HGB Ep. 518 - Haunted Poland

Moment in Oddity - Tyrone Sunken Garden

Hidden gardens are always intriguing, but the Tyrone Sunken Garden in Fenton, Michigan is exceptionally unique. The location is made up of stones from all 50 states and have been assembled in a manner to resemble Stonehenge. The creator of the garden, Charles Smith, traveled throughout the United States and shipped the granite stones back to Fenton. All 50 states are represented and each stone is engraved with the state's motto and flower. The property is owned by Crestwood Memorial Cemetery. The manager of the cemetery has stated that the garden needs to be refurbished but that has yet to take place. There are two stone archways with engravings that welcome guests to the circle. At the center of the Stonehenge-like-structure is a white obelisk. The garden is flanked by a hill and a small stream. According to a Times article, the unique space was created by Smith in 1935. There had been a wooden bridge erected by volunteers to aid in the access to the hidden garden but sadly, vandals broke it. According to a Facebook page dedicated to the Tyrone Sunken Garden, the entire history of the location is not completely known. However, the nearly 90 year old hidden garden certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

In the month of December, in 1939, Robert L. May wrote Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. May worked for  Montgomery Ward department store as a copywriter. He was requested by his boss to write a cheery children's book. Preferably using an animal as the main character, similar to a story like Ferdinand the Bull. Previous holiday seasons the department store had purchased mass amounts of coloring books to give out to the children of shoppers. The thought was to create the store's own storybook to save on costs as well as to be used as a marketing ploy. At the time of his bosses request, Robert's life was difficult. His wife was dying of cancer, finances were stretched thin and he had a 4 year old daughter to care for. As May began to write his storybook, he recollected his days as a child and how painfully shy he was. This inspired Robert to base the story on a character who was sort of an ugly duckling with a kind heart. Together with his daughter Barbara and a Montgomery Ward artist, the three visited Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo to come up with a rendering of the main character. After the death of his wife, May's boss offered to have another writer finish the book but Robert declined. When the book was completed he read it to Barbara and her grandparents and by their reactions, May determined the book had its desired effect. That Christmas, 2.4 million copies of the softcover Rudolph poem booklet were given away at Montgomery Ward's. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Haunted Poland

Like so many countries in Europe, Poland has been witness to centuries of history from medieval times, through World Wars, communism, democracy and its utter erasure from existence. Overseers to much of this history in Poland have been castles. Many of them have ghost stories attached to them. But it's not just the castles. Churches and landmarks also have their legends. Join us as we talk about the history and hauntings of Poland!

The intopoland.com website features an interesting legend we wanted to share before we got into the real history of Poland. "The Legend of Lech, Czech and Rus. Over a thousand years ago, there were three Slav brothers wandering with their tribes through the lands of forests and fields stretching between two large rivers, Oder in the west and Dnieper in the east, in search of the best place to settle. One day, after months of weary travel, a beautiful sight appeared before their eyes: on a hill there stood a huge oak tree with a nest between its branches. From the nest a mighty white eagle soared into the sky. Lech was amazed by the view and considered it as a sign from the gods for him and his people. He decided to settle there and chose the white eagle with its wings spread wide against the sunset sky for their emblem. Soon they built a town which they called Gniezno (a “nest” in the Slavic language). The town became the capital of their nation and the first capital of Poland. And so the three brothers separated: Czech decided to go south and Rus chose the east where they started their own countries." 

The land that would eventually encompass the country of Poland was first settled by tribes of people. There were Germanic clans, Slavs, Balts, Celts and Scythians. West Slavic Lechites (ley kites) established themselves during the Early Middle Ages and they would eventually be known as Polanians or Polans and this is where Poland gets its name. The word means "people living in open fields." Poland would first be ruled by dynasties with the first being the Piasts in the 10th century. Poland was Christianized about that time as well. The country was in a precarious position because it sat in the middle of what is considered the East and the West. Wars, uprisings and land confiscation have been a part of its record. It grew to be the largest country in Europe and was also completely erased. Poland was part of one of the biggest medieval battles when it defeated the Teutonic Knights with Lithuania. After that, Poland experienced its Golden Age where art and science flourished. This ended in the late 18th century when Poland was invaded by Russia, Prussia and Austria and they partitioned pieces of Poland, so that it no longer existed. That nonexistence would last for 123 years. The 1800s saw several uprisings, which obviously all failed. World War I would give Poland rebirth and it formed a republic that was able to stop a massive Soviet invasion in 1920. The invasion of Poland by the Nazis in 1939 started World War II. A strong resistance movement formed with the Allies and the largest European resistance movement of the war lead the Warsaw Uprising. By the end of the war, six million Poles had lost their lives, three million of them were Jews. The country rebuilt, but it was under Soviet control until 1989. Poland wrote a new constitution and is today a capitalist economy with a Parliamentary democracy. And also, a country full of legends and ghosts!

