family for much longer. Perhaps even today?
Hvítárvellir is an old large farm and mansion in Borgarfjörður at the mouth of the Hvítá River west of Iceland. The land was considered one of the most valuable lands in the country and was, among other things, one of the largest salmon fishing grounds in Borgarfjörður.
Read More: Check out all ghost stories from Iceland
The family living there centuries ago was plagued by a ghost said to have been raised from the dead and sent as vengeance after a woman chose to marry someone else. Some say that the descendants of the family are still haunted.
Fylgur/Fylgja: The Old Norse Ghost
There were many different types of ghosts in Norse mythology and that the vikings believed in. One of them was the Fylgjur or Fylgja ghost, or Attending Spirits that we can find traces back in Iceland since the 12th century. These were originally a ghost of a very physical substance that interacted with the real world as if they were a part of it still.
Read Also: Check out the Irish Fetch ghost, that has a huge resemblance to the norse Fylgja.
In the Fylgjur stories from the middle ages, the spirits could be a beneficial one, almost like a messenger to help with the person’s path of life, some sort of totem animal or guiding spirit. But when the folklorist of Iceland started collecting old oral tales from farmers in the 17th century, the Fylgjur ghosts had drastically changed from its pagan old norse roots, throughout time, religious belief and superstition.
Icelandic Ghosts and Ghouls: Fylgja or the draugr ghosts attached themselves to people that they haunted. They could also attach themselves to buildings or even entire towns. Many stories also talk about it being a generational haunting where the ghost decides to haunt all of the descendants of the original person it cursed. Most often the female line of the family. // An illustration to the Icelandic legend of the Skeleton in Hólar Church (Beinagrindin í Hólakirkju). From Icelandic Legends : Collected by Jón Arnason, illustrated by Jules Worms.
One thing that really changed was the Fylgjur’s purpose of haunting the living, and it was rarely to be of any help. Many stories talk about how they were wronged and it caused their death. They then came back to take revenge and were dangerous, even deadly.
The Ghost Stormhöttur Haunting Hvítárvellir
At Hvítárvellir in the 18th century, Sigurður Jónson was sheriff in Borgarfjörður county (1704–1738, or perhaps rather until 1741). He had married Ólöf, daughter of Jón Magnússon the elder of Eyri in Seyðisfjörður to the west, and Ingibjörg. The wife of Dean Páll, mother of Ingibjörg, was named Helga and was the daughter of Halldór, the woman from the witchcraft persecutions in 1669.
Ólöf Jónsdóttir had grown up in the west with her parents. She was a beautiful and popular woman that many men wanted to marry. Sigurður Jónsson was the lucky one though and won her hand after her first husband died in Stórabóla of 1707, a smallpox epidemic that wiped out a quarter to a third of Iceland’s population, only days after their wedding.
It’s speculated that the rejected suitors grew hateful toward the married couple, Sigurður and Ólöf, although no names are mentioned. According to stories, they raised a ghost and sent it to her, saying that it should follow her. Many Icelandic ghost stories begin when the living raise the undead to do their bidding.
Hvítárvellir: The Farm in Borgarfjörður around the turn of the century in 1897, which WG Collingwood drew during the summer when he was traveling around the country.// Source
This ghost was male, and it was called Stormhöttur who followed Ólöf for a time and became quite famous. Sigurður hated the ghost and quickly gathered some men to deal with it. Stormhöttur was confined in the Heggstaðir ridges a short distance southeast of Hvítárvellir and never appeared again, though those ridges are always thought to be haunted.
Others tell of Stormhöttur’s fate differently, saying that Ólöf went outside the first time he came to Hvítárvellir and met him in the yard, but when she knew his errand she said to him: “Go to the devil, north to the hayfields,” and that it is the same ghost that lies on the hay there so that it does not break apart. This is also told as a completely different ghost story that had nothing to do with Ólöf, but haunted the farm and is mostly known as The Ghost of the Hay Field.
Hvítárvellir-Skotta is Sent to Haunt them
When word came west that Stormhöttur had been dealt with, those who had sent him felt themselves badly treated and sent a new spirit against Sigurður himself that would ruin him completely. They raised a woman from her grave, giving her dark powers and sent her to bring misfortune to Sigurður.
Once Sigurður was traveling with another man west of the Hvítá when they saw a reddish-brown fox running after them. The fox spoke to them and asked where Sigurður of Hvítárvellir was. The sheriff suspected what the fox really was and told her that Sheriff Sigurður was down at Álftanes. The fox then turned aside and hurried off there, while the sheriff continued homeward as quickly as he could. But when he had just come home and was taking off his coat he was violently attacked and thrown to the floor of the main room as the Skotta could not be fooled so easily.
Sigurður was a courageous man, but needed help against this ghost. When she wrestled with Sigurður she had cast off the fox-skin and was then in the form of a woman. Her clothing is described as a black cloak-frock with an old-fashioned head-dress, but the end of the head-dress hung back on her neck like a tail, from which she took her name and was called Skotta. And because she was sent to Hvítárvellir she was called the Hvítárvellir-Skotta, and that name is very common, though later she received other names which will be mentioned still.
Another story is that Skotta caught Sigurður at the ferry across the Hvítá together with one of his farmhands, who was both strong and clairvoyant. He saw and recognized Skotta trying to get onto the boat and he grabbed the sheriff’s saddle and flung it at her. Skotta took the saddle and rode astride it along the western bank of the Hvítá, though it was slow, until she came upon another man who did not see her but recognized the sheriff’s saddle and picked it up. He was then ferried across to the south and brought the saddle to Sigurður, saying it must have been left behind in the west. But Skotta used that opportunity to get across the river without being noticed by anyone in the ferry.
The Danger of a Skotta Haunting
There’s no clear account of Skotta’s malice while she followed Sheriff Sigurður, but it was often said that ill befell wherever he went. Cattle, cows, and horses were found dead or crippled, and people attributed that to Skotta; and Sigurður often had to make compensation because of her.
When Sigurður and his wife were elderly he gave up the office of sheriff. One night after Þorri (1751) the farm at Hvítárvellir burned down, and it is said that it came from the fire of a tobacco pipe. Their son Páll was able to save them from the fire, but he himself burned inside with five other men.
Some attributed that fire to the ill-will of Guðríðr Hinriksdóttir, sister of the brothers Ólafur and Sigurður Hinriksson, who had been farmhands at Hvítárvellir and died there, because Sheriff Sigurður had refused to grant her inheritance after them, having taken the farm of Hvítárvellir into his own hands. Others attributed the fire to Skotta. After the fire Sigurður went west to Setberg to his relatives.
Skotta Haunting the Decendants
The sons of Sheriff Sigurður and Ólöf were Páll, who burned at Hvítárvellir, and Jón, pastor at Hvammur in Norðurárdal (1752, †1780). He was married to Kristín Guðmundsdóttir, sister of Lady Þórunn and Eggert of Álftanes. Reverend Jón Sigurðsson and his wife Kristín had a daughter named Ragnheiður. She married Jón Jónsson the younger, pastor at Gilsbakki (1771, †1796). Their children were: Reverend Jón at Bergsstaðir (1826, †1838 or 1839), the housewives Kristín of Víðidalstunga, and Halla, first wife of Jón of Leirá. Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir lost her husband and married again, to Einar Guðbrandsson, assistant pastor at Hvammur in 1801, and they lived at Brekka in Norðurárdal. At that time the pastor at Hvammur was Þórður Þorsteinsson.
Hvítárvellir around 1900: Then used as a dairy school in what was called the Baron’s House, which is on the far left in the picture. The building was moved in 1925 to Hvítárbakki, Borgarfjörður.
