Thursday, April 02, 2009

Mysteries - 3) Voergård Slot

The Hovering Ghost



The legend says that fru Ingerborg Skeel every New Year's Night comes a crowfoot closer to Voergård, and when she reaches her own magnificent building work, then it will break down.
She's the most wellknown ghost at Voergård. She lived in the 1500s and she was the building master of the beautiful Renaissance castle. She loved to do inspections in the whole building and she still does. Several groups have seen Ingeborg Skeel looking into the window as if she is standing in the air outside. During her lifetime there was an external gallery all the way round the building, and of course she's not aware of the new conditions!

Ingeborg Skeel has got a very bad reputation . She was said to be flogging and torturing ther peasants and servants, she cut the fingers of a thievish child, she threw her building master in the moat and brought a ship aground on her beach in order to plunder it. Known documents tells quite another story. She was a very diligent and enterprising woman , and she was actually very charitable and took care of the poor people in her district.

As a ghost she's very noisy. The top corridor in the east wing is equipped with a door in both ends, and these doors must never be closed, or else she makes a terrible noise in the night if there's no free passage. Being a ghost she should be able to walk through doors shouldn't she?



Like in many other haunted places there is an indelible blood spot at Voergård, it is showing upon the floor in the north east tower room. When the floor was grinded in connection to a renovation and a laquer in 1997, the blood spot came up again. After every new grinding the spot turns up again and again.

Deep down in the cellar is Rosedonten, the prison. Here is a scary monster which can cause the most hardened criminal to break down and confess all his crimes after just one night in the dark. Rosedonten is very small and stuffy, so the monster might probably be a hallucination caused by lack of oxygen.

However an old tradition continues. Every New Year's Night a bundle of straw is put into the prison room to the monster to keep him calm.

Voergård Castle is situated in Vendsyssel in North Jutland, ab. 12 km southwest of Sæby. Open daily in holidays and in the summer season. A fine art museum. Public access to the park all year.

See: Voergård Slot

Next: 4) Borreby Slot, The Alchemist and the Doppelgänger

Source:
"Det mystiske Danmark", en rejseguide til spøgelser, uhyrer og andre mærkværdigheder.
Lars Thomas, Aschehoug Dansk Forlag, 2005.
"Vore Gamle Herregårde", Per Eilstrup, Kay Nielsen, Holger Rasmussen, Forlaget Union

photo 2003: grethe bachmann, Voergård, Vendsyssel, North Jutland

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