Diablak in Babia Góra (Dee ah blok Bah bee ah gore ah)

Translating the name of this location gives one an idea of the legends connected to this mountain range. Babia Góra means a "Mountain of Old Wives" and Diablak means "The Devil's Peak." Babia Góra is located on the border between Poland and Slovakia and the Devil's Peak is the highest peak of the Babia Gora. The Devil’s Peak has a dark history. Legend claims that the Devil set up a contract with a robber and he built him a castle on the top of Devil's Peak. The castle collapsed on the thief and he tried to dig himself out with a shepherd's axe. He was unsuccessful, but climbers claim to still hear him trying to dig himself out. Another story about this location claims that Babia Góra is a sitting old woman that turned to stone. Other legends contend that the peak hosts covens and witches would observe their Sabbath here.  The weather can be very extreme here and is probably why there are so many accidents on it, but there are those who claim it is because the mountain is haunted. The theory is that the supernatural phenomena of the Devil's Peak gives off an exceptionally high level of energy that clouds the mind and hence why planes crash here and climbers fall.

Skull Chapel in Kudowa-Zdrój (Koo doe vah Zedroy)

The Skull Chapel is technically known as St. Bartholomew's Church and was built by Friar Waclaw (Votswahv) Tomaszek in 1776 in the Baroque style. He was a parish priest for the nearby village of Czermna (Germna). The story goes that he was walking near an embankment by the belfry and saw a human bone sticking out of the ground. The Friar fetched the village undertaker named Langer and the two men began digging and digging some more. They found one bone after another and they realized that the entire area was strewn with human bones. There had apparently been a couple of mass graves here, one for victims of a cholera epidemic and another for people killed during a war in the Klodzko (Kwod skah) region. There was obviously no way to know who all the people were or which bones went to what people, so they decided to bleach the bones and put them in the chapel. Over the years, they added more and more bones and eventually even the undertaker and the Friar had their bones added to the chapel when they passed.The walls of the chapel are now adorned with 3,000 skulls and the bones of around 21,000 people. The Skull Chapel was restored in 1945. This is said to be one of the top eight spooky places in Poland, but we actually think its pretty cool. We haven't heard of any hauntings, but it probably also hasn't been investigated.

Wawel (Vah vel) Castle 

Wawel Castle was built atop a Jurassic limestone outcropping in Cracow. Legends claim that a cave beneath the hill was home to a dragon. This dragon was slain by a clever shoemaker. The shoemaker took the skin of a sheep and stuffed it with sulphur and put it outside the cave so the dragon would eat it. It did just that andf then had as incredible thirst, so it drank and drank from the nearby Vistula River and this caused it to explode. The bones were hung near the entrance of a cathedral as a warning to other dragons. By the 9th century, the hill became the principal fortified settlement of a local tribe with an earth and wood rampart. In the mid-11th century, the castle was built as a Romanesque stone building called the palatium. The first historically recorded coronation of a Polish ruler took place here in 1320. The castle was expanded both eastwards and upwards through the centuries. Some changes included a Gothic pavilion called the Danish Tower and an irregular courtyard. There were cathedrals built on the hill too and this would become the necropolis of the rulers of Poland. The castle was rebuilt in the Renaissance style in 1504. Hans the Wood-Carver built the wooden ceilings and various painters decorated the walls with friezes and royal portraits. The Renaissance palace has survived into today, but has suffered some fire damage and isn't as splendid as it once had been. The Austrians turned it into an army garrison, which damaged the building as well, but a lengthy restoration helped and other restoration projects have been conducted as recently as the 1990s. The castle now runs as a museum. Since this is the main burial sight for Polish kings, the spirits of those former rulers are said to haunt the castle. One of their main haunting acitvities is to gather all together on Christmas Eve in the castle and their full-bodied apparitions have been seen. One of the court jesters for King Sigismund, Stancyzk, is also said to haunt the castle. This is usually to give a warning that danger is near. He will appear on the battlements if this is the case.