There are few stories of Skotta from this period, but she did follow the couple at Gilsbakki, and people thought they saw her skipping ahead of Reverend Jón when he rode to the annex at Síðumúli. She was always in the meadow at Síðumúli when the pastor was seen on the Háafell slopes, Háafell being the outermost farm in Síðumúli parish.
After Lady Ragnheiður married Reverend Einar and they moved to Brekka she was called the Brekka-Skotta. Few deeds of hers are recorded there, though she was said to have killed a farmhand at Brekka named Gunnar. He had gone into the cowshed in the evening, either to carry water for the cowshed hand or to see how things were, but in any case he was found dead in the cowshed passage, while the cowshed hand heard, at that very moment, the sound of hide being dragged behind him along the cowshed ridge.
Once Reverend Þórður of Hvammur was riding through his parish. He had gone down into the valley on his business, and his path lay along the banks between Brekka and Hraunsnef, called Pálsengi. The pastor then saw Skotta come to him. She did nothing but sit up behind him on the horse. The pastor was a resolute man and did not let it shake him. He quickly leapt off, cut the girth, and pulled the saddle back off. Then he mounted again and rode home bareback, while Skotta was seen sitting on the saddle for a long time that day, beating the stirrup-leathers.
After the death of Lady Ragnheiður, Skotta followed her children. Her daughter Kristín married Jón Friðriksson Thorarensen, a student, in Víðidalstunga. He considered Skotta no welcome guest in his family and wanted to be rid of her. Skotta was then grown old and weak in the knees, as was to be expected, since few had been able to harm her. They met when Jón returned from a journey south and was riding north over Arnarvatnsheiði. He asked Skotta what journey she was on, and she said she intended to visit his wife. But since Skotta was sore-footed and Jón wished to be rid of her, they agreed that she should leave his family in peace if he would give her something for her feet. He then took off his strong riding-boots, iron-shod, and threw them to her, and she put them on at once and disappeared.
There are no stories of her following Jón, pastor at Bergsstaðir, but people believed that she followed his son Jónas, who was a farmer at Arnarholt in Stafholtstungur, and he is often thought to bring misfortune wherever he comes. After Jón in Víðidalstunga and Skotta parted, people say that she chiefly stayed with Halla, first wife of Jón of Leirá, and she played him many tricks, killed livestock, and such things. Jón spent the first years of his farming at Kalmanstunga in Hvítársíða. From there he moved to Leirá, and after that Skotta was called the Leirá-Skotta, which name she still bears, and she follows the children of Jón’s first wife at Leirá. There is little to be told of her deeds since, for she is very old and worn, so much so that she herself is reported to have said that she could only drag herself by crawling on her knees, and she has long surpassed the usual age of ghosts, 120 years.
Even so, the people of Leirá are always thought to bring misfortune wherever they go, and men often think they see her at Akranes, since both farmhands from Leirá row there and come on various errands, but always she seems to be noticed before them.
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.
Old cities carry old ghost stories, and Bern in Switzerland is no exception. From the old buildings filled with history to the depth of the Aare river, here are some of the most haunted places in Bern.
Centuries after the vampire panic starting with the death of Petar Blagojević, another vampire was said to haunt the Serbian village, Kisiljevo. Who was Ruža Vlajna and what happened to her?
Said to be the mass burial place for the dead Irish Independence rebels from 1798, the Croppie’s Acre in Dublin is said to be haunted by their lingering souls.
Once a green paradise, the legend says the fairies protected the people of Val Gerina valley in the Swiss alps. Driven by greed to impress a woman however, the son meant to continue the tradition and friendship with the fairies, brought it all down.
Haunted by its former Fellows, Trinity College in Dublin is said to be filled with eerie spirits where even the bell tolls after dark when the shadows take over campus.
A true story morphed into a fairytale, the life and death of the French Countess Marie Louise St. Simon-Montleart has become the stuff of legends. Buried in the forest close to Wildegg Castle in Switzerland, it is said she is haunting the castle and the forest, her sanctuary.
Crossing through the Jura Mountains in Switzerland, an urban legend about the ghost of a lady in white is said to have haunted the Belchen Tunnel and was widely known and written about in the 80s. Question is, is she still haunting the tunnel?
After falling to his death trying to escape the debtor’s prison, The Marshalsea Barracks in Dublin, it is said the ghost of Pat Doyle is haunting the remaining walls of the ruins.
On the night before her wedding, a girl was tracked down by a ghost sent to kill her. Who was behind the haunting, and where did the ghost go after their encounter?
Once there was a farmhand at Hvítárvellir who is not himself named, nor is it said who his master was. Hvítárvellir is an old large farm and mansion in Borgarfjörður at the mouth of the Hvítá River. The land was considered one of the most valuable lands in the country and was, among other things, one of the largest salmon fishing grounds in Borgarfjörður.
Read More: Check out all ghost stories from Iceland
As an old farm with a long history, there have been more than one ghost passing through the place. But unlike the more vengeful ghost of Stormhöttir and the Hvítárvellir-Skotta that caused misery, accidents and even deaths, the spectre that became known as the Ghost of the Hay, was a more tragic figure.
The Ghost of the Hay
Before he came back as a ghost, he was a gardener at Hvítárvellir and harvested all the hay, and he had plenty of work, for there was then a large herd of cattle, both cows and steers. This man with no name set his heart on a girl at the farm. Although the farm has a pretty good record of those who have lived there throughout the years, she also remains nameless.
Hvítárvellir: The Farm in Borgarfjörður around the turn of the century in 1897, which WG Collingwood drew during the summer when he was traveling around the country.// Source
Alas, she did not want to have the gardener and she rejected him. Because of this the man became depressed and isolated himself from the others and only focused on his work that was done as it always had been. Now, no one wanted him, and he wanted no one.
One day, he was found hanged in his own neckerchief in one of the haystacks. People believed that he had taken his own life out of grief because he could not have the girl. She had meanwhile become betrothed to another man.
Life went on, and on the evening before her wedding, the weather was fine and the moonlight bright. The girl still had things to get in order for her wedding in the morning, like finishing her bridal shoes. She said to a maid at Hvítárvellir that she should come with her out to the doorway of the house to keep her company as she worked on her shoes, since the night was so fair and bright outside and it was not yet the time when people lit lamps.
They sat on the doorstep for a while, the bride-to-be working on the shoes and the other maid relaxing beside the bride-to-be until the maid got sleepy and yawned before calling it a night. The bride-to-be sat still as before and finished the shoes. When she had completed them she happened to look out and saw a man coming up from below the field.
He looked rather imposing, and he did not greet her. She addressed him first and asked who he was. According to the sources, he introduced himself, but there are no signs of her knowing or recognizing him. He claimed he had business with her. She said: “It is good then that I was not in bed since you have business with me, but what is your business now?”
“I intend to kill you,” he said.
“I think you will not do that,” she said, “and now do either this: go to the lowest and worst hell, or go to the damned north to a hayfield and row there for eternity. You will have nothing else from me.”
“I’ll rather go north to the hayfield a thousand times,” said the ghost, and he quickly turned and went there, and clairvoyant men have often seen him rowing there. After that the girl was entirely free of him and she was married in the morning.
It is, in short, common talk that although it is often stormy at Hvítárvellir, as in many places in that district, never there does hay break apart in the yard if neither stones nor people are put on it, and men credit this to the ghost who lies on the hay and protects the hayyard from all hay damage, provided that he may be alone on the stack. But if people lie there on the hay or put stones on it, it is said that the hay breaks apart and is whirled away down to the fence-lines.
