Moon Mausoleum
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.
After strange knocking and poltergeist activity made the people at Erstad Farm believe it was haunted. And when they asked the ghost what it wanted, it unraveled the lives of more than one person forever.
After strange knocking and poltergeist activity made the people at Erstad Farm believe it was haunted. And when they asked the ghost what it wanted, it unraveled the lives of more than one person forever.
In Norwegian folklore, the utburd is among the most feared spirits and would linger in people’s minds and legends for centuries. It is the ghost of a child killed at birth and hidden away, denied both life and burial that comes back to claim its name or call out its parents. .
Read More: Check out all ghost stories from Norway
Most utburd stories belong to legend and fairytales, but one case from Alversund in 1711 grew so serious that it ended up before the local court. What began as a terrifying haunting became a legal scandal that exposed fear, superstition, and human deception.
In the autumn of 1711, strange events struck the farm of Siri and Anders Erstad in Alversund, a small place on the west coast of Norway. At first, the disturbances were subtle. There were knocks in the walls and strange sounds around the chimney. Soon the activity escalated. Household objects were torn down, tables overturned, and chaos filled the rooms.
Terrified, Siri and Anders fled to the neighboring farm, seeking refuge with Zidselle and Baste Erstad. Their relief was short-lived as the disturbances seemed to be following them. The unseen presence now seemed intelligent. It responded to questions and made its will known.
First they believed that the ghost had to be because of the house and that it was built upon an old burial ground. On 17 October 1711, the entity finally spoke clearly. It claimed to be an utburd.
The ghost revealed a detailed and horrifying story. It named its parents as Ole Knudsen Øvre Tveiten and Sygni Monsdatter Vatne. According to the spirit, Sygni had given birth to a daughter in Anders Erstad’s barn around 15 years ago, strangled the child, and hidden the body in a food storage shed.
Sygni, who was then working as a servant at Sletta on Radøy, an island right by, was summoned and confronted with these accusations. She was known to have lived a rather loose life, as she earlier had needed to do a public confession in church for this. There was also gossip among the locals that she had admitted to having taken the life of a child. During the interrogation, witnesses claimed that the haunting intensified. The table reportedly flew around the room, and Sygni’s cap was torn from her head and that the ghost would tear her apart. Overwhelmed by fear, she eventually confessed.
Anders and Baste searched the farm and claimed to find bones beneath the floor of a food shed. They had at the start started digging for bones beneath their floorboards, convinced it had to be graves underneath their house. The wife remembered that she once had experienced something tugging her skirt in the food shed, so they started to dig there. Believing they had discovered the remains of the murdered child, they buried the bones in consecrated ground at Alversund churchyard.
Despite this burial, the haunting did not stop. The disturbances continued as before. Confused and frightened, Anders and Baste took the matter to the local court at Frekhaug. The authorities ordered them to exhume the bones and hand them over to the chaplain.
The result was unexpected. The bones did not belong to a human being at all, but some sort of animal. 11 bones, although the spine and skull was missing, there had never been one.
Still, the case was not closed. On 21 October 1711, Parish Priest Erich Møinichen arrived at Erstad with an entourage to investigate personally. That very evening, the ghost made itself known once more. Møinichen questioned it directly. The spirit claimed it had been with God since its death, yet when asked the name of God’s son, it could not answer.
Møinichen began to suspect human involvement. Attention turned to Steffen Pedersen Rydland, a farmhand and perhaps not the brightest and most likely to not be able to answer serious questions. He was between 15-18 years. He was taken to the rectory, where he confessed. The haunting had been staged and Steffen admitted that he had created the disturbances on behalf of Sygni Vatne. She had promised him a pair of knitted stockings if he frightened the household enough to secure her return to Erstad. The ghostly knocks, flying furniture, and eerie voices were the result of trickery, not the supernatural.
Why he would go to these lengths for a pair of stockings is perhaps just as difficult to believe that there was a ghost of a baby haunting the farm. And just how staging a haunting would get Sygne’s position back is also just as mystifying. There are also testimonies that Steffen had met Sygni in midsummer that year, and that she really wanted to marry Anders, but he didn’t want her. So as vengeance, she wanted to put together a haunting to scare them.
The matter was finally brought before the court at Bruknapp on 17 February 1713 and the scandal only got worse. Under questioning, the 53-year-old Sygni Vatne admitted to having had a sexual relationship with Ole Øvre Tveiten ten years earlier, but she denied ever giving birth to a child. She explained that her earlier confession had been made out of terror caused by the supposed ghost.
Ole Øvre Tveiten admitted to having relations with Sygni two years before the great fire of Bergen in 1702 (a local way of calculating time then). Further investigation revealed a deeper scandal. Sygni had previously had a child with Ole’s son, which meant that her later relationship with Ole constituted incest and was guilty in blood shame, a crime punishable by death at the time.
Because there was no physical evidence, the court showed leniency for this part though. Sygni Vatne was sentenced to forced labor in the fishing communities of northern Norway. Ole Øvre Tveiten was sent to forced labor at the copper mines in Årdal.
Anders and Baste Erstad were each fined three riksdaler for their “simplicity” and superstition in burying unknown bones in consecrated ground. Steffen Rydland was excused on account of youthful foolishness and ignorance and received only a round of beating or spanking as punishment.
But did Sygni really kill the baby? Who was telling the truth? Was she simply confessing to a “lesser” crime to cover up for the unforgivable one?
The utburd of Erstad is a striking example of how belief in ghosts once shaped reality, and how a made up story of a ghost could give real life consequences and seal people’s fate forever.