The Wielopolski (Wheel oh pole ski) Palace

The Wielopolski Palace is also located in Krakow. This is where the Krakow City Council meets and it is the residence of the mayor of Krakow. The palace was built between 1535 and 1560 for Hetman Jan Tarnowski. Upon his death, the palace passed into the hands of three other families with the final one being the family for whom it was named, Wielopolski. The fire of Krakow in 1850 destroyed the palace heavily and the family sold it. A surgeon bought it and repaired it and before long, musical performances were being held as well as masquerade balls. The city of Krakow bought it in 1864 and they remodeled it for government purposes. The spirit here belongs to a young woman who was the Countess of Wielopolski. She apparently fell in love with a man of a lower rank, the butler of the palace. Her father found out when she confessed her love to the priest and her father walled her up in the castle. For that reason, her soul has no peace and she wanders the halls as the White Lady.

St. Mary's Basilica

St. Mary's Basilica is located in Krakow and was built in the 14th century. It is a brick Gothic styled church. The interior houses monumental polychrome murals and a national treasure for Poland, The Altarpiece by Veit Stoss. This is also known as St. Mary's Altar and is a large Gothic altarpiece that sits behind the high altar. It was carved between 1477 and 1489 by the German-born sculptor Veit Stoss and was stolen by the Third Reich during World War II. The altarpiece was recovered after the war and put back in its rightful place. Another unique thing connected to the church is that every hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, a trumpet signal—called the Hejnał mariacki—is played from the top of the taller of Saint Mary's two towers. The trumpet song breaks off in the middle to commemorate the death of a 13th century trumpeter who was shot in the throat while issuing a trumpet alarm about a Mongol attack. The spirit of that trumpeter haunts the church now. 

 

Wola Justowska (Voe lah You stow skaw)

There is an abandoned house in the Wola Justowska district of Krakow. The house is completely overgrown with vegetation and even has a tree growing through the middle of it. The windows and doors are boarded up. A story claims that a man hanged himself in the house in the 1990s and weird things happened to people who moved in afterwards. A married couple moved in first and they didn't last long, moving out within the month. The last straw for them was when their car started by itself and drove forward in the garage. The next couple who moved in, opened a jewelry shop in the house and they started finding the gems crushed in their drawers. An IT company were the next occupants and they left after the monitors started throwing themselves on the ground and several computers burned up. People who walk by claim to see lights and dancing shadows behind the boarded up windows. 

Zofiówka (Zoe fewv kaw) Sanatorium

The old Zofiówka Sanatorium is located in Otwock (Ott whahsk) near Warsaw. This was founded as a Jewish asylum for the treatment of mental disorders and was founded in 1908 by  Polish-Jewish neurologists Adam Wizel, Samuel Goldflam, Ludwik Bregman and Adolf Weisblat. They had formed the "Society for Poor Jews with Nervous and Mental Illnesses." There was an isolation ward for the most difficult patients. Conditions were never great, but they got worse during the occupation of Poland during World War II. Four hundred patients were starved there by the Nazis. A few of the doctors managed to escape, but the rest committed suicide to avoid torture. After the war, the Soviets reopened the sanatorium and it mainly cared for children. In 1985, care was mostly for those who were drug addicted and this continued through the 1990s when it closed. Locals claim to hear disturbing moans and disembodied footsteps. Some patients were taken out into the forest and killed by the Nazis and people have told stories of seeing blurred faces in the forest, surrounded by a strange glow.

Sobotka Hill (Soh Baht kah)

Sobotka Hill is located in Gdansk (guh dinesk) and the name translates to bonfire in English. There’s an old-deserted mansion sitting on an incline known as "Devils Hill." Legends claim that witches met with demons for forbidden rituals here. The real story is that a Masonic order used the mansion for meetings in the 19th century. They called it Lodge of Three Halls. Locals have seen weird flashing lights in the windows at night. Phantoms are said to walk the house. 

Wieliczka (Wee ah leets kah) Salt Mine

The Wieliczka Salt Mine is really something to see and it is an UNESCO World Heritage Site. There is a story of a legendary treasurer connected to the mine. Inside the mine is the Treasurer Chamber. It is said that a ghost guarded the treasure in the mine: salt. Miners would tell stories about this spirit whom they called The Treasurer. This is a good spirit and the following story reveals that. There was a young boy who was very poor and he went to foreman at the mine to see if he could get work there. The foreman scoffed and told the boy that he probably couldn't handle the work. The boy begged for work and explained that he needed to help his family. The foreman relented and told the boy that he would give him a week to prove he could handle the work. As the boy worked, a miner came over to him and said that he would help the boy if the boy agreed to give him half of his wages. The boy agreed. The week ended and the boy had managed to prove himself. He went and got his wages and then he went to find the miner who helped him. The miner appeared to him and said that he was The Treasurer and that he was very proud of the boy because he proved to be honest. The Treasurer told him to keep all the wages. And then he disappeared. Now when The Treasurer shows up, he is usually warning of a disaster like a cave in, fire, explosion or flooding.