Hvítárvellir around 1900: Then used as a dairy school in what was called the Baron’s House, which is on the far left in the picture. The building was moved in 1925 to Hvítárbakki, Borgarfjörður.
Once when the weather grew stormy there were in the hayyard at Hvítárvellir two haystacks among others, one newly stacked of loose and light meadow hay and unturfed, but the other compact and settled hay, turfed and well cared for. But all the same, all the turf and stones were flung off the latter haystack as if they were thrown, and the hay itself was scattered everywhere, while the newly piled hay was not disturbed in the least.
The Icelandic Ghost of Vengeance
About this ghost it is quite remarkable that he is one of the few who does good and not evil. A Móri is a male ghost in Iceland. When a male is raised from the dead for such a purpose like vengeance, he is not called a ghost, but a Móri. Often the term Fylgja ghost was used interchangeably with the Draug ghost. The female version of this vengeful ghost was called Skotta. Móri means rust brown in Icelandic and the ghosts were named so because of the color of their clothes.
Icelandic Ghosts and Ghouls: Fylgja or the draugr ghosts attached themselves to people that they haunted. They could also attach themselves to buildings or even entire towns. Many stories also talk about it being a generational haunting where the ghost decides to haunt all of the descendants of the original person it cursed. Most often the female line of the family. // An illustration to the Icelandic legend of the Skeleton in Hólar Church (Beinagrindin í Hólakirkju). From Icelandic Legends : Collected by Jón Arnason, illustrated by Jules Worms.
Who was this ghost that came to her door the night before her wedding? Was it the man who took his own life, or perhaps a ghost he raised as revenge before leaving the world himself? There has also been speculation that the ghost who lies on the hay is the Skotti or the Hvítárvellir-Skotti that were mentioned earlier. Some also say that it is Stormhöttur who guards the hay there, as is mentioned regarding the Hvítárvellir-Skotta. But that’s another story.
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.
Old cities carry old ghost stories, and Bern in Switzerland is no exception. From the old buildings filled with history to the depth of the Aare river, here are some of the most haunted places in Bern.
Centuries after the vampire panic starting with the death of Petar Blagojević, another vampire was said to haunt the Serbian village, Kisiljevo. Who was Ruža Vlajna and what happened to her?
Said to be the mass burial place for the dead Irish Independence rebels from 1798, the Croppie’s Acre in Dublin is said to be haunted by their lingering souls.
Once a green paradise, the legend says the fairies protected the people of Val Gerina valley in the Swiss alps. Driven by greed to impress a woman however, the son meant to continue the tradition and friendship with the fairies, brought it all down.
Haunted by its former Fellows, Trinity College in Dublin is said to be filled with eerie spirits where even the bell tolls after dark when the shadows take over campus.
A true story morphed into a fairytale, the life and death of the French Countess Marie Louise St. Simon-Montleart has become the stuff of legends. Buried in the forest close to Wildegg Castle in Switzerland, it is said she is haunting the castle and the forest, her sanctuary.
Crossing through the Jura Mountains in Switzerland, an urban legend about the ghost of a lady in white is said to have haunted the Belchen Tunnel and was widely known and written about in the 80s. Question is, is she still haunting the tunnel?
After falling to his death trying to escape the debtor’s prison, The Marshalsea Barracks in Dublin, it is said the ghost of Pat Doyle is haunting the remaining walls of the ruins.
Although not even completely dead, an unfortunate boy was resurrected as an undead by a sorcerer to avenge an entire family. For generations the Írafells-Móri plagued, harassed and also took care of the family he was sent to destroy.
There was a man named Kort, the son of Þorvarður Möðruvellir in Kjós. He was a juryman and a well respected farmer. He was also known to be an extremely haunted man. The ghost that ended up haunting him and his family descendants are mostly known by the name Írafells-Móri. Not only did the ghost haunt the family, but their friends, neighbours and just unfortunate people crossing his path. But seeing that including every instance of haunting and haunted, this article will solely focus on Kort, his children and grandchildren.
Read More: Check out all ghost stories from Iceland
Kort was married twice. First to Ingibjörg, and the latter Þórdís Jónsdóttir. Ingibjörg was from the north and many had tried to propose to her before Kort, but she refused them all. The suitors became angry when she chose Kort over them and the men in the north went to a sorcerer to curse both Kurt and Ingibjörg. To do this, the sorcerer resurrected a ghost that would do their bidding called a Móri.
A Móri is a male ghost in Iceland. When a male is raised from the dead for such a purpose like vengeance, he is not called a ghost, but a Móri. Often the term Fylgja ghost was used interchangeably with the Draug ghost. The female version of this vengeful ghost was called Skotta. Móri means rust brown in Icelandic and the ghosts were named so because of the color of their clothes.
Raising the Dead for Vengeance
The sorcerer chose for this a young boy, of whom the story says that he had died of exposure outdoors between the farms. When he rose from the dead, he was warm and not even completely dead before being resurrected, and was sent out, ordered to haunt the couple at Möðruvellir and their descendants for nine generations.
The many men who saw the Írafells-Móri described him so that he wears gray trousers below and a brownish coat on the body, with a black broad-brimmed hat on his head, and there was a notch or large gap in the brim above the left eye. When Móri came south he attached himself to Möðruvellir as instructed and killed livestock and spoiled food. But there are no examples of Móri directly killing people.
Icelandic Ghosts and Ghouls: Fylgja or the draugr ghosts attached themselves to people that they haunted. They could also attach themselves to buildings or even entire towns. Many stories also talk about it being a generational haunting where the ghost decides to haunt all of the descendants of the original person it cursed. Most often the female line of the family. // An illustration to the Icelandic legend of the Skeleton in Hólar Church (Beinagrindin í Hólakirkju). From Icelandic Legends : Collected by Jón Arnason, illustrated by Jules Worms.
One winter, Kurt and his wife had two calves that the Írafells-Móri drove over the cliffs the following summer, and they were found dead below. Another time, Kort had a mare and a foal grazing in the home pastures at Möðruvellir. Late in the summer men saw the foal running as if it had gone mad around a stone, and then it fell down dead. When they came to it the foal lay dead with its behind, caught its rectum on the stone and tore all its guts out. This was attributed to Móri.
Unlike most ghosts, the Móri was thought to have not been completely dead before being turned. Because of this, the ghost needed to eat and was even rationed food at both Möðruvellir and when he went to live at Írafell to haunt their son, Magnús Kortsson.
Móri would sometimes sit on the barn floor and gnaw on the milk troughs with his paws or knock them down, splash curd both on Ingibjörg and all over the rafters, or throw turf and stones into the food wherever it was, spoiling it with it if he wasn’t fed. Once they forgot to feed Móri in the evening and in the morning, they saw him sitting in the barn with his hands down in each cheese barrel, both munching on the cheese and sprinkling it with crumbs. After that, they were careful not to forget to feed him.
After this Kort moved away from Möðruvellir and went to Flekkudal in Eyjafjörður, but Móri followed them there and plagued them no less than before until his death in 1821.
The Haunting of Magnús Kortsson
After the death of Kortur Heitin (1821), Móri first followed his eldest son Magnús, who lived for a long time on Írafell, as mentioned above, and because Móri was the longest attached to it, he was called Írafells-Móri, and that name has since stuck with him.
It seems that there were fewer evil visits before Kort the Elder than to some of his children and grandchildren from his first wife, whether it is because it has been longer since he was alive and those stories have therefore faded from people’s memory or Mór was more concerned with the visits when he began to follow Kort’s children or the third thing that some think is most likely is that he did not dare to wade as much while Kort was alive as after he died.
It wasn’t just food that Móri needed; he also felt he needed to rest like anyone else, and it is said that after he started following Magnús Kortsson to Írafell where he got his name, he always had to leave a bed space empty for him opposite his own. No one except the ghost was supposed to lie in it. It also had a separate food supply.
Once people needed a place to stay for the night at Írafell. Later that evening, a boy came to the house and asked to stay there. Magnús said he could stay in the house, but had no place but the floor to sleep unless he dared to sleep in the ghost’s bed. The boy accepted and braved himself to get into the bed, but when he fell asleep, something terrible stirred him in his sleep and woke him up. He was unable to sleep well that night.
The next day the weather was bad so that the guests could not travel and had to stay at Írafell another night. That evening, some boys who lived at Írafell and knew Móri and had often been in a fight with him came and stuck knives all around the bed so that the points stuck out everywhere. That night the boy slept soundly and the men were grateful that Móri had not dared to attack him because of the knives.
Once Magnus went to Seltjarnarnes when there was a lot of fishing there, but since he had no regular place on any of the boats, he sailed with them all and sat in different places every day. For two days, he got a seat at farmer Sigurður’s in Hrólfskáli. They all noticed that Magnus was never alone, and on the third morning and they set sail, they started whispering about seeing something looking like a russet wool or ball of hair coming with Magnus. Because they didn’t want to bring any bad luck with them to the sea, and asked him to leave the boat.
The Haunting of Björn Kortsson
It said Björn Kortsson had twice suffered grievous affliction like his other brothers. Once a man met Björn traveling north, and when they meant to ride past each other his horses shied, and it was the belief of men that they had seen the ghost and feared him, though the man himself did not see him.
On another occasion it was that the farm at Mýdal in Mosfellssveit stood open one winter evening in moonlight and fair weather. One of the household came from somewhere, and when he came into the doorway he saw a boy further inside the door whom he did not recognize, but thought to himself that this must be Írafells-Móri, from the description he had heard of him. The man now thought to corner Móri inside to handle him and shut the door. Then he let his hands sweep through the doorway and felt as though something came against him, but when he meant to seize it, it slipped away from him again so that he could not grasp it. But early the next morning Björn Kortsson came to Mýdal.
Björn was, like all that family, a good-natured and well respected man. It is said that he was popular with the ladies and at least three sought after him when he was a young man at Hjálmholt. He used to joke that it was Mori they were after, as everyone knew that he was followed.
As time went on though, Björn joked less and less as madness afflicted him in the later years of his life, and it wasn’t easy to live with him. It seems that a lot of the family members had this mental illness that often accompanies stories of ghosts haunting families. The illness was not seen as natural though, and was blamed on Móri.
The Haunting of Einar Kortsson
Einar Kortsson, who had been living in Tjarnarhús near Lambastaðir for a long time, once left home and was going up to Kjós to find his relatives there. It was early in the winter and when he arrived there it was getting dark. He continued on foot, and arrived after the vigil at Skrauthólar in Kjalarnes. Although Einar was not entirely unfamiliar with the place, he did not want to cause any trouble or wake people up when they were all just asleep. So he decided to look in the barn to see if he could find a place to stay for the night.
The next morning he excused himself to the townspeople who welcomed him. They did however think that the Mori had made way for their master, as the night before, a cow had broken its neck and was found dead in the same stall Einar went to sleep in. The Mori was also thought to be behind the death of Einar’s favorite horse. One morning late in Einar’s time, Gráni lay dead in the air so tightly in front of the farm door in Tjarnarhúsi that no one could get in or out of him until the door was taken off its hinges. This was thought to have been caused by Móri.
Móri played various other tricks on Einar while he followed him. One was that Einar sometimes became like a disfigured man in the face or like a leper, with eruptions of scabs and boils and scratches as if a cat had clawed him, but if he was asked how he had gotten them he would say nothing about it. At times these eruptions disappeared again, and this was counted among other strange things that are said to follow the Kort family and be attributed to Móri.
Men also often saw Móri riding around the houses at Einar’s, both the farmhouses and also a shed that he owned, and it was believed that Móri stayed often down by the sea, for many times the dogs there went mad and broke out in barking and noise around the shed, though no men nor animals were seen moving near it.
The Haunting of Kort Kortsson
Not many stories have gone about of hauntings before Kort Kortsson the elder, but men still believe they can fully say that Móri followed him so that harm came both to others and to himself. In the winter of 1833 it so happened that Þorsteinn, a farmer at Þúfukot in Kjós, rowed the winter fishing season at Kjalarnes and went home at Easter, as is the custom of many fishermen whose homes are not far away.
On that same day Kort Kortsson in Uppkot in Eyrarhverfi also went home, for he too was rowing that season at Kjalarnes. Since Kort was on foot he asked Þorsteinn to carry a few things for him. One of these was a sheepskin coat which Þorsteinn tied behind him. Þorsteinn then continued his way until the roads divided to Þúfukot and Uppkot. Þorsteinn meant to go straight home without stopping at Uppkot, but when he turned his horse onto the path that led home to Þúfukot it seemed to him, and he even thought he heard, that someone seized the sheepskin coat behind him, and in that same moment the horse fell down dead under him. This was blamed on Móri, that he had crushed or killed the horse because he had wanted Þorsteinn to return the sheepskin coat home to Kort.
Kort was like many of his siblings, half-crazed in mind, so that often care had to be taken that he did not do himself harm, which he often tried when he was in such a state. In one such fit he got hold of a knife and cut himself straight across the neck, but then someone came to him and the knife was taken from him. He was then brought to a doctor who healed him and sewed the wound, but since the stitching had been done badly, there was always something odd in Kort’s throat when he swallowed. People believe he died of this wound, which he was continually reopening when madness came over him.
The Haunting of Solveig Kortsdóttir
Solveig, daughter of Kort, married Magnús, a farmer at Hjallasandur on Kjalarnes, and they have lived there for most of their farming life. People say that Móri follows her, as with the other siblings.
Magnús and she had kept a maidservant named Sigríður. She was once in the kitchen in the evening doing some household work. Then the maid said to her mistress: “What is crawling there on my back?” and looked back over her shoulder at the same time. The housewife said that nothing was crawling on her. But in that same moment the maid fainted where she stood. Then the household came and carried her to her bed. Afterwards the fainting passed off, but then she was seized with terrible vomiting. And just about when the vomiting eased, there was a knocking at the farmhouse door. A farmhand heard it further inside the house and said: “Be off, whoever you are,” for he thought that it was the one who had attacked Sigríður the maid. Then they went to the door, and there was Solveig Kortsdóttir, asking for that same maid who had fainted, for she had some errand with her. People think this was the ghost of Solveig, Írafells-Móri, who pressed so hard upon Sigríður.
Kort’s Grandchildren and the Continuing Haunting of their Family
Magnús at Írafell had four children: two named Guðrún, Guðríður, and Guðmundur. Once, Guðrún fell ill, and Móri came to her where she lay in a single-room dwelling and knocked down all the sets of cups she owned from a shelf above the window in the same room where she lay, and they went, as one might well imagine, into a thousand pieces.
The other Guðrún married her father’s workman, named Ólafur, and they have long lived at Reykjakot in Mosfellssveit. She was often ill both in mind, as so many of the Kort family have been prone to, and also in body. She has also lost a number of children, and that may well be in part the cause of her ailments. It is said that Móri, especially after the death of Magnús, took up his lodging with the couple Ólafur and Guðrún and that he keeps to himself above a large floor-vat which is sunk halfway into the pantry floor. When Guðrún is ill so that others must take charge of the cooking, it is said that Móri sets a dog’s head upon himself and is ashamed to take his food from any other than Guðrún.