Liw (Lee ewe) Castle

The Liw Castle is located next to the winding Liwiec (Lee ewe wek) River in the town of Liw. The castle was built in the Gothic style in the first half of the 15th century. Masovian Duke Janusz I of Warsaw had ordered the construction to protect the river. The castle was expanded in 1549, but unfortunately burned to the ground in the mid 17th century. A manor house was built in 1792 on the site and this too ended up destroyed. The castle and manor house were rebuilt after World War II and they are today a museum. One of the families who had lived in the castle were the Kuczynskis (Coo chin ski). The castellan (kuh steh luhn) was Marcin (maar cheen) and he gave his wife Ludwika (lewd week ah) a richly ornamented ring. Somehow, the ring became lost, so Marcin ordered another one made. This ring too was lost. Marcin heard some rumors about his wife giving the rings to her lover and he believed them. So he ordered his wife beheaded. In the Spring, when the new gardens were being prepared, the two rings were found in the nest of a magpie that had fallen out of a tree. The wife had not been having an affair. The castellan was heartbroken and guilty and he killed himself. The wife's spirit is said to still walk the castle and she is seen in a yellow dress, so people refer to as the Yellow Lady.

Przemysl (puh sheh muh shl) Castle

The Przemysl Castle is located in Poznan (paaz nuhn). The castle started as a Slavonic fortified settlement known as a gord. A Polish king captured it in 1018 and built a Romanesque rotunda and great hall. In the 1300s, this was replaced with a Gothic castle that was destroyed in 1498. It was rebuilt and then later renovated into the Renaissance style in 1616. The castle was rebuilt, yet again, in 1762 and this is the castle that can be seen today. The Austrians stationed troops in the castle in the late 1700s during the partitioning of Poland, which eventually reduced the size of Poland to the point that it ceased to exist. The Austrians used the castle as a prison for Russian prisoners during World War I. Restorations were completed in both 1920 and 1980. The castle can be toured and features exhibitions on Casimir (kah zi meer) the Great, a mobile archery range and knight shows where people can learn how to sword fight and use bows. This is home to the Culture and Science Center as well. There are two ghosts here. One is believed to belong to a 13th-century duchess whose husband paid some servants to murder her while she bathed and the other is a black knight who sometimes accompanies her.

Kornik (Coor nik) Castle

Kórnik Castle is located in the town of Kornik near Poznań (paaz nuhn). The Gothic Revival castle was built in the 14th century and willed to Poland in 1924 and houses a museum and extensive library. This had belonged to Teofila (tae oh feel ah) Działyńska who was a well known Polish landowner. She wasn't as well known in life though as she was in death. She died in 1790 and that's when she started starring in ghost stories. Before her death, Teofila did a great job of preserving the land and renovating roads and bridges and she built a Lutheran church. She rebuilt the castle and established a great library inside, preserving many important books. But she made a big mistake before she passed. She decided to expand the castle again and in order to do this, a small hunter’s lodge that belonged to the Gorek family had to be torn down. Legend claimed that the family had buried their treasure in the lodge and conjured evil spirits to protect it. These spirits were disturbed when the lodge was torn down and so after Teofila died they punished her by forcing her to wander the castle for eternity. She manifests from a portrait of herself that hangs on the wall. In it, she wears a white dress so she is seen wandering the halls as the Lady in White.

Bobolice (Bo bo leetzay) Castle

King Casimir (kah zi meer) III the Great built the Bobolice Castle in the middle of the 14th century in the village of Bobolice. Polish King Louis I the Great gave the castle to a Hungarian Duke who leased the castle to another Hungarian who used the castle to conspire with the Teutonic Order and to rob local villagers. The king finally had enough of that and he invaded Bobolice and took back the castle. It then passed through various families, one of which was the Krezowie family. The niece ended up imprisoned in the castle where she died and she was also a spirit known as the lady in white. That's one version of the story. The other claims that there were twin brothers, one who lived at Bobolice and the other who lived at Mirow Castle. They built a tunnel between the two castles and hid a treasure in it that they had a witch guard for them. One brother went away and when he returned, he brought a back a beautiful girl with him. He eventually suspected that his brother had fallen in love with the girl, so he locked the girl into the cellar down by the treasure. The next witches' sabbath, the witch left for Bald Mount and the other brother snuck down and slept with the girl. The twin came back and caught them and killed his brother. He then bricked the girl in and she died. She now haunts the castle as the Lady in White. She prefers the castle tower. Today, the castle is privately owned.