Magnús of Írafell’s son Guðmundur was haunted by Móri no less than his sister Guðríður. One winter, Ásgeir the farmer at Lambastaðir had sent his son Þorvaldur to Reynivellir for instruction under Reverend Ólafur Pálsson, now provost of Gullbringu- and Kjósar-sýsla. Þorvaldur went home shortly before Christmas to spend the holiday with his parents, and it had been arranged that he would be fetched afterwards if anyone happened to travel from Kjós.
One evening at Lambastaðir, Þorvaldur and his mother Sigríður were the only two sleeping in the house. It was late at night and the lights had been put out, when Sigríður suddenly felt unwell and asked her son to light them again. Þorvaldur did so, and when he was finished she asked him to fetch her some water to drink, and to take the light with him so he would not stumble anywhere, although Þorvaldur, though only twelve years old at the time, was not afraid of the dark and did not need it for that reason.
So he went for the water into the kitchen, leaving the lamp in the parlor and the parlor door open, so that the glow reached into the kitchen. He filled a glass and was about to go back when, as he turned around, he saw a strapping boy come out of the anteroom into the kitchen, though neither of the doors there had been closed the evening before. The boy stood in the glow of the lamp bareheaded, with a broad-brimmed hat in his hand, wearing a brownish coat, raising his eyebrows roguishly and grinning at Þorvaldur. They looked one another in the eyes for a short while, for Þorvaldur said he had not been afraid of him but studied him closely, and he still remembers how it seemed to him that the boy’s whole face was covered with hair. But when Þorvaldur took his eyes off him, he was overcome with dizziness so that the water spilled from the glass.
Then a sheepdog that had been lying in the parlor leapt up with a terrible barking, running through the kitchen and out into the home-field, and several other dogs joined in, keeping it up for a long time. The next day two men came down from Kjós to fetch Þorvaldur, and one of them was Guðmundur Magnússon, who was then living at Káraneskot. People then felt sure that it had been Írafells-Móri whom Þorvaldur had seen that night.
Einar Kortsson had four daughters; two of them are normal, one suffers from a limb-wasting disease, and the fourth is thought not to be quite right in the head. Her name is Guðrún, she is sixteen years old, and until now nothing had been found amiss with her. She often complains that “the wretch Móri” is teasing her, pinching her, or otherwise tormenting her. Recently she developed an ailment in her knee which lasted a long time, and she herself said that it had come about because Móri had shoved her so that she fell on a stone with her knee. And just as she blames Móri for all these mishaps of hers, so there is talk that he is also the cause of the girl’s want of understanding, since she is considered little more than a half-wit, and this is thought to be in keeping with various other assaults of Móri against members of the Kort family.
Descendants of Kort: The picture above shows Kristinn Magnússon, Guðrún Pétursdóttir, his wife, and Pétur Kristinsson, their son. // Source
Kristinn Magnússon (1827-1893) was the son of Solveig Kortsdóttir (1796-1865). Kristinn was a well-known shipowner and shipbuilder. Móri, never did anything horrific when they tjey reached this part of the descendants. He was more of a nuisance to the family according to Kristinn. He told people they had to feed him like they would any other adult and as his ancestors had done before him. He would spill his food and make a big mess as per usual. Kristinn spoke often of the boy, as he called him. He never seemed to bother him, but his presence was often with Kristinn and if we are to believe the legends, perhaps still are, although in a more faded presence in the family members branching out in Iceland like a tree.
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.
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Said to be the mass burial place for the dead Irish Independence rebels from 1798, the Croppie’s Acre in Dublin is said to be haunted by their lingering souls.
Once a green paradise, the legend says the fairies protected the people of Val Gerina valley in the Swiss alps. Driven by greed to impress a woman however, the son meant to continue the tradition and friendship with the fairies, brought it all down.
Haunted by its former Fellows, Trinity College in Dublin is said to be filled with eerie spirits where even the bell tolls after dark when the shadows take over campus.
A true story morphed into a fairytale, the life and death of the French Countess Marie Louise St. Simon-Montleart has become the stuff of legends. Buried in the forest close to Wildegg Castle in Switzerland, it is said she is haunting the castle and the forest, her sanctuary.
Crossing through the Jura Mountains in Switzerland, an urban legend about the ghost of a lady in white is said to have haunted the Belchen Tunnel and was widely known and written about in the 80s. Question is, is she still haunting the tunnel?
After falling to his death trying to escape the debtor’s prison, The Marshalsea Barracks in Dublin, it is said the ghost of Pat Doyle is haunting the remaining walls of the ruins.
A family cursed by a ghost called Sels-Móriwas said to be haunted for nine generations in 18th and 19th century Iceland. Targeting the women in the family, it is said that it was the ghost that drove them all mad.
What sticks out from Icelandic ghost stories, was that often, the ghost was not just a shadow or whisper, creaking in the walls or lurking in the corner of the eyes. The Icelandic ghosts were often like flesh and blood and dangerous. Not only could they hurt you, they could follow you and your family, plaguing them with misfortune, and like the ghost story of Sels-Móri or the ghost of Þorgarður, was behind madness that seemed to be passed down in the families.
Read More: Check out all ghost stories from Iceland
A ghost story spanning over generations as well as travelling over the entire country is the story of Móri of Sel, where the story was said to have started. The story features an Icelandic ghost called a fylgja from 19th century Iceland, that has roots back to the Viking age. And to understand the concept of this rather long family saga, it could be helpful to how the fylgja evolved and operated through time.
Fylgur/Fylgja: The Old Norse Ghost
There were many different types of ghosts in Norse mythology and that the vikings believed in. One of them was the Fylgjur or Fylgja ghost, or Attending Spirits that we can find traces back in Iceland since the 12th century. These were originally a ghost of a very physical substance that interacted with the real world as if they were a part of it still.
Read Also: Check out the Irish Fetch ghost, that has a huge resemblance to the norse Fylgja.
Fylgja attached themselves to people that they haunted. They could also attach themselves to buildings or even entire towns. Many stories also talk about it being a generational haunting where the ghost decides to haunt all of the descendants of the original person it cursed. Most often the female line of the family. Perhaps because of its origin as a female spirit.
Icelandic Ghosts and Ghouls: An illustration to the Icelandic legend of the Skeleton in Hólar Church (Beinagrindin í Hólakirkju). From Icelandic Legends : Collected by Jón Arnason, illustrated by Jules Worms.
In the Fylgjur stories from the middle ages, the spirits could be a beneficial one, almost like a messenger to help with the person’s path of life, some sort of totem animal or guiding spirit. But when the folklorist of Iceland started collecting old oral tales from farmers in the 17th century, the Fylgjur ghosts had drastically changed from its pagan old norse roots, throughout time, religious belief and superstition.
One thing that really changed was the Fylgjur’s purpose of haunting the living, and it was rarely to be of any help. Many stories talk about how they were wronged and it caused their death. They then came back to take revenge and were dangerous, even deadly.
Sels-Móri or Þorgarður
The story starts with a completely different family than the one that ended up being cursed. It starts with the life and death of the ghost itself. There once was a married couple that lived at a farm near the river Elliðá, not too far from Reykjavik.
The story was compiled by Jón Árnason from stories circulated in the southwest of Iceland). Valgerður Jónsdóttir (1771–1856) and Hólmfríður Þorvaldsdóttir (1812–1876) are also listed as sources. There are at least 18 people by name, and at least 15 are verified historical people.
The farm had a worker named Þorgarðurand it was rumored that the wife had an affair with him. The farmer often had to go out for trivial tasks while Þorgarður was back home alone with her and this got people talking.
One winter night there was a horrible storm when the farmer was out working and tending to his livestock. He didn’t come home the following night and a search party was put together. The next morning they went to look for him and found him dead in the river and it looked like a murder.
Elliðaá: The salmon river near Reykjavík from ca 1900 where the whole story about the Sels-Móri started.
Þorgarður was immediately suspected of this because of his reputation, and most believe that he actually did it. Even though he denied that he had killed his master, he was sentenced according to what the story says, either death by hanging or paying up with some fines and he should be allowed to redeem his life with a sheep fee. However, he didn’t have the money.
At that time there lived a man named Jón at Seli in Seltjarnarnes east of Reykjavik, known as a diplomatic statesman with a kind heart. Þorgarður went to Jón and begged him to save his life and get out of the sentence.
Jón was reluctant to do so at first, but Þorgarður vowed to serve him and his descendants as long as he had the strength and age. Jón, touched by the man’s plight, agreed to help and began to count the ransom on the table that Þorgarður needed to escape hanging.
When Jón counted the money, his wife Guðrún entered the living room and asked what he was doing with all the money. Jón said he was going to save the life of the man. She asked him not to do that foolish thing and swept up all the money in her apron with one hand.
Jón changed his mind and agreed with his wife. When she walked out of the room with the money in her apron she looked at Þorgard and said: “Let each one suffer for his actions.”
Þorgard answered: “There will be no parting with us here; therefore it is no more than for me to see that my farewell follows you and your family to the ninth point.”
Then Þorgarður went away and was captured by the authorities, either in Iceland or abroad. It is believed that he was hanged in Kópavogur and that after his death, he immediately went back and sought out the Selsjóns as a fylgja ghost.
The Hauntings for Nine Generations
As he had promised, he followed them wherever they went, especially the wife. Guðrúna was then both despondent and delirious and haunted for the rest of her life. Because this ghost was attached to Sel for a long time, he was called Sels-Móri.
A Móri is a male ghost in Iceland. When a male is raised from the dead for such a purpose like vengeance, he is not called a ghost, but a Móri. Often the term Fylgja ghost was used interchangeably with the Draug ghost. The female version of this vengeful ghost was called Skotta. Móri means rust brown in Icelandic and the ghosts were named so because of the color of their clothes.
The Selsjóns couple had one daughter named Þorgerður that would be the next victim of Sels-Móri’s haunting. She married Halldór Bjarnason, a prominent farmer in Skildinganes. As well as inheriting her parents’ estates, she also inherited Sels-Móri of her family they called ættarfylgja, meaning something like an ancestral ghost.
They had a son, Bjarni í Sviðholt, and it looks like the Sels-Móri skipped the male descendant of the family and he lived in peace. He was probably one of the members of the legal court whom the law speaker Magnús Ólafsson appointed later to the Alþing of Öxará, 1798.
He had many children and was known to be friendly and a good guy, thinking perhaps that they were free of the haunting. They still knew about the Sels-Móri, and he was in those days often called Sviðholt’s ghost, but very often he was still associated with the name Þorgarður. But the ghost returned to haunt the female descendants.
Bjarni’s second daughter, whose name was Úríður, married Benedikt Björnsson, a student from Hítardal, who has been a priest in Fagranes for a long time. She was the greatest clairvoyant, but such adversity came upon her that she became half-crazy and sometimes angry with everything and difficult to live with. Although the ghost of Sels-Móri was almost part of life in Icelandic folklore culture, her insanity was too much for her husband.
As a result, she divorced her husband and her sister Ragnheiður took her in who was married with a school teacher at Bessastaðir called Jón Jónsson. The teachers and families of Bessastaðaskóli often lived in or close to the school. Today this is residence of the President of Iceland and has always been important in the history of the nation and has always been the seat of chieftains and high officials.
Úríður died there after a time of unstable paranoia. She would claim that a viper was stinging her and that another woman called Ingibjörg was stabbing her with a cobbler’s needle. This was believed to refer to a woman who lived with her and her husband before they separated. This woman actually became his second wife after the divorce, so it begs to question what really happened before she was sent to her sister.
They all believed that their ancestral ghost Sels-Móri who was the one behind her insanity. Úriði is said to have said during her fits of insanity that she should have said: “My sister, it’s better to stab me,”
It looks like her sister, Ragnheiður, was mostly free of the haunting, although the Sels-Móri was blamed when he caused the destruction of a mail boat that was lost in 1817 because her first husband sailed with it. Sels-Móri was also the cause of the late Þórður Bjarnason’s death, in Sviðholt; it is still said that he had haunted the children of Ragnheiður, especially her son, Björn.
Ragnheiðar’s children, Especially Bjarna Rector
It should be mentioned here at the same time that Bjarni Halldórsson in Sviðholt had a sister named Jórunn who seems to have had almost a parallel haunting in addition to her ancestral one. She was very fair and beautiful and a man in Álftanes asked her to marry him. But she thought that he was beneath her and she rejected him. She would however never be rid of him.
He promised he would cling to her and her family, even if he was unable to get to her as a wife. She married one named Eyjólf, and had a baby girl. They hadn’t been together for long when it became apparent that Jórunn had mental issues, which only increased as time went by, and in the end, she went completely insane. This was believed to be because of the curse of the suitor she rejected as well as the curse their family already was struggling with.
Her daughter Þorgerðr grew up and married Eggert Bjarnason, who was at that time the priest at Snæfoksstaðir (Klausturhólum) in Grímsnes. She then went east with him and they had children together and it seemed to be fine. Perhaps they had escaped the curse by moving away?
Time passed until Jórunn, Þorgerðr’s mother, died. There was no evidence of that illness in Þorgerði during her mother’s lifetime, as she had never come south since she went east, and it is said that Reverend Eggert was warned not to let her go south and never come beyond Sog or Álfvattan and would not blame her then.
But when Jórunn á Skógtjörn died, it is said that Þorgerður begged her husband to go south with her to mourn her mother and he finally agreed. They had come south over Hellisheiði, south into Fóelluvötn above Helliskot when the curse hit her. According to the stories she was struck with a a dizzy spell and that she was never the same again. She had inherited Sels-Móri. They also believed that her mother’s ghost and fylgidraugur, had met her daughter there and followed her from then on as long as she lived
Breaking the Generational Curse and Haunting
She didn’t live very long however, and she died shortly after going south. The children of Reverends Eggerts and Þorgerður didn’t fare well with either, and two of their daughters were also said to have gone crazy, as so many of the women in their family line had done before them.
But Sels-Móri made a promise all those generations ago, and after the ninth generation, the curse was lifted and the family line, if there still is someone around, is said to be finally free from it.
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.
Old cities carry old ghost stories, and Bern in Switzerland is no exception. From the old buildings filled with history to the depth of the Aare river, here are some of the most haunted places in Bern.
Centuries after the vampire panic starting with the death of Petar Blagojević, another vampire was said to haunt the Serbian village, Kisiljevo. Who was Ruža Vlajna and what happened to her?
Said to be the mass burial place for the dead Irish Independence rebels from 1798, the Croppie’s Acre in Dublin is said to be haunted by their lingering souls.
Once a green paradise, the legend says the fairies protected the people of Val Gerina valley in the Swiss alps. Driven by greed to impress a woman however, the son meant to continue the tradition and friendship with the fairies, brought it all down.
Haunted by its former Fellows, Trinity College in Dublin is said to be filled with eerie spirits where even the bell tolls after dark when the shadows take over campus.