Niedzica (Need Zeeca) Castle

Niedzica Castle is in the southernmost part of Poland. The castle was built in 1320 and was a border post with Hungary. The castle is Gothic in styling and has been renovated several times through the centuries. Despite being in Poland, it mostly housed Hungarians. The last Hungarian inhabitants left in 1943 and the Red Army eventually marched in and took it during the war. The country of Poland took ownership in 1963 and runs it as a museum. The original Gothic castle is mostly in ruins, but its dungeons are intact. The legend connected to this castle is about Sebastian Berzeviczy, who owned the castle in the 18th century. He traveled to the New World and fell in love with an Inca princess and they had a daughter who married the nephew of a descendant of Inca kings. The group eventually fled to Italy with some sacred scrolls that included a treasure map to where a lost Inca treasure was hidden at Lake Titicaca in Peru. The family brought the scrolls to the castle and people still believe that the map is hidden in the depths of the castle. The spirit of the Inca princess is said to haunt the castle, probably to guard the map.

Czocha (Cho Ha) Castle

The Czocha Castle is located in Sucha (such ah) and is nicknamed the "ghost fortress" and that is because it is so full of ghosts. The castle was built in the 13th century and then was rebuilt in 1909 by Ernest Gütschow, a German entrepreneur. The castle is a hotel today. There are several spirits that haunt the bridge that leads into the castle gates. These people were part of a funeral procession in 1719 and the bridge collapsed underneath them. They drowned in the moat and now their moans are heard. One of the castle's owners had an unfaithful wife and he ordered her drowned in the well in the courtyard. Her cries are still heard coming from the well. She apparently had a child fathered by her lover and the child was bricked into the castle. Are you sensing that Poland likes stories about bricking in people in the castles? The cries of the baby are heard coming from the walls. The German entrepreneur Gütschow had several spouses who were all unfaithful and he would throw them into the castle’s dungeon through a secret trapdoor hidden in his bedroom. Their souls are said to be imprisoned in the maze of underground corridors. There's a White Lady here too. This was a woman named Gertrude who lived in the castle with her brother in the 15th century. She turned traitor on him and helped the Hussites mount an attack on her brother. He managed to protect himself and the castle and when he found out his sister had betrayed him, he had her beheaded. A curse was called down on her so that she couldn't even enter the gates of Hell and she is doomed to walk the castle forever.

Halszka (Howl skah) Tower

The Halszka Tower was one of the defensive towers from a medieval castle that was built in the 14th century. This is also called the Tower of the Black Princess. Her real name was Halszka from Ostrog. Her father wanted her to marry Lukasz (Loo Kash) Gorka, but she wasn't having any of that, so she was imrpisoned in the tower from 1559 to 1573. Apparently, she was forced to wear an iron mask while in there. Today, it is said that she haunts the tower.

Ogrodzieniec (Oh grah jin yitz) Castle 

Ogrodzieniec Castle now lies in ruins. It dates to medieval times and sits upon the mountain, from which the castle gets its name. The castle was built into the rocks around it, so it was well fortified. Several families have owned it through the centuries and it has been occupied and burned several times. The ruins have been preserved and can be toured. There are a couple of ghosts here. The first belongs to a big black dog that rattles a chain that is around its neck. The spectral dog has been seen walking the grounds. A man who owned the castle in the 17th century named Stanisław (stanee suave)Warszycki (war zik ee) haunts the ruins. he had made a fortune in his time and didn't want to share it with anyone. He was a very cruel man as well and liked to make use of a torture chamber in the castle. It is said that the Devil took the man straight to Hell when he died, but people claim to see his apparition and to him walking around. perhaps he is still trying to guard his wealth.

Some famous Poles were Frederic Chopin and Marie Curie. Chopin has a ghost story about him shared on Classical Public Radio WDAV's website, "Chopin’s restless spirit strikes again! In fact, this story is just one of several spooky experiences pianist Byron Janis has had involving the late composer. Feeling a supernatural link with Chopin, Janis was once gifted a rare cast of the composer’s face from Georges Sand’s estate, which he proudly displayed on his piano. One day, guests who were visiting Janis’ family at home asked about the mask – and suddenly, something remarkable happened. Salty fluid began to leak from the cast’s eyes, followed by a frothy foam bubbling forth from its mouth, leaving the family and guests in awe and 'terribly shocked.' Janis’ explanation for the incident? The mask was crying tears of joy – and 'Chopin was happy he could communicate, somehow, with the current world.'" Was this really Chopin back from the grave? Are any of these Polish locations harboring spirits? That is for you to decide!