A true story morphed into a fairytale, the life and death of the French Countess Marie Louise St. Simon-Montleart has become the stuff of legends. Buried in the forest close to Wildegg Castle in Switzerland, it is said she is haunting the castle and the forest, her sanctuary.
Crossing through the Jura Mountains in Switzerland, an urban legend about the ghost of a lady in white is said to have haunted the Belchen Tunnel and was widely known and written about in the 80s. Question is, is she still haunting the tunnel?
After falling to his death trying to escape the debtor’s prison, The Marshalsea Barracks in Dublin, it is said the ghost of Pat Doyle is haunting the remaining walls of the ruins.
The story about the girl and her meeting with a ghost in the graveyard and the white cap she took from it has been retold for centuries in Iceland.
The story about the White Cap is an Icelandic ghost story from the old times, although how old is uncertain, as it is now turned into a folktale that has gone through many retellings. It tells the story about a nameless boy and girl that took something from a ghost and had to pay dearly for it.
The Ghost story was retold from its oral story in Icelandic Legends by Jón Arnason who traveled the country and collected the folktales and ghost stories in the 1800s inspired by the work the Grimm brothers did in Germany in the same area.
The Ghost and its White Cap
The little boy and girl lived close to a church in a small village in Iceland. The boy was a mischievous boy and had a habit of trying to scare the girl when he had the opportunity. But the more he tried to get a scare out of the girl, the more used she got to it, and in the end, nothing faced her anymore. And everything she saw she thought was strange, she was sure it had to be one of the boy’s tricks.
One day while they were washing clothes, the girl was sent to the churchyard by her mother. The linen they had just washed was hung up there to dry. The girl went unafraid into the graveyard and started to fill her basket with the fresh linen when she looked up and saw someone sitting on a tomb close to her. The figure was dressed in all white and she thought instinctively it had to be the boy that was up to one of his tricks, so she wasn’t afraid and figured she would call his bluff.
The girl ran up to the figure on the tomb and pulled off its cap as she said out loud that he would not be able to frighten her this time.
She then went home with the linen, but when she came back, the boy was the first one that greeted her when she reached her cottage. No way he could have reached home before she did and she started to fear the truth.
This was not the only strange thing though, as when they sorted through the linen, they found the cap that she had pulled off from the figure on the tomb. The White Cap, although white was full of mold and earth. They all then understood that it had been a ghost she had encountered, and now, the whole village was paralyzed with fear.
The Icelandic Ghost on the Tomb
The next day, the ghost was again sitting on the same tombstone like it had done the previous day, although now it was missing its White Cap. Nobody dared to approach it and had no idea as to how to rid themselves from it. Ghosts in icelandic ghost stories were often shown to act as flesh and bone that could interact with living humans, and sometimes, they were very dangerous. So they sent for help from a village close to them.
In that village there was an old man that claimed that they had to replace the white cap that the girl had taken from the girl to avoid any bad repercussions. It had to be done with everyone watching in complete silence, and it had to be the little girl that gave the cap back.
Icelandic Legends: The ghost story of the “White Cap” comes from Iceland and was retold by Jón Arnason in Icelandic Legends as he was travelling around collecting oral tales around the country.
So the whole village gathered in the churchyard, watching as the little girl approached the ghost sitting on the tombstone, not really moving, not really showing any sign of what the ghost really wanted. She placed the White Cap on its head and asked if it was satisfied now.
The ghost looked up and answered: “Yes, but are you now satisfied?” as it raised its hand and hit her and the little girl fell over and died. The ghost then sank into the grave he was sitting on and was not seen again.
When collecting folktales from Iceland, they encountered many tales about the ghost of children left by their mothers to die, an útburður, that came back to haunt their mothers. This is what the Icelandic ghost story Móðir mín í kví, kví or Dear Mother in a Pen, Pen is about.
Móðir mín í kví, kví means the Dear Mother in the Pen, Pen, and is one of Iceland’s most well known ghost stories, and also the base for the most horrifying lullaby children have gone to sleep with.
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The Folktale of Móðir mín í kví, kví
Once there was a young girl living on a farm with a want for life, dancing, singing and partying. She was unmarried and poor though and became pregnant with a man that had no plans of taking her as his wife. When she gave birth she decided to carry the child and put it outside to die. She carried the child out in her shawl or veil, sometimes retold it was only a rag.
After it was all over and done with, she attended a vikivaki celebration with singing and dancing a ritual circle dance during the church holidays, something the girl loved. She got the invitation, but had nothing to wear for the occasion. So she didn’t go and was sorry to be sitting at home.
Just before the dance, the girl was milking sheep with another woman and complained to her that she had nothing to wear. As soon as she said it out loud they heard a voice from under the wall of the pen:
Icelandic: “Móðir mín í kví, kví, kvíddu ekki því, því; ég skal ljá þér duluna mína að dansa í og dansa í.”
English: “Dear mother, in a pen, a pen, do not worry about it because, because I’ll lend you my rag to dance in and dance in. “
In Icelandic ghost stories, the ghost often repeat the last word in the sentence as in this short verse. She knew the message was to her, and she knew it was a ghost, talking about the single piece of clothing she had left the child out to die in. She was so shaken up after hearing her dead child reciting the words to her and she went insane for the rest of her life.
The útburður Ghost in Icelandic Folktales
In Icelandic as well as Scandinavian ghost stories, people sometimes encounter an útburður or an utburd. They were ghosts of children that were put outside to die. Either the child was unwanted because it was born outside of wedlock, or the parents didn’t have the means to raise it.
útburðr: The ghost in Móðir mín í kví, kví is an utburd, found in many variations in Scandinavian folklore. The Swedish call them Myling, and Utburd or útburðr in Norwegian and Icelandic. They can remind of the English Changeling creature.
When Scandinavians were pagans, this was a practice that wasn’t a crime. Even when the pagans on Iceland turned Christian, this was something that they continued to have as a permitted custom until the 11th century. In fact, to have the child would be punished with fines or even death.
The children turned into ghosts, sometimes just to torment their mother, sometimes because they couldn’t enter heaven because they weren’t baptized.
You could hear them crying, and they were believed to have been bad omens.
Djákninn á Myrká meaning the Deacon of Dark River is an Icelandic folk tale that have been passed down for generations now. It tells the story of the ghost of a man trying to make his girlfriend join him in death.
Once upon a time in Horgardalur not far from Akureyri in Iceland a deacon lived on a farm called Myrká. He was riding his trusted horse called Faxi to meet up with the woman he loved named Guðrún. It was the day before Christmas, a stormy and cold winter night.
It was a long ride to her farm called Bægisá. On the way to her he had to cross the river Hörgá, but he fell into it. He ended up drowning and only his horse survived the night. He was found the next morning by a farmer and laid to rest, but Guðrún didn’t get the message and she waited for her loved one to come and pick her up.
So when she got a visitor in the darkness she believed it was him and went with him. He was behaving strangely though and kept calling her Garún. In Icelandic folklore, ghosts are unable to utter the word for God, which Guðrún is compiled of.
It wasn’t before the raging wind blows off the large hat on the visitor she realizes it isn’t her boyfriend alive, but a skeleton. She also saw an open grave in the graveyard the skeleton tried to pull her towards.
The ghost skeleton of her boyfriend keeps pestering her and he wants her to join him in death so they can be together. Guðrún finally breaks free from the ghost and gets the help of a sorcerer. The sorcerer traps the ghost on unholy ground outside the graveyard belonging to the church at Myrka.
He places a large and cursed stone on it that still holds the ghost of the priest’s apprentice. You can still see it today on the unholy ground, still waiting for his girlfriend to be together forever.
Probably the closest thing Iceland has to a gothic romance tale, the ghost story of Miklabæjar-Solveig was the story of a real woman that was said to haunt the village she killed herself in after an unrequited love for a priest.
The story about Miklabæjar-Solveig turned into a mystery and there have been many legends about what really happened to her.
She is perhaps best known in connection to a priest that disappeared that she used to work for and may have had an affair with before he cast her aside to marry another. Some even think she came from beyond the grave and took him with her as he was never seen again.
Miklabæjar-Solveig and her Tragic Death
Not much about Miklabæjar-Solveig’s life is known and even her full name is disputed and could have been Solveig Þorleifsdóttir, but we simply don’t know. She could have been from Hrolleifsdal, a valley on the eastern side of Skagafjörður on the northern side of Iceland.
According to the stories, she was a housekeeper or maid for Odd Gíslason, the local priest in the village, before he got married. It is said that Miklabæjar-Solveig fell in love with Odd as a one sided crush, or was even his mistress for some time. But her feelings would have an unhappy end and he married Guðrúna Jónsdóttir in 1777, although he continued to have her working in his house.
Read More: Check out all of our ghost stories from Iceland.
This was too much for Solveig and it is said that she went insane, or at least fell into a deep depression and constantly tried to take her own life. The other workers in the house were put on watch to watch over her and prevent her from harming herself, one of them was Guðlaug Björnsdóttir, the sister of Sir Snorri á Húsafell, who slept by her side at night. It was also to prevent her from going upstairs to the reverend.
Although they tried to keep her away from doing anything, she managed to slip away one night. On April 11th in 1778 she jumped out the window onto the grass and ran off. A worker named Þorsteinn saw her and ran after her, but it was too late. She was too quick, and when he finally reached her, she had already cut her throat and died.
It is said that Þorsteinn said to her something of the likes of that the devil would take her. Miklabæjar-Solveig didn’t have an opportunity to answer, and died that night in 1778.
Þorsteinn came back with the news, her body and said that her final wish had been to be buried in the cemetery. They wrote to their superiors about this, but were denied.
Miklabæjar-Solveig was buried outside of the cemetery, and her death was not recorded in the church book. This was the custom with people that took their own life, but her grave was there, just north of the cemetery.
The Ghost of Miklabæjar-Solveig Returns
Then the rumors started and people started to whisper among themselves that her corpse was not lying still in the grave and that she was angry about not burying her in a consecrated ground.
It is said that the priest had dreams about her and about how angry was with him. She said to him that since he had refused to bury her in holy ground, he too would meet the same fate.
People referred to her now as Miklabæjar-Solveig and talked about seeing her around the cemetery, the village as well as their dreams with blood gushing from her throat, angry at them.
Miklabæjar-Solveig: According to the legend, Miklabæjar-Solveig continued to haunt the village after they refused to bury her on holy ground. She came back as a vengeful ghost that are said to have even dragged people down to her grave.
The Disappearance of the Priest
8 years went past and the ghost stories about Solveig were told among the locals. Then on October 1st in 1786 Odd Gíslason went to Silfrastaðir for mass not far from his home. He never returned from the trip. It is known that he did stop at Víðivellir to speak with the county commissioner Vigfús Scheving
From there it was only a kilometer to Miklabær and he was riding home alone in the dark, possibly very drunk. He usually rode with a companion because of how badly Solveig haunted him, but for some reason, this night he was alone.
It is said that the locals of Miklabær heard someone coming to their windows knocking. But there was a sinister sound to it and they became afraid and didn’t want to check it out. It is said that the youngest son was sent to the door to greet his father. When he opened it though there was no one there.
When they woke up the next day they found his horse not far from the town, but the priest had vanished into thin air. They searched for him for many days, but not a single trace of him was found.
Miklabæjar-Solveig took him to her Grave
Soon the stories about Solveig and that she had something to do with his disappearance started to form. They thought that she had come out from her grave and dragged him with her and that his body was now in her coffin.
Þorsteinn was not satisfied with leaving what happened as a mystery and made a resolution to continue to look for his master.
Þorsteinn shared a room with Guðlaug, the one who had shared a bed with Solveig before she took her own life. Guðlaug was a clairvoyant and kept seeing the ghost of her former colleague.
As an experiment, Þorsteinn put the priest’s clothes under his pillow and went to sleep. Guðlaug saw Solveig come into the room and towards them. Solveig reaches out her hand towards Þorsteinn’s throat. Afraid of what Solveig is doing, she wakes Þorsteinn and sees that Solveig has left a cut along his throat.
In his sleep, Þorsteinn dreamt that he met Solveig were she told him that he would never find out what happened to his master and then motioned as if once again trying to cut her throat which she still blamed them for. When he woke up, Þorsteinn decided to end his quest and would let it all remain a mystery.
The Truth About the Missing Priest
What really happened to the priest? The truth is up for debate now as there are many conflicting versions. For the longest time the villagers were left without a clue to where he had gone to and what happened to him, except from the rumors about Miklabæjar-Solveig.
One letter that is found about this is from Ragnheiður Þórarinsdóttir that was written in 1789. She was the wife of the assistant bailiff, Jón Skúlason. In her letter she stated that they actually did find his body in the Gegni stream that ran below the village. This is also written up in Vatnsfjarðarannál the youngest.
So why all the mystery surrounding his death? It seems that his burial was kept a secret from most of them. Everything indicated that he had passed away, and by his own hand, something that would make his property go to the king and that he would be refused a cemetery burial. Therefore his death and burial was kept a secret, although the talk about the ghost of Solveig had something to do with it wouldn’t let go and perhaps even fuel to cover up the truth.
The Legend about Miklabæjar-Solveig Continues
Decades later most believed that his body was never found and was most likely in Solveig’s grave. Ghost stories about her rising from her grave with blood dripping from her throat were still told.
From the Grave: In the grave they dug up they found these jewelry, that could possible have been hers.//Source: From bygdasafn skagafjordur.
A story told about Hannes Bjarnason met Miklabæjar-Solveig in Djúpadal where she haunted the hill and stopped him from getting up to the town until someone came and helped him. Going into the 19th century though, the legend about Miklabæjar-Solveig died down until 1910.
In 1910 they expanded the cemetery and suddenly Solveig’s grave was inside of it. They dug up one of the graves in 1914 and found that the coffin was buried towards the south, the opposite of the customs and people believed that this was her coffin. When they moved the coffin it was destroyed and the bones buried next to the burial site. There was nothing unusual when they reburied her.
Miklabæjar-Solveig was laid to rest like this until 1937 when she once again was exhumed and buried inside of the Glaumbær cemetery and not a whole lot has been heard from her ghost since then. Perhaps she finally was able to rest in peace?
In one of the more popular bars in Reykjavík called Húrra, there is a legend about a ghost that is haunting the pub. It is often believed it is the ghost of a young man that was lost at sea.
One of the most haunted places in Iceland is a pub in Reykjavík called Húrra. It is a very popular bar and concert venue with live music and if we are to believe the local legends, it is a haunted pub as well.
It is not the only supposed haunted pub in Reykjavik, that has a population around 130 000 people and perhaps even more ghosts. It is believed to be one of the first permanent settlements from the late 800s, and has a long viking and coastal history.
The place where Húrra Pub is built is where the city of Reykjavík’s former shoreline hit and if you go down to the basement of the building you can still see some of the city’s original foundation wall from old times.
The staff that works there claims to have spotted strange shadows on the walls, heard noises after closing time when no one was supposed to be there and felt like they had someone following them, although they were completely alone in the pub. They also tell about a wave of being nauseous in the staircase.
Who can this ghost be? According to some, it is often believed to be a young man who was lost at sea.